[00:00:01] Luke: All right, here we go. Episode 615 of The Life Stylist podcast. Today we're doing another chat between myself and my lovely wife Alyson, answering some listener questions. To those that submitted them, thank you very much. We appreciate it. It's always fun to sit down and hear what's on the minds and hearts of our listeners.

[00:00:32] Alyson: Indeed. Got to stay tapped into what the folks want.

[00:00:36] Luke: Yeah.

[00:00:36] Alyson: You got to keep your finger on the pulse.

[00:00:39] Luke: You got to keep your ear to the ground.

[00:00:42] Alyson: Yeah, you got to keep something.

[00:00:45] Luke: When you were a kid, did you ever put your ear on train tracks to determine if a train was coming from way far off?

[00:00:55] Alyson: I definitely grew up in a town as you know. When we stay there, we hear the trains that roll through tiny, little Syracuse, Indiana. But I don't have a memory of placing my ear to the track.

[00:01:09] Luke: You got to make sure they're not close, of course, but yeah, you can hear them from miles away.

[00:01:14] Alyson: Huh. Also, it's incredibly dangerous to even touch a train track because you can get electrocuted.

[00:01:23] Luke: That would be subways in cities. Train tracks in the country aren't electrified.

[00:01:31] Alyson: You're sure?

[00:01:31] Luke: 100%.

[00:01:33] Alyson: Just got to watch the advice we give here.

[00:01:35] Luke: This is not medical advice. I wouldn't be standing here because I lived on train tracks, and three of my childhood homes were right on train tracks. So I spent a lot of time throwing rotten eggs at them, flattening coins on the tracks, and listening to see if they were coming.

[00:01:54] Alyson: Can't you also just place your hand and feel if there's a vibration, or is that not--

[00:01:59] Luke: It's not as accurate as the ear, honey.

[00:02:02] Alyson: Which ear is that? Did you tend to use the right or the left more? Do you recall?

[00:02:08] Luke: No, I don't remember.

[00:02:09] Alyson: Okay. Yeah, I do remember you saying though, that there were two or three houses where the train tracks were right directly behind, which I thought that was a little interesting.

[00:02:18] Luke: Yeah, it's weird.

[00:02:19] Alyson: Like what are the chances of that?

[00:02:20] Luke: Yeah. Because I only lived in probably five houses my whole childhood, and three of them were on the train tracks.

[00:02:26] Alyson: Gosh. Did you just adjust to that?

[00:02:31] Luke: I don't know. I think when I was a kid I was probably much less sensitive to that kind of thing.

[00:02:39] Alyson: Well, sure, but still, if they're literally in your backyard, even if they're not doing the toot toot when they go by your house, it's still like a rumble, and it's an experience.

[00:02:50] Luke: Yeah.

[00:02:51] Alyson: Okay. Interesting.

[00:02:54] Luke: I'm from the other side of the tracks, man.

[00:02:58] Alyson: Yes, indeed you are. As more and more folks will get to know when your book comes out, there's a lot of stories in there, honey.

[00:03:11] Luke: Lot of stories from the other side.

[00:03:14] Alyson: You're feeling nervous about the vulnerability level of what you're sharing in the book?

[00:03:21] Luke: I hadn't thought about it until recently. I just had my head down and have not edited or filtered anything. But the chapter that I'm writing right now is about sex and relationships and my assorted past dealing with both of those aspects of the human experience.

[00:03:48] And I got probably 75% through and then one day it occurred to me that people were someday going to read it, and I had a little bit of a ego death and wanted to tread back and edit or soften, which I haven't done. There's still time to do that. But yeah, it's interesting finding the balance between being, oh, I don't know, subversive, just for the sake of it.

[00:04:26] Sensational. That's the word I'm looking for. It's like to be honest about one's experience or the past without sensationalizing it. So I think most of it's pretty tactful, but it is, to the ego, really embarrassing.

[00:04:43] Alyson: It's bold. It's a bold book.

[00:04:45] Luke: The strata of-- not that my life is terribly unique. Many people have had similar experiences, but the person I am today and the way I live today and my codes of conduct today are so diametrically opposed to how I used to be and how I used to behave. So to me, as I read it, it seems like it's about a different person's life.

[00:05:08] Alyson: Yeah. I also would disagree in that many people have lived a similar life to you. You said something a minute ago about, I think a lot of people have had similar experiences. I beg to differ. Yeah, I beg to differ. I'm sure there are some things, yes, that you've experienced that others have. However, there are many of your stories that, trust me, not many people have--

[00:05:39] Luke: I think a lot of people have had those kind of experiences, but maybe fewer of us have emerged and crossed over to the other side where they become part of our past.

[00:05:52] Alyson: I still don't know.

[00:05:54] Luke: The world is still full of people who are involved in prostitution and pornography and all kinds of crazy things, but you just don't hear about them because they maybe don't move through it, and they just stay stuck in that lane, and they don't get to a place where they can write a reflective book, where they extract the wisdom of having had those experiences.

[00:06:18] Alyson: When you're reading to me the other night, that segue was crazy in the best way. I don't want to give too much away, but the segue from one job to the other, remember I was like, "You can't say that." And of course you can, and it was an epic segue, but it was just such a bold one that-- yeah, there's a lot of flavor in the book. Anywho, would you like to begin to answer some questions?

[00:06:47] Luke: I'll do my best.

[00:06:48] Alyson: All right. I'll start in order here with the man named John who asks, "What is the best "hack" or practice you know of to really expand your consciousness or advance spiritually?"

[00:07:09] Luke: It's so simple that it sounds unbelievable, and that is to be unconditionally loving to everything and everyone at all times. It also sounds impossible.

[00:07:32] Alyson: Yeah, that's what I was about to say.

[00:07:34] Luke: And as I answer any of these questions, any answer is just based on my current level of understanding and what I believe to be true and right at this time. And hopefully at some point in the future I'll find any answer limited, if not wrong.

[00:07:54] But aside from all of the esoteric wisdom and spiritual practices and all of the things that essentially clear the blocks from love, the hack or the shortcut, I think, is just going directly to the source, because there's no power greater in the universe than the power of love. And that's not love that is bypassing or in denial.

[00:08:34] Alyson: Fake.

[00:08:35] Luke: Yeah, it's not a romantic love. It's love as a way of being in the world. And so it might express through action or through emotion or through words or deeds. But what gives me the most fulfillment and helps me to feel most spiritually grounded and centered and gives me the sense that I'm making progress is when I met with people or experiences in life or aspects of myself that are difficult to love and I find ways to move through it and love them or it or myself anyway.

[00:09:25] And so it's like love is an expression of radical acceptance. It's just like I can love something or someone from afar and also practice discernment without judgmentalism. In other words, I can love someone that I strongly dislike or someone with whom I disagree, or a system or an ideology with which I disagree without making it wrong or wishing it to be another way.

[00:10:00] I can love it just as it is, but also not choose to participate in it. And I think that's where some of the love and light, unicorns and rainbows, new age spirituality runs astray, is love as a doormat. But if you think about the way we love our dog, Cookie, or the way you would love a child, sometimes that love expresses as boundaries.

[00:10:33] So rather than being a doormat, love can also be a gatekeeper. So there's so much power in love. But because of the nature of the ego and the intellect, we're sometimes misled into thinking that we find our strength in anger or defense or offense.

[00:11:04] Alyson: Well, there's so many fine lines and nuances.

[00:11:06] Luke: Yeah.

[00:11:07] Alyson: A lot of gray area, and every person and every day, and every moment, and every experience and every scenario is going to be a completely different prism. So it's so much for we, humans, to navigate.

[00:11:21] Luke: Yeah.

[00:11:22] Alyson: So I just want to give--

[00:11:24] Luke: For example, this person's talking about raising one's consciousness. There's a person that we hired recently to do some work on the house who's the project manager for this company. And he's objectively, I would say, incompetent in terms of communication and accountability, integrity, and so on. And so I don't like the person. It's not someone I would choose to hang out with.

[00:12:02] I don't agree with the level of work that is being offered in exchange for the money that was paid. But when I find myself being tempted to think that person is wrong or think they should be different, or I start to have any resentment or animosity toward them, I know that's not raising my consciousness. That's lowering my consciousness.

[00:12:30] So I can love that person as they are, but still, as we did, go over their head and speak to the owner of the company in very firm and clear terms to express my discontent and to try and remedy the situation because I can't change that person. But I might be able to change the relationship or the dynamic so that it aligns with the original agreement, the contract. The terms of the contract aren't being adhered to.

[00:13:02] And so if the person that is our interface between our entity and the entity of the company with whom we made that agreement, then that person needs to be removed or bypassed, and the line of communication goes directly to the top. That's what we did, and so far, it seems to be proving to be a good remedy.

[00:13:26] But I find myself, even--this morning, there was a text interaction, and I found myself internally wanting to complain and make that person wrong again, which to me is disempowering. So if I'm applying a radical unconditional love, first and foremost is to myself, to not put up with any bullshit, and to communicate clearly and ask for what I require in order to--

[00:13:54] Alyson: Well, right there is the piece that I keep wanting to speak to. It's like, I think for myself and others, that's the point where it can get to be a bit mysterious and exploratory because it's like if-- I'm just pulling this out of my ass. But if $50,000 was given and the level of work is at $15,000 and you need to communicate that, and yet you're still trying to be unconditionally loving, in which tone and how are you communicating in order to properly get your point across?

[00:14:42] Because where I get challenged, and you know this about me, I don't have a problem having challenging conversations, boundaries, all that stuff. But in my mind, if I go to that person like there have been no mistakes and like they are doing 50,000-dollar work rather than 15,000-dollar quality work, and I talk to them in the same tone and manner in which I've been talking to them up until that day where I'm realizing they're falling dreadfully short of the standards, then I don't necessarily trust or know that it's going to click inside of them or that some external shift is going to happen if I'm just talking friendly and unconditionally loving and kind and like, "Oh yeah, no worries."

[00:15:35] That's where if you could clarify because I can't be the only one that feels like if you talk to them like everything's fine, they're not going to get that everything is not okay.

[00:15:46] Luke: Authentic, clear, honest communication is an expression of love for everyone involved. And that's the difference between pathological accommodation and people pleasing, because there's a lack of authenticity if I'm trying to communicate my truth to someone in a way that withholds the reality.

[00:16:08] Alyson: Do you change your tone at all?

[00:16:10] Luke: If something serious needs to be communicated, yeah. Sometimes love is a boot in the ass to someone. It's like if you have a 3-year-old and they're throwing a fit in a public place, out of love, you're going to instruct that kid on appropriate behavior in the context of that situation. Now, from afar, objectively it might seem like, oh wow, that parent's being really harsh with that little kid.

[00:16:46] But the discipline is born from a place of love, not from punishment or cruelty. And so in this real-life case, I determined that it was going to be ineffective to try to communicate our needs and the issues that we were having to said representative. So I went above his head to the owner of the company and contacted him directly. And in very clear, very direct, very honest terms, communicated point by point each of my complaints and grievances.

[00:17:27] At which point, thankfully, he was very responsive, showed up at the house with the whole crew, went over everything, while the problematic person laid in the background with his head hang in shame, because I thankfully had the wherewithal to just go over his head and not try to communicate to someone who's unable to receive that.

[00:17:51] Alyson: Yeah. And still, when that owner is here, how do you feel you're communicating with him? What is your tone, and what is your energy at that point?

[00:18:04] Luke: As long as I'm being met with respect and being heard and being seen--

[00:18:14] Alyson: So you test the water first?

[00:18:16] Luke: I would say so. I'm open and receptive to a different experience. And thankfully in this situation I was met with acknowledgement of the heirs. This person took responsibility. It was made clear to me that he acknowledged what was off track and made a verbal commitment to get things back on track.

[00:18:41] And so at that point, I had already communicated, through email, a line-by-line itemized list of what needs to be addressed, which he acknowledged. And we went through the house and started addressing those things.

[00:18:56] So had he shown up and deflected or refused to listen or was unable or unwilling to have accountability, then that expression of love as truth would've had to be escalated with some more energy. But I also know that the transformative power of love, not a wishy-washy love, but a firm and strong love that's courageous and willing to tell the truth even when it's uncomfortable also has a transformative power.

[00:19:32] And so if I can meet that person with openness and communicate my needs clearly and honestly, if they're at a certain level of consciousness, they're going to be called to meet me there. And now the dialogue and the interaction is going to be elevated to a different place than it would've been had they showed up and I came from--

[00:19:54] Alyson: Frustration.

[00:19:54] Luke: Frustration, a victim perspective--

[00:19:58] Alyson: Anger.

[00:19:59] Luke: Anger, attack, offense.

[00:20:01] Alyson: Blame.

[00:20:01] Luke: Vitriol, blame, all those things. So all of it, to me, to get back to his question, it's the science of mind. It's having a watchful awareness over the thoughts I entertain, and performing from a place that's higher and beyond whatever chatter my mind has to say about things.

[00:20:31] And to me, the thing that's helped me grow the most is, through awareness, removing any thoughts of judgment, negativity, resentment, condemnation, guilt, shame, all of that mess that's lower consciousness, and coming from a place of myself as divinity. And myself as divinity is willing to die for what's right, is willing to kill for what's right at a high level.

[00:21:08] Alyson: What percentage of time do you find that when you enter into a situation from that more peaceful-- you've set the energy tone, so you're not straggling in the unforgiveness and the anger. You've cleared that. You've found a clear set point. You go in calm and loving to see.

[00:21:34] Can you guesstimate a percentage of time that you are met well in that place and that person has a high enough consciousness to where the whole field, the whole essence can lift and you're able to feel heard and get positive direct results from this very calm, loving energy?

[00:21:58] What percentage of the time does that happen, or percentage where that is not met and you have to get into more of a sternness? Or, I don't even know the word to use, but more of a matter of fact, direct, tone that, not aggressive, but that's not so--

[00:22:20] Luke: Assertive.

[00:22:21] Alyson: Yeah, assertive.

[00:22:22] Luke: Assertive rather than passive.

[00:22:23] Alyson: What percentage are we going in which direction there?

[00:22:26] Luke: That's dependent on the level of integrity of the person receiving it, the person I'm communicating with. Unfortunately, it seems the world is filled with a higher number of people without integrity than with. But most of the time, diplomacy and fairness tends to resolve the issues eventually.

[00:22:59] But that's also been part of my growth, has been to be willing to be more assertive and to put my foot down when it's necessary. And sometimes it's necessary to be quite firm and honest. And sometimes it's a lawsuit. Sometimes it's a get the fuck off my property.

[00:23:25] Every once in a while, some people are just unreasonable, and they're unable to hear you because they're so hypnotized by their own unconsciousness. But another important aspect of that that makes being unconditionally loving much easier is by practicing discernment at the outset of relationships.

[00:23:50] This is something that I'm so grateful for in our relationship because you have such powerful intuition and such strong discernment, and you really bring me a lot of balance in that way because historically, I've tended to give people too much benefit of doubt. And just, oh, everyone's cool if you just give them a chance. It's not true.

[00:24:23] Many people are very uncool and will rob you blind or take advantage of you if they are given the opportunity, and that's one of the downsides of being someone with a peaceful nature and having equanimity and being able to communicate in a way that's compassionate and all of that, is that lower energy people, people in their animal nature see kindness as a sign of weakness, which can ultimately be used to one's advantage on your side, on the love side, because little do they know that if the situation calls for it, they're going to be dealing--

[00:25:10] Alyson: Annihilation.

[00:25:11] Luke: They're going to be dealing with a lion not a lamb. And so all of it to me is about balance. It's like calibrating energy, how much energy to put out, and what is the nature of that energy? How firm do you have to be? How much energy do you have to present in order to get someone's attention to break through to them, to help them to understand?

[00:25:41] Most of the time, through communication and just being diplomatic and understanding and doing my best to see both sides of the equation, I'm able to resolve most things. But even if I can't, I really do my best to avoid the temptation of hating that person or thinking that person should be different. Because in my life, almost all of the suffering I've experienced has been by believing people or anything in the world should be different than it is.

[00:26:19] Alyson: Lastly, but I think this is a really important, beautiful one to keep unpacking because it just pertains so much to daily life and human nature. We can't get away from this stuff that we're talking about. There's 8 billion people on this planet.

[00:26:36] Luke: It's the whole nature of Earth school, and that's why we have a spectrum of kindergartners to postgraduates on the scale of awakening. It's like if we came here and everyone were enlightened avatars, then there would really be no point to come here and be in a body.

[00:26:56] Alyson: What are you telling yourself when you do feel a frustrated energy or thought come up about the person and the situation? And we have this witness consciousness where we can observe our own thoughts. It's like, oh, I'm feeling this. I'm thinking this. So you're aware that that's happening.

[00:27:19] But then there's like a fork in the road where the ego or that frustration can lock down and feel justified, and I've got to stay tuned into this so I can get the results I want. Or the other fork is getting somehow back into the softness and into the unconditionally love, heart-centered place.

[00:27:41] So what do you tell yourself when you feel the frustration and you feel the glitch wanting to grasp? How do you go to the other side of the fork in the road? Because that grasp can get be really strong sometimes.

[00:27:54] Luke: Ultimately, I know that I would rather be at peace than be right. And the egoic aspect of me is its own entity, and it cares so much about securing its position that it would rather die than be wrong. And so through my meditation practice and just overall efforts on a day-to-day basis to be aware of the thoughts that are circling and trying to land on my tree, I do my best to not give those thoughts that make me weaker energy.

[00:28:44] Because even if a thought like they're wrong, I need to punish them. I'm going to get revenge. I'm going to teach them a lesson. I'm going to embarrass them, whatever. Even if objectively I'm right, I'm still going to suffer because I'm the one drinking the poison, hoping they die.

[00:29:06] Alyson: But that ego grip can really sneak in there.

[00:29:10] Luke: I'm not saying any of this is easy. You got to understand I started this practice, whatever this is that I'm describing, 28, almost 29 years ago. For half of my life, at least the first 25 years, not only did I have zero awareness that there was any delineation between who I am as a soul, as a being, and what the mind is, they were so unified that I experienced my entire reality from the position of mind, from the position of ego.

[00:29:56] And year over year, year over year, I've worked to create a gap of separation so that I can sit here and know who I really am and remember who I really am in my truth, and have a bit of awareness on these other aspects of the self that are God-given and part of the whole composite human, and they have their purpose.

[00:30:20] But if they're allowed to have agency over the way I think, the way I feel, and thus the way I act, then those lower aspects of myself are going to have agency over my entire destiny. I've allowed that to happen, and I've lived under the bondage of mind for so long and was so tortured and allowed it to hurt me and destroy my life in so many ways, and to hurt so many other people that it's like touching a hot stove.

[00:31:01] And not to say that I don't fall into it sometimes, but it's pretty rare these days that I'll get caught in a cyclical loop of, say, resentment or anxiety around a situation or a person that grips me so tightly that I can't let it go, like the obsessive thoughts. That's pretty rare. And that used to be, and I'm not exaggerating, that was all day every day with the exception of brief moments of escape through however I was escaping at that time in my life.

[00:31:38] Alyson: So what practice are you doing? What is an example when someone's at that fork in the road and they have witness observer consciousness and they're like, "Okay, here's the frustrated flare? I'm wanting to analyze. I'm wanting to feel moral superiority, whatever it is." Or you could go over to the heart space.

[00:32:04] What are you doing? Are you closing your eyes for 30 seconds and breathing into your heart? Are you going on a walk? What are you chanting? What are you doing to go left in the fork in the realm?

[00:32:17] Luke: You know what's funny? I'm not really doing anything. I think that the speed with which I identify those intrusive thoughts has become so fast that when they come, it's like dodging a bullet. And my practice is to see the bullet coming, and rather than catching it, to let it pass.

[00:32:52] In other words, when I identify a thought that's disempowering and untrue, really, because falsehood-- disempowers truth empowers-- if it's a thought about someone that the mind believes is true, but ultimately is not and the higher self in me knows that, I just withdraw my energy from it. It's not a fighting it, and it's not a resisting it. It's just like--

[00:33:21] Alyson: But when someone's first learning this though, there's going to be that dance. And so was there a time in your life where you spent half of the day going right, going left in that fork in the road, feeling the frustration, and then like, okay, I'm aware, but I'm going to over here? 30 seconds later, another surge of the attempt to grip. And you pull over here.

[00:33:43] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good. All right. There's a book-- it's a fantastic book that I used to read daily for years. It's called Sermon on the Mount by Emmett Fox. He was part of the new thought movement in the '30s and '40s, and he was a pioneer in something, I guess that could be called scientific Christianity.

[00:34:04] And so what he would do is take passages from the Bible or teachings of Jesus, and he would put them in very plain, basic metaphysical terms and remove the theology and dogma and myth from those stories and just say, "Here's what was actually being said. Here's the foundational principles behind these teachings." It's an incredible book.

[00:34:28] And I've never been a religious person or even a Christian person per se, but that book really helped me in so many ways of really understanding how the mind operates, and the way that Emmett Fox unpacks the teachings of Jesus has so much to do with the mind and our thinking.

[00:34:47] And one of the examples he gives in that book, and there's all kinds of great principles in his books like this, but this one for some reason just stuck, I think because it was a metaphor that I could picture, and therefore I could apply. And the way he describes negative thoughts is like a soldier on a battlefield. You're looking out over the horizon, and you see enemy soldiers start to march across the land.

[00:35:16] And if you give them time to entrench themselves into foxholes, they'll start to multiply and overtake you. But if you can pick each one off as they cross the field before they dig themselves in, they never take hold. And he uses that analogy for negative thoughts or what I refer to as disempowering thoughts.

[00:35:39] And so when one of those comes, it's relatively easy for me to not grab a hold of it because I know the pain it's going to cause. But to your question, it did take, unfortunately, many years of not being able to first even see them. They would just grab me. It was like getting hit with a poison dart or something.

[00:36:05] I'm like, "How did I get this? I was having a good day." Yeah, like, boom. And they would sneak in, and then they would fester, and I would give them energy. But I think some of the things that have helped is meditation, using NuCalm, the neuroacoustic software app that I hopefully talk about a lot because I think it's really helpful for everyone, doing neurofeedback training, microdosing psychedelics, macro dosing psychedelics intentionally and journeys. I've done a lot to really heal my mind and to--

[00:36:48] Alyson: Not spend all day in that dance of left or right.

[00:36:49] Luke: Yeah, yeah. So part of it is practice, but I have also really focused on just neurogenesis and creating new neural pathways. And that type of work on the physiological level makes the metaphysical application of those principles much easier because you're not fighting against your neurochemistry.

[00:37:11] You're not fighting against those grooves that have been cut into the mind, into the limbic system since the day you were freaking born. And so a lot of it has to do with brain healing. Hyperbaric oxygen chambers, getting oxygen to the brain, blood flow to the brain.

[00:37:29] I just got an inversion table in the garage, so I've been hanging upside down, getting blood into the brain. Those types of interventions and practices make it much easier to have dominion over the mind and to be in the driver's seat rather than the back of the bus when it comes to the directionality of your thoughts.

[00:37:55] Going back to the capacity to meet life with radically unconditional love, that's much easier to do when your brain function is optimized. This is the thing, like people I think often conflate biohacking with inner peace or fulfillment. But to me, all of the physical practices and healing modalities serve the sole purpose of giving me a mind and body that has a higher capacity for consciousness and evolution.

[00:38:38] Because I've tried to supplement my way to enlightenment and I can tell anyone listening, it ain't going to work. You don't care how much money you spend or how much you work on the physical vessel. It can turn into a distraction from the real mission. But that said, there's certainly a lot of value in my experience in repairing some of the parts of the body and mind that need healing, and that helps us get to the place where we can take life in stride and be more responsive than reactive.

[00:39:17] Alyson: Okey dokey. Do you feel complete?

[00:39:20] Luke: Yeah. I had no idea that question was going to elicit all of that, but that's a huge topic. It's like, what raises consciousness? Also will I add is avoiding things that lower it, which could be people, certain media, music. If you're trying to raise your consciousness and you're watching horror movies every night and listening to Slayer all day, it might be a slower path.

[00:39:47] So surrounding yourself with beauty, high-minded art, holy company, avoiding the things that block us from having higher consciousness. For me, my Achilles' heel right now is what was formerly known as Twitter. That's like the thing almost every day I'm like, "Why are you doing this to yourself? This is toxic." And the animal brain is still like, "Aah, I just want to see what's going on in the world."

[00:40:15] And I literally can't resist. A couple days ago, I was like, "I think I'm just going to delete it from my phone." And then I wake up the next day, I'm like, "No, I can control it. I just won't look at it." And today I was about to meditate and I'm like, "Don't look at X. Don't look at X." And I was like, "Just for a second. I just want to check in on the war." And I'm fine. It didn't ruin my day, but it definitely didn't add to my joy, my happiness, my sense of wellbeing.

[00:40:43] Alyson: But there are some days where it's not that quick, and you into a vortex.

[00:40:48] Luke: Yeah. So we all have our vices. Thankfully, mine are much less destructive than they used to be. But it's like, I think self-honesty and just being aware of the things that block us from our highest expression and, not through guilt or self-shaming or self-condemnation, just becoming increasingly willing to surrender those habits or distractions or vehicles of escape to God.

[00:41:17] And just to learn to be more with ourselves and reality of our life without trying to numb and avoid it. And getting rid of those things, toxic relationships, whatever they are, is one of the things that creates the space for that awareness where we can be mindful of the thoughts and emotions that we're entertaining.

[00:41:37] Alyson: Mm-hmm. Okay. Here comes another good one, one of my favorites that I've been pushing you to cover for years.

[00:41:48] Luke: Oh boy. What's this one going to be?

[00:41:51] Alyson: This, I think, is from someone named Kelly. "Where do our human spirit and soul go to when we die? Have you looked into near-death experiences?" NDEs. Can we get a chant? NDE.

[00:42:08] Luke: For real, I am fascinated by this topic. In fact, back there on the shelf, I have a massive book called The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences. I think this is one of the foundational questions of the human experience. It's, who are we? Why are we here? Where do we go when we die?

[00:42:35] So it's a funny question to try to answer because obviously I'm alive in this version of myself, so I have no idea. But I do find it very interesting to hear the accounts from people who have physically or clinically died and come back into their body and the experiences that they share. To me, they're very encouraging because the number one human fear, of course, is the fear of death.

[00:43:05] And it's the root and the seed of every other micro fear or anxiety we experience in life. They all trace back to the fear of death. And the funny thing about that is that there isn't one person on earth that's actually afraid of death, but there's 8.4 billion egos that are. Our soul knows that there is no death, that death is not a reality. It's a complete fallacy. But because we are so enraptured by form, we believe it to be true, and it's really scary.

[00:43:43] Alyson: I think also there's got to be a large portion of the population who, it's maybe not necessarily that they fear death. It's like how much pain is experienced before you eviscerate back into the eternal. It's like a car accident, for example. Are you laying there in a totaled car screaming in agony for two hours before the [Inaudible].

[00:44:16] Luke: I think that scares me more than death. It's the suffering. It's like the fear of suffering.

[00:44:23] Alyson: How are you arriving to the merging back with oneness?

[00:44:27] Luke: Yeah. Totally, totally. Yeah, that's a really good point. I think that probably scares me more than being gone. It's like, how do you check out? So yes, it's a topic that I'm very interested in.

[00:44:44] Alyson: If anyone's friends with the actor Jeremy Renner, please--

[00:44:47] Luke: Yeah. Because he had one. You were telling me about that.

[00:44:50] Alyson: Yes. I think it happened a couple of years ago, and I knew. I still read on TMZ and things sometimes, and so I saw two years ago--

[00:45:00] Luke: TMZ is your Twitter.

[00:45:01] Alyson: Exactly. That he had gotten run over by a huge, commercial-level snowplow or something. But it wasn't until more recently where I realized that through that experience, he had a full on NDE. And he now is talking about that and what his process was like and that journey between the realms and how there was a huge part of him that didn't want to come back to Earth. And so I'd love for you to interview him about that.

[00:45:32] Luke: Yeah, me too. I think there's something very interesting in the universality of people that have had those experiences. Each story is unique in some ways, but they all seem to share commonalities. And that is they don't have any interest in the physical body when they're out of it. It's just like a piece of meat.

[00:45:57] They're like, "God, why was I so obsessed with that dumb thing laying there in the hospital bed?" They don't give a shit about the body. It's completely meaningless once they're out of it. It's really interesting when people have NDEs say in surgery, and most of them report that they're floating up in the corner of the room, and through their awareness, they're able to see and hear everything going on in the room much to the shock of the medical staff once they come back in the body and describe to them what just happened in the five minutes before.

[00:46:30] Can you imagine being that doctor and someone's like, "Oh, hey, I heard you say this, and you grabbed that scalpel, and you got the hose, and you did the oxygen, and you said, well, I don't know, she ain't going to make it? And here I am." Those kind of things are just fascinating to me. And then also it's like some people feel compelled to come back for a higher purpose, even though they're tempted by--

[00:46:55] Alyson: A lot of them are given the choice, I've heard. God or the angel, whoever they're talking with, source, will say, "Hey, it's up to you. Do you want to go back?" And if you do, then sometimes I think more context is given, and then some people, when given that choice, they ponder it more than they do decide to come back into the body.

[00:47:19] Luke: I know. It makes you think, so how many people that have died had an NDE and like, "No, peace out. I ain't going back to that shit hole." Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting. I would say the closest thing I can imagine to that realm would be my experiences with 5-MeO-DMT.

[00:47:46] Because those in my lifetime have been the experiences wherein I felt the least tethered to the physical body, the persona called Luke Storey, the thinking mind, the egoic identity. For a few minutes, all of that seems to be completely obliterated, and I've been thrust into what could best be described as the totality of everything that ever was and ever will be, like a true, non-dual merging with consciousness where there's just a sliver of awareness that you're still breathing and you're still alive.

[00:48:38] And it's such a powerful experience that-- I had an opportunity to do it yesterday. I was just like, "Eh, I don't know if I'm ready for that." There wasn't a lot of fair warning or preparation or really time to feel into it. And I guess I wasn't meant to be there because I wasn't. But it's such a profound experience that it's thankfully not something that I would take lightly or probably do very often.

[00:49:05] It's been a few years now, but those few experiences for me really helped me with the fear of death and gave me a glimpse of what might be on the other side, which is not that you don't exist anymore, it's just that you exist as much more than a single point of awareness or a single point of consciousness.

[00:49:27] You just dissolve into the fabric of the divine, of God itself. And it's very safe there. It's actually more safe there. Because you don't have the vulnerability of being on the physical plane and be subject to all of the things that can happen to you while you're here when you're stuck in a body. You're very vulnerable.

[00:49:49] And so when you're not in a body and you're just in the field, it's very safe. And it's in those experiences too, some people refer to that, I think, erroneously, at least from my perspective, as the void, where it's just emptiness. In those experiences, it is the polar opposite of emptiness.

[00:50:17] It's complete fullness, which is why it's so overwhelming. Just supernatural and mind-blowing. It's just ineffable. But I have a sense that something like that happens when you cross over, some version of that.

[00:50:36] Alyson: Well, that's what I felt when Jellybean crossed over when I was holding him. He crossed into the other realm very quickly, and right when he did, I felt-- because I was so curious. I had had Jellybean. We had been in each other's lives for almost two decades.

[00:50:58] Luke: For those listening, that was Alyson's, well and then our cat.

[00:51:02] Alyson: Silly boy.

[00:51:03] Luke: Who's buried in the backyard right out there.

[00:51:05] Alyson: Yes. Harry Gato, which I ended up calling him Jellybean for many years. But yeah, so I was really curious what was going to be my experience with this beautiful being who had been by my side for nearly 20 years when all of a sudden he's not in the physicality anymore and he's in the field of oneness, the field of loving awareness.

[00:51:28] What will then be my experience of him? And I felt exactly what you're describing. As soon as he crossed over, I just felt him just permeate into eternity. I felt him become the energy of love in the eternal. And it was so clear and so pronounced. I felt him just become everywhere and become love everywhere. And I can even feel it to a degree right now as I'm speaking about it. He's everywhere, and he is pure love. And it was really an awe-inspiring experience.

[00:52:10] Luke: That's cool. Yeah. I think because we experienced life through the senses and perception of the body and the mind, we think of death as a contraction, like things get smaller and tighter. But what you just described is the exact opposite of that. It's just complete expansion.

[00:52:34] Alyson: A birth into field of--

[00:52:35] Luke: Yeah, yeah. It's actually a birth. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. So yeah, I don't know, man. I hope I don't find out anytime soon. But having just let go of my dad and having been there the moment he left his body, I was wondering these same things, especially in the 48 hours or so where he was incapacitated and essentially in a coma. And so he wasn't really all the way in his body, but he wasn't all the way on the other side.

[00:53:05] There was this bardo, and he was somewhere in the middle there. Oh, man, during that time sitting in the hospital, I had a fever of curiosity of like, where is he right now, and what is he experiencing? What can he see? What can he hear? Is he looking at me right now?

[00:53:29] Can he hear me? Is he seeing his relatives halfway through the portal and us, other relatives, that still remain embodied here? I don't know of anything much more fascinating than the transition of what we call life out of one form and into another. And I do. Anyone listening, if you know who's the OG, the badass, expert on this topic, near-death experiences, I'm all ears.

[00:54:01] I did find someone who's, I forget their name, but they've written books, and they're the head of the NDE Institute. I forget where they are, but I did actually reach out to them, and for some reason they couldn't or wouldn't do the podcast. It was schedule or location-based or something like that. But it is a topic I want to cover more. So I'm all ears if somebody has a recommendation on that.

[00:54:29] Alyson: We now have Chris, and Chris is saying that they are convinced alcohol doesn't deserve a place in their life yet-- see, I don't want to read it in the first person because I'm so sensitive to energies. And I also don't know if Chris is a male or a female. So I'm going to read it as if Chris is a male. So just bear with me while I restart this again.

[00:54:56] Luke: You don't want to take on their--

[00:54:58] Alyson: Yeah, I'm super energy sensitive, so I don't want to read this in first person. Yeah. So he's convinced alcohol doesn't deserve a place in his life yet he still has not been able to eliminate it. He just got done doing a 70-day alcohol fast and went back thinking maybe it would be different, and it's not. He's almost 50. Why can't he walk away for good from this toxic substance? He can't seem to find another hobby or distraction to gravitate towards.

[00:55:30] Luke: Oh, man.

[00:55:30] Alyson: You know that one.

[00:55:32] Luke: That one hits close to home. Yeah. Well, the poison's in the dose. I guess now there's a lot of popular research circulating around the toxicity of alcohol and that whether or not you have a drinking problem, it's just not good for you. I don't know. I haven't looked into it because I don't drink alcohol, so it's not an issue for me.

[00:55:53] But I don't know that alcohol is inherently toxic, but I do know, based on my own experience, that it was toxic for me because of the relationship I developed with it, or really the relationship it developed with me, is what happened. I never planned on becoming an alcoholic.

[00:56:13] There was something in my genetics and epigenetics that despite the fact that I didn't really enjoy the taste of alcohol or its effects, each time I drank from the time I was a kid-- maybe the first time I was probably eight or nine or something like that. Each time I drank, I got drunk whether I wanted to or not. Period.

[00:56:48] I never drank alcohol without getting drunk once. Never. Which is weird if you think about it. That's what they call alcohol spirits. So my relationship with alcohol, it was like a one-sided love affair. It loved me, but I didn't love it back, but I couldn't stop doing it.

[00:57:15] And so to Chris's question, it's great to have self-awareness and to be willing to be honest with oneself. I think that's a really important part of overcoming any challenge and any attachment. Because denial is the biggest block to resolution. If I was Chris's wife or best friend going, "Man, you drink too much, you drink too much." If Chris didn't acknowledge and see that within himself, I'm just going to assume Chris is a guy, there's no chance that you're ever going to escape it.

[00:57:58] Alyson: Sounds like he's being pretty honest with himself.

[00:58:00] Luke: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So huge hurdle right there. And then it's a matter of whether or not I'm a problem drinker, which is someone who drinks alcohol despite the fact that it has negative consequences. But if I really buckle down, I can stop and stay stopped.

[00:58:33] Because I've met many people who you might look at and think they're an alcoholic because they get wasted and they love to drink, and they go out every weekend. But if they, say, have a kid or they get a new job or life circumstances require more of them, they're able to put it away without going to treatment or going to a 12-step group, or having to take the path of a recovering alcoholic, whatever that might look like.

[00:58:58] If someone's repeatedly tried to quit and all they're able to do is stop, the difference being stopping is temporary, quitting is permanent, that might be the sign of being an alcoholic. And when one crosses the Rubicon of heavy drinker to alcoholic, that gets quite serious fast.

[00:59:25] And there's many varieties of alcoholic on the alcoholic side of the ledger. Some alcoholics are periodic, some are daily maintenance drinkers, where they just microdose a little bit, but they can't stop and every variation in between. I was an alcoholic, but I, for example, very rarely ever drank in the daytime or in the morning. And I've had friends that are alcoholics. They literally wake up, crawl out of bed, and take a shot at whiskey or vodka or whatever. That was disgusting. I never did that.

[01:00:02] But almost every night of my, say, probably 18 years old to 26 or so, almost every night I got blackout drunk. Maybe a few exceptions here and there. And I never planned to. And so my form of alcoholism was sun goes down, I start getting antsy, anxious, uncomfortable, lonely, depressed, you name it, whatever feeling I didn't want to feel, which was pretty much any of them, even sometimes just joy.

[01:00:37] It's too much to handle. The upper ceiling on my capacity for happiness was just like, I don't deserve to be happy. I better get drunk to quell any emotions that fall outside of the realm of being numb and asleep. And so that was how alcoholism looked to me.

[01:00:57] It was like a nighttime phenomenon. And the few times that I did drink during the day, because the way I drank, which was just really fast, I would just pass out by 2:00 in the afternoon or something, and just wake up at 2:00 AM with the hangovers, just bad.

[01:01:18] So I didn't tend to drink during the daytime. I don't know how often Chris is drinking or how much, but it's just to create the framework for anyone who might have concerns that they're drinking too much, that they're a heavy drinker, or that there's some variety of an alcoholic.

[01:01:39] Alyson: He specifically said, why can't he walk away for good from this toxic substance? And he chose that word toxic. So I feel like that's a key. I'm not trying to label him anything. I'm not diagnosing. I'm just saying the fact that he himself has identified it as that says something to me.

[01:02:02] Luke: As far as I understand, based on my experience and also my direct observation of hundreds, if not thousands of alcoholics over the past 28 years, is that once you've crossed that line into full blown alcoholism in whatever variety as I just described, because every person is unique and their alcoholism is also unique, I don't know that I've ever seen anyone overcome it on their own through sheer willpower, positive thinking, change of scenery, going to the gym.

[01:02:43] It requires a power that's greater than a single person's power. And it takes a lot of power to overcome alcoholism. Most people don't have that kind of power within them because the power that we would exert to overcome alcoholism is willpower. And the willpower is nowhere near as effective and potent as the power of creation or God or source itself.

[01:03:17] Alyson: Jesus.

[01:03:18] Luke: Jesus. Let Jesus take that bottle. And so for me, when I got to that point, I had tried everything within my own power, used every resource I possibly could within myself to control and manage my drinking, and it got to the point where I was cornered and had to admit that I could not beat it myself. And so where that led me was checking myself into a treatment center.

[01:03:49] Alyson: If your mom had not have driven you to the rehab center, would you have driven yourself?

[01:03:55] Luke: I don't know that I could have even--

[01:03:59] Alyson: You were too drunk?

[01:04:00] Luke: Yeah. At that point, I could barely get on an airplane.

[01:04:04] Alyson: Maybe if it even wasn't that day, just in general.

[01:04:06] Luke: I know what mean. Yeah. Thankfully, when I hit that point at 26, it was the most pivotal moment of my entire life by far, maybe other than being born. I was picking up that phone one day at the end of a self-administered detox that was absolutely treacherous, somewhere in Canoga Park or Reseda out there. [Inaudible] somewhere, just laying on the floor, really sweating it out for a few days. And I picked the phone and called my mom, said, "Mom, I'm done."

[01:04:37] And she was waiting for that phone call for a long time. And so she speedily got in touch with the treatment center and set me up. And then I flew up there, and she took me. So to your question, I think if she would've been unable or unwilling to do that for me, I feel like I would've found a way to do something to get myself somewhere, even if it was like a, I don't know, a state-sanctioned freaking halfway house or detox center or something, public services kind of thing or something.

[01:05:08] Because when I was done, son, I was done. I was out. White flag of surrender, flying so high that God could see it. So to answer Chris's question, man, it's like, I hate to be the bearer of this news, but I think when you've crossed a certain point, outside help is necessary. Counseling and therapy and reading books and meditating, whatever, probably ain't going to do it.

[01:05:39] It's like medical detox treatment because coming off alcohol, depending on how much you're drinking, can literally kill you. You can quit heroin all day long, you're fine. You quit alcohol-- I saw a guy in treatment go into the DTs and have a grand mal seizure. And he did not do any drugs. He was just a straight up OG alcoholic.

[01:06:00] So depending on how much someone is drinking, it's really important to make sure that there's medical supervision because it can be really dangerous if not fatal. And then, man, it's a 12-step program. I really don't know of any other way. I've met a couple of people in recent years for whom addiction of some kind was problematic that found remedy through plant medicines.

[01:06:32] And every once in a while, that happens for people because of the peak spiritual experience that they can sometimes produce. And they've walked out of those experiences changed and able to let those addictions go. But that is a bit more hit or miss.

[01:06:51] So I would say, man, it's like time to perhaps tighten your belt and get humble, teachable, open-minded, willing, and more than anything, ask God for help, even if you don't believe in God, if you're an atheist or an agnostic, which I was. God cares not whether or not you believe. God just wants you to ask, and it's instantaneous.

[01:07:24] Alyson: Amen. That was a big one.

[01:07:28] Luke: Yeah. My heart really goes out for that one because, man, I know all too well the darkness of that path.

[01:07:38] Alyson: Yeah, as you're answering that, I was definitely tracking and flashing to just different people who I've known throughout my life who, yeah, some of them no longer on earth who, yeah, just got gripped by that experience.

[01:07:55] Luke: All substance addiction is brutal, but there's a unique essence to alcoholism. It's got its thing.

[01:08:06] Alyson: How much do you think the spirit of alcohol, that entity was at play and was a factor for your alcoholism? I don't know if I'm making that question clear.

[01:08:21] Luke: I think for me, alcohol, the spirit of alcohol opened portals of vulnerability into my field. It does something in terms of removing energetic protection and boundaries. It makes you less conscious.

[01:08:55] Alyson: Right. So what's one example when that entity, that spirit of alcohol has infiltrated? You've drank your first bottle glass. Then what's an example of those openings of the vulnerability that might--

[01:09:12] Luke: Self-sabotage. Just blowing it in so many ways for so many years. Just having opportunity, land in my palm and just crushing it. That was a lot of it. Just almost knowingly making decisions that were deleterious to my wellbeing.

[01:09:31] Alyson: So that spirit, that entity of alcohol could have maybe gone to your low self-worth and latched on there that would then create self-sabotage experiences.

[01:09:42] Luke: Yeah. And also, not that I really had much discernment in those days to begin with, but any sort of intuition or gut feeling about people and their degree of trustworthiness was completely annihilated.

[01:10:01] Alyson: Just mayhem.

[01:10:03] Luke: I allowed anyone and everyone into my field, made very poor decisions around kind of people I befriended and slept with, all of that. And also maybe most tragically the spirit of alcohol always open the portals to other drugs. Because alcohol, I was addicted to it, but it wasn't my friend. You know what I mean?

[01:10:39] Cannabis was my friend. That was my medicine. That was a utility. It was useful to me, and I enjoyed it. Whereas alcohol was a necessary evil. It was something I needed, but not something that I wanted. Cannabis was something I wanted and needed. And alcohol, the spirit of it would weaken my resolve and destroy my judgment and deceive me into thinking that I could again and again use other drugs with impunity.

[01:11:20] First to cocaine, then to crack, then to heroin. If I was drunk, for example-- here's a good one. If I was really drunk and there were no other hard drugs around, I would do crystal meth. I hated crystal meth. It's the worst drug ever created in the world. And that says a lot because crack is a super shitty drug.

[01:11:41] But crystal meth, to me, is just like the grossest, most disgusting, most depraved drug ever. Put some alcohol in me, and all of a sudden, it sounds like a great idea. You got some speed? Great. Let's do it. So yeah, it's infected my mind into making decisions that were self-harming.

[01:12:03] Alyson: Yeah. I think there's something in that examination for Chris.

[01:12:08] Luke: Hopefully there's some grist for the mill in there. I think the underlying thing is like if you might be an alcoholic, you're going to have to admit that to yourself. And if that's the case, it's unlikely you're going to be able to fix it on your own. And then it's a matter of like, "Okay, I need help. Where am I going to find that help, and am I willing to receive it?" Because there's plenty of people out there willing to help you.

[01:12:33] Alyson: Yeah. Okay. Switching gears here. I recognize this name. We've got Mokie back in the house again asking a detox question.

[01:12:42] Luke: Mokie. That's a great name.

[01:12:43] Alyson: Mokie. Tips on detoxing vaccine exposure. We are aware of vax poisons and heavy metals dropped in water, food, and air. Dr. Ardis speaks about snake venom, etc. What can you suggest to help reverse this epidemic?

[01:13:02] Luke: Oh, man. This human experience, man, the earth realm and its polarity.

[01:13:18] Alyson: Right.

[01:13:19] Luke: The forces of darkness, the spiritual warfare. Unfortunately, there's an anti-life, anti-human aspect of this world. And it seems to me one of the ways that they've expressed that is through poisons disguised as medicine. And yeah, it's something that's difficult for me to love that unconditionally because it's directly impacted my life in some pretty meaningful ways. And that's one I'm working on, is like, "Okay, am I willing to forgive everything and everyone, no matter what?" Close. Getting closer.

[01:14:17] Alyson: This one gets you sometimes.

[01:14:19] Luke: Yeah, getting closer. But yeah, that one really cuts.

[01:14:23] Alyson: I remember back in the day, when we were discussing this more just as a family, there was something we could put in baths.

[01:14:33] Luke: Yeah. Borax.

[01:14:35] Alyson: Oh, that's what that was?

[01:14:36] Luke: Yeah.

[01:14:36] Alyson: I thought there was something else too. No? Isn't there another bath thing?

[01:14:41] Luke: Borax is a mineral called Boron, and that is the only one I've heard but I could be forgetting.

[01:14:50] Alyson: That's the thing that pulls out nanobots?

[01:14:51] Luke: That's what they say. But this is the issue with getting these substances out of our bodies, whether we directly took them or they've been--

[01:15:04] Alyson: Floating in the air.

[01:15:06] Luke: Floating in the air, or however they get into other people, which seems to be quite evident at this point. The problem with this is that there are so many "experts" that have monetized their brands, whether they're just a content brand or whether they're a product brand based on sensationalism and speculation. So there are a lot of ideas that float around in social media and meme sphere, like putting borax in your bathtub and it dismantling nanobots.

[01:15:44] That may or may not be true. I don't know. It's a great question because the waters are murky when it comes to scientifically validated mechanisms of detox for some of these highly sophisticated and novel bioweapons. We don't even know what these things are because we can't even depend on the people that have created and distributed them.

[01:16:09] Nor can we wholly depend on the people, on the good guy side that we determine are analyzing them and telling us what they are, whether they're these nanobots or whatever. Snake venom, I don't know. I don't know what they are. I just know that they're maiming and in many cases killing people.

[01:16:32] So regardless of what they are or why they're being given to people, why the population is full of it, I go back to just basic principles of detox, which would be saunas, fasting, mega dosing zeolite, activated charcoal, doing liver cleanses, liver flushes, doing colon hydrotherapy. And these aren't in any particular order. These are just known ways, proven ways over time to get things out of your body.

[01:17:18] Alyson: What was that oil that we would sometimes [Inaudible] before we would fly? Pine.

[01:17:23] Luke: Yeah, it's pine oil from Shen Blossom. Its called shikimic acid. I forget the name of it, but there's an acid that's in pine that is extremely antimicrobial.

[01:17:37] Alyson: Yeah. I feel like sometimes before flights we would take that.

[01:17:41] Luke: Yeah, yeah. It's called Blood Purifier from Shen Blossom. We'll put it in the show notes at lukestorey.com/615. Then on the more sophisticated side, in terms of the internal detox, there's the push catch theory, which is taking different herbs and things that stimulate bile flow and get your eliminatory organs to excrete toxins.

[01:18:07] And then you bind them with something like activated charcoal or zeolite or calcium bentonite clay or something, and so on. And then you make sure the colon is clean or being clean so that everything gets out of your body. And those are the old-school detox techniques.

[01:18:23] But from firsthand experience, just still anecdotal, personally, if I had done that to myself, I would be doing EBO3 therapy. No, EBO2, which is a process wherein you get ozone infused IVs and blood dialysis at the same time. Essentially, it's like an oil change for your blood. And the last time I did one of those, I think I did two or three of them. It's generally recommended you want to do three of them in three weeks. And this is not medical advice, but EBO2, not O3.

[01:19:09] EBO2, it's like 10 Pass Ozone-- people might have heard of that-- or intravenous ozone therapy, but much more power powerful at cleaning the blood. And it is said to rid the blood of all of the things that this person is describing. The interesting thing about the last time I did it is that the nurse who was administrating it, this was back more in the plandemic time, she had been inoculated twice and developed myocarditis. Is that what it's called? Is that how you say it, Jarrod? Myocarditis? Myocarditis.

[01:19:44] I can't even say it because I don't want it. She got that, started having heart problems. She did two sessions herself and completely healed it. That's what the nurse told me face-to-face. She had no reason to try to impress me. If anything, she should have been embarrassed because she took the medicine.

[01:20:04] So when she told me that, I was judging her, if I'm really honest. I'm like, "Dude, you're a nurse and you didn't know?" Okay. But anyway, point being, it's not about what's been done and whining about that or feeling victimized or angry. That's not going to do any good. It's like, "Cool, let's get solution-oriented." And to me, any and all ways you can detox anything from the body is going to be helpful.

[01:20:30] Alyson: Okay.

[01:20:31] Luke: Yeah.

[01:20:32] Alyson: Yeah, I did that.

[01:20:34] Luke: I have many shows I've done on detox, and we'll put links to those in the show notes as well. Oh, my bad. I forgot one thing. Systemic enzymes. They do a number of things, but one of the main effects of systemic enzymes, I like a product called Dissolve-It-All from Mitolife. We'll put that in the show notes as well. Serrapeptase is one of the enzymes, and by systemic I mean you're megadosing the enzymes on an empty stomach so that they don't use their energy to digest food.

[01:21:11] But one of the things that they do among many benefits is they dissolve blood clots and cysts and all kinds of growths. And when I say mega dose, I'm talking about anywhere from six to 20 capsules every day with a glass of water, first thing when you wake up. So that's a really powerful way to get more biological material cleared from the body.

[01:21:37] Not so much toxins in the sense of glyphosate or something, but when things have metastasized and are growing in the body and you want to get rid of them, inflammation and so on, the systemic enzymes are a really important part of that protocol.

[01:21:53] Alyson: And also, the myofascial work and the lymphatic work, that's been really helpful for me and my body, spinal network.

[01:22:04] Luke: Spinal network analysis. Yeah.

[01:22:06] Alyson: Yeah, all that stuff that--

[01:22:07] Luke: It's funny, you guys. So I did a podcast years ago with Donny Epstein who created this modality called Spinal Network Analysis. Fascinating guy. And I used to go get those treatments a lot. And Alyson started going to see some specialist, and someone told her, I think they were a chiropractor, but they are very subtle and just energetic.

[01:22:28] I was like, "That sounds cool." So she's going. She really loves it. And then one day she comes home and is like, "Yeah, it's called networks spinal something." I was like, "Dude, you've been doing NSA? That's the shit." I was so happy because it's a beautiful modality. It's very effective.

[01:22:42] Alyson: Yeah. Can really help reset things. And I did a couple of rounds of that EBO2 back in the day, and that's the one where if you have a lot of stuff that's detoxing out your-- the stuff in the container gets really puffy and fluffy. I didn't have that, but what was that? Just the detox gas bubbles or something?

[01:23:03] Luke: It filters your blood and plasma. And so the impurities and inflammation, essentially the white blood cells of inflammation will fill up your little bucket and it gets very foamy. And I remember when you did yours, I was looking over and you haven't been living the life. You've been living a clean, healthy life, but you haven't been as hardcore as me. I remember looking at your bucket and getting--

[01:23:28] Alyson: I had no bubbles.

[01:23:28] Luke: I was envious. I was like, "Damn, this girl's healthier than me, and she just lives her best life." I'm over here--

[01:23:34] Alyson: I'm over here eating pizza.

[01:23:35] Luke: Yeah. You're just chilling, and you had less inflammation and toxins than I did. But there's something very satisfying about that when you're getting a treatment and you can see objectively stuff that looks like you don't want it in your body coming out of your body.

[01:23:48] Alyson: Yeah, yeah. And it also gets run through those light.

[01:23:52] Luke: Yeah, that's right. Hemealumen. Oh, that's a part I forgot. Yeah, the EBO2 is super cool. So it ozonates your blood. You basically have a syringe going in one arm and out the other. And so it really is like a circulatory filtration. So you have ozone going into the blood. Then that goes into a dialysis machine, which filters it out.

[01:24:17] Think of an oil filter in your car. And then your blood goes through this machine called the Hemealumen, which has red light and a couple of different UV light spectrums. And so your blood is getting irradiated by the light, which is incredibly good for your mitochondria and detox and all the things. So yeah, that treatment, if it's done according to protocol, is multifaceted and super potent.

[01:24:42] Alyson: Mm-hmm. Okay. I'm excited about this next one due to one word in this question, and I'm going to let you figure out what that one word is. This is asked by Heather. "What conspiracy theories are you most interested in right now? Have you watched the series, The Nephilim Looked Like Clowns, Understanding Conspiracy? It ties in perfectly to Tartaria and flat Earth." Now, what's the word I liked in that question?

[01:25:09] Luke: Clowns.

[01:25:10] Alyson: Clowns.

[01:25:11] Luke: Yes, I knew that. No, I've not watched that documentary. Man.

[01:25:18] Alyson: What a title? The Nephilim Looked Like Clowns from Understanding Conspiracy.

[01:25:23] Luke: Yeah. Interesting. We'll find it, and we'll put it in the show notes for anyone else that wants to check it out. I think I have to moderate myself a bit with the pursuit of truth and the exploration of conspiracies because it can veer on the side of negativity and put me in a state of anxiety or just piss me off that there's just been and continues to be so much deception.

[01:26:02] So I'm trying to think of what I find most interesting in terms of untruths that are widely held. I think the biggest conspiracy really that fascinates me is just zooming out at humanity and the number of massive falsehoods we've been led to believe are true.

[01:26:36] Alyson: Mm-hmm.

[01:26:40] Luke: The medical system, the education system, the financial system. What is money? That's a conspiracy in and of itself. Currency versus money. It's insane. The cosmology of earth and the cosmos, space, history.

[01:26:59] Alyson: The calendar.

[01:27:01] Luke: The Gregorian calendar.

[01:27:02] Alyson: That one.

[01:27:04] Luke: Daylight savings time. It's like from the moment you leave your mom's womb, you are lied to about everything.

[01:27:18] Alyson: And because it happens directly after birth, it's so easy to get conditioned, brainwashed into thinking that any of that stuff is normal or healthy. I went to college, and I'm glad I did, and I know you have thoughts on that. And if we have a child, you don't want them to go to college and all those things, but--

[01:27:45] Luke: Just not one of these infiltrated universities. Well, they could do whatever they want.

[01:27:52] Alyson: I'm not trying to take a certain stance on what I'm about to bring up. It's just been fascinating to me because I haven't landed on anything but just, yeah, the school system. It's what you do in America. You start to go to school at a very young age and you start to read these books that are in the school bookshelves and in the school libraries, and it's like, it just all happens so fast.

[01:28:18] You don't even have a moment to even ponder, like, is what I'm reading true? You just get fed all this information. You take all these exams. You have to write all these essays so that you regurgitate, you put in writing these things that you're reading from the books. But how do you know the things you're reading from the books are true?

[01:28:38] And then you are reinforcing that they're true because you're writing a 20-page essay paper on the facts that are held in the book. And it's just like, just scratching the surface right there is enough to just be like, "Whoa, what?" It's a lot.

[01:28:54] Luke: Yeah, it's wild. Also, the system that perpetuates the mass deception and manipulation is very clever, and it knows that humans have the tendency to self-identify with their beliefs. And so if I'm taught my entire a certain understanding of reality, it's very difficult to not take that on as part of who I am.

[01:29:33] So later in life, if you try to question that reality, I take that or the ego takes that as an affront to my identity because I think that the things I believe are who I am because I've been indoctrinated and trained to forget who I am.

[01:29:52] And I think that's something that's so interesting about, for lack of a better term, the truther movement, is that many of the people that are seeking truth about the nature of reality and about the world are also people who are seeking truth or found truth about their own true nature, their spiritual origins.

[01:30:14] It's like when we become more aware of who and what we really are, that starts to manifest as discernment and helps us to see more clearly through falsehood. Whereas a person who has no recollection of who and what they really are and are just living as the persona, the NPC that's been programmed into them by society, they can't help but be more closely identified with their belief systems.

[01:30:52] And that's why those people are impossible to change and impossible to convince with objective facts. They're just totally controlled and motivated by emotions, the way they feel. Because the way they feel is controlled by who they believe themselves to be.

[01:31:11] And so if you threaten my worldview, it's like you're trying to kill me. Because without that, I don't exist. My whole belief structure is built on falsehood, and I'm so attached to it. Whereas people that are starting to, or have been exploring themselves from a spiritual point of view, become more malleable and less identified and attached to their beliefs.

[01:31:38] Alyson: Much easier to have the I don't know--

[01:31:41] Luke: Totally, yeah. There's few things more fun to me than getting something totally wrong and being like, "Oh man, I totally missed--"

[01:31:51] Alyson: Starting from scratch.

[01:31:52] Luke: Like, yeah. Wow, I was really off on that one. To me, it's like, wow, thank God I finally found out. I'm not attached to any of the Tartar, flat Earth, whatever. It's like, dude, I really don't care what the truth is because I'm not attached to it being a certain way. What I value is knowing what the truth is.

[01:32:16] Alyson: Yeah, yeah. It brings to mind, and I know this is a bit off track, but one of my favorite points about shamanism, how the word shaman in ancient Siberian language translates to one who knows, or one who sees in the dark. But one of my friends, who's a Daoist shaman in one of the ancient Chinese languages, the word shaman translates to, I don't know.

[01:32:43] And I've always loved that, that shaman, in two very ancient different languages, directly translates to the complete opposite thing. One who knows and I don't know. And that's what shamanism essentially is if you distill it down, down, down, down, down. It's being able to healthily balance and hold both of those.

[01:33:06] Luke: That's very cool. I didn't know that.

[01:33:08] Alyson: Yeah, I love that.

[01:33:09] Luke: I find it interesting that that word, shamanism, has its origins in Mongolia or Russia or something.

[01:33:17] Alyson: Siberia.

[01:33:17] Luke: Siberia. Okay. So many people are attached to that being a South American cultural artifact and are very uptight about that. So I love that you're setting that true. See, there's a truth. I might've been attached the idea that that particular term belongs to a certain demographic of people, but because I'm not attached to that belief, I get new information and, oh, that's interesting. Cool. That's good to know.

[01:33:47] Alyson: That's just where the word came from, but the art of living an honorable connection to the planet we inhabit and to God, that was just at the start of time, and before it needed a title and had a title. You know what saying?

[01:34:03] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[01:34:04] Alyson: Anyways, so that's a whole other conversation.

[01:34:05] Luke: It's like you have to go back. Okay, who was the first human being that felt deeply in relation to the earth itself and everything on it as a living organism?

[01:34:20] Alyson: And also had a connection to the unseen and a reverence to source, creator. And that person was a shaman, practicing shamanism, but there was no title needed at that point. They were just living healthily.

[01:34:34] Luke: They were tapped into the rock and the stars. One last thing I want to add to that is just an exercise that I think is just so helpful for anyone that wants to try it, is when you find yourself believing that you know something to be true, play around with framing it as, at this point right now, I believe this to be true.

[01:35:09] It's really healthy to leave room for flexibility and evolution as open-mindedness is much more expansive. It's like, it doesn't mean that you become gullible because you're also growing in discernment and your capacity to discern truth from falsehood. But there's been so many times in my life that I've been attached to one erroneous idea.

[01:35:39] And looking back, they were some of the most idiotic, limiting beliefs that I could have ever imagined. But at the time, I would've clung to it, to the death. And so I like the idea of just easy come, easy go. I always think of this as like in the old Western movies, a salon door. It's like this door that swings both ways.

[01:36:05] And open-mindedness is not just having a receptivity to new and novel ideas that are wanting to present themselves and whether you let them in or not. It's also like opening the door that faces out so that you can be willing, readily to discard ideas and beliefs that no longer serve you. It's like being able to empty the trash as much as take gifts in.

[01:36:31] Alyson: Mm-hmm.

[01:36:32] Luke: Yeah. It's like, hold things loosely. It's such a powerful practice.

[01:36:37] Alyson: Mm-hmm. Yes. My battery's starting to dwindle. I don't know about yours. We've been going for a couple of hours.

[01:36:45] Luke: Have we really?

[01:36:46] Alyson: Yeah.

[01:36:47] Luke: Oh, shit.

[01:36:47] Alyson: It's after 3:00.

[01:36:48] Luke: I swear to God, hand on a Bible. If you made me time this, I would say we're about an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and a half.

[01:36:59] Alyson: We probably didn't start directly at 1:00. I know we're always a little late, so it's probably, maybe been an hour and a half, hour and 40. But still, it's--

[01:37:09] Luke: Ninety minutes is a good length for these episodes, I think.

[01:37:14] Alyson: Yeah. Do you want to do one more or do you want to--

[01:37:16] Luke: Let's do one more.

[01:37:17] Alyson: Okay. I just like this lady's name, Life Fairy Godmother. She's saying she's struggling with love addiction. She's single mother of two and also has two dogs. She trusts God truly wholeheartedly, but sometimes it gets dark and loneliness hits hard. "It would be great if you could give a voice to love addiction in a world that lacks understanding of it."

[01:37:40] So I'm just rereading that. She's struggling with love addiction, but she's a single mother of two kids and also has two dogs. She does trust God, but sometimes it gets dark in the loneliness. It's hard. I guess she's just wanting you to speak to your experience with love addiction because-- so yeah, it doesn't seem like many people do speak to this.

[01:38:07] Luke: Yeah, that's a really good one and poignant because I spent the last year writing a book about loneliness, and the chapter that I'm writing right now, chapter 7 spends a lot of time on the love addiction-love avoidance dynamic. So I have a bit of familiarity with it, although I'm certainly not a expert. I would recommend to her the work of Pia Melody, who--

[01:38:35] Alyson: Pia?

[01:38:35] Luke: Pia Melody. Yeah.

[01:38:36] Alyson: Cute name.

[01:38:37] Luke: Incredible author and expert on the topic from whom I've learned so much. Oh, man. And it's so complex because when you get into addictions that aren't tied to a substance and are a necessary aspect of our lives, it gets murky and really difficult.

[01:39:04] When you're talking about sex addiction, food addiction, love addiction, co-dependencies, these aren't things that we can just cold Turkey and practice complete abstinence from.

[01:39:28] Luke: In the case of alcoholism, as we were discussing before, it's black or white. You either drink alcohol or you don't. In other words, in order to live, I don't have to have one shot of vodka every day to sustain my life. But if I'm a love addict and I'm wanting to recover or I'm in recovery, human connection is essential to my life.

[01:40:00] And so how does one experience healthy connection without the tentacles of codependency and love addiction coming into play? And so it's really tricky and it's really complex. And my experience of that realm is pretty extensive and went on for decades before I even ever heard the term or knew what it was.

[01:40:31] I think when you're on either side of the equation, whether it's what we call love addiction or love avoidance, it's pretty well established that they're manifestations of your childhood wounds. And so for most of my life, I erred on the side of the avoidant because of relationships I had when I was a child.

[01:41:01] Emotional closeness felt like entrapment or pressure to me. When women with whom I had relationships wanted to get closer and bond and be more serious, it elicited a sense of fight or flight.

[01:41:23] Alyson: Run for the hills.

[01:41:24] Luke: Panic, when someone's literally just trying to love me.

[01:41:27] Alyson: I just got a vision of you in your jeans, sprinting up a hill in the Hollywood Hills.

[01:41:32] Luke: A big dust cloud behind me. Yeah. Which is really tragic and really sad that I denied myself of that experience for so long. But it had to do with just unresolved dynamics and hurts from when I was a kid. And so for those that are unfamiliar, it would probably be helpful to create a basic framework of the dynamic between the avoidant and the addict. So you have one person on one side who's needy and craving and chasing that love or what they perceive to be love, and then you have the other party who is resisting, emotionally shutting down.

[01:43:30] And rather than being responsive to the love and attention and affection coming toward them, and the desire for closeness and bonding, they sense that as a threat to their sovereignty and freedom. And that dance perpetuates because by its very nature, it doesn't lead to resolution.

[01:44:00] Because the chaser's never going to stop chasing, and the runner's never going to stop running. And it's nature's way of bringing to our attention wounds that we experienced earlier in life so that we're given the script and the stage and the cast to replay them and change the end of the play.

[01:44:29] And so it's extremely painful for both parties because each party really wants and needs authentic connection. But their way of going about getting it is still being informed by and warped by the unhealed parts of themselves that are unresolved.

[01:44:52] Alyson: Which created imprints and codes and neuropathways and things in the mind and the psyche that are trying to keep you safe and protect you. There's all sorts of dynamics that get set up.

[01:45:07] Luke: Yeah. And so this is why people like me that have had that propensity on one or the other side of that, when you meet someone and it feels so right, it feels so electric, and you get this feeling like they're the one, they're the be all, the end all, and things just seem to click into place so quickly, that it's almost like magic, and it feels intoxicating.

[01:45:42] The reason it feels like that is not because it's the right person. It's because it's a familiar person. There's something in our brain, to your point, that goes, "Aha, pattern recognition, click, click, click." We know this is lingering. And the recesses of the subconscious mind, there's unhealed parts of myself, and unknowingly this person and the dynamic that we're creating is a perfect energetic match for the template that was created before.

[01:46:16] And I can't resist from falling into it. And so in a really tragic way, the avoidant and the addict are magnetized toward each other in ways that they can't see or understand until it becomes too painful.

[01:46:36] Alyson: But sometimes you can see it. I won't give details of that one situation that you were in, soon as she was walking towards you, you knew that was trauma, trouble, danger. And yet still-- and so I want to offer that that possibility exists as well where you can get to a level where you have enough conscious awareness of what you're about to encounter, and then still, I guess there was a part of you that just was like, "I guess this is what we're doing." Because you still, even with the awareness, said yes to it.

[01:47:13] Luke: Well, this goes back to the question about excessive drinking and when someone reaches the point beyond their capacity to help themselves.

[01:47:25] And in the last couple of relationships I had, before I really started focusing on my recovery in this area, I was getting the sense that what I was doing wasn't working in a big way, just in terms of being perpetually single and in my 40s and living like I'm 22 still, just in the way that I was relating and my unwillingness and lack of ability to be in a committed relationship or be monogamous or want to get married or have kids. I was socially and romantically retarded, literally.

[01:48:11] So I started to see that, but it was like, there was still the inertia of the way that I was, the inertia of my character and my habits and just how I rolled. So I started to see it, but there was a period where my seeing it and choosing something different and new and healthier weren't aligned yet.

[01:48:31] And that was just like hitting bottom with drugs and alcohol, for me was hitting an equally painful bottom, which was just the humbling admission that I was absolutely clueless when it came to handling my romantic relationships and affairs.

[01:48:50] And so my answer to this woman would be very much the same to the alcoholism, if she's arrived to a point at which she has some awareness around these kind of dynamics and just the psychological understanding, but is still compelled by these patterns and ends up in cyclical and painful and self-harming relationships, it might be time for outside help.

[01:49:20] Alyson: Yeah.

[01:49:21] Luke: For me, I spent a lot of time in Al-Anon groups, in Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous groups. I remember walking into those meetings and just going like, "What?" It was like people were reading my freaking emails. You know what I mean? I'm just like, "Holy shit, I'm not the only one that is struggling with these issues?" So liberating and also spiritually centered.

[01:49:47] Just as I applied spiritual principles to overcome alcoholism and all these other addictions, I applied the same principles to overcome those patterns of behavior and to lead me into different practices and modalities that could heal the underlying issues, which for me has primarily been in the realm of plant medicines and psychedelics.

[01:50:07] And so I think first is the identification, reading some books, studying a bit about the basic, just the blueprint of these dynamics. Where do they come from? How do they manifest? What does it look like? Then, okay, now I know what it looks like. Do I have this thing? Is it an issue that is too big for me to overcome on my own?

[01:50:31] If so, what are my options in terms of getting some outside help in order to actually change and not just have the awareness that is happening in my life? But how do I have the awareness and actually do something different? And for me, it required a lot of education and also a lot of outside help.

[01:50:52] Alyson: Yeah, yeah. My path was different in a lot of ways and similar to yours, I chose very long-term celibacy of almost five, five and a half years, easier than one might guess, easier than what I would've thought it would be. Also very challenging at times. But so glad I did that.

[01:51:14] And also in that surrendering, during my divine intervention and awakening to God, Earth Mother Jesus, and my own soul, and asking to be shown the way and giving a vow that I would finally get out of my own way and surrender to that higher divine calling and plan, in that I took really extreme responsibility for the guidance that would enter in and heeding the messages.

[01:51:42] And I was very organically shown by God, my own body, my own soul, this trail of healing. Oh, I need to do womb healing. And then I would somehow be led to the perfect womb healer. And it just began this quest and path of many years of tending to those more foundational woundings and traumas that then created the relationship issues.

[01:52:09] But it got me all the way to the roots through mainly celibacy and surrendering my life to God and Jesus and my own soul. So I didn't need to go to AA or love-- what's it called? Love addicts or--

[01:52:26] Luke: I love that you don't even know this stuff. Your path is so beautiful. That program is called Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. People refer to it commonly as SLAA.

[01:52:37] Alyson: So I didn't have--

[01:52:38] Luke: It sounds like it'd be a bunch of old men in trench coats that are porn freaks or something. It was really just people that struggle with relational dynamics and fall on either side of that spectrum. And often, it's interesting too on the side of it that involves sexuality. There's the part of using sex to numb and escape, and I think most people are aware of that.

[01:53:02] But one of the things that I learned was that one of my patterns was using sex as a way to block intimacy. And that's sounds contradictory, but it's like if I refuse to be monogamous and I kept my options open and dated whomever whenever, I felt like as long as I was very transparent and honest about it, then I was absolved of any bad karma or anything that would go against my ethics, which I did.

[01:53:41] But I didn't know that that was one of the ways that I was withholding the experience of love, because I wouldn't get too intimate or involved or attached to one person because I would be careful not to spend too much time with one person. It was so like I used that as--

[01:53:59] Alyson: A block to true intimacy.

[01:54:00] Luke: Yeah, a self-protection, because there were so many parts of myself that were still operating from a wounded place, and I was so terrified. I didn't know, but I was terrified of abandonment and the vulnerability that could put me in a position to be abandoned. So it's like all just armor and self-protection. It shows up and is operational in many ways that are counterintuitive and not obvious to anyone unless you, like you did and I did, take some time out of the entire game. Just opt out.

[01:54:34] Alyson: Yeah, the celibacy really-- I don't know how I could have found my path without it, that true reset to start to learn how to trust myself again, primarily. Because when that veil lifted and I saw such scary, harsh truths, talk about rude awakening after rude awakening, of seeing like how I was treating myself, seeing how I was treating my body, seeing how I was dishonoring and disrespecting my sacred vessel, and how not only did I do that once, but allowed it to happen on a ongoing, regular basis for nearly two decades.

[01:55:09] That's a rude awakening. That caught my attention, that allowed me to be celibate for more than five years to have that level of reset to re relearn everything. Let's start from scratch.

[01:55:24] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[01:55:25] Alyson: How do I get to know myself? How do I begin to relate healthily with another person? I went back to square one, and it takes work and some time, but we're proof that when you put both of those things in, you can arrive to a truly healthy, wholly integrated relationship.

[01:55:46] Luke: And your experience also speaks to the fact that there isn't one path for everyone. You didn't go to therapy and 12-step meetings and all this kind of stuff.

[01:55:55] Alyson: Well, I did do a lot of therapy, but yeah.

[01:55:57] Luke: Okay, so add that. But it sounds like your path was identifying there's an issue, going to the root of those issues, and just steadfastly healing all of those roots.

[01:56:10] Alyson: It was truly God showing me the way. And God did step by step, process by process. And that's still in my ongoing journey. I'm still in that alignment.

[01:56:19] Luke: It's similar to what I was describing earlier, those few and exceedingly rare people who have addiction issues and go work with psychedelics and they get sober just from doing that and never learn anything about any steps or how addiction works and any of that.

[01:56:34] There's no philosophical understanding necessary. They just healed the underlying issues that were motivating the addictive behaviors in the first place, which is an interesting way to go about it.

[01:56:47] The last thing I'll say on the love addiction piece is, even, I think it's a misnomer because you can't be addicted to love. Love isn't something that one can be addicted to. And I wish it wasn't named that, but it is what it is, and that's how people commonly know it to be. But I think what we perceive to be love addiction, just like drug or alcohol addiction, is that we're not addicted to the love. We're not addicted to the drug.

[01:57:25] We're addicted to the feeling that we get in its presence, or the feeling that we attribute to the love or to the drug. It's an addiction to the state. It's not an addiction to the thing. So what we're chasing as a love addict and what we're so attached to and clinging to and needy of is the feeling of wholeness, completion, union, safety, security, warmth that we--

[01:57:57] Alyson: Connection.

[01:57:58] Luke: Connection that we experience when we're engaged in a loving relationship. So some days someone will think of a better, more accurate term. But I love the vulnerability of that question. And I love talking about this kind of stuff because it's like, dude, to the ego, it's super embarrassing. Like so many things I just shared, I'm like, "Did I just say that? Don't say that. That's so uncool. That's so lame. How lame are you?" Literally.

[01:58:26] And I just observe that, and I go, "Okay, that's interesting. Thank you for sharing." This could help someone. And in my own willingness to be transparent, it's probably helping me too.

[01:58:40] Alyson: Amen. Great note to end on. Well, this has been a pleasure as always. Thanks for having Cookie and I be a part of The Life Stylist with Luke Storey.

[01:58:51] Luke: Thank you. I know you have other things to do that might be more interesting or fun to you than sitting and talking to me on the podcast, but I really appreciate these sessions that we do and that you are a loving and receptive sounding board where I can draw out experience and hopefully a little nugget of wisdom here and there that might be useful to someone who asked the question.

[01:59:21] It wouldn't be the same without you, just like everything in life. So I love you and thank you for your time and presence. I appreciate you so much.

[01:59:31] Alyson: I love you too. We love Peanut too, right, Peewee?

[01:59:34] Luke: We sure do. The dog with four names. All right. Show notes are at lukestorey.com/615. Peace out. Much love.