Speaker 1: Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Welcome back, everyone to another episode of Comeback Stories. I'm
Speaker 2: one of your co hosts, Darren Waller, grateful that you
Speaker 2: guys are here to join us for another episode.
Speaker 3: And I'm Donnie Starkins mindfulness and mental health coach and
Speaker 3: meditation and yoga teacher. And today we got a guest,
Speaker 3: an amazing guest. His name is Albert Bastiller. So Albert's
Speaker 3: a father, a husband, a coach, a facilitator, and co
Speaker 3: founder of Sacred Sons. Albert illuminates the darkness of human
Speaker 3: suffering with the fire of love.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: I love that he holds space for individual and collective
Speaker 3: healing so that all men may open their hearts and
Speaker 3: awaken to their sacred masculinity. Albert, great to have you on, brother, Welcome.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. Brothers.
Speaker 3: Heard so many great things about you, and I'm glad
Speaker 3: that we haven't connected in the human but we're here
Speaker 3: to really drop in. This has come Backstories and we
Speaker 3: usually get right into it, and we'd love to.
Speaker 4: Know for you what was life like growing up. That's
Speaker 4: a really big question as I'm sure most of your
Speaker 4: guests can attest to. Yeah, life for me growing up
Speaker 4: was chaotic, confusing, heartbreaking. Yeah, it was all those things
Speaker 4: and more. But I think at the core of it,
Speaker 4: I felt very alone. Even within my family of origin.
Speaker 4: I felt like there wasn't the support and direction that
Speaker 4: I was seeking to feel like I had a firm
Speaker 4: foundation on this earth. And so I feel like I
Speaker 4: escaped into my imagination often and you know, I found
Speaker 4: my way. Of course here I am and childhood was tough.
Speaker 4: So it comes to mind you brought up the word confusing.
Speaker 3: So when Darren and I first started this podcast, we
Speaker 3: came up with this first question and the very first episode,
Speaker 3: Iron interviewed Darren, and then second episode Darren interviewed me,
Speaker 3: and that was the same thing that Darren said, confusing.
Speaker 4: My answer was easy.
Speaker 3: Yet we found ourselves and even you, because I'm familiar
Speaker 3: with your story, still in the same spots, in the
Speaker 3: depth of an addiction. So I just wanted to point
Speaker 3: that out for some context, and maybe Darren I'll let
Speaker 3: there and share a little bit. I know our listeners
Speaker 3: have heard, but he can give some context as to
Speaker 3: why it was confusing for him.
Speaker 2: Yees. So the confusion for me lied in there was
Speaker 2: nothing externally wrong about the environment I grew up in.
Speaker 2: I grew up in a two parent household, great schools,
Speaker 2: great environments, I had good friends. So everything on the
Speaker 2: outside was like, this is great, Like I couldn't be
Speaker 2: blessed with a better childhood just from what I know.
Speaker 2: But the confusion light on the inside for me because
Speaker 2: very early on, I just felt like the reality and
Speaker 2: somehow what I adopted as a truth very early on
Speaker 2: that I just wasn't enough, that something about me was
Speaker 2: inherently wrong. You know, there's people of my skin color
Speaker 2: telling me that I wasn't black enough because of the
Speaker 2: way that I acted in my personality. I was just
Speaker 2: different man. I loved all different kinds of music. I
Speaker 2: was kind of nerdy. I was like all over the place.
Speaker 2: You couldn't put me in one box. But there's a
Speaker 2: bit of a limiting perspective around what it's like to
Speaker 2: be black, and I didn't fit in that box. And
Speaker 2: I just felt like the fact that I can't change
Speaker 2: my skin color, I'm stuck with this, and it's just
Speaker 2: a constant reminder that I'm not enough. And so that's
Speaker 2: where the confusion lie for me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say that I can resonate with some
Speaker 4: of that. You know, my father is American, He's white American.
Speaker 4: My mother is Taiwanese. I was born in Taipeid, Taiwan,
Speaker 4: grew up there until I was five, until we moved
Speaker 4: to California after my parents separated, And so I feel
Speaker 4: like that was a lot of the root of the
Speaker 4: confusion for me was the disharmony between my mother and father.
Speaker 4: They were fighting a lot, They didn't see eye to eye.
Speaker 4: There wasn't a lot of affection and tenderness and kindness.
Speaker 4: My mother, of course, was a very nurturing woman, cooked
Speaker 4: amazing food and was like very quick to you know,
Speaker 4: want to comfort us and soothe us. My father was
Speaker 4: on the other side of it, pretty militant, cold, angry
Speaker 4: at times, and while he could come down to our
Speaker 4: level occasionally, it's always seemed off. He was off somewhere else,
Speaker 4: he was in his head. He was just somewhere else.
Speaker 4: So I didn't feel that grounded connection with him. Where
Speaker 4: we did connect was on an intellectual level. But you know,
Speaker 4: as young children, as the boy that I was, at
Speaker 4: least I longed for that deeper connection with my dad
Speaker 4: and he wasn't really able to meet me there. Wow,
Speaker 4: Darren and I were just talking.
Speaker 3: We recorded an episode previous to yours, and it was
Speaker 3: an episode we did together called anchoring in the present
Speaker 3: moment and the impact it can have when we're not there,
Speaker 3: when our body's there but our mind is elsewhere, especially
Speaker 3: when it comes to relationships father son, mother, daughter, parents,
Speaker 3: like or you know, your romantic relationship, and just the
Speaker 3: impact you know, especially these days, but even back then
Speaker 3: it can have. And it sounds like it had a
Speaker 3: tremendous impact on you with your dad really not being there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was physically present most of the time between
Speaker 4: zero and five. However, you know, he was emotionally, I think,
Speaker 4: disconnected from himself. So how could he be emotionally connected
Speaker 4: with us if he was disconnected from his own inner
Speaker 4: world in that way? He was always you know, I
Speaker 4: think often his thoughts and ideations and you know, his
Speaker 4: fantasies really and so I'd reckon with that. And I
Speaker 4: feel like children they intrinsically attuned to the environment, right,
Speaker 4: The children are so wise, but they're just like absorbing
Speaker 4: all the information in the environment, and so a part
Speaker 4: of me felt rejected, even though my dad was there
Speaker 4: and he you know, I don't even know if he
Speaker 4: actually said the words I love you or anything like that,
Speaker 4: but i'trinsically picked up that there was a disconnect between
Speaker 4: us and I, you know, children myself included, took that
Speaker 4: as there's something wrong with me. There's something wrong with
Speaker 4: me that my father is not taking the interest that
Speaker 4: I desire from him. He's not taking he's not seeing
Speaker 4: me right, he's not here with me. And so I
Speaker 4: interpreted that as there's something wrong with me. You know,
Speaker 4: there's something intrinsically wrong with me, and that's shame, right,
Speaker 4: there was shame there there's something wrong with me. I'm
Speaker 4: bad or I'm wrong or something off or I would
Speaker 4: be loved by my dad.
Speaker 3: Can you can you think about and what comes up
Speaker 3: for you? And if I we ask, like what was
Speaker 3: an early memory of pain?
Speaker 4: Well, my father was you know also you know, a
Speaker 4: physical disciplinarian. So even at the age of three, you know,
Speaker 4: we things had to be a certain way and if
Speaker 4: they were not that way, or if maybe we broke
Speaker 4: a dish or spilt something, you know, you know, pick
Speaker 4: he picked me up and he just spank me, you know,
Speaker 4: and that was a I think a very shocking and
Speaker 4: startling realization that created a lot of fear in me
Speaker 4: as a boy. I'd be running through the house and
Speaker 4: he'd be chasing me, you know, to give me a
Speaker 4: good wallop. And for him, in his paradigm, that just normal, right,
Speaker 4: that's good parenting even but for a little three year
Speaker 4: old boy, dad's scary.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I was afraid of my father and I equally loved him,
Speaker 4: and so there's just like dichotomy of like, I love
Speaker 4: this man who's my dad, and he's not loving me
Speaker 4: and seeing me as I long to be loved and seen.
Speaker 4: So I think that that's definitely an early pain point.
Speaker 4: Another pain point for me was just the chaos and
Speaker 4: the dysfunction within their dynamic between my mother and father
Speaker 4: just always fighting. There was no harmony. It was it
Speaker 4: always seemed like things were on edge and there was
Speaker 4: this tension in the air, and that it doesn't feel
Speaker 4: good to be around an environment where I felt like
Speaker 4: I either kind of walk on eggshells or we kind
Speaker 4: of just adapted, you know, or I'd escape off into
Speaker 4: my imagination. So there wasn't a sense of full safety
Speaker 4: and security in my household. And I think as a
Speaker 4: young boy, as a young child, that's very painful to
Speaker 4: reckon with. And so yeah, that was really the early
Speaker 4: the early foundations as this there's not a sense of
Speaker 4: safety and security, and that was very challenging to move through.
Speaker 3: I've heard you say this on another podcast when I
Speaker 3: was listening to you a while back, that you said
Speaker 3: my parents did not know how to communicate matters of
Speaker 3: the heart, and the way that you articulated that was
Speaker 3: like wow, that that awareness and that understanding to be
Speaker 3: able to see that and understand why they did what
Speaker 3: they did, and also the impact that it had on
Speaker 3: us was really really powerful. Those words really hit me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean communication is so key in all relationships.
Speaker 4: It's our capacity to communicate and translate our inner experience
Speaker 4: and perspective to convey that to others in a way
Speaker 4: that they can understand and receive. That creates that reciprocity
Speaker 4: between us, that creates the foundation where we can really
Speaker 4: see eye to eye and heart to heart as human
Speaker 4: beings say like oh, you know, I see myself and
Speaker 4: you and you can see yourself and me. And it's
Speaker 4: that mutuality that creates that rapport, that resonance that we
Speaker 4: love like as humans were, you know, we love it
Speaker 4: when we vibe with another we're like, we just hit
Speaker 4: it off and we're just a vibe and it's just easeful.
Speaker 4: Whereas it is someone that we don't necessarily vibe with,
Speaker 4: you can just feel that tension. And the only way
Speaker 4: to break through that tension, which I believe is like
Speaker 4: the unconscious, unresolved energetic of our past or somatic past.
Speaker 4: But to be able to bridge that through language and
Speaker 4: communication is powerful. And so yeah, I feel like not
Speaker 4: being understood in my household, seeing dysfunctional communication and really
Speaker 4: not being able to convey and communicate even with myself
Speaker 4: and to know my own needs and to be able
Speaker 4: to convey and communicate that to the world. And so
Speaker 4: it's been a long journey to be able to become
Speaker 4: fluent in communication, in emotional, in intra communication, the inner
Speaker 4: communication with my deeper self with God.
Speaker 2: You know, obear, I'm in awe of your journey into
Speaker 2: how you've gotten into the place where you are now,
Speaker 2: just the servant that you are and just the wisdom
Speaker 2: that you radiate, And I feel like a fascinating part
Speaker 2: of your journey that I'd like to dive into a
Speaker 2: little bit is you grew up in an atheist household.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever had a conversation with somebody
Speaker 2: that is an atheist or that was a part of
Speaker 2: their lifestyle. Could you explain like what that was like? Yeah,
Speaker 2: for the first twenty something years of your life, I
Speaker 2: believe you said, what was that like?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it was bleak's that's a word that comes
Speaker 4: to mind, because this is all there is, right, There's
Speaker 4: no magic, there's no spirit, there's no invisible world. This
Speaker 4: is what you get, and it's just random, right, We're
Speaker 4: just all here like a consequence of you know, billions
Speaker 4: of years of evolution and we're kind of a fluke.
Speaker 4: We're just out here floating in space, and there's no
Speaker 4: higher order to things. Everything's just chaos. Everything just happens
Speaker 4: because it happens that way, because it's a dog eat
Speaker 4: dog world, right, and the strong survive and the weak perish.
Speaker 4: And you know, having my father who was you know,
Speaker 4: he was raised in a his mother was very religious.
Speaker 4: His father wasn't, but his mother was like extremely Christian,
Speaker 4: and I think that dynamic created this repulsion for him. Again,
Speaker 4: it was like he was even against he was against religion.
Speaker 4: It wasn't just like there's no God. It was like
Speaker 4: anybody that's religious is suspect. They're they're like feeble minded,
Speaker 4: or they're afraid, or they're you know, believing in fairy tales.
Speaker 4: Here like we need to live in reality. And so
Speaker 4: there's a big judgment against spirituality, against any religion, against
Speaker 4: even like traditions, right, even like cultural traditions. And so
Speaker 4: it was very it was devoid of a deeper sense
Speaker 4: of meaning and purpose of life, like why are we
Speaker 4: all here? And so I really struggled with that of
Speaker 4: like why is life feel like it's just pain and
Speaker 4: just suffering? Like why am i here? I did not
Speaker 4: ask to be here, and I didn't have a deeper
Speaker 4: roadmap to understand myself in relationship to what all of
Speaker 4: this is. What is this reality that I'm a part
Speaker 4: of outside of like the scientific materialism that my father
Speaker 4: was very you know, knowledgeable of. You know, he was
Speaker 4: a mining engineer, he spoke five languages, he was very
Speaker 4: well versed in world history and war and all these things.
Speaker 4: But in the matters of the heart, he was you know,
Speaker 4: an infant, he wasn't able to have healthy functioning relationships
Speaker 4: and really in any capacity, i'd say, across the board.
Speaker 4: So it was tough. It was tough, and I feel
Speaker 4: like in many ways, as I, you know, went through
Speaker 4: my awakening, I reck I understood the perfection of it all,
Speaker 4: of having the father and mother that I did, and
Speaker 4: of feeling feeling the pain of having no higher power,
Speaker 4: no creator, no cosmic order to this and having to
Speaker 4: go without that and not being able to really makes
Speaker 4: sense of reality other than like we're all fucked. This
Speaker 4: is just it is what it is. You know. Everybody
Speaker 4: lives the way they want and that's it. And I
Speaker 4: followed that dictate to my own demise, right seeking, pleasure seeking,
Speaker 4: status seeking, you know, to be perceived as someone because
Speaker 4: on the inside I felt like nothing, I felt worthless.
Speaker 2: To what ends do you feel like you had to
Speaker 2: go to to to cope with that bleakness and that
Speaker 2: hopelessness and the futility? Like where did that take you?
Speaker 4: You know? It was fun at first, you know, it
Speaker 4: took me into i would say, the rave scene, the
Speaker 4: party scene, which really did expand and open my world.
Speaker 4: You know, some of these entheogens these these you know
Speaker 4: drugs as they were, they did like md M A
Speaker 4: for one, you know, ecstasy, It did kind of give
Speaker 4: me this sense of wow, like this feels amazing and
Speaker 4: I've never felt like this before, and is this this
Speaker 4: is possible? This feeling is love, right, this is like
Speaker 4: something I've never felt before. And even being in that scene,
Speaker 4: you know, there's a camaraderie that forms with others. You know,
Speaker 4: there's a sense of belonging to these groups of people
Speaker 4: that you know, we share the interest of partying and
Speaker 4: maybe some other stuff. But like, I feel like it
Speaker 4: started out fun, you know, it was partying, It was
Speaker 4: good fun. But then it increasingly I declined or degraded,
Speaker 4: I would say, into like more of the you know,
Speaker 4: dependent upon the drugs. Right, there was more of a
Speaker 4: seeking of that of like going harder, of going deeper,
Speaker 4: of going further, and that brought me into addiction, the
Speaker 4: depths of addiction. And it was then that I realized
Speaker 4: that even though I knew it was harming me, I
Speaker 4: wasn't able to resist. Often there was that time I
Speaker 4: believe that I had a strong mind and that I
Speaker 4: could make choices for myself, but it was addiction that
Speaker 4: really humbled me and had me doubting myself because before that,
Speaker 4: I really, you know, I think somewhere along the line,
Speaker 4: I did start to believe that I had something in me.
Speaker 4: I couldn't put my finger on it, but I would.
Speaker 4: I was willing to take risks. You know, I felt
Speaker 4: a sense of deeper confidence that wasn't coming from the
Speaker 4: outer I didn't know how to articulate that that was
Speaker 4: the soul that I am expressing itself and feeling like
Speaker 4: there's more underneath the surface that I'm still uncovering. But
Speaker 4: through that and being humbled by not being in control,
Speaker 4: basically of losing control of my own will and volition
Speaker 4: to make choices for myself that would either harm myself
Speaker 4: or better myself, that's really where where the where that
Speaker 4: worldview collided, right because it was like now here, I
Speaker 4: am no God, no religious construct, no structure, really left
Speaker 4: my own devices, right like I can do whatever I want.
Speaker 4: And in that not having like an ethical true north,
Speaker 4: not having a path forward that I could say I'm
Speaker 4: starting here and this is where I want to go.
Speaker 4: Because you know, in my early twenties, a lot of
Speaker 4: my friends they went off into their four year schools
Speaker 4: and I ended up you know, going to jail, you know,
Speaker 4: and I was arrested for possession for sales and had
Speaker 4: my first experience in jail, in a county jail and
Speaker 4: men Central Jail in LA which is a full experience
Speaker 4: in and of itself, just to be in that world,
Speaker 4: to be around, you know, people who are facing twenty
Speaker 4: five to life or murder, being around gang members and
Speaker 4: experiencing their mindset, and you know, even having you know,
Speaker 4: people that are much older in you know, in encountering them,
Speaker 4: and it's like, wow, I'm seeing if I stay on
Speaker 4: this path, you know. And it seemed like that the
Speaker 4: people that were around me were progressively getting I would say,
Speaker 4: the outlook on life was getting more and more cutthroat
Speaker 4: and more and more bleak. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 4: more of the you know, criminal element. As I started
Speaker 4: going deeper and deeper into my addiction, so you know,
Speaker 4: not having a creator at the core and running away
Speaker 4: from my traumas, which is ultimately what you know, addiction
Speaker 4: was for me. It was like I didn't want to
Speaker 4: feel the pain of disconnection that I felt. I felt
Speaker 4: this emptiness inside gnawing at me of why don't I
Speaker 4: feel connected to anything deeply? Why don't I feel connected
Speaker 4: and able to access what it seems like other people
Speaker 4: around me, my peers, are able to access in the
Speaker 4: in the emotional sphere, and in the sphere of even
Speaker 4: desiring greater things for themselves that were not like just
Speaker 4: fleeting boyhood fantasies of how having more power and more
Speaker 4: fame or more.
Speaker 3: Status in the depths of our addiction, I think both
Speaker 3: Darreon and I did a lot of a lot of
Speaker 3: other drugs, but at its core, it was pills for us.
Speaker 4: What was it for you? And just how bad did
Speaker 4: it gain?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: It was for me it was methamphetamine crystal, and it
Speaker 4: got really bad. I think at my when I was arrested,
Speaker 4: I was on like a four day binger, and I
Speaker 4: was I I'm six ' three and so at this
Speaker 4: time I was, I believe, one hundred and seventeen pounds. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And so in losing myself like in like having no
Speaker 4: I would say spiritual north star, having no connection or
Speaker 4: at least conscious connection of of myself with the creator
Speaker 4: and and and that I'm a part of this magical,
Speaker 4: wondrous universe. I just I started destroying myself because I
Speaker 4: think at the core of that belief is I'm unworthy,
Speaker 4: I'm unlovable. There's these things that I interpreted as a
Speaker 4: boy from my environment that I carried over and you know,
Speaker 4: it crossed a point where a lot of my friends
Speaker 4: that were around me, because I always was fortunate to
Speaker 4: have very good groups of people around me. However, at
Speaker 4: a certain point my friends started letting me know, like,
Speaker 4: I can't support where you're going. I can't You're not
Speaker 4: like who you were. Because I started losing I think
Speaker 4: pieces of maybe what made me me, and as it
Speaker 4: was all stripped away, I feel like that was necessary
Speaker 4: in a sense of this stripping away of identity, of
Speaker 4: sense of self so that I can come to the
Speaker 4: rock bottom and really like, that's really what initiated my
Speaker 4: awakening and my connection to God was a prayer. It
Speaker 4: was that prayer of sinking so low into my own self, hatred,
Speaker 4: into addiction. You know, I had so much shame that
Speaker 4: I couldn't break out out of the addiction because I
Speaker 4: was living I was really living a double life because
Speaker 4: I was still you know, working full time and doing
Speaker 4: my best attend to my responsibilities to my family, my
Speaker 4: mother and my two sisters at the time, and I
Speaker 4: was the quote unquote man of the house. You know,
Speaker 4: I had left when I was nineteen, I'd left home.
Speaker 4: But then when I was twenty three, my mother reached
Speaker 4: out and said, we need help. You know, we're still
Speaker 4: in this two bedroom apartment. You know, we grew up
Speaker 4: in from middle school, and they're still in this two
Speaker 4: bedroom department apartment not on the best side of town,
Speaker 4: and they were struggling. And I had kind of gone
Speaker 4: off on my own to like live my life, and
Speaker 4: my mom reaches out and says, you know, we need
Speaker 4: your help. And I had a relatively decent it job
Speaker 4: at the time, and so since I was doing pretty
Speaker 4: poorly at the time, I was like, you know what,
Speaker 4: maybe this is best. And so I said, okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'll come and we can move out and find a
Speaker 4: place together, and we can help my sister who had
Speaker 4: Schitzo effective disorder, which is kind of like a cross
Speaker 4: between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and so she was hearing voices,
Speaker 4: she was like on six different meds. It was intense
Speaker 4: to witness her journey. But it was in moving back
Speaker 4: in with my family and saying this is what's going
Speaker 4: to make me quit the addiction. I'm going to I
Speaker 4: have my family that needs me. I'm going to be
Speaker 4: able to quit the drugs and help them. And in
Speaker 4: not being able to do that and breaking the promise
Speaker 4: to myself, I just felt so much shame. You know.
Speaker 4: I felt a lot of shame because I had already
Speaker 4: been to jail, I'd already been through all that, and I,
Speaker 4: you know, I climbed my way out just on my
Speaker 4: own accord. I you know, started going to the gym.
Speaker 4: I quit the addiction for a time, and I started
Speaker 4: working out in eating rite and running and doing all
Speaker 4: these things were good for me. I you know, built
Speaker 4: up my weight to like two hundred pounds. I felt
Speaker 4: very strong, very fit. And then I fell back in.
Speaker 4: I relapsed, and it took me took me down. It
Speaker 4: took me down. I was in a really bad headspace,
Speaker 4: and ultimately I came to the point of really thinking
Speaker 4: about ending my life a lot. I started at first,
Speaker 4: it started out as ideation, as kind of this, like
Speaker 4: that's maybe what I need to do, you know. It
Speaker 4: started out from that point to like getting to a
Speaker 4: really dark place where one night it was like that's
Speaker 4: what I need to do. That's the solution to everything.
Speaker 4: Like here, I am being a burden too society, being
Speaker 4: a burden to my family, even though that wasn't the
Speaker 4: case because I was financially providing, I was helping out
Speaker 4: my family. But it's that distorted perspective of self and
Speaker 4: of life that, you know, it really kind of twisted
Speaker 4: the knife into me, into my heart and into my soul.
Speaker 4: And so I just felt I felt the intensity of
Speaker 4: feeling just worthless, of feeling all that shame, of feeling
Speaker 4: like I didn't deserve to live. And that brought me
Speaker 4: the point of, you know what, let me do the world,
Speaker 4: and let me do my family a favor, let me
Speaker 4: just end my life. That was That was it. That
Speaker 4: was it. And being in that place and really resigning
Speaker 4: myself to death, resigning myself to non existence, because that's
Speaker 4: what I thought death would bring, just non existence. I
Speaker 4: don't exist anymore. I'm just gone, right. But it was
Speaker 4: in that experience where I was I set out to
Speaker 4: end my life. I was alone in my room, I
Speaker 4: had my knives, and I was ready to go, and
Speaker 4: I started grieving. I started grieving my life and what
Speaker 4: was and what could have been, and just started feeling
Speaker 4: devastated to have to leave, but even knowing that this
Speaker 4: is the only way, and then coming to a point
Speaker 4: where something deep within me cried out. It wasn't even
Speaker 4: like my voice. It wasn't even it didn't feel like
Speaker 4: me at the time, because I wasn't living in my
Speaker 4: heart and soul, and so I feel it was the
Speaker 4: deeper part of me cried out to God, cried out
Speaker 4: to the creator and said, God, if you're real, I
Speaker 4: need to know. And it was this prayer from the
Speaker 4: depths of me because I was determined to end my
Speaker 4: life that night, and I feel like it was this
Speaker 4: last stitch effort from my soul to say, hey, we're
Speaker 4: going the wrong way, and in calling out and saying
Speaker 4: that prayer and making that prayer from my depths, God responded.
Speaker 4: God responded, and I was enveloped in a vibrating energy
Speaker 4: that I'd never experienced before. I've never experienced anything like this,
Speaker 4: and it was so foreign at first that I didn't
Speaker 4: even know what it was. It felt like this really
Speaker 4: fast vibration that was just outside of me at first
Speaker 4: that I perceived it as filling my room. This vibrating
Speaker 4: energy and it kind of tripped me out at first
Speaker 4: because I was like, what is this? And then it
Speaker 4: came inside me and washed away in that instant all
Speaker 4: the grief, all the agony, all the pain, all the
Speaker 4: chaos that was swirling in me, and it was just
Speaker 4: like calm. It was just absolute peace. And I just
Speaker 4: started sobbing. I just started sobbing as I was held
Speaker 4: by the Creator. It felt like being held by all
Speaker 4: loving mother and father. I describe it as it felt
Speaker 4: like I was now a little baby and I was
Speaker 4: just being cradled like I had never been cradled in
Speaker 4: my life. And I just wept. I wept in joy,
Speaker 4: I wept in gratitude, and I gave my life to God.
Speaker 4: I said, don't ever leave me. And it was communicating,
Speaker 4: wasn't I wasn't verbalizing this. It was just all internal.
Speaker 4: And so being able to communicate and be heard and
Speaker 4: receive responses was it fundamentally transform my perception of the world,
Speaker 4: the perception of life, and perception of myself. Because suddenly
Speaker 4: where I felt absolutely worth, worthless one moment about to
Speaker 4: end my life, and then to be saved and to
Speaker 4: be held and to be loved and to be reminded
Speaker 4: that I'm not alone and that God loves me, that
Speaker 4: I am loved, and to feel that love, right, we
Speaker 4: hear it in words, but to feel it in this
Speaker 4: all consuming energy and to feel it in my heart.
Speaker 4: You know, that's really the powerful That was the most
Speaker 4: powerful part of it is that it gave me access
Speaker 4: to my heart because before, you know, maybe I'd feel
Speaker 4: what I thought was love on ecstasy or in certain
Speaker 4: infatuations relationally, but this was something different. It was something
Speaker 4: that my soul recognized, something deeper, and it left an
Speaker 4: indelible mark upon me and completely shifted my trajectory in life.
Speaker 3: I love, love, love how much you and we will
Speaker 3: probably continue to talk about God, and I know for
Speaker 3: some people they'll be really inspired and some maybe triggered
Speaker 3: or uncomfortable.
Speaker 4: But that's even more reason to keep talking about it.
Speaker 3: But I'm just curious for you, this idea or as
Speaker 3: it came in, was not through any type of structured religion, right,
Speaker 3: So maybe you can talk a little bit about that
Speaker 3: and what or who God is to you today.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel like that was probably the only path
Speaker 4: into relationship with God for me in this life. It
Speaker 4: took me about to leave this earth to reach out,
Speaker 4: and so maybe that speaks to something from the past,
Speaker 4: you know, past lives. Maybe I was really stubborn. I'm
Speaker 4: a tourus in this life, so maybe there I do
Speaker 4: have that stubborn element and to experience that level of
Speaker 4: redemption for me in my own room in this I've
Speaker 4: experienced that I didn't tell anybody for so many years.
Speaker 4: It was just a part of like my path and
Speaker 4: I was very alone as I left off the world
Speaker 4: of drugs and partying and just like recklessness and then
Speaker 4: started to write my life bit by bit. But it
Speaker 4: was really experiencing God, not only from that experience, but
Speaker 4: knowing that now that I understood, and I started exploring
Speaker 4: the different world religions from that point of having a
Speaker 4: direct experience. Now I was able to connect so many
Speaker 4: dots as I started exploring and praying with different houses
Speaker 4: of worship, you know, visiting the Christian churches, visiting different
Speaker 4: Hindu temples, going to the Buddhist sanctuaries, you know, just
Speaker 4: having having the desire, the genuine desire now to search
Speaker 4: and understand. Okay, now that I know that God is real,
Speaker 4: let me see what everybody's talking about and feel what
Speaker 4: they do like to connect with God. Now that I've
Speaker 4: connected with God so deeply and I feel that God's
Speaker 4: a part of me forever, I want to continue to
Speaker 4: do my part to cultivate that relationship, to lean into
Speaker 4: the source of my existence and the source of all existence.
Speaker 4: There's nothing more important than for me to align with
Speaker 4: the source of all existence. And so that led me
Speaker 4: on a big quest and journey to study the different
Speaker 4: world religions and to practice them so that I could
Speaker 4: feel what it was like to pray with different peoples
Speaker 4: because there's so much religious divide still. You know, Christian
Speaker 4: see things very this way, Islam sees it very this way.
Speaker 4: But it's like, well, we're all talking about God, right,
Speaker 4: or it's all coming back to the source of all
Speaker 4: of this, right, There can only be one. And I
Speaker 4: think that in our humanness we missed the point. Sometimes
Speaker 4: we missed the mark. And so I think coming from
Speaker 4: a place where I was void of all of that
Speaker 4: religious programming and indoctrination, I was just kind of a slate.
Speaker 4: But then it came to life with that direct experience
Speaker 4: of God, of love of the Divine. Now things that
Speaker 4: resonate with the love that I experienced. It was like boom'
Speaker 4: that's true. Yes, I know that's right. And then there's
Speaker 4: one stuff that like, I'm like, that doesn't resonate, that
Speaker 4: doesn't feel like the God that I experienced, That doesn't
Speaker 4: feel like the God that I experienced? Why would God
Speaker 4: say that or expect this? And so I kind of
Speaker 4: had a true north that was that was aligned by
Speaker 4: the Creator in my direct experience and through studying the
Speaker 4: different world religions. I think it gave me breadth because
Speaker 4: I had the depth of experience from that first mystical
Speaker 4: experience that changed me. But now I needed to cultivate
Speaker 4: the breadth of understanding of what was out there in
Speaker 4: the world and like kind of cross correlate, like does
Speaker 4: this resonate, does this feel true? Does this make sense?
Speaker 4: Is this a cohesive way that I can deepen my
Speaker 4: relationship with the Creator or does it feel like there's
Speaker 4: like some kind of outer standard that is imposed that
Speaker 4: I feel like a lot of religions kind of do
Speaker 4: you know in how they've kind of degraded over thousands
Speaker 4: of years to like these outer expectations rather than the
Speaker 4: inner lived experience of what it is to be in
Speaker 4: union with God, to be in love with God. And
Speaker 4: since God exists within everybody, right, God is growing in
Speaker 4: everyone and everything in all life. How am I showing
Speaker 4: up in all of my relationships? And how am I
Speaker 4: showing up in my relationships with nature? And so what
Speaker 4: it really did was it forced me to make an
Speaker 4: inventory of how I had been up to that point
Speaker 4: and to do my best to begin to rectify these
Speaker 4: kind of character defects that came from not having that blueprint,
Speaker 4: not having the map to understand how to live a
Speaker 4: righteous life, to live in alignment. And so began a
Speaker 4: period of deep self exploration and honesty. Or I had
Speaker 4: to own take ownership for a lot of the ways
Speaker 4: I had been out of integrity and how I'd hurt
Speaker 4: a lot of people because I really didn't have that
Speaker 4: ethical north star. I didn't have that handed to me,
Speaker 4: and the way that my parents modeled love to me
Speaker 4: was very dysfunctional, and so I hurt a lot of
Speaker 4: people along the way. And finding God for me helped
Speaker 4: me reconcile the mistakes I had made in my ignorance,
Speaker 4: in my own pain, and then to have the resolve
Speaker 4: to go out step by step, bit by bit and
Speaker 4: change that. And so a lot of the old people
Speaker 4: that I used to hang out with, and a lot
Speaker 4: of my friends from school when they met me after everything, like,
Speaker 4: you know, people don't really change. That's like I think
Speaker 4: a belief out there. People don't really change. But they're like, wow,
Speaker 4: you've really changed, You've really changed. And I took that
Speaker 4: as a big encouragement, you know, because now my inner
Speaker 4: world was starting to align with the outer world in
Speaker 4: a way which brought greater peace, which brought greater harmony,
Speaker 4: and there was just greater flow.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: It wasn't just like me getting my way and going
Speaker 4: after what I wanted or desired. It was looking for
Speaker 4: the higher the highest outcome in every different situation. And
Speaker 4: sometimes it's like, you know, driving by someone and their
Speaker 4: cars broken down, and we have that split second to
Speaker 4: make a decision. Am I going to show up and
Speaker 4: help this person that looks like they could use some
Speaker 4: help they're standing out there looking bewildered, Or am I
Speaker 4: just going to drive by and think someone else will
Speaker 4: get it? And so it gave me that the impetus
Speaker 4: to just take action and help in whatever way I could,
Speaker 4: to really serve. And so that really started this like
Speaker 4: informal training of really practicing what I felt in my heart,
Speaker 4: of really having so many opportunities to just try my
Speaker 4: best to help people and sometimes you know, it didn't
Speaker 4: work out. I learned a lot of lessons in trying
Speaker 4: my best to help everyone I could and realized through
Speaker 4: the process that I can't help everybody. I can do
Speaker 4: my best to help who At this point, I've cultivated
Speaker 4: wisdom to know who I can help and who I
Speaker 4: really can't help, Like life has to sometimes teach people
Speaker 4: before they're ready to learn, right before they're open enough
Speaker 4: to be guided.
Speaker 2: That's so powerful because I feel like a lot of
Speaker 2: I mean, I needed an experience that was, you know,
Speaker 2: devastating in its own right, but ultimately led me to
Speaker 2: experience God. I had to go through addiction, I had
Speaker 2: to go through a trans almost a transactional relationship with
Speaker 2: God earlier in my life to where I felt like
Speaker 2: if I did a certain amount of things, I would
Speaker 2: get blessings in return, or if I do something to
Speaker 2: be good enough in God's presence. But your story and
Speaker 2: your narrative is shattering that because you're freeing somebody from
Speaker 2: that and allowed them to say, like, at my most
Speaker 2: broken form, at my most shameful, at my most depressed,
Speaker 2: that's where God wants to meet me the most. That's
Speaker 2: where he wants to love me the most. And that's
Speaker 2: so powerful because even with me, I feel like I've
Speaker 2: cultivated a relationship with God and I feel like we're
Speaker 2: in alignment. But it's almost like we just like do
Speaker 2: business together, and I'm like, I've done so much, I've
Speaker 2: caused a lot of pain, I've acted so much in
Speaker 2: a way before that It's like, I know God created me,
Speaker 2: and he placed these abilities and these gifts in me,
Speaker 2: and he knows he can do work through me, but
Speaker 2: he can't possibly like love me like through all that,
Speaker 2: and I'm still trying to find that out. And it's
Speaker 2: and it's like it's in hearing you say that is
Speaker 2: just it's it's it's shattering my own conception of God too,
Speaker 2: because I still see him in this bit of a
Speaker 2: punitive form, if that makes sense.
Speaker 4: That to completely makes sense because I think so much
Speaker 4: of the West world was raised with you know, this
Speaker 4: Christian Old Testament God, and there's a New Testament God
Speaker 4: that Jesus really came to flip on its head, like
Speaker 4: to be like no, like love your neighbor as yourself,
Speaker 4: you know, do good unto others, and to really kind
Speaker 4: of flip the old paradigm on its head at the time,
Speaker 4: But that was also two thousand years ago, you know.
Speaker 4: And something's change and something's never change. And the things
Speaker 4: that never change are the timeless principles of what it
Speaker 4: is to be a good human and to fow what
Speaker 4: it is to follow Christ, right, what it is to
Speaker 4: awaken like the Buddha. You know, different teachers from around
Speaker 4: the world. You know, they came and they you know,
Speaker 4: religions form around them, but they didn't come to start
Speaker 4: a religion. They came to help humanity. Remember that that's
Speaker 4: our path that we're walking. That these are our older
Speaker 4: brothers and sisters, and we have to follow their example.
Speaker 4: And they come with these teachings and these ways of
Speaker 4: being that leave a mark on the earth right in
Speaker 4: thousands of years ago, and we're still going to churches,
Speaker 4: We're going still going to the temples. We're still talking
Speaker 4: about these divine expressions. You know that the Son of God,
Speaker 4: daughters of God. And what I found interesting in my
Speaker 4: search through all the different world religions is there's generally
Speaker 4: this point of revelation, be it a prophet or an
Speaker 4: avatar like Christ or the Buddha or Krishna, and avatar
Speaker 4: being they came with a specific mission on earth to
Speaker 4: help humanity turn back towards God because things were becoming
Speaker 4: you know, dogmatic religion was going cold, right, it was
Speaker 4: no longer serving humanity to continue our evolution, and so
Speaker 4: really having the foundation to understand that even at our worst,
Speaker 4: God loves us beyond our capacity to understand. God loves
Speaker 4: us unconditionally, and that unconditional love doesn't mean like unconditional
Speaker 4: permission to do what the fuck we want, right, And
Speaker 4: that's why pain is a teacher. We experience pain, suffering,
Speaker 4: and disappointment to the degree that we need to be
Speaker 4: broken open. Our hearts need to be broken open, and
Speaker 4: we need to be humbled to understand that we're being
Speaker 4: called into a deeper alignment. We're being called to perhaps
Speaker 4: a higher station of life, and it might not necessarily
Speaker 4: look like what we think it's going to look like.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: That's what I learned and I still continue to learn,
Speaker 4: because we have it all all mapped out at a
Speaker 4: certain point where like, Okay, this is what I do,
Speaker 4: and when I get this, it's all going to work out.
Speaker 4: And sometimes we need we need to be humbled, and
Speaker 4: we need to be broken down so that we can
Speaker 4: be born anew so that we can recalibrate to the
Speaker 4: path that our soul is really here to live. And
Speaker 4: I know that for me, there was a lot of resistance,
Speaker 4: and there's still this occasional resistance that I'm unconscious of,
Speaker 4: you know. But it's through that yearning and that longing
Speaker 4: to know God more and to love God more that
Speaker 4: keeps me deepening my alignment because I know that when
Speaker 4: pain comes, I need to listen. If it comes and
Speaker 4: I'm not able to hear the whisper and then it
Speaker 4: comes in the shouts and I'm ignoring the shouts, then
Speaker 4: it might come with a you know, a swift kick
Speaker 4: knocking me off my feet that makes me freeze and go, Okay,
Speaker 4: I need to take stock of the situation because clearly
Speaker 4: I'm not attuned right now to God. I'm not listening
Speaker 4: to what God wants of me.
Speaker 3: You mentioned something earlier about somatic past, and I know
Speaker 3: the importance of really getting clear on the emotional intelligence
Speaker 3: and the destruct or the emotional inheritance and the destructive
Speaker 3: behavior that it can cause. So to maybe somebody that
Speaker 3: isn't aware of somatic past or what that means, or
Speaker 3: emotional dysfunction, generational dysfunction. Can you just talk about that
Speaker 3: a little more.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, it's called different things. I call it,
Speaker 4: you know, generational cycle of trauma or generational curse because
Speaker 4: that's what it really is. You know, epigenetically, it's handed
Speaker 4: down to us lifetime after lifetime, through the generations, through
Speaker 4: our father and our mother and their parents and their
Speaker 4: parents and depending on what they went through. You know,
Speaker 4: that gets into the DNA, it gets into the literal
Speaker 4: their nervous systems and our nervous systems wire based on
Speaker 4: our environment, right, they sync up with our environment so
Speaker 4: that we can survive, so we can know this is
Speaker 4: what I can expect, and this is how I need
Speaker 4: to navigate reality because this is the quality of life.
Speaker 4: It is. So if during a war, you know, things
Speaker 4: are scarce, there's a famine, you know, people are on
Speaker 4: edge and it's not you know, then that's the nervous
Speaker 4: system that we're getting so that we can have the
Speaker 4: best chance of survival. You know, and that doesn't just
Speaker 4: eliminate after one generation, and it carries on. It carries on.
Speaker 4: You know, we I think we all of us came.
Speaker 4: We were already in our I think it was in
Speaker 4: our grandmother, right in our grandmother's womb. We're in our
Speaker 4: in her eggs. I think it goes back at least
Speaker 4: three generations, but even beyond that of just the norms
Speaker 4: of our family of origin and beliefs and expectations, and
Speaker 4: how that can carry on and potentially limit us and
Speaker 4: the expression that we want to have. And so you know,
Speaker 4: really trauma is any experience that was too much for
Speaker 4: us to integrate. It was overwhelming, and so we went
Speaker 4: into a state of fight flight or freeze. But think
Speaker 4: about being born into a family that's in state the
Speaker 4: state of fight flight or freeze. That's the nervous system
Speaker 4: we inherit. That's that was the nervous system I inherited.
Speaker 4: Like life is hard, things are scarce, people are mean,
Speaker 4: and yes, of course there's those those moments of light,
Speaker 4: of tenderness of love. It wasn't as that. There's a
Speaker 4: lot of others out there who have experienced way worse,
Speaker 4: but mine was at least intense enough where it felt
Speaker 4: like a burden from a very early age. And so
Speaker 4: children shouldn't be feeling a massive burden in life ideally, optimally,
Speaker 4: you know, for for for their optimal thriving, we should
Speaker 4: ideally live in a place of security, of calm, of peace.
Speaker 4: And we can look at a lot of other countries
Speaker 4: and they don't necessarily have a ton of wealth, but
Speaker 4: they can still have access to joy and togetherness and
Speaker 4: unity because a lot of them, you know, they might
Speaker 4: be connected to their culture. Right, there's these cultural blueprints
Speaker 4: that support us in our thriving. But in America, you know,
Speaker 4: there's a there's kind of a lot of different things
Speaker 4: going on, a lot of things that can be confusing.
Speaker 4: And so coming from a biracial household, my mother from
Speaker 4: the East, my father from the West, that was already
Speaker 4: a collision of worldviews, right, masculine and feminine, it's it's
Speaker 4: it's a coming together. And in my case, at least,
Speaker 4: there was a kind of a dysfunctional relationship between the
Speaker 4: masculine and feminine. You know, my father was very patriarchal,
Speaker 4: very dominant, controlled my mother in various ways. And my mother,
Speaker 4: you know, and she was also very emotional, So she
Speaker 4: did have the storm aspect, but being in this environment
Speaker 4: where it's like the accumulation of generations of stuff, of
Speaker 4: gunk of hardship and it's just like kind of being
Speaker 4: on a pressure cooker, you know, it felt like just
Speaker 4: walking on eggshells, like a false step could result in pain.
Speaker 4: And so it was already like they're in the ether,
Speaker 4: and it wasn't that hard for it to come through
Speaker 4: in a physical way. And so having to work through
Speaker 4: that kind of emotional burden or baggage was a big
Speaker 4: part of my work after having my awakening experience, because
Speaker 4: it didn't just go away. After my awakening with God
Speaker 4: and experiencing what unconditional love is, experiencing what true peace
Speaker 4: and calm is, I had the contrast to know, wow,
Speaker 4: I'm nowhere near that in my day to day I
Speaker 4: could be in nature and still like not fully at ease.
Speaker 4: And so it took me years of intensive meditation, of
Speaker 4: intensive prayer, of spending time in nature and disconnecting from
Speaker 4: the media, the TV, the partying and all those things
Speaker 4: to kind of detox. And then I came to a
Speaker 4: point of losing my younger sister to suicide, losing my
Speaker 4: sister Shanda to suicide, and that was it was devastating.
Speaker 4: That was a very devastating experience. And I believe that
Speaker 4: the only thing that kept me and helped me be
Speaker 4: the man that I was at the time was God,
Speaker 4: because now I had a place to turn to when
Speaker 4: it felt like it was too much, and I didn't
Speaker 4: question God's will. I didn't say this is wrong, and
Speaker 4: the shudn't have happened. I started from a place of acceptance,
Speaker 4: knowing that God is in control of all things and
Speaker 4: that nothing happens without divine sanction. And God even showed
Speaker 4: me a vision of it happening a year before it happened,
Speaker 4: and it was, you know, she jumped off a building
Speaker 4: in this vision that I had, and in the vision,
Speaker 4: I jumped off after her because and I teleported after
Speaker 4: I died, quote unquote died. But then now suddenly I
Speaker 4: got teleported to this like kind of no man's land,
Speaker 4: like this in between where now I was like, oh no,
Speaker 4: I don't have a body anymore and I'm just stuck here.
Speaker 4: And I was like this awful realization of like, oh no,
Speaker 4: I'm stuck here. And from that point the day that
Speaker 4: it happened. I was guided, and this is all in
Speaker 4: retrospect and the moment, I had no idea. I was
Speaker 4: just living in the moment. But I was sharing with
Speaker 4: my sister how much we loved her. I was saying
Speaker 4: all these things and letting her know that we're going
Speaker 4: to be here no matter what, We're not going to
Speaker 4: give up on her. And I'd just been fresh out
Speaker 4: of addiction. I had a year sober at that point,
Speaker 4: and I just was putting all my energy into trying
Speaker 4: to help her because I was like, if God helped me,
Speaker 4: God's going to help her. And I like that was
Speaker 4: like where I was kind of like not seeing the
Speaker 4: creator and the Creator's will and how things unfold clearly,
Speaker 4: because it was really like I need to save my sister.
Speaker 4: That's why God. Part of why God saved me so
Speaker 4: that I can save my sister. But in losing her
Speaker 4: in you know, having to say goodbye, and in really
Speaker 4: being pulled down into the underworld, because that's really what
Speaker 4: it plunged us into in my family, because my mother
Speaker 4: was so hell bent on saving her of like we
Speaker 4: need to save her, we need to save her. And
Speaker 4: I feel like almost in some ways that like need
Speaker 4: to like try to save her. Is why in some
Speaker 4: ways maybe God took her because it wasn't helping or
Speaker 4: serving any of us in our growth, because we were
Speaker 4: hyper focused on trying to save my sister and it
Speaker 4: wasn't meant to be, and that brought us into healing.
Speaker 4: That tragedy was a tragedy of losing my younger sister
Speaker 4: ultimately is what pushed me really, because they're so low,
Speaker 4: they lost their jobs. I was carrying the family on
Speaker 4: my shoulders and the finances and everything, and they were
Speaker 4: not functioning, and so I pulled us. I pulled us
Speaker 4: into the breavement support groups, you know, I pulled us
Speaker 4: into family therapy and found a space for them to
Speaker 4: cry and for us to you know, feel the compassion
Speaker 4: of someone else that was just fair kind of as
Speaker 4: a rock. And through that process I got into my
Speaker 4: own therapy and then I started that really started deepening
Speaker 4: my healing journey and acceleration of my self awareness. So
Speaker 4: it really came together with my spiritual beliefs and practices,
Speaker 4: but also really doing my work to clear out the somatic,
Speaker 4: my somatic body right to really do the work to
Speaker 4: break those generational cycles that were momentums that were like
Speaker 4: pushing me in a certain direction, and so really and
Speaker 4: like kind of putting a pause and beginning to do
Speaker 4: that work that's deeper self work. It inspired so much
Speaker 4: transformation not only within me, but within others because it
Speaker 4: really kind of said, oh, wow, this is so powerful
Speaker 4: to heal and to feel love from another person, to
Speaker 4: feel compassion from another person, to feel their humanity. It's
Speaker 4: a game changer. It's a game changer. It literally flipped
Speaker 4: everything and expanded my world even further. And that's really
Speaker 4: what gave me, like kind of the direct experience of
Speaker 4: God and others, of experiencing God within others as like
Speaker 4: the right words would come through and touch a deep places,
Speaker 4: as I felt someone just being there listening, support, being
Speaker 4: selfless and holding that space for me and me being
Speaker 4: able to receive that. It changed just the nervous system, right,
Speaker 4: because we begin internalizing these safe people, you know, these
Speaker 4: in these spaces where we feel safe, and it helps
Speaker 4: us coregulate. Suddenly our nervous system is being regulated and yeah,
Speaker 4: and finding safety in another I feel like it's it's
Speaker 4: pretty crucial to be able to feel that first and
Speaker 4: then we can find help other people find that safety
Speaker 4: once we can find it within ourselves. But how can
Speaker 4: we find it within ourselves if we don't have someone
Speaker 4: else that can model that for us or show us
Speaker 4: in a human in human form, what it is to
Speaker 4: be calm, to be loving. Wow.
Speaker 3: That word safety really, in the last year, it's been
Speaker 3: about a year, has run very very deep for me.
Speaker 3: And you guys are talking about your paths and spirituality
Speaker 3: and path to God. My so ten years into my sobriety,
Speaker 3: I ended up doing a ceremonial buffo code medicine journey.
Speaker 4: And my intention is doing the.
Speaker 3: Journey was to get closer to God and really develop
Speaker 3: that relationship because for ten years I was talking to
Speaker 3: talk and I mean I was praying and meditating, but
Speaker 3: it was lacking the depth and kind of some of
Speaker 3: that transactional stuff Darren was talking about. And as I
Speaker 3: entered into the medicine and left my body, I did
Speaker 3: not see God, but I felt the presence of God.
Speaker 4: And as I dropped in, it was.
Speaker 3: In a ceremony of about five people, and I started
Speaker 3: saying out loud, I'm safe, I'm safe, and I repeated
Speaker 3: it four or five times, and the shaman called me
Speaker 3: in to go first. It was five people that had
Speaker 3: never done it before, so they not only did they
Speaker 3: get to witness that and me verbalizing it.
Speaker 4: But I felt held. I felt safe.
Speaker 3: I felt and my intention was to get closer and
Speaker 3: I felt and not necessarily saw, but felt everything that
Speaker 3: I needed to. And I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: everything's going to be fine. Everything I've done my whole
Speaker 3: life was to feel safe. All about it, Karen, what
Speaker 3: other people think, and I'm like, I'm good. And as
Speaker 3: I came back and integrated, it just made me realize
Speaker 3: how many how everybody is going through this world just
Speaker 3: trying to feel safe, and us as men don't have
Speaker 3: to worry about going out to our car at ten
Speaker 3: o'clock at night and worried about feeling safe. So then
Speaker 3: it gave me a whole nother perspective around women and safety.
Speaker 3: And so it's just been a big thing for me
Speaker 3: about holding sacred space. And I know you're doing that,
Speaker 3: and I want to make sure we leave enough time
Speaker 3: to talk about the unbelievable work you're doing, the men's
Speaker 3: work with sacred sons.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, thank you so much for presencing the importance
Speaker 4: of safety and our responsibility as men to create those
Speaker 4: sacred spaces for transformation to happen, and so really have
Speaker 4: been immersed in men's work for the past seven years,
Speaker 4: I would say. And it happened kind of by happenstance,
Speaker 4: of course, as it would, where I was invited to
Speaker 4: facilitate a men's prayer circle. There was a call putting
Speaker 4: out at the time of Standing Rock, where the Standing
Speaker 4: Rock sue, we're facing off with the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Speaker 4: They were wanting to build a pipeline, oil pipeline through
Speaker 4: the reservation, and the indigenous peoples you know, from all
Speaker 4: over the world gathered at Standing Rock to say no,
Speaker 4: to say enough is enough, and there was a standoff
Speaker 4: between the police and between the indigenous people's and who
Speaker 4: are all gathering. And so there was a call put
Speaker 4: out by the elders at Standing Rock that men's and
Speaker 4: women's prayer circles be created and that we pray for
Speaker 4: the water protectors, we pray for the ones who are
Speaker 4: standing up. And I was invited to co facilitate the
Speaker 4: ceremony from a brother mine at the time, and he
Speaker 4: he blessed me in that sense of really giving me
Speaker 4: a space where I could bring in some of these
Speaker 4: you know, Western psychological perspectives and techniques and ways of
Speaker 4: facilitating that I had learned through my undergraduate experience in
Speaker 4: facilitating you know, these pretty much growth therapy groups. And
Speaker 4: I was on my way to become a therapist, but
Speaker 4: being able to weave in what I had learned through studying,
Speaker 4: you know, these different tools and techniques of helping people
Speaker 4: heal that were not you know, I was not of
Speaker 4: the psychiatric perspective after my sister and seeing what happened
Speaker 4: with my sister, but you know, really seeing that we
Speaker 4: are the medicine and that we can really hold a
Speaker 4: space and lead others into safety. We can lead others
Speaker 4: and create the context that they can feel safe enough
Speaker 4: to express the parts of themselves that they didn't get
Speaker 4: to express, perhaps in their childhood or along the way
Speaker 4: to their adulthood. And it's many of these I think
Speaker 4: failures of the environment. I don't it's no one's to
Speaker 4: blame at the end of the day, no one's to blame.
Speaker 4: But there is a responsibility that we have as men
Speaker 4: to shift culture, to shift our environments by being that
Speaker 4: safe and grounded space. But how can we be that
Speaker 4: safe and grounded space when it wasn't modeled for us,
Speaker 4: or if we've never experienced one, and so unless we
Speaker 4: experienced it along the way through our family of origin
Speaker 4: or through a mentor, or through an uncle or an
Speaker 4: aunt or someone that could give us that blueprint of
Speaker 4: what it is to feel safe in another's presence, to
Speaker 4: feel protected, then we kind of go off piecing together,
Speaker 4: piecing life together in a way of like what we
Speaker 4: think we should do, what we want to do, but
Speaker 4: also the somatic embodiment of what we are energetically, like
Speaker 4: what is our ancestral inheritance, what kind of traumas are
Speaker 4: we carrying from this lifetime from birth to where we
Speaker 4: stand today, and are we effectively integrating all of that
Speaker 4: energy in such a way that we can radiate the peace,
Speaker 4: the calm, the safety, the inspiration to love, the compassion
Speaker 4: that really humanity, that's our birthright. Like what God teaches
Speaker 4: us is that we are created in God's image, and
Speaker 4: this is said in many different ways around the world.
Speaker 4: You know, it's not only from the Christian faith, it's
Speaker 4: from all faiths. So we are creating God's image. And
Speaker 4: so what that means is we have the capacity to
Speaker 4: develop these qualities in us. And that's why for me,
Speaker 4: there's no automatic salvation. It's our responsibility as men and
Speaker 4: as women and as humans to cultivate our higher faculties,
Speaker 4: to refine our consciousness so that we can support the evolutions,
Speaker 4: you know, whether that's our own children, whether that's in
Speaker 4: our purpose work, whether that's out on the field, you know,
Speaker 4: wherever that is, to be able to bring that cultivation
Speaker 4: into the environment. That's what brings balance. And that's really
Speaker 4: our responsibility as anchors right as men, where we can
Speaker 4: anchor a certain energetic to an environment, and that could
Speaker 4: be a positive or a negative. Right we can bring
Speaker 4: we can bring anger, we can bring anks, we can
Speaker 4: bring fear, we can bring terror, We can bring a
Speaker 4: lot of things as men, and we just want to
Speaker 4: look at examples from throughout time, war right, genocide. We
Speaker 4: are capable of the darkest of things, and we're also
Speaker 4: capable of the most beautiful of things, and so it
Speaker 4: really is our prerogative. I believe to find orientation around
Speaker 4: the core of life, which is the creator, which is God,
Speaker 4: which is the source of all existence. And our closest
Speaker 4: example is simply nature, because nature is creation, it's God's
Speaker 4: creation and it's it's just a continual giving. It's radiating
Speaker 4: its peace, and if we spend enough time in nature,
Speaker 4: it's it's one of the greatest Tea says. I'm sure
Speaker 4: you both can attest to and anybody who's given it.
Speaker 4: It's due time we can connect to the Creator more
Speaker 4: readily through nature or through you know, are a baby, right,
Speaker 4: Babies are great examples because they're straight, they're straight from source,
Speaker 4: and when they're when they're well fed and well slept
Speaker 4: and we're holding them. You know, I have a newborn,
Speaker 4: my son, Zion, my number three. When I'm holding him
Speaker 4: and he's just smiling at me, I'm just looking in
Speaker 4: his eyes and it feels like I'm just being submerged
Speaker 4: into the depths of love and I'm just here. There's
Speaker 4: nothing else, just him and I and it's this sacred
Speaker 4: experience that it's like this is God. You are God,
Speaker 4: and I'm experiencing God through you, my son, and I'm
Speaker 4: just feeling that interconnectedness that like I'm my father's son,
Speaker 4: but I'm also the great Father's son, as we all
Speaker 4: are as men. And so that's what really inspired the
Speaker 4: creation of sacred sons was my first son, Cairo. You know,
Speaker 4: two days after he was born, I was leading a
Speaker 4: group of sixty four men in exercises that I was
Speaker 4: creating on the fly because I had that intention and
Speaker 4: desire and I'd never facilitated that large of a group,
Speaker 4: but it was just coming through I'm going to do this,
Speaker 4: I'm going to lead them in this way, and by
Speaker 4: through the process I saw them and their walls were
Speaker 4: coming down. They were crying, they're seeing each other, they
Speaker 4: are bracing, they're feeling love, they're feeling safety, and they're
Speaker 4: feeling permission to bring all of them out rather than
Speaker 4: like how much as men we feel like we need
Speaker 4: to censor ourselves or show up in a certain way.
Speaker 4: But if that's not a true natural being and it's
Speaker 4: bravado or it's this like provisional personality, these adaptations we've
Speaker 4: learned to use to survive, to get clout, whatever it is,
Speaker 4: then that energetic is going to lead to suffering for
Speaker 4: ourselves or for another because it's not in true alignment
Speaker 4: with the Creator. And so I feel like, as men,
Speaker 4: our first step is coming back to our hearts where
Speaker 4: the Creator dwells, coming back to our hearts, coming back
Speaker 4: to nature, coming back to love within ourselves. But the
Speaker 4: only way to do that is to reckon with the darkness,
Speaker 4: to face the shadows, to face the ways we've been
Speaker 4: out of alignment, the ways we've lied, stolen, herded, cheat like,
Speaker 4: all the ways that we've been out of integrity and
Speaker 4: caused harm to life. To really do that fearless self inventory.
Speaker 4: You know, they do this in AA and a lot
Speaker 4: of twelve step programs. I had never gotten into AA,
Speaker 4: but it was a part of my spiritual path of
Speaker 4: There's a toll Tech tradition called recapitulation where you go
Speaker 4: through your whole life and find all the times where
Speaker 4: you had been out of integrity, and then you recreate
Speaker 4: the situation as you would now, and you go through
Speaker 4: your whole life doing that, and they say it cleanses
Speaker 4: your luminosity. So you're cleansing your energy, You're cleansing your
Speaker 4: soul of all the misdeeds and replacing those misdeeds with
Speaker 4: the right deeds. So now you're clear about how to
Speaker 4: be in alignment. And so that's the first step as
Speaker 4: men and as I think humans in general, is coming
Speaker 4: into alignment with our source. Right that that's our true north.
Speaker 4: And if we have a true north that's not rooted
Speaker 4: in the creator, that's actually born of this world and
Speaker 4: born of the you know, the creations of man, then
Speaker 4: we're going to be off the mark. And that's what like,
Speaker 4: that's sinning, right, to miss the mark, that's what it
Speaker 4: really means to sin, like the etymology of the word right,
Speaker 4: that's what it what it meant originally to miss the mark.
Speaker 4: And so if we want to be on mark, on
Speaker 4: our target, and and for me, the target is to
Speaker 4: embody as much love, as much peace, as much wisdom,
Speaker 4: and to share it with as many as I can,
Speaker 4: and to really kind of be that alchemy of spirit
Speaker 4: and matter, because I know I'm this soul, I'm this
Speaker 4: energy that it resides in this body right now. And
Speaker 4: I know, based on my sisters, how abruptly my sister's
Speaker 4: life was taken away, that my life could end just
Speaker 4: this suddenly, that I don't have a guarantee on tomorrow,
Speaker 4: and so I do my best to live each day
Speaker 4: as if it was it would be a good day
Speaker 4: to die. And of course I want to live a
Speaker 4: very long life. But the indigenous Native Americans that would
Speaker 4: have a saying they say, today's a good day to die,
Speaker 4: especially when they went off to war, you know, gave
Speaker 4: them that courage to move forward without thought of their
Speaker 4: own life so that they could be effective in war.
Speaker 4: And there's that understanding that in some ways I don't
Speaker 4: want to use that analogy of war for our life.
Speaker 4: But there are outer principalities which are not for God.
Speaker 4: And while the core of it, all there is is God,
Speaker 4: all there is is the Creator, because anything that's outside
Speaker 4: of the Creator isn't even real. But while we're in
Speaker 4: these bodies, while we're in this three D world, and
Speaker 4: it feels very real. I want to show up in
Speaker 4: a way that demonstrates to my three children, my sons,
Speaker 4: what it is to be a man and up with responsibility,
Speaker 4: to show up with love, to show up with courage,
Speaker 4: and to stand for freedom right, our human freedom. And
Speaker 4: that's really a foundation of God. Is freedom, is feeling free,
Speaker 4: is feeling free. And I experience that more and more
Speaker 4: as I'm as I'm expanding, and I want I want
Speaker 4: that for my sons, I want that for humanity because
Speaker 4: I think so many of us, myself included in the past,
Speaker 4: felt like I grew up in a prison. I felt
Speaker 4: like I grew up like with so much baggage and
Speaker 4: weight on my shoulders, and so to be able to
Speaker 4: help men lighten their load a little bit, because once
Speaker 4: we lighten our load and we work through some of
Speaker 4: that trauma, it opens up a space within our somatic
Speaker 4: body to now start perceiving and experiencing life in a
Speaker 4: whole new way. We're finding more joy, more levity. Right,
Speaker 4: there's so much joy simply in existence, and it can
Speaker 4: be very very serious and bleak and like, I don't
Speaker 4: know how much longer I want to be here kind
Speaker 4: of energy unless we make space in our somatic bodies
Speaker 4: that we can really play, so play doesn't feel like
Speaker 4: it's has to be for so we can actually genuinely
Speaker 4: play like little children and feel that freedom and wonder
Speaker 4: and joy just to simply be in these bodies on
Speaker 4: this beautiful earth. I could go on.
Speaker 2: So, man, you're really painting a beautiful picture. The ultimate
Speaker 2: comeback story. I feel like, I would say, from a
Speaker 2: hopeless life, oblique life, to the most broken parts of
Speaker 2: your story, where that love and compassionate as deep as
Speaker 2: form came to meet you there and then propel you
Speaker 2: from there to be love and something that I feel
Speaker 2: like has inspired somebody today, that somebody can take away
Speaker 2: from the fact that from their pain, from their suffering,
Speaker 2: that there is something great that can form from that
Speaker 2: when they feel like nothing is possible. So yeah, we
Speaker 2: appreciate you. I appreciate you for coming on here and
Speaker 2: sharing just the depths of your story. Man.
Speaker 4: Thank you for the space, Thank you for the time. Brothers. Yeah, Wellbera,
Speaker 4: this was so powerful man, I knew this would go deep.
Speaker 3: And for anybody listening, even if you were maybe a
Speaker 3: female listening, and you want to pass this along this
Speaker 3: episode to as many men as possible, it would help.
Speaker 3: But I think it also helps the female to understand
Speaker 3: also the importance of this work, whatever your race or
Speaker 3: your gender is so the way that you articulate things
Speaker 3: and just to attach the proper meaning to all of
Speaker 3: the struggle and the pain and the loss of your sister,
Speaker 3: the east and the west of mom and dad and
Speaker 3: how it's collided. It's like all brought you to this
Speaker 3: space of great wisdom and you're doing great things, man,
Speaker 3: So thank you so much for showing up and sharing
Speaker 3: your heart and telling your story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, thank you so much. Brothers. It's time, you know,
Speaker 4: that we can bring masculine and feminine together and the
Speaker 4: perfect and young, you know. And that's really the evolution
Speaker 4: of my work beyond Sacred Sons, is unifying the masculine
Speaker 4: and the feminine and creating the spaces for us men
Speaker 4: who have been in the path and for the women
Speaker 4: who are ready to be met, to come together in
Speaker 4: the sacred reunion as I call it, because it's a prayer,
Speaker 4: it's a prayer or collective. You know, from all the
Speaker 4: pain that we see out there, that we need spaces
Speaker 4: where we can come together and unify men and women
Speaker 4: from all backgrounds. It's time to unify. Where can our
Speaker 4: listeners track you down? Yeah, they can check out my
Speaker 4: Instagram which is Albert Bastia and Albert Bostia dot com
Speaker 4: as well. I'm sure you guys can put in the
Speaker 4: show notes that we got these on these modern devices.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll get we'll get you dialed in and again,
Speaker 3: if you're listening, thank you for listening. Be sure to
Speaker 3: stay connected with us always. It helps if you're leaving
Speaker 3: those five star reviews or leaving a comment or a
Speaker 3: review in your Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening.
Speaker 3: It helps tome because our mission is always to reach
Speaker 3: as many people as possible, and your feedback and reviews help,
Speaker 3: so definitely track down over and we appreciate you being here.
Speaker 3: You can also find us on the Inflection Network on YouTube.
Speaker 4: Yeah Thanks.
Speaker 1: Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.