[00:00:01] Luke: So you studied computer sciences or something in college.

[00:00:07] Tim: I did. I did. I went to Purdue University, and that was from '92 to '96, studying computer science. And that was the last vestige of my life in the matrix, if you will.

[00:00:21] Luke: And at what point did you start to-- and I ask that because it seems the life you live now and the life that you share with other people through your education, mentorship, and so on, is the antithesis of where that career would've taken you. I just see you in a dark, little computer room, sitting in front of that screen. What was the impetus to start to search for a higher purpose or meaning? When did you start to see cracks in that plan or a lack of passion toward that particular path?

[00:00:55] Tim: Yeah. I had played by the rules, so to speak, through childhood and adolescence and high school and college. I was always good with math and science and left brain-type stuff. But I also had this deep yearning. I remember as a boy, just this incredible yearning for the mystery of life and consciousness, and who are we, and what are we doing here, and what is this thing called life on earth?

[00:01:31] I remember fondly, as a boy, sitting out on the back porch in Indiana, growing up and just looking at the stars and just contemplating those mysteries. But I had my fair share of pain in childhood as well. I had a lot of beauty between the oak hickory forest there of Indiana and a loving family, but ultimately a broken family.

[00:01:59] My parents got divorced when I was 15, and there was abuse and a lot of bullying growing up. I was always a very sensitive boy, and in the '80s, growing up, that was a tough go. I think there was still a part of me that was asleep, so to speak, going into college, and I'm good at computers, so I'll do this.

[00:02:26] But I was, I don't know, sophomore, junior, when it really hit me like, oh yeah, I'm signing up to live in a cubicle for the next 60 years. There's no way. And they say, the old phrase, the teacher shows up when the student is ready. And so I was really blessed.

[00:02:48] I had a history professor who was a professor of an advanced history class I was taking. He was part Lakota, and he was teaching-- yeah, it was an advanced history class, but really it was an introduction to earth-based spirituality in disguise at this conservative Midwest University.

[00:03:11] And so introduced [Inaudible]. We are all related. The concept of synchronicity. And I could just feel myself coming alive, Luke. I just felt that spark of life that for me as a boy was always there, riding my bike down the hill or whatever it was, being with my friends.

[00:03:34] There was that aliveness. And then I realized in my time with Professor Foley that I had lost that aliveness. But my time with him and these threads, it was coming back. And so long story short, I decided to follow that. And I was like, "You know what? There's no way I'm going to sit in front of a computer the rest of my life."

[00:03:59] Although, it's funny because as we were just speaking, sometimes I do that now, running admin for my organizations. And so I was like, "So what do I do? Drop out of college or change majors and study forestry or wildlife biology?" And I was like, "No." I was a junior I think at that point, maybe halfway through. I was like, "I'm going to finish. I'm just going to get the degree in case I need it. And then I'm going to play by my rules and really follow my heart. So that was the moment of awakening, I would say.

[00:04:33] Luke: What did your parents think of that decision?

[00:04:35] Tim: Oh, they were not happy, my mom especially. And I had a lot of anger towards them, honestly, at that point. I was like, "Wow, this whole American Dream of a wholesome, happy family--" Their divorce, I felt so deep. Years later, I did a healing journey and saw myself falling endlessly in this endless void just falling, falling, falling. And that void was my parents' divorce.

[00:05:18] And so I always felt that. And so I was upset when I left college, and I hit the road, Jack Kerouac style, lived out of my truck, barely a penny to my name. Everything I owned in the truck, sleeping in the back of it. Really proud of myself that I'd never paid for camping or anything like that.

[00:05:38] And I didn't talk to my parents for months. I think, I don't know, 3, 4, 5 months went by. No communication. And of course, this is pre cell phones and everything. Yeah. I'm sure I made my mom a nervous wreck. But also on the soul level, I was really finding myself.

[00:06:03] I was claiming my life for me. And I needed that. I would later grow into a lot of empathy, especially as a father myself now. So yeah, my parent, especially my mom, she was not happy. And I think somewhere in there she wanted me to continue playing by the rules, of course. And of course, she loved me and she wanted me to be safe and have a secure future. But boy oh boy, my soul was calling for something else.

[00:06:39] Luke: Something that I contemplate often is the way, let's just speak broadly, Westerners, just European people that have created Western culture and the way that we educate, the way we relate to one another, the way we create these institutions, the way our society runs, and more specifically the way that we relate to/in many cases, are abusive toward the natural world.

[00:07:14] And the contrast of that between indigenous peoples, whether it be North America or elsewhere, that-- the word synchronicity when you mention that really stood out to me-- regardless of different belief systems, there's an undercurrent that we are part of the natural world and that we have a role there and that we belong there.

[00:07:44] Tim: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:45] Luke: And that everything in that reality is happening with a sense of purpose. And there's a cohesive nature to that worldview. When I first got together with my wife Alyson, that you met, it's not like I was judgmental or anything, but it's like I thought it was endearing and cute, because her background is in shamanism, that she talks to trees and wants to give any creature that dies a proper burial.

[00:08:22] And there's so much intentionality around how she relates to the natural world. Even though before we met, she was spending 15 years in New York City. But I would just observe her. And over the years we've been together, it's like, oh, I'm starting to get it. This isn't something she made up. She just aligned herself with, I think a more holistic, reciprocal relationship with nature.

[00:08:47] And so I said all that to say, what were some of the foundational differences earlier in your journey that you started to see, how people in Indiana, where you were from, related to the natural world or not, versus some of the Native Americans and people that you started to gravitate toward? What's the big crux of the difference there in terms of our disconnection from who and what we are?

[00:09:19] Tim: Great question, Luke. And I'll just say, to preface my answer, or to start, the way I see it, humans have lived with that deep connection to nature for most of our time here on planet Earth. And it's only these past, what, few hundred, maybe a thousand years that we've really disconnected, depending on how you want to define that.

[00:09:48] So I still look at this chapter of history we're in as largely experimental. We know that humans living in connection with the natural world in a very direct way is not just sustainable for our existence, but regenerative. We don't know that's the case with our current society.

[00:10:11] And there's lots of indicators that it's degenerative, of course. And then, like I said, for me personally, the biggest difference that I intuitively felt from the beginning was abuse and bullying, this pain and disconnection and separation and loneliness of divorce can't be the core of good human existence on planet Earth.

[00:10:40] And I just intuitively had a sense that the indigenous communities knew something about that that we as modern people didn't. So as far as the differences I felt, I mean, another big difference was like-- again, going back to being a kid, I remember just that feeling of aliveness and then contrasting that to adults.

[00:11:05] Most adults looked zombies to me. And I'm like, "What happened?" How did you go from like a exuberant kid to like sleepwalking? And that can't be right. I certainly don't want it for me. I felt that. So after college, the day after I graduated, I threw everything in the truck and went to the Navajo Indian reservation and plot myself down there.

[00:11:40] Luke: Did you know anyone there, or did you just show up?

[00:11:42] Tim: I knew one person. I had a single connection, a girl I met who was a teacher out there. But that's all I needed. I just needed something. And I want to credit my dad too, because he took us on a family vacation when I was little, I think six or seven, out West. And we traveled through a lot of the national parks and through the Lakota Pine Ridge reservation and all of that.

[00:12:17] A seed was planted back then that stayed with me. And that was the only time I'd gone out West. I would later go during college, but yeah. So I moved out there to the Navajo reservation in Arizona, Northeast Arizona, and had that one connection.

[00:12:36] And I was looking for this new worldview. I was looking for a new lifeway. I was looking for a sane human operating system that I could learn from. I don't think I had all those words back then, of course. I was 22. What did I know? But I knew my heart, and I knew my intuition, and that was guiding me true.

[00:13:06] So it was interesting because my computer science degree wound up being useful. I got hired as a programmer for their utility company, their electric company, but it was a door in. And that was a whole journey because I remember going there. I applied and did an interview and all that.

[00:13:31] At the bottom of the application there was a little line. It said, "Navajo preference policy." Basically we reserve the right to hire our own people. And I was like, "Okay." And I asked. I was like, "How many other people have applied for this job there"? She's like, "10." I was like, "How many are Navajo?" And she's like, "Nine." Oh. So I'm the only white guy that applied. And I'm like, "I've got no chance."

[00:13:55] I actually got the job, and I later asked-- I was so curious-- like, "How did I get it? What about the Navajo preference policy?" And my boss, Joy Thompson, beautiful, kindhearted woman, she looked at me, and it's one of those moments, looking into my soul. And she's like, "Tim, you were the only one that brought real heart." And I knew that was right. I was like, "Wow, what does that even mean?" I was 22 years old.

[00:14:23] Luke: Yeah.

[00:14:24] Tim: That was one right there. It was like people that honored, I don't know, passion, heart, soul, they had a sense of that thread of synchronicity and aliveness that matters. And I could see that although here we have the Navajo people and living a modern experience at this utility company, the way they lived was a mature way of honoring this thread of soul, or the spirit that moves through all things, even amidst the modern experience.

[00:15:08] So that was huge. And I was like, "Yes to that." But that chapter didn't last. I was only there for a year, year and a half. There were a lot of subtle teachings, cultural teachings that were present there for me. But as a 22-year-old, I was looking for-- I don't know, man. I was looking for a white-winged, rainbow buffalo to fly in, take me away or something.

[00:15:34] And it was subtle. It was really subtle, the teachings, but there was so much. So anyhow, during that time, I traveled more and I had connected with Janine, who became my wife, and ultimately left the reservation to go be with her. And that was a whole journey because it was funny.

[00:15:58] A lot of the Navajo never spoke to me much. I had my little computer department and I knew those folks, but I was the only white guy around. I'd go in the grocery store and felt like judgment day. But I knew something about that from being the socially awkward kid growing up and all that sensitivity.

[00:16:21] Also, it was really healthy for me as a white male, honestly, to be like, oh, here's what it's like to not be in the majority. And that developed a lot of empathy. I'll never forget the day I left. I turned in my notice. Honestly, I didn't think I had much of an impact on that community.

[00:16:45] I was also still dealing with a lot of low self-esteem, honestly, that had come through my childhood. But they called a meeting and it was in this room they called the sky room. Like, Tim, there's a meeting today. I'm like, "That's funny." They always would plan these meetings and give lots of advanced notice, and this one was just kind of sprung on me.

[00:17:06] And I'm like, "What's this about?" And it's my last day. And so I go in there and it's a big like, "Surprise." And all 100 people at that organization had gathered up to throw me this going-away party. There was a big sheet cake, farewell Tim. This was no ordinary, modern, Western, going-away party.

[00:17:31] This was a traditional honoring. They give me the seat of honor, everybody lines up, and one by one comes in and shakes my hand. Some have gifts. Some have medicine gifts. They're telling me how much I've impacted them. One guy was like, "Tim, you've changed my view on white people. I just want you to know. I never thought there was a good white person until I met you."

[00:17:59] And I was like, "What?" I was shocked, frankly. And I'm like, "Where has all this--" It was confusing too, because where's all this been? I didn't think I had had much of an impact. I had long hair at the time. They put my hair in their traditional Navajo tie and presented me these moccasins.

[00:18:22] It was this huge honoring. And at the end of it, this woman, Gloria, she comes up and she's like, "You're probably pretty confused right now." And I'm like, "Very. I totally don't get, why is there this big honoring when I didn't think you guys even noticed me."

[00:18:39] And she's like, "You got to realize your people and our people have a long history, and it takes a lot for us to trust white folks. And so we are really cautious about extending that. But Tim, you've worked your way into our hearts." And she's like, "Also, this isn't just a going-away honoring. This is us actually asking you, would you stay?"

[00:19:10] Luke: Oh, wow.

[00:19:10] Tim: And I was like, "Oh my gosh." I'm like, "You don't understand. I'm in love and love of my soul mate is up in Ashland, Oregon." And she's like, "Okay, okay, okay." She wound up writing Janine a letter, petitioning her to move to St. Michael's, Arizona, Window Rock, Arizona. Janine wouldn't have it though.

[00:19:33] She was in a whole Waldorf teacher training. It was a whole spiritual process for her. Nothing like that ever happened, even remotely close to that would've ever happened when I grew up. Are you kidding? Honoring transitions? What's that? Onto the next thing. How quickly can we move on to the next thing?

[00:19:56] Here was a people that really took the time to honor transitions that were present in their hearts, that were present with the natural world. Mostly, I look back at that time, Luke, and there were so many cultural teachings. I remember I had a friend, Tony, who really opened his heart to me and invited me to his home, and his grandmother, who was like this 98-year-old woman, didn't speak a lick of English.

[00:20:28] Lived in a Hogan, which is a traditional Navajo home structure. And I came there just wide-eyed and searching. And, oh my God, man. It brings up a lot of feelings actually. I just remember her opening her heart to me so much. Somehow, I knew that I needed to bring a gift, so I brought sacks of groceries. Understood that cultural point, and I brought that.

[00:20:59] And she's talking to me with this big, loving affection, but it was all in Navajo. I didn't know what she was saying. And Tony's translating. He's like, "She's saying she sees you as her grandson and welcoming you into our family and can see how you've helped me as a true friend." He was a lonely guy.

[00:21:19] Anyhow, this whole thing, she's like adopting me. And I'm like, "I just met you." Nothing like that ever happened. It was like the opposite growing up. Where was all of that? Maybe there was a couple friends whose moms had a good heart growing up, but there was so much nature-based culture still alive and well that, oh my God, man, just fed my heart so much. And yeah, that was a foundational teaching for me, I would say. I still work to embody that for others now as a 51-year-old man. Yeah.

[00:22:03] Luke: At what point did you have your first real initiation in terms Vision Quest, rites of passage? Had you had anything like that happen? It doesn't sound like it as a kid in Indiana.

[00:22:16] Tim: Not really. The closest thing to that would've been some psychedelics in college.

[00:22:21] Luke: That could do it in one way.

[00:22:23] Tim: In one way. But culturally, no. That recreationally couldn't touch a real cultural initiation. Not the kind I would later experience, at least not for me. But that did open up the world of the interconnectivity of life and a greater consciousness.

[00:22:45] I will definitely acknowledge that. Luke, at that time I was looking for a practical spirituality. I wanted to learn the old ways, wilderness survival, stick skills, tracking animals, and all of that kind of thing. And I didn't find that directly on the Navajo reservation.

[00:23:09] Plus, the ceremonial practices, they were really alluring, but they were largely not accessible to me. Those doors never opened while I was there. And that was something really strong in my heart. I was really yearning for that. So I moved up to Ashland, connected with Janine, and we wound up moving down to Taos, New Mexico. And a college buddy, this was '98, sends me a book written by this man, Tom Brown Jr.

[00:23:45] The book is called The Quest, and it's a story of how he's mentored by his teachers, this old Apache scout and healer named Stalking Wolf. And there was two threads in there that really touched me. One was this thread of wilderness survival and what you and I were speaking about.

[00:24:11] That all of our physical needs as human beings can be met directly from the Earth, and that that's still available to us today. And so here I was, a 24-year-old male. I was completely dependent on grocery stores and phone systems and highways and vehicles and homes I didn't know how to build, all of that.

[00:24:34] And I was like, "Okay, yes." The provider archetype in me, especially as a young man, really was like, "Okay, here's something I need to learn to be a human on planet earth and feel empowered." And again, I didn't have much of that empowerment growing up. So that contrast was particularly strong and alluring.

[00:24:57] The other side that Tom spoke about, based on Stalking Wolf's teachings, was vision. And that life is not random, and it's not accident, each individual life, each individual human life. That we all have a purpose. We all have a grander vision that's calling us forward towards who we really are and what we're here to do, and who we're here to be.

[00:25:27] And that the great adventure of life is discovering that and living it. And that all the synchronicities, they're all just stepping stones towards that vision. And that that's what's the power behind those synchronicities calling a person forward. And I just lit up.

[00:25:48] I was like, "Yes, yes, yes." And there's this ceremony called a Vision Quest, this initiation that's more than a ceremony that can put you on that path. And I was like, "Sign me up, man. Where do I sign up?" So we wind up going out to New Jersey of all places where Tom had his school and got involved.

[00:26:15] We did his standard class with 100 people, and it was an epic journey. All the wilderness survival skills and learning to track animals and learning the wild plants, which are edible and which ones are medicinal, and learning the language of birds and how they're speaking to us constantly.

[00:26:31] And there was ceremony. He had sweat lodge. And the mentoring was really a standout piece, how he was teaching. He used a method called Coyote Teaching, which is all about cultivating passion and curiosity in the student, not about I've got the information. You don't. Let me tell you all this.

[00:26:54] It was a very empowering approach that just built up all this passion. And I was like, "Yes, yes." But there was not much mention of Vision Quest. And so weeks over, we're back in the truck. I'm with Janine, and she's like, "So Tim, how--" She's great. She's always great at debriefing and processing, and she's like, "Tim, how was the week?"

[00:27:20] "Oh my God, it was so good, everything." "Was it everything you really hoped for?" And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." Oh, here's a friend. "The only thing that's still left undone is the Vision Quest piece." And she's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was really important to you." And yeah, they didn't talk about that at all this week. And she's like, "Do you want to ask about that before we go?" And we're literally in the car about to go.

[00:27:46] So my wife was asking, "Okay, so what about the Vision Quest?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah." "Do you want to go ask one of the staff about it maybe?" And I was like, "Okay." Tom was largely inaccessible, but one of his top instructors and a really incredible mentor, John Young, was there. And I knew that John was connected in that way.

[00:28:11] Now, mind you, back then, I had really low self-esteem-- toxic low self-esteem from how I grew up. And so to approach somebody like that, I was about to have a heart attack. I got out of the truck, but that vision was calling. There was this calling, and I had to do this, but I was so afraid. I was so scared. And of course, the whole instructing crew, all the instructors are circled up, having their private circle, and I'm like, "Oh my God."

[00:28:43] Luke: Right when you walk up?

[00:28:44] Tim: Yeah. I've got to break through this crazy invisible barrier. So I do, and I ask John about Vision Quest. It was 120 students, so he didn't know me from anybody. So he's like, "Vision Quest?" And again, one of these staring deep into my soul through my eyes moments, he's like, "I wouldn't even think to think about or consider sending someone out on Vision Quest until they've gone to their sit spot every day for a year."

[00:29:16] And I was like, "Okay, great. That's all I needed." Now a sit spot, that's a practice of going out into nature for 20, 30 minutes or more, and just connecting, quieting the mind, opening the senses, connecting with the natural world, connecting with yourself. And so I did. I went to my sit spot every day for an entire year, late at night, early in the morning, winter, summer, snow, rain, dry, cold, warm, the whole bit.

[00:29:48] And after that, went back to John. At that point we had gotten involved with this wilderness school in Vermont that was getting started. And this was my deeper passion and driving force, was really like, I needed to feel that sense of connection. Why am I here? What is the point of my life? I don't want to waste this life.

[00:30:14] More than anything, I was like, that was number one." And that's what was getting me out to that sit spot every day. Anyhow, so after a year I met up with John, and there were a few different options, actually. There was an old Lakota man, Gilbert Walking Bull, who was a traditional Oglala healer, who was still alive at that point.

[00:30:36] And there was a whole path of Vision Quest that was Hanbleche, is what the Lakotas call it, which means crying for a vision. That was available through him. And then there was a Vision Quest through the Tom Brown and Stalking Wolf lineage. That was an existential crisis for me. How do I pick, and who am I to pick?

[00:30:57] And all my low self-worth came up. I wanted some authority to pick for me, but it was mine. And John helped me and mentored me through that, and could see what I was struggling with and helped me to find that sense of empowerment. Not by giving it to me, but by guiding me to find it myself. And I did eventually. Ultimately, I wound up doing both,

[00:31:24] Luke: Of course. I had a feeling that was coming, based on the path that you chose after that.

[00:31:30] Tim: Exactly. But I started with the Stalking Wolf lineage, and that was-- what was that? That was summer of 2000. And so this was a four-day solo fast. I was drinking water, but 96 hours in a small circle. And this was in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, I don't know, 10-foot diameter circle.

[00:31:54] Fasting, praying with the singular intention of, who am I really? Why am I here? What's the point of my life? And not just as a question, but as a passion, like as a fire burning in me that was said, I'm not willing to keep on living in this fog of not knowing why I'm here. It was putting my stake in the ground and saying, I have to have this. And that was a whole journey.

[00:32:26] Luke: Tell me about the logistics of that particular quest. So no food. You're, I'd say confined, but you chose to be confined to a small area, so you can't spend your time going off adventuring. Right?

[00:32:44] Tim: No. Uh-uh.

[00:32:44] Luke: Okay, but you have water.

[00:32:46] Tim: Yes.

[00:32:47] Luke: Do you have any other tools, Fire starter?

[00:32:50] Tim: Oh, no, no. No fires, no journals. I had a sleeping bag. It's not meant to be a suffer fest, I tell people these days. But if it rained, I had a tarp. Not a tent, but a tarp. And a sleeping bag. And it was just the essentials.

[00:33:09] Luke: Any weapons?

[00:33:11] Tim: Oh, no, no, no, no. No knives. None of that.

[00:33:15] Luke: I was telling you earlier about my old man. He would go out on these hunting trips by himself, and he had guns with him, obviously, but it's just the mindset. And I think that's where I was going with my first kind of opening question, is like the mindset of us that are so detached from nature versus Native peoples around the world that are more attached.

[00:33:39] Even if their culture's been lost or decimated, there's still that connection. And so the idea-- even me today, I'm 55, and I've spent some time outdoors and consider myself rugged, but not very skilled. If I was able to survive, it would be on mindset alone, for sure. Because I'm pretty good at transmuting situations into something neutral or positive.

[00:34:06] But the idea of being out there with no self-defense is probably the most unnerving part. I feel like if I just had a little pistol or something, it's like I could just chill. But the thing is I think for those city folk like me is, and correct me if I'm wrong, but predation is probably much lower of a realistic threat than just what your own mind can do to you of finally being faced with yourself and having no distractions.

[00:34:39] Even just to think about you're limited to a small geographic, little homestead for those few days, that is probably scarier than actually what could happen to you due to the elements or predation or something, right?

[00:34:57] Tim: Absolutely.

[00:34:58] Luke: There's no distraction from yourself.

[00:35:01] Tim: Yeah. You can look up the statistics. I live in north Idaho. We've got grizzly bears and mountain lions and wolves. It's a wild place, and there's large predators. I could count on one hand the number of interactions I've had with those species, and they've never been interested in me or the people around me.

[00:35:22] But no, statistically, we're much more likely to-- are you kidding? Driving a car at 75 miles an hour is way more dangerous than spending time in the woods like that. And indeed, when it comes to survival skills, this is one of the things I teach, I always do a trick question. This is the Coyote Teaching.

[00:35:46] I ask people like, "So what do you think is the number one survival priority?" And some people are like, "Oh, food for sure." "Oh, no, no, no. It's fire. It's fire," somebody else says. "No, no, no. It's got to be water." "No, it's shelter." And of course they're all wrong.

[00:36:02] Luke: Let me guess. Mindset, attitude.

[00:36:06] Tim: Dude, you nailed it.

[00:36:08] Luke: You know how I know that? I was telling you earlier, I've watched every episode of every single wilderness survival show.

[00:36:16] Tim: Yeah.

[00:36:17] Luke: And I'm pretty good at predicting who's going to make it to the end now. And it rarely has to do with who's the most skilled.

[00:36:25] Tim: Exactly, exactly.

[00:36:27] Luke: It has to do with the person who has mental fortitude and they have agency over their mind where they won't go dark.

[00:36:36] Tim: Exactly.

[00:36:36] Luke: I call going dark just when you just spin out into irreversible negativity. It's like you can spot it, man. I'm always rooting for the underdog, someone who's maybe smaller and not as tough physically, but they cannot be broken.

[00:36:52] And it's so inspiring to me because I think, I'm pretty good at that part. Even though I have zero skills, I feel like, well, you could learn the skills. But man, how do you learn how to have that perseverance and the ability to prevent your mind from sliding off a cliff?

[00:37:13] Tim: Yeah.

[00:37:14] Luke: When you're training people, how soon into that do you start to see the attitudinal weakness versus someone who comes in with a lot of skills versus little skills? Can you spot pretty quickly how--

[00:37:28] Tim: Oh yeah.

[00:37:29] Luke: -- optimism is somebody's core operating system versus someone who's going to freak out with the minimal amount of stress in a situation?

[00:37:39] Tim: Oh yeah. If you're going to do the work I do, you have to be good at profiling and reading people. And connecting with nature is all about reading the natural world around you. If I can detect the alarm call of a little Pacific Wren at 100 yards away indicating the presence of a bobcat coming in that it's freaking out about, that training teaches people how to read other human beings as well.

[00:38:13] And plus, I've always been really sensitive, and at times, trust me, that's felt like a curse at times. But these days, it's a real blessing. So yeah, that has a huge impact. And it's not just optimism, but it's also adaptability and resilience. And I'm a big believer that we all have that capacity as human beings, but it's not cultivated and it's not taught.

[00:38:41] Certainly not taught in grade school, mainstream academics. I work with a lot of youth and I work with a lot of adults. And when I'm working with youth, it's always about building that. We might call it optimism or resilience or adaptability. Sometimes I just refer to it as capacity. Building an individual's capacity for facing hardship, doing hard things, and being okay with it.

[00:39:07] Luke: My meditation teacher, Jeff Kober, calls it adaptation energy. Speaking to the core benefit of meditation, it's just the ability to have-- I look at it as there's a time delay when something objective and external happens, and how quickly I'm able to respond in reality, to contextualize the situation in a way that makes it easier and not stressful.

[00:39:41] Because it's like you can have the same objective situation, but two different people will have like night and day perception of it to be able to adapt in real time. I always like that adaptation energy. And I can tell if I'm not getting good sleep or I'm traveling a lot or whatever, get a cold, anything.

[00:40:00] I can see that my resilience and adaptation energy is just low. It's like a low battery where I'm just more reactive, can't think as clearly, critical thinking starts to get a little funky. And it's like just becoming more emotional and just illogical. Right?

[00:40:18] Tim: Yes. Yeah.

[00:40:20] Luke: Going back to the Vision Quest, in your early days when you were a participant, what were some of the differences in terms of how they were structured, and how did that inform the way you structure those for clients now?

[00:40:40] Tim: Oh yeah. I've done a lot of Vision Quests. That's really been my primary spiritual practice as an adult, since I was, whatever, 24, 25 years old. And I've done big ones with, I don't know, 50-plus people. I've done really small ones where it was just me. I've had all sorts of different experience, all sorts of different facilitation styles. I've done some where I drank water, some where I didn't. Those get really intense.

[00:41:16] Luke: Somewhere you're just dry fasting out there?

[00:41:18] Tim: Dry fasting, yeah.

[00:41:19] Luke: Damn.

[00:41:19] Tim: Yeah, that'll bring your shadow up real quick.

[00:41:23] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:41:24] Tim: At least it did for me.

[00:41:25] Luke: I think that's why I lean into this and I'm so curious about this particular element of your work, because in my life experience, when I've really been pushed to the edge of comfort and I see how difficult it is for me just to be in my body and just be still without inputs, those external dependencies-- a phone is an easy one. Or just, I need coffee. I need this. I need that. I need my dog. I need my wife.

[00:41:53] It's like needing so much external stimuli or support in order to just feel contentment and to feel at one with my environment, it's shocking how difficult that is. So that's something I just find so fascinating about this.

[00:42:10] And I'll also add, I did a Vision Quest when I was at Rocky Mountain Academy nearby, where you live. And this was in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. I was probably 15 at that time. You'd probably know the mountain. I forget what mountain it was. But it basically took us two days on snow shoes to get up to the spot where we were going to. They called it a solo.

[00:42:35] And I remember we stayed in a cabin on the way up, so I think it was two days. I'm 120 pounds. I got a 60-pound pack, and snowshoes. I don't remember if we had cross-country skis or not. Maybe not. I think it was just snow shoes. But that's how deep the snow was.

[00:42:52] Tim: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:42:52] Luke: And it was so hardcore. And then basically, they gave us each our little plot, and we were taught how to build a snow cave. So we had a tarp, and then you'd build a snow cave, which you would know this, but people listening, it's actually quite warm in a snow cave. I wasn't cold. And then we had a little sterno to cook a little can of beans.

[00:43:15] And we had a journal, and it was terrifying. But at the end of that trip, you spoke to your issues with self-worth and trauma and things like that. At the end of that, I felt for the first time in my life as close as I'd ever felt to being a man, the level of confidence. Just that I could look back up at that mountain and go, "Holy shit, I just climbed that mountain with snow shoes and a pack and stayed by myself in a snow cave for three days."

[00:43:44] The thing I didn't know at the time, there were adults. They'd be walking by and checking on us. But we didn't know that. You couldn't see them. I only found that out later when they were taking pictures of us in my little cave. And I'm like, "Oh, I didn't know there was someone there the whole time." Or I didn't know how close the other kids were either. We weren't that far. But we didn't know that. Right?

[00:44:04] Tim: Yeah.

[00:44:05] Luke: So that experience really stood out to me as a major turning point in my life. And so I think having had that brief experience, it's something I'm so curious about learning more about. Because I think I would have a harder time doing something like that now than I would then. You know what I mean? It's like, was I tougher at 15? Probably.

[00:44:27] Tim: Yeah.

[00:44:28] Luke: Yeah. So run me through some of the different experiences you've had, and again, how that has shaped-- I don't know how fluid your protocol is that you offer, if you've really got that dialed in based on the best practices or, I guess, conditions that you've experienced doing them on your own.

[00:44:50] Tim: Yeah. Again, great question, and there's a lot to that. If I can, I just want to back up and talk about like initiatory culture because that really informs my response.

[00:45:01] Luke: Yes, yes. Okay.

[00:45:03] Tim: When we look back at earth-based traditional cultures that lived a sane lifestyle that was actually in balance with the earth, these initiations like Vision Quest or rites of passage, or these ceremonies, they didn't exist in isolation.

[00:45:21] They were part of a larger fabric of mentoring and a larger developmental process that each individual was going through. These days, it's really easy to look at these things and say, "What new ceremony do I need to do? Do I need a Vision Quest? Do I need to go do psychedelics? Do I need a darkness retreat?"

[00:45:42] And we look at it from our lens, our cultural lens, which is largely invisible, I think, for a lot of people, of separation and consumerism. And there's a lot of spiritual materialism. Listen, I have all that too. But I've awoken to that and recognized that-- because what I went through wasn't just a handful of cool ceremonies or workshops or trainings.

[00:46:10] I had a five-year mentoring relationship with elders and mentors and students and peers and families, so that that Vision Quest landed in a way, Luke, that wasn't just healing, although it was healing, and wasn't just transformational, although it was transformational, but resulted in a true sense of obligation, a healthy sense of obligation and responsibility to the next generation. With good mentoring, you get more than you give. I remember being young and like going to my mentors, like, how do I say thank you?

[00:46:53] Luke: I know.

[00:46:53] Tim: I could have paid 10 times the amount and it still wouldn't have been enough.

[00:46:58] Luke: Totally. I used to have a mentor. I'd call him, and I was in early sobriety at the time. I was just a train wreck, but I'd call my mentor and, "Oh, this girl, she broke up with me. I lost my job." Whatever drama. And he would start laughing his ass off. And by the time he was done laughing, I would be laughing at my own problems too.

[00:47:22] Anyway, he'd teach me all these spiritual principles, and I just thought, I'd be dead without this guy. I was so grateful, and so I was so sincere. Oh, thank you so much, man. Oh my God, you're saving my life. And he looked at me like I was nice. He goes, "Oh man, thank you. You have no idea what you're doing for me."

[00:47:38] And I didn't get it. I was like, "Oh, he is just being nice." And then as years went on and I started to cultivate some value within myself that I could share, mentoring people. They'd tell me things. I'd just be like, "Dude, you don't need to thank me. You have no idea what a shitty day I was just having until I got to spend two hours helping you."

[00:47:56] So there really is a beautiful lesson of reciprocity in that that I think is largely missing from our achievement-based accolade, wealth-chasing culture.

[00:48:11] Tim: 100%. And what my mentor told me when I actually asked him that was, he says, "Oh, you can't and you won't thank me enough." And I was like, "What do I do with that?" And he's like, "Give it to the next generation, Tim. That's how this is meant to be." And that was world-shifting for me.

[00:48:30] I was like, "Oh, that there is healthy culture." When you're given so much by the elder generation that the only option you have is to pass that love on to the next. And it's not like because I should or I have to. That's what my parents wanted me to do. It's because my heart's overflowing.

[00:48:50] Luke: Yeah. It's like you're compelled.

[00:48:52] Tim: Yeah. Like you're saying, it saved my life. I'm compelled to give. And then all these years later, that's what I've done. And now lo and behold, my students and the instructors I train and all of them, they come to me with that same thing. I just laugh and I'm like, "You're in it." I'm like, "You're not. You're not going to thank me. Pass it on. Remember that 14-year-old we worked with this past week, that's who you're going to give it to." And they're like, "Oh."

[00:49:20] So a good initiation, in my opinion, exists in a larger cultural fabric of mentoring. And it's more than a one-time-- yeah, there are one-time experiences, but there's a larger arc of mentoring happening. My great preference is to work with people for multiple years. And I've got students I've worked with for 5, 10, some 15-plus years. And if we went back to-- my ancestors are Irish.

[00:49:55] Corcoran is my last name, and a few years ago I went back to Ireland with my dad and had a whole ancestral pilgrimage. That's how it would've been back there. Certainly in North American indigenous cultures, any of the old cultures had that culture in place. So a big part of my work's been like, how the heck do I recreate that in 2025 in the United States?

[00:50:18] Maybe it's an impossible task, but slowly the work happens and putting pieces together. So when I look at the question that you asked of, what constitutes a good Vision Quest? The experience itself-- that solo, those four days, whether there's water or not water, or can they move around or are they confined, or do they get a journal or do they not, or whatever, how much gear, how little gear-- frankly, those are like the least important questions, in my opinion.

[00:50:53] And the more important questions are, what is that cultural context and the mentoring context within which it's held? And how do I bring as much of that as I can? So these days I offer them as a 10-day event with three days of intensive mentoring before and after the solo.

[00:51:12] Luke: Oh wow.

[00:51:13] Tim: Plus we do a bunch of Zoom calls before and after, and even that feels really limiting. I accept anybody who's interested, but my preference is always to work with people that I've been mentoring for a few years. Do you know Ben Greenfield?

[00:51:31] Luke: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:51:33] Tim: He just moved to Central Idaho, but they were in Spokane, and I've worked a lot with Ben and his sons, River and Terran, who are now 17. They just did a Vision Quest with me a few months ago.

[00:51:45] Luke: Oh, cool.

[00:51:46] Tim: And I started mentoring them--

[00:51:47] Luke: I can't believe they're 17. That's crazy. I think when I met them, they were little.

[00:51:53] Tim: Yeah, yeah. I met them when they were six.

[00:51:55] Luke: Oh, wow.

[00:51:56] Tim: And we've done a bunch of father-son wilderness programs.

[00:51:59] Luke: When friends have kids, it's like--

[00:52:01] Tim: They grow.

[00:52:02] Luke: Yeah, it's weird. I go, "Yeah, you got a little kid." He's like, "Dude, my kid's 18 now." And I go, "Oh, it's been eight years since I've seen him." That makes sense.

[00:52:09] Tim: It would make sense.

[00:52:10] Luke: It's funny, I lose them. I'm like, "Wow, his twins are men."

[00:52:14] Tim: Yeah. So I started working with them when they were six, Luke. I took him through the adolescent rite of passage at age 13, marking the end of childhood and the entry, not into adulthood, but into adolescence. And then just a few months ago, they completed the Vision Quest, which served as their rite of passage out of adolescence into adulthood.

[00:52:36] And that's like, what is that? A 12-year mentoring arc? Now, not everybody goes through that, and that's okay. And there's a lot of value. I don't want people to think you have to have that. Or I also by the way, don't want people to think you have to go to your sit spot every day for a year to do one.

[00:52:54] But boy oh boy, is there a lot of value in a longer journey where you're seen and you have a mentor who cares, who shows up for you day in, day out, who can hold this larger fabric of your journey so that it results in that sense of, oh my God, there really is a deep transformation.

[00:53:16] And integration becomes, by the way, which I know it's a big buzzword these days, a million times easier when you have a longer arc of mentoring within which these experience is happening.

[00:53:30] So that's always what I'm looking at these days, is like-- and yeah, there's always choices on the logistics and the structure. These days when I offer it, most folks don't have a lot of experience, so I have people drink water. I do have them do a 96-hour, four-day solo.

[00:53:53] And it's largely in a small area. We have a whole safety protocol where I go and we check in on them. But I also do it small group. I keep my quest to 12 people max so that there's a lot of personal mentoring. That's something I feel so strong about. If it's going to be really supportive, I have to have a relationship with the person I'm initiating and understand what are those wounds that, of course, are going to come up.

[00:54:26] And what are those latent gifts just waiting to burst forth like a spring wildflower? But oh my God, there's 18 layers of trauma in the way, and we've got some unearthing to do. That's how I was mentored though, real personalized mentoring. And with the deep work, I suppose there are ways to do it at scale, but I don't know.

[00:54:55] These days I'm not so interested in that. I'm much more interested in the actual human journey. And that's how it was done for me. And that's where my skill set is, so yeah.

[00:55:06] Luke: As you're sharing about these rites of passage right from childhood into adolescence, adolescence into adulthood, I thought, no wonder we're so screwed up. That didn’t really exist in our culture in any intentional way. And I was thinking about my own life path, and so many of my initiations and rites of passage were self-imposed unconsciously through unresolved trauma and karma, things like that that I recreated.

[00:55:45] It's like I created these dark nights of the soul for myself unknowingly in all of those initiations. I'm happy with my life the way it's been, and it's all perfect. But it's like, I go, "Oh, man." I had that one initiation of the solo I described, but so many of the other ones over the years have just been through lack of awareness, lack of consciousness, maturity, wisdom, etc.

[00:56:09] Just driven myself over the edge of sanity in different ways. Where then, and only then was I faced with those existential questions of meaning and purpose and values and morality. It's like I had to choose it because I had no other choice than to explore those parts of myself and heal those hidden core wounds and all that stuff.

[00:56:35] But if our culture was more intentional in creating space for those transitions, it seems like we probably wouldn't be so prone to creating them in ways that we do, like I have for myself unknowingly, that we're so much more painful and difficult for myself and anyone in my orbit.

[00:56:58] Whereas if it's set aside and there's intentionality behind it, it seems like those things that we need to deal with within the recesses of our psyche and so on would just come to the surface and we'd have a template and a framework by which we could deal with them and address them in a healthy way instead of through distortion and darkness. What's your take on any of that?

[00:57:26] It seems like it's a major gap in our culture, is this rites of passage. And I can't think of it in terms of girls and women so much because I'm not one. But I'm sure on that side of the gender scale, that there's historically ways that young girls learn how to become adolescents and then women and so on. It's like we're all just freaking lost out here trying to figure this shit out.

[00:57:51] Tim: Totally, totally. And I would just pause and acknowledge you, Luke. It's clear you have alchemized those wounds. Look at you. Look at the work you're doing now. And from what I know of you, what you went through, you and I share some similarities on that side of things.

[00:58:07] And you said like, "Oh, I didn't have a choice." And I know what you mean. When we're at a certain point, it's like, yeah, growth, that's the only path. But it's actually not, and there are people who hit those moments and don't choose that growth, and stay small, and stay fragmented.

[00:58:28] Luke: That's true.

[00:58:29] Tim: And so as a brother on the path here, I at least want to take a moment and acknowledge--

[00:58:36] Luke: I appreciate that.

[00:58:37] Tim: I've had a hell of a journey, man.

[00:58:38] Luke: You know what I think it is, is like, I've always looked at it-- there's this, I don't know, higher self or over soul, even so many missteps of just lost for so many years just completely destroying myself. But there's always this quiet, subtle voice that's like, "Hey, you should probably turn right here," which I ignored most of the time.

[00:59:04] Tim: Yeah, yeah.

[00:59:05] Luke: But when I listened, I really listened and really went for it. At those turning points, it's like, wow, there's some big pivotal moments in my life where I was able to find that little mustard seed of self-love or self-worth that guided me toward the light, for lack of a better term.

[00:59:25] So yeah, that's an important distinction because I did see so many people, especially in my addiction recovery journey, that just couldn't or wouldn't get with the plan. They end up in jail, they end up dead, relapsing. It was so confusing to me. And I just thought it must be a multiple lifetime thing. Right?

[00:59:47] Tim: Yeah. Who knows?

[00:59:50] Luke: Who knows how many times I've been on this particular karmic lesson and failed and wasn't able to meet the moment? And just like, ah, another wasted lifetime, basically. So that's how I've come to reconcile that. It's just a guess, but I think it's a newer versus older soul thing where at a certain point you take on an incarnation and you're like, that's it.

[01:00:13] I'm not fucking around this time. It's like, I'm going to go right to the gates of hell man, and I'm going to walk through it. I'm going to emerge victorious. And yeah, it's interesting that some people, at least in whatever lifetime we're meeting them, seem to lack that, I don't know, tenacity or inner voice that they can listen to.

[01:00:37] Tim: Yeah. Because it's all about courage and willingness to face vulnerability and admit this stuff. And yeah, I'm not perfect. And, oh my God, I've got all my wounds and my flaws. And ultimately, to come to peace with that. One of my teachers-- this is Hal Stone. He's a originator of a body of work called Voice Dialogue, which is the original parts work.

[01:01:03] He would say, "It's all okay. Whatever you've been through, and however crazy trauma or hurting others, or however you've been hurt, or whatever you feel, toxic shame about-- it's all okay." And so much of the journey is about just accepting whatever neuroses or crazy patterns that have gone on for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. It's actually okay. And learning that, what does that mean to embody that? That kind of care, that kind of self-love, is a foundational piece of the work.

[01:01:50] Luke: What kind of things typically come up for people? And I know you do a lot of different experiences and things like that, so I'll move on eventually from the Vision Quest thing.

[01:02:01] Tim: No, no.

[01:02:02] Luke: This is just one particular lane that I find so fascinating. What kind of things come up for people that are the greatest hits of what someone might face on day 2 that they really struggle to work through?

[01:02:14] Tim: A lot of people think that like the days have certain qualities, but anything can happen. So I'm not one who would categorize day 1 verse day 2 or whatever. But I can share a couple stories.

[01:02:30] Luke: That'd be great.

[01:02:31] Tim: Yeah. Okay.

[01:02:33] Luke: I can only imagine the stories you have living the life you've lived for this long.

[01:02:38] Tim: There's some good ones.

[01:02:39] Luke: I did listen to one of your podcasts where you were describing, I think it was your first [Inaudible], which was-- it was like the whole podcast was just that story. I was like, "Dude, I could do five episodes with this guy." That's a really great story in and of itself, so yeah.

[01:02:54] Tim: The whole Family Survival one. That was a good one, yeah.

[01:02:55] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was epic. You guys had to hang the meat up in a cache and come back for it. And I was just like, "Oh man, that sounds really hard."

[01:03:08] Tim: Here's a newer one that just took place a couple months ago. So I had had a young man. He's, I don't know, late 20s, maybe 30. And this is a guy that came to us at the Wilderness School. Because my wife and I, we run Twin Eagles Wilderness School.

[01:03:26] That's our locally based organization. And then I also run Purpose Mountain, where the Vision Quest are run through. Anyhow, this fellow first came to us at the Wilderness School, wanting to-- he was an outward bound guy and wanted to learn more of the primitive skills.

[01:03:43] Luke: Just to interrupt really quick, is the Wilderness School something that's just ongoing, running all the time?

[01:03:47] Tim: Yeah, yeah. So my wife and I started Twin Eagles Wilderness School in 2005, and that's a locally, maybe regionally based organization. Mostly in-person programs for adults and youth. So we do tons of summer camps. Youth programs through the school year and adult programs, and yeah, survival skills and bush craft and primitive skills.

[01:04:10] But that's more than just the skills. That one, Luke, has really focused on-- our approach is that of mentoring, the Coyote Teaching I was previously speaking about. What does it mean to draw the best out of this person in front of me? So this fellow came as an intern. Learned our approach to environmental education, if we want to call it that, was really touched by it.

[01:04:42] Here's a guy who had his share of trauma, and that was pretty evident, right away. And he was a guy who had a huge heart, and I could feel a lot to share, but didn't have access to his voice. And struggled in that way. His tendency was to, let me be the guy who's going to hump gear from point A to point B. Give me a task that I can stay busy with.

[01:05:11] But when it came to like, okay, step forward, and I want you to share a story with the group. Boy oh boy, he would hesitate and resist. So I'd worked with him for a year or so, maybe two, and he came on Vision Quest, and he had-- so with Vision Quest work, there's always healing that happens, and that's coming to terms with the past, we might say. And there's visionary development, which is coming to terms with the future.

[01:05:48] Who am I becoming? And that's an important distinction. They both happen, but there's a fundamental difference in that quality. So for his healing work, tragic story, but when he was, I don't know, a late teenager-- he's a big river rafting guy and has done guiding on the river and stuff in Grand Canyon. He had a traumatic experience where one of his close, close friends, I think his college roommate drowned.

[01:06:18] Luke: Oh man.

[01:06:19] Tim: It was just the two of them, and the boat flipped, I think, and the guy's foot got caught in a rock. And he went to save him and had him in his arms, and the guy is flailing and he's stuck, and he has to choose between letting him go and saving himself or probably dying there with him. And let's go.

[01:06:46] And dude, just super heavy. Couple years later, a repeat experience where he witnesses another friend, this time not as close, but another friend drown in a rafting accident. And has held onto this for, I don't know, eight, 10 years. And so when a person calls for their vision and puts that stake in the ground and says, "Okay, I'm not willing to live another day until I'm connected with this North Star of my life."

[01:07:22] As we said, all the stuff, all the trauma, all the wounds that are there blocking that come to the surface. And so he had some heavy work to do to get through that. And a lot of tears. And some of that was done on his own up on the mountain, where he had to-- it was basically just you and the earth and God, or your creator, however you want to-- mystery or life, if you don't believe in God, whatever. The power of life itself. And you come to terms with that. And he did.

[01:07:58] But some of the healing work happens with other humans. In those three days beforehand, it was clear to me that he was carrying this weight, and that was the thing he was really running from. And so we worked with him on that and made sure he got it, that this was part of his work to do up on that mountain.

[01:08:25] Coming back, the integration side of things with those three days together, we do a process called mirroring where he shares his story and then as guides, we're reflecting his journey back to him and affirming these changes. Because that's what people need.

[01:08:44] I'm sure you know this. When we go through these big changes, we do go through them and there's excitement and it's inspiring and invigorating, but there's also a part of us that wonders like, did that just happen? And from an elder or a mentoring position, it's not like I'm the authority that says, "Yes, it did, or no it didn't."

[01:09:05] But to mirror something back and say, "I see that this is what you went through, and I see this is how you're showing up differently." And he looked different. Literally walking down that mountain, I actually didn't recognize him at first. It was one of my favorite moments of Vision Quest, is when they return. They're walking down the mountain.

[01:09:25] Oh my God, Luke, it's like their spirit is their regalia in that moment. Just for a moment. But it's just pure. And it's tough to put into words, but it's just exquisite. And I could see he really had let go of it, but he himself is still processing and integrating all that.

[01:09:46] And I remember mirroring that experience to him. And I did this almost drama therapy moment where I replayed that moment of-- I took on the role of the one who drowned and reflected that back to him. Not kind of, but did reflect that back to him in a really powerful way.

[01:10:11] And he was just bawling and bawling, but it served that function of really letting him know in no uncertainty that he had moved through it. He had come to peace with that. And oh my god, Luke, afterwards, his voice was so strong. We have him do a new embodiment of the vision, and he was up there singing this song. And I'm like, where did that come-- who is this guy in front of me?"

[01:10:43] And it was that potential that I had saw when I first met him is right there. But again, because he had been in a longer arc of mentoring, he got that same thing we were talking about where he's super grateful and he's like, "Tim--" He couldn't stop saying thank you. And I was like, "Hey, you're welcome, but just know somebody did this for me."

[01:11:09] And I was under the weight of a billion pounds of toxic, low self-worth, and this is how I thank them. And so the way you thank me is you pass it on. And he really got it. And so now, this is two years into his journey, he's in this really intensive apprenticeship now as a nature-based mentor.

[01:11:28] Luke: Oh, amazing.

[01:11:29] Tim: And he's on that larger track because he feels that. He's like, "I need to give back, and I need training." He still has got some training to do, and that's fine. But that was a big one.

[01:11:45] I think I would just highlight the fact that there was a certain portion of that transformation and healing that can only happen in nature where it's just you and the great power of this universe. And there's a certain part of it, I believe, that can only happen with other humans. Yeah. So that's one.

[01:12:07] Luke: That's epic. I love just the axiom of having to walk through the fire in order to get to the other side. I think many of us, myself included at different times, get into this idea of creating our own reality and manifesting in our vision and goals and dreams, all the stuff that's on the other side of all the shit that I haven't worked through. It's like a spiritual bypassing kind of thing. It's like, I just want to get to the good stuff.

[01:12:40] Tim: Of course, of course.

[01:12:41] Luke: I've found that without the first phase, which you called the healing portion of it, even if I am able to achieve, or gain or whatever I think is going to be fulfilling, I can never really own it if I haven't cleared the space to actually embody it. You know what I mean? I've had so many peak spiritual experiences, plant medicine, whatever, and it's like, that's nice.

[01:13:10] But if I'm still eventually reverting back to my old patterns that are there because there's something dying to be addressed, faced, and healed, it's like I'm going to make very little progress without both of those in place. And I think it's a helpful way to approach just personal growth because to just be working on the shadow all the time can stop us from stepping into the light.

[01:13:44] Tim: Oh, yeah.

[01:13:45] Luke: But leapfrogging over the shadow to just jump into the light because it feels really good, you're also missing so much opportunity there.

[01:13:52] Tim: Absolutely. And we see this a lot. I'm a big fan of men's work. I've got an amazing men's group up in Sandpoint. We've got 65 guys in our group, and we have five subgroups. And I've been doing that for 15 years, and it's mostly focused on healing the past. But some men get caught in that loop of-- it's like we almost get addicted to the healing process for the sake of healing.

[01:14:18] And it's like, well, what's the point? Great, I can heal till the cows come home. And trust me, I've been there. Oh, poor me, and all my wounds. But to what end? Okay, great, I'm healed. Now what? So what am I going to do with my life? And then what I love about purpose-based or visionary development work is, it's not that I'm trying to minimize the healing work, but I don't know, in my experience, Luke, it's really easy to overdo healing work in a lot of the circles I've been in.

[01:14:50] And so the healing work is what's needed rises naturally. Okay, step forward towards your calling, take some action, get in front of that group, get in front of the microphone. Your wounds will come up real quick. And that tells you where you need to work, if your calling is aligned.

[01:15:11] Another way I think of this is with natural law. One way to look at natural law is that everything is born, everything dies, and life is always renewed. So birth, death, renewal. And that goes for us too. So if I'm going through a journey of transformation, typically what comes first is actually the death.

[01:15:35] Meaning I've got to let go of whatever that part of me that believes I am a piece of crap or my low self-worth. There's a whole death process I need to go through before I can come through and really find my voice in an authentic way that's true and humble in a good way. Humble as in humus, like the earth, humus. So the death often comes before the birth, in my experience and renewal.

[01:16:09] Luke: It sounds like you're doing something really interesting. And I don't know how common this is in your field, but when I've looked into this, our mutual friend Daniel Vitalis, who's just such a great inspiration to me in so many ways, and specifically just the way he's gone from a kid who knew nothing about the natural world to just fully immersing him himself in it, just in such a hardcore way, it's like you could go learn like primitive survival skills, which I think something I've always wanted to do because I just-- I know innately that I'm not a real man. You know what I'm saying?

[01:16:53] And I'm not being self-deprecated. It's like if the infrastructure that I'm always complaining about, I call the matrix, if all of this just imploded, I'm shit out of luck, literally. I don't have the skills yet to go survive on my own. So I could go learn that. But it's also really important to be seen and to learn how to be vulnerable. And as a man, to address traumas and to gain emotional intelligence.

[01:17:19] And being able to use discernment to determine when and where and with whom it's appropriate and safe to be vulnerable. So it sounds like you're taking some really important parts of the human experience when it comes to growth and evolution that are typically siloed.

[01:17:38] I would never look at a wilderness survival training as a place where I would go and also be able to really commune with other men and to grow in that way. I would go to a men's group over here, and there's a lot of people doing that work. But am I wrong that what you're doing is unique in the way that it's fusing these elements together? Or is that something that's happening and I just don't know about?

[01:18:01] Tim: It's out there. I'm not the only one doing that work. But I am unique. I came up in the Wilderness School movement, and as a really sensitive person, like you were saying earlier, I felt like I didn't have much choice but to face my old wounds. They were just coming up so much of the time.

[01:18:25] If I was going to move forward, I knew I had to. And I didn't see all my peers going through that. There was a lot of peers that I have that have just done the wilderness skills proper and didn't bring in the whole inner work piece. So I saw really early that when we connect with nature and open up our awareness, build all of this, we're sensitizing our five senses to notice more, to be more sensitive.

[01:18:54] And so there's this internal process of our internal senses become more sensitive to what we're holding. So it's only natural that one is going to have to come to terms with all the stuff they're holding. So anyway, the two have always been as one for me. There are others doing it.

[01:19:17] But with the whole cultural context and long-term mentoring and everything else, I think what I'm doing is fairly unique. There's vision quest and vision fast work out there where they're working on core wounds and all of that.

[01:19:38] My life's been like a big jigsaw puzzle, man, and I've had to piece it together. The pieces I have brought together from depth psychology to men's work to wilderness skills, to community building, mentoring, they've formed a cohesive whole. Yeah, I don't know. So yes and no. There's others doing similar stuff, but I think there is a lot of uniqueness too in what I offer.

[01:20:08] Luke: In the aspect of just wilderness survival skills, I've noticed within myself there's-- was halfway joking, like, I'm not a real man, but I am in my own way. But I think what I was getting at there that I've observed in myself is it's like knowing what you don't know in that arena.

[01:20:38] And as I was telling you earlier, my dad was-- if my childhood had been different, if he was in a different place and I was in a different place, there was a lot of things that needed to be worked out there. But I could have learned all that stuff. The timing was off.

[01:20:53] There's a background hum of, I don't want to say fear, but maybe a background hum of anxiety that is background but still detectable and palpable in terms of just confidence of knowing how to handle one's business. It's like during the plandemic time, I moved to Texas, got out of California where we were-- I felt like a refugee and I was like, fleeing California because things were so uncertain.

[01:21:26] And landed in Texas, went hunting right away to get a grip on that. Got some firearms, stored some food, a little prepping. But still my prepping, and I know this subconsciously, my prepping is still dependent on the infrastructure of suburban Texas.

[01:21:45] It's like, how many days would I really make it with a house, even if all the utilities were turned off and whatnot, in a natural disaster or something like that. But there's still part of me that knows there's like a lack of confidence or some background anxiety because if push really came to shove and I had to protect myself and my wife and our dog out in the wild, if I'm honest, I wouldn't make it very far at my current.

[01:22:15] So the question is, leaving aside the men's work side of it and the psychological healing, how much impact does someone just gaining those skills have just in terms of that background anxiety? It's like if you're a black belt, MMA, whatever guy, you're not going to walk around picking fights, but you also probably, I think, would feel a certain sense of safety and confidence that if somebody tried to pop off, you could handle it. Right?

[01:22:46] Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:22:47] Luke: So speak to just the inner subconscious confidence that comes with just having some basic skills to take care of yourself in the wild, to the point that you made earlier that we're designed, and this realm we call Earth is designed to be self-sustaining. We actually don't need anything that modernity has to offer if we have those skills.

[01:23:12] To me, that just feels so empowering. Just knowing one could wander off in the wilderness and figure out fire and shelter and how to get food and what you can eat and not eat. That's so rare in our society now. The guys like you are like a rock star to me. Vitalis, I'm like, "Dude, I worship you."

[01:23:30] Yet I still haven't put in the work to learn those things. But my motivation would be to quiet some of that background noise that knows like, dude, if society falls apart, you better hope some of your friends have this figured out because you really don't.

[01:23:45] Tim: Yeah. Well, good question.

[01:23:48] Luke: There's probably 10 questions in the one question.

[01:23:49] Tim: No, it's great. I'll try and keep it focused. There's a huge amount of confidence and empowerment that comes forward from learning these skills. One of the things I've done a bunch of is put myself and of course, lots of others out on survival quests, where you challenge yourself.

[01:24:10] And, okay, my first one, funny enough, and I shared this story on the first podcast I did with Daniel Vitalis, four days in the Green Mountains of Vermont, nothing. I mean, nothing. Close on my back with the goal being, okay, build a shelter that can keep me warm and dry, make fire by rubbing sticks together, find clean water and food.

[01:24:38] And I've got stories and stories and stories on that front for myself and others, but there's a huge amount of, yeah, Luke, empowerment and confidence that comes from that. That's really significant. For me, I haven't struggled with depression in life, but I have struggled with anxiety.

[01:24:05] And when I got that, it was 9-1-1. It was 9/11 when I did my first survival quest. Coming out of that, the amount of confidence and belief in myself and just my place on earth was massive. It changed everything. And it's not like I'm out there constantly testing these skills, but I'm an elk hunter, and I do get out there.

[01:25:32] And when push comes to shove, I know what to do and I know how to care for my family. But what's interesting is that if you actually look back at people living close to the earth, there weren't that many cases of individuals living alone, surviving. Yes, there's people certainly who had more of those skills, but that's not how people thrived.

[01:25:56] Luke: Right, right.

[01:25:57] Tim: It was in community. And that's always one of the biggest surprises that people have coming to me, is, I want to learn fire by friction, and I want to learn to build a survival shelter. And I'm like, "Actually the biggest thing is attitude and community."

[01:26:14] That you're actually not going to thrive if you're out there, some hermit or some solo person. And there's lots of stories. Who was the guy up in up in Alaska? They made the movie on the young guy who died in the bus.

[01:26:33] Luke: What was that called?

[01:26:33] Tim: Into the Wild or something.

[01:26:34] Luke: Yeah, Into the Wild.

[01:26:35] Tim: Yeah, yeah.

[01:26:37] Luke: I think it was a book and then a movie.

[01:26:38] Tim: McCandless, or I forget the guy's last name, but yeah, exactly. The book and the movie. That was his whole realization at the end. He's a young guy. Wanted to find his belonging and prove his connection to the earth. And at the end, when he died in that bus, he left that note.

[01:26:54] And it was all about real happiness only comes with others, is only experienced when shared with others. And that's what people experience. They come out and maybe it's a group of teenagers or it's a group of adults, and the bonding, the connection.

[01:27:12] Yes, there's this hunger for connection to nature. And yeah, people talk about it to me oftentimes, like, there was a veil between me and the earth. An invisible veil that I didn't know was there that separated me. And I felt like an outsider, like an alien. But after this time, and frankly, whether it's wilderness survival skills or Vision Quest-- I get this a lot at Vision Quest-- I don't know how it happened exactly, but that veil is gone, and I feel like I'm part of this earth. I feel like I belong now. That's huge, man.

[01:27:47] Luke: Yes, yes.

[01:27:47] Tim: And that's a huge piece that frankly, psychological healing can't touch. And again, I see a lot of people spinning, circling in therapy or men's work or women's work, psychological healing, when I think what they actually need is belonging to nature.

[01:28:04] Luke: Goosebumps.

[01:28:05] Tim: Yeah. So that's a huge one. But the other piece is community, the bonds that form. I have people coming back. I've done this long enough. I get people coming back to me at 25, 30, 35 years old, saying, "Tim, I just want to thank you so much. The best years of my childhood were going through your camps. And to this day, my best friends are the people I met at your programs."

[01:28:31] Because that bond, it's incredible, man. We know we connect when we get vulnerable. Yeah. But that's not just emotional. That's also physical. So if I share a physically vulnerable experience, are you kidding me? Sleeping in the woods in a leaf hut and rubbing sticks to make fire and eating elk steaks over the fire, whatever it is. That's super vulnerable.

[01:28:58] And now you combine that with emotional vulnerability and, hey, let's take off the mask, and who are you really? What are your emotional vulnerabilities? And you bring all that together? Holy crap. It's life changing.

[01:29:14] Luke: That's such a point because it's like being in relationship with a natural world is also a vulnerable relationship because it's so variable and unpredictable. You just go out somewhere where the weather changes and it's sure.

[01:29:32] Tim: Cold or hot or wet.

[01:29:33] Luke: Yeah. Every minute can be a different sort of challenge. And I think that veil that you spoke of, that's what I was trying to articulate, is the difference between one going out into nature and one knowing in their bones that they are nature.

[01:29:53] Tim: Yeah.

[01:29:54] Luke: Right?

[01:29:55] Tim: Exactly.

[01:29:56] Luke: I had that realization a few years ago. I took a bunch of mushrooms out in Yosemite-- apart from when I was a kid and just using psychedelics like an idiot and maniac, this is, I think the only time there was never a ceremony. Because I was with close friends, and yeah, we had a little bit of a container and some prayers and stuff.

[01:30:15] But then it was just choose your own adventure and run around in the woods. And I just was taking just copious amounts of mushrooms and I was just having so much fun. It was one of those laughing fit mushroom journeys. My whole body hurt the next day because of just laughs.

[01:30:30] But anyway, the real lesson of the day, which I'll just never forget because it was so profound, and it speaks to that veil, I was out in a creek and I was just picking watercress and mint and stuff. It was just abundantly grown in this creek. And I'm just down there munching.

[01:30:45] Everyone else, their journey was over and they went back in the house and I, for some reason, just felt compelled to keep eating more mushrooms. So I was on my own at that point, and they'd come check on me. Luke, what are you doing? I said, "Oh man, they have the best salad in here.

[01:31:00] I'm just eating this stuff and realizing, dude, I could just live right here. I don't know how long you could live on watercress and mint, but for that afternoon I was very well fed. And then I sat on a stump and I was just talking to myself, as you do in those situations.

[01:31:20] And I went, "Luke, you got to remember this. You need to spend more time in nature. You got to get out in nature more." And I was like, "Oh wow. Such a big epiphany." And then that voice that we hear wherever it comes from was like, "Luke, you are nature." I was like, "Boom." It gives me chills right now. It just hit me so hard.

[01:31:41] And it was just like the flip of a switch is such a huge difference in terms of context. Then I went back and lived in LA and forgot about it. But that inner knowing is like, okay, I know that to be true now, but that veil is still there, if I'm really honest. I go take a walk in the green belt over here and it's like, oh, I'm visiting nature. You know what I mean?

[01:32:08] Whereas Vitalist says like, recreation, recreating what a human would normally be doing. You'd be out hunting, gathering, resting, napping, dancing by the fire, ceremony, community. It's like still, I think for so many of us, nature is this thing out there. And we enjoy it and it's nice, but we're not really of it. We're in it.

[01:32:31] Tim: Yeah. That's such a good point you bring up. And I oftentimes open with that, like the great lie of our time-- and there's many traumas that modernity has wrought upon us as modern people. One of the greatest ones, I believe, is that we are separate from nature. And are you kidding? We evolved from this earth. As I like to say, we didn't get dropped off from the spaceship. And even if we did, that too would still be nature.

[01:33:06] Luke: Yeah, because it would be nature somewhere else.

[01:33:08] Tim: Yeah. It's life. We have this false concept, narrative of separation that we're somehow different. But even these microphones and the computer, or the couch or all of this, the chairs, the table, the glass, it's all from this earth. And so are we. But we've forgotten that. We've forgotten our wildness.

[01:33:34] And that's a holistic thing. We've forgotten it psychologically, in the body, somatically. We've forgotten it spiritually. We've forgotten it emotionally. What does it mean to re-access those wild parts of us? I remember being a kid. My mom was always telling me, "Timmy, you're just too wild. You're too wild." And that was the big wound for a long time, was, I'm too wild.

[01:33:59] So coming back to nature early on in my adulthood was like, are you kidding? This is huge. I get to be as wild as I want and express myself. And through that, oh, I find my gifts. And through that, and with a lot of mentoring of course as well, oh, I find my vision. I find who I really am.

[01:34:19] And so it's a huge one. And it's such, I believe, Luke, a developmental need for us as human beings not to know, but to feel our oneness with this earth. You can't substitute for that regardless of how many, I don't know, ayahuasca journeys or psilocybin or men's groups or therapy sessions or breath work. To experience yourself as the earth in an embodied way, yeah.

[01:34:58] Luke: Going back to the communal aspect, something that came up when you were describing that. I always like to think about where we came from and what we used to be like, what culture was like when we were hunter gatherers and so on. And when I've thought about, as I was saying earlier, just acknowledging my lack of practical skills in the natural world, living off the land and so on, I have thought about that in terms of how we've evolved. If we were in a tribe of 50 or 60 people, not every one of you would be the most badass fire keeper or hunter.

[01:35:39] You'd have someone who's the medicine person and someone who's the storyteller or the singer, or the dancer. It's like seems like people would naturally gravitate toward their inherent talent where the world we have-- you almost fell for the psyop of like, go get an education and do a job. You would've been in a cubicle under fluorescent lights with the Wi-Fi router next to your whole life or whatever, my worst nightmare.

[01:36:08] Tim: Right.

[01:36:09] Luke: But I think there's something to be said for also, and you can tell me based on what you see when you have groups, is like, not all of us are good at the same things. And so we have kind of a warped idea of equality in this culture wherein we're all expected to be good at the same things.

[01:36:29] And take public school, is a great example of that. I too was a kid that was told you're way too wild. No, it's because you have me behind a desk trying to feed me math. I'm not a math guy, still to this day. I can't even read a clock. Anyone that knows me is like,
"What time am I supposed to be there? Don't even bother telling Luke, because unless Alyson tells him, you're supposed to be somewhere. I don't even know what planet I'm on.

[01:36:53] But I think finding our self-worth has a lot to do with finding what we're good at. So if I put myself in, say, one of your programs, it's like, yeah, I might not be the guy who has a lot of skill with my hands and I'm really good at building a shelter, but I might be really good because I have high empathy and emotional intelligence at talking someone off a ledge when they're starting to go dark. I could bring back in.

[01:37:21] So I think, what would my role have been if I sucked at hunting and fire building and whatever? It's like, oh, I think I would be good at social cohesion and communication, which is storytelling, things like that that I do. So what have you found in terms of people finding a groove with what their inherent natural skillset is when it comes to the wilderness survival skill space?

[01:37:48] Tim: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, Luke. We all have unique gifts, and that's a firm belief that I hold. And I've never met anyone or never mentored anyone whose gifts didn't show up, whose gifts didn't rise. But yeah, what's the old quote? If you judge a chimpanzee by its ability to swim in the water, of course it's going to be a failure.

[01:38:18] And the atrocities of modern schooling are many. When we look back at the old cultures, each child, by the time they were maybe seven years old, would've had a vast and deep connection to nature, knowing every animal footprint and knowing what species that made that, knowing all the different plants and flowers of their bio region and the different trees, and what those things are good for you.

[01:38:50] Which ones are poisonous, which ones could keep you alive? The different birds and the calls and what that means. So there was this standard curriculum, if we want to call it that, that the elders made sure the young ones got. Then from that, of course, in these old cultures, the elders were always watching and profiling sensitively the young people as well, always holding that question, what's this one's gift? What's that one's gift?

[01:39:24] And for those of us who didn't fit the modern mold, and trust me, I was one of them, for a long time the low self-esteem was rooted in, I don't have any. Everyone else is more important. Luke Storey, he's got gifts. Or somebody else, they've got gifts. But me, not me, I don't have anything.

[01:39:43] And it wasn't until I really took the deep journey of connecting with nature and mentoring that I began to see my gifts. And I began to see my own qualities, that emotional and spiritual sensitivity that's always been with me that I was ridiculed for growing up. Oh my God, that's a gift? Wait, what? I'm talking about a 180.

[01:40:09] But as well, these old cultures had a holistic model. They recognized equal value in all the hard skills like making fires or hunting just as much as the artists or the healers, or the storytellers. And of course, there was cultural development around that. There would've been different societies.

[01:40:37] You had the healing society. You had the basket-making society. You had the hunting society. And so not only was there space for diversity, diverse gifts to express themselves, but there was a whole culture actively watching for that and drawing that forward.

[01:40:56] And so that's really been a big part of my work. They say, "I've dug a well for you to drink because I've known the pain of thirst." I've known what it's been like to be the outcast and to feel like I don't fit. And so I so yearn for that for everyone, and certainly the people that come into my life and I make a connection with.

[01:41:22] Yeah, I want us all to feel like I have a place here, I belong. And it's there. It's there for all of us. I am thinking about listeners right now, watching, and it's like, man, if you're one who's feeling that or has felt that, I would just say, hold on, and know there are gifts that you carry.

[01:41:44] And that the journey towards discovering those and feeling good about yourself and learning that you can share those with others is absolutely accessible. Because that's real personal one for me.

[01:42:02] Luke: There's so much self-worth to be found in just discovering what you're good at. You know what I mean? When you're a round peg trying to fit in a square hole your whole life in this system that we've created, it's very painful. And also for people too that-- I don't have many friends like this, but I have some friends that were a bit more mainstream and maybe went to school and studied something and created a career out of it.

[01:42:30] But it's also quite common that even if someone is good at something and they have a competence for it and a natural ability, later in life they might find that that is not actually where their passion lies, which is another trap. It's like on one side you have a lot of passion for something, but no training or skills or really aptitude for it, which is frustrating and makes success really difficult.

[01:42:55] But many people are successful because they are just towing the line and doing what seemed to be the path of least resistance because they were naturally skilled at something or drawn towards something. And then that classic midlife crisis where you're like, "What?"

[01:43:07] I'm making all this money. I've checked all the boxes. From the outside, it looks like I've got it together. But there's still a missing sense of purpose and meaning to one's life because those things haven't coalesced in a way where passion, purpose, values aligned with what you're naturally skilled in.

[01:43:31] Tim: Mm-hmm. And service, being able to take all that and give it to another in a meaningful way. Yeah. Can I share another story here--?

[01:43:40] Luke: Go for it, man.

[01:43:41] Tim: One of my early wounds was around-- I've always been a strong dreamer. When I was in grade school, oh my God. I was always the kid with my head out the window, like looking outside. And, "Timmy, get back in the room here. You're a dreamer." In a bad way. The teachers would tell me that.

[01:44:06] And nighttime dreams, for whatever reasons, I've always dreamt a lot-- at night as well as daydreams. You're just dreaming about life. And for whatever reasons, when I do initiatory work, when I lead Vision Quest and rites of passage and initiations, and really any deep work, my dream life gets really active.

[01:44:30] And oftentimes dreams will come through in those settings, as medicine for the people I'm working with. And always for me too. And there was a recent one that came through that was particularly poignant and strong, and ties in with this other piece we haven't spoken much about, which is ancestral healing.

[01:44:56] Because, and I'm sure you're familiar with this, but not only do we carry our own wounds from this lifetime, but we carry our father's and our mother's wounds and on back. So this was during Vision Quest just a few months ago. We made it to day four, so the questers are all out there on the land.

[01:45:19] It's the first night that they're sleeping, and I dream that night. And in my dream, I just realized at the beginning that I'm watching a movie in my dream. This is a film, a two-hour film. And from the beginning, I can tell this is like a stunning, I don't know, super engaging and an Oscar-worthy film.

[01:45:42] And it starts off with this boy in the 1920s, little, seven years old, and he's got like the knickers and the white shirt and the dark suspenders and all that. He's playing ball or something, and he's yearning to-- his friends are there, but he is wanting his dad. He wants to play ball with his dad. Just super innocent moment.

[01:46:04] And his dad's nowhere to be found. And it becomes evident that the father is not present with his son because he's lost in this world of crime and violence. And the dream continues on. It was one of these epic dreams, and it continues on and shows how the son was just yearning for his father's love.

[01:46:28] And this continues on. The boy grows and eventually becomes a father himself. And that gap had never been filled. But what was clear, Luke, was that the father did love his son, but his life was such that he was stuck in this world of violence and crime. And as much as he tried to-- there were little moments here and there where it would come through, but his dad was actually doing his best, but didn't have access, the kind that he really wanted to to share that love with his son.

[01:47:02] So then it repeats. Now it's the next generation, and now the son's become the father, and he's carrying that same wound, and it repeats. He has a son, and he's not able to be there. And this goes on and on. And each generation, the father is trying to love the son. The love is real. It's there.

[01:47:26] The dad wants to, but life circumstances are such that all he can do is really focus on survival. Until it gets to modern day. Now it's like 2025, and there's a guy, and he's a father himself, and he's doing healing work. He's doing initiatory work.

[01:47:47] And as he's going through his healing journeys, I don't know. He was being facilitated-- I don't know what the exact context was, but there was a facilitator and maybe a group. And each time he faces another wound and his body's shaking and he's releasing trauma and all of it, these are ancestral wounds that he's releasing, the movie will zoom in to one of his ancestors.

[01:48:14] Oh, it zooms in on the great-grandfather. And these are not just generic, ancestral wounds. These are specific moments that happen to real people. And so it zooms in and shows this whole trauma that the great grandfather went through.

[01:48:28] And then back to like the guy, his body is shaking and he's releasing this trauma. And this goes on and on and on. And before the healing journey, the modern day guy had all these judgments on his dad and the ancestors, like, they were freaking weak, man. Why didn't they do this journey?

[01:48:49] Why did I get stuck with all of this pain and all this trauma? He had real judgments. But afterwards he went through the whole thing, he's got nothing but love and compassion because he feels that like, holy crap, they actually did the very best they could, and they didn't have the opportunity the way I do now.

[01:49:13] And he realizes, I'm actually the first in my lineage to have the privilege to heal in this way. And I don't have to focus on hardcore survival the way my ancestors did. And so it's this whole transformative thing. And as the dream comes to a close, the man is walking out of a restaurant or a bar or something, and there're in the parking lot, there's that same boy that it started with that from 1920s.

[01:49:48] This is his great, great grandfather as a boy. But it's like his spirit, a ghost or something. You can see through. And the boy's playing ball. And the boy turns to his, what? This would be his great, great grandson, but as a man, and the great, great grandfather as a boy, and tosses him the ball.

[01:50:09] And they start tossing it. The boy's got a big smile on his face, and then the man puts the ball down and walks over. Picks up his great, great grandfather, and hugs him. And they're crying. I'm observing myself watching the movie in the dream, and I'm crying. I can't stop crying.

[01:50:33] And this is not just healing your inner child. This is healing your great, great grandfather's inner child that you carry yourself. And then the guy's name is revealed, and it's one of these family lines where the male first name was passed. And I'm not going to say the name on the recording here for a reason, which I'll say in just a minute, but the name is revealed, that they've all had the same first name.

[01:51:05] And later after I wake up, I realize that's actually the first name of one of our questers that's out on the mountain right now. And I'm just like, "Holy crap." The movie comes to a close, and just before the credits roll, it does that thing where it zooms out and it shows that this whole thing was a man watching this movie, and there's the guy with his drink and his snack and the TV that he was watching.

[01:51:32] And then it zooms out again and shows there was a man watching this, and again, and again and again. And then the final reveal is I wake up and I'm like, "What?" And then I wind up sharing that-- I'm all in tears and it's all disoriented, and then I wind up sharing that with the group.

[01:51:54] And the guy who's shared the first name, it was huge for him. He had lived that whole thing. I share that because do this work, man, it's like we're doing it for ourselves, yeah. But we're also doing it for all those who came before us, that I honestly believe many of them didn't even have the opportunity. And that we can do this so that we can also serve those future generations.

[01:52:27] Maybe we can leave this world a better place. And maybe it doesn't have to be all doom and gloom. I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know what's going to happen. But I know that men, like you and I, and probably a lot of our listeners, have the capacity, if we choose it, that courage, to make a difference in this world and in our own lives and in the circles that we inhabit.

[01:52:51] Luke: That's beautiful. That's such an important, and again, I think largely missing truth in our culture, is the ancestral line. Because we think about, oh, I'll be the first one in my family to kind of do the work and change the trajectory. So it's like the chain will be unbroken from here moving forward.

[01:53:17] And I've observed this in my own family with my brother. He has kids, and he's a better dad than our dad was. And our dad, however, flawed he was, was much more conscious than his and so on. And I know this isn't true for all family lines, but in mine there's been definitely improvements with every generation, and on my mom's side too.

[01:53:38] But I don't think it's intuitive for us to think about the connectivity with those that have passed before and to be able to put ourselves in their shoes and find that empathy and forgiveness that they, of course, were just doing the best they could with whatever tools and opportunities they had.

[01:54:00] No human being makes a decision, like, I'm going to do the most wrong thing possible. It's like you're just acting out patterns and wounds, and all of those things. But that's something, I think, in our culture that's not really acknowledged or generally viewed in the same way.

[01:54:16] Whereas the little time, but some time I've spent with indigenous peoples, it's all about the ancestors. And there's an unbroken chain going way back. And it's that timelessness worldview where all of time is interconnected and there is no past. It's all part of a continual now moment, which makes a lot of sense to me. So that's really beautiful. That's incredible that you had that dream too.

[01:54:45] Tim: I know, man. It was a whopper.

[01:54:47] Luke: Yeah. Those things happen, I don't know, in ceremony and things, but Alyson that you met is a dreamer like that. She'll wake up at 4 in the morning and just go through these whole shamanic journeys and processes just on the natch in ways that are transformative and inform her day or decision she makes right in that dream time. And that's never something I've been able to really access in that kind of way. So that's very cool.

[01:55:20] Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:55:21] Luke: Speaking of psychedelics, plant medicines, I look at any situation that's good and I always think, okay, how can we make this maximum? So when I'm thinking about something like the Vision Quest, I think, it's probably pretty challenging.

[01:55:38] I think maybe if I did one the first time, I'd just go out and just do it as is. But then I can't help but think, if it's good like that and it's transformative, it'd be probably pretty awesome if you drank some Wachuma or ate some mushrooms or something. In your experience or in your world, are medicines ever part of the equation, or do you think they have a place in these experiences?

[01:56:02] Tim: It's a good question. How I've gone through them and how I've led them for others it has not included entheogens and psychedelics. Part of, I think, one of the reasons for that is that-- I was saying with Vision Quest work, you really do earn every ounce of the transformation that you experience.

[01:56:30] It's just you. There's nothing you ingest. It's a shedding, is what it is. It's a letting go of. It's letting go of all the distractions of modernity and food and interactions with humans, and all of it.

[01:56:47] And so it can be a deeply altered state of consciousness that one gets into in Vision Quest, but that is earned through-- I don't even want to say earned, but it's facilitated through one's own actions or non-action, as the case may be. As such, what I've found, and especially heard from a lot of others-- you know Josh Trent.

[01:57:16] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[01:57:17] Tim: He introduced me to you. He's done two Vision Quests with me, and he had done, I think a bunch of Ayahuasca journeys prior to that. I'll never forget the first time he came back, coming down the mountain, that moment where he is wearing his spirit.

[01:57:32] He was the first one back. I was right there creating him big hug. And he is just right there and so present. He's like, without even missing a beat, "Tim, I will never need to do ayahuasca again because--" and this was his, his words, not mine. "My inner child never felt safe. But up there on the mountain, it totally did."

[01:57:57] Now, I get it. That's not everyone's experience, and I don't mean to claim that it is. But for Josh, and I've done podcasts with him where he shares this, it was a big deal. It was a big deal. And people talk about, with the psychedelics, it's like blasting off and you're on that rollercoaster ride.

[01:58:17] And it can be unnerving, to say the least, for one's inner child. And with Vision Quest work, one way to look at it is you're going down to the earth, and it's a transcendent experience. You're transcending ego, but not so much that you would identify with, that the self would identify with spirit as much as that the self would identify with soul.

[01:58:50] That differentiation, if we're looking at soul as one's place on the earth, and if there's a part of me that knows my purpose, it's my soul. So there's a lot of benefits to it and to going "unassisted."

[01:59:09] Luke: Unassisted.

[01:59:10] Tim: And in my experience, Luke, I really do believe it's easier to integrate. I really do. Because of the fact that it was a slow burn getting to that altered state, and it's a slow transition getting back. Now, I think psychedelics definitely have their place, but I have had a handful of folks who come to me scared that they can't have a successful experience without that.

[01:59:46] Luke: Oh really?

[01:59:47] Tim: Oh yeah. I've definitely had that. And they will make a big case for why I should be allowed to bring psilocybin or whatever. And I always hold the line. I'm like, "I want you to have this experience and see what it is when it's just you. Because all of that, that capacity to be in those altered states does dwell within us. It really does. And yeah, there's lots of examples of traditional cultures that had the psychedelics, and there's lots of examples of traditional cultures that didn't.

[02:00:19] And especially in our modern day and age, we're so disconnected from our spirituality. There's such a hunger. It's like, God, we're all wandering in the desert and totally dehydrated. And any bit of spirituality is just like an oasis. And I get it. Goodness, no. God knows, I've lived that.

[02:00:43] But I think that the hazard though is looking at it from the consumeristic mindset, that I need something to shift my consciousness, and that I'm not capable of that myself. And the other piece that comes in really big is mentoring. I'll go back to that. We spoke about that earlier.

[02:01:05] For Vision Quest to be effective and transformational, you really need a good mentor to guide you in the good prep work and help identify those healing pieces that need to be done. And reflection and integration work afterwards. And it puts it in a context of culture and mentoring and the lived human to human experience that oftentimes isn't the same as say a one-off, I don't know, facilitated ayahuasca ceremony or psilocybin, or what the case may be.

[02:01:40] So I just see that there's a ton of value for folks to have that experience. And again, I'm not against any of that. I really think all that has its place. The idea of combining it together, who knows? I'm sure that's happened. It hasn't been something I've experimented with myself or worked with, but I could imagine done well.

[02:02:10] If I were ever to be involved in anything like that, I would want it to be held in a mentoring culture with active facilitators, beyond just trip sitters, but I mean facilitated work and real guides in that sense. Not to say that trip sitters aren't real guides because they are, but I would want there to be a broader scope of cultural mentoring present in that way.

[02:02:36] Luke: Totally makes sense. You raise a really important point, I think, which is a great reminder for me that my wife reminds me of a lot. Because as I said, she just, I don't know, has an innate capacity for spiritual realms unassisted, which has always been a bit of a stretch for me. It's like, where's consciousness?

[02:02:57] I'm a long time meditator, but I've had so many just incredibly beautiful and transformative experiences with the assistance of whatever plant medicine or psychedelic. But even in those peak experiences, there's a part of me that knows it's not the thing outside of myself that's delivering the experience, the medicine is just a catalyst for something that I have within me that I just need to do anything that I'm invited to to learn how to cultivate without needing the assistance. Which has been the past few years of my life.

[02:03:35] So I can imagine a situation in which you're in the wilderness and you've had that mentorship and you've been properly prepped, and then, wow, now you're out here by yourself for a couple days with nothing to distract you from yourself. It seems like the same medicine within is going to start to bubble to the surface.

[02:03:56] Hence a redundancy of adding some other molecular support there when you don't really need it. It's like you have the medicine within you, which any good shaman will tell you. The medicine is you.

[02:04:07] Tim: You are the medicine.

[02:04:08] Luke: Yeah, exactly. That makes a lot of sense to me.

[02:04:11] Tim: Yeah.

[02:04:12] Luke: Both versions of that can also sound terrifying. Just going and doing it with water. So I was like, "That's pretty hardcore." Because Josh has told me about his experiences and relayed them. "Oh, this is more powerful than any ceremony I've ever done. And so like, oh, that's interesting. I go, "That sounds scary, man, just being out there." What about the bears and mountain lions and whatever.

[02:04:34] He is like, "No, it's all good." And there's a part of me that knows like, oh yeah, you just go out there with yourself and see what you find, without having the fireworks. Which can also be beautiful, but also distracting. That time I went hunting out here when I first moved here, one of the-- outfit called Sacred Hunting and--

[02:04:55] Tim: Oh, what's the guy's name?

[02:04:56] Luke: Mansal.

[02:04:57] Tim: Yes. Yeah. I need to connect with that fella.

[02:04:59] Luke: He's going to be here tomorrow.

[02:05:01] Tim: Oh, really?

[02:04:01] Luke: Yeah, great guy.

[02:05:02] Tim: Oh, wow. Oh, cool.

[02:05:02] Luke: Yeah, great guy. One of the days there was not on a hunting day, but on the in between, off day, we had some psilocybin and there was a ceremony, but then you go off by yourself. It was like a micro, few-hour Vision Quest.

[02:05:24] Tim: Yeah. Solo. Yeah.

[02:05:25] Luke: I remember being out in the field in the hot Texas sun, just going, "This is kind of rough." I thought it was going to be a lot more fun than this, but part of it was just like, "Okay, I'm out here. There's no music. There's no bells and whistles. No one's burning copal. There's no shaman."

[02:05:42] It's just me, myself, and I out there reconciling the fact that I just killed something the day before, and what does that even mean? And it ended up being a really beautiful experience, but it was also a lot just to be alone out in the wilderness and then having to contend with these really strong mushrooms. So I can imagine. I probably wouldn't have needed both, right?

[02:06:06] Tim: Yeah.

[02:06:07] Luke: And probably would've still derived the same benefit and also arrived at some of the same revelations and understanding that I had. Which for me, it was particularly around death. And also, speaking to the synchronicities of nature and that nothing's happening by accident, just yesterday-- and again, I always reference my wife because she's been such a great teacher, but she really pays attention to animals.

[02:06:35] She wrote a book about Power Animals, and so she's very tapped into animals appearing. And I used to think that's a little superstitious. Does it really mean anything? But yesterday a hawk swooped down, I was sitting in the backyard, and I just heard this blah, blah, boom.

[02:06:51] It ran into one of the gutters. And I think it probably saw a lizard or something next to me, which it was quite close. And then it just flew up into the tree. And that trip that I had hunting and then having some mushrooms, that was the day that I really saw that nothing in nature is happening by accident. There's an orchestration happening, and that hawk coming down right at that moment did mean something.

[02:07:18] Tim: Yes.

[02:07:18] Luke: And that the pig that I shot the day before was in that exact spot, almost as if it knew I was going to be there, and I knew it was going to be there. There was this really interesting unfolding that showed me there are no accidents, and also showed me that death is a falsehood. It's an impossibility, which is a pretty great lesson to get.

[02:07:44] Tim: Huge.

[02:07:44] Luke: But that's something that appeals to me about the kind of work that you do, is just, wow, how can we get back in touch with that interconnectedness, that synchronicity, the web of life where there's a purpose to everything that's happening all the time?

[02:08:01] And it's not superstition to think it's raining for a reason right now. And as you've mentioned bird song, you hear the bird song, and it means something about what's going on in the environment. And the way the trees kind of sway. Just the whole movement of nature when we're present to it, is so powerful. And there's so many messages being delivered every millisecond.

[02:08:25] Tim: More than we could ever process.

[02:08:26] Luke: Yeah. It's like nature's saying something. What is it saying? What do I do with that information?

[02:08:32] Tim: And we're part of that great conversation.

[02:08:35] Luke: Right.

[02:08:35] Tim: There's a teaching I use with initiation that everything is perfect. And when things are good, that works real well. But when you're up against some shit, that's tough. But that's a soulful way of looking at things, that whatever's happening is perfect. And it's not that we're orchestrating all of it.

[02:08:57] We're just a node in the great web of life. But we are a node, and it is connected. And so, yeah, if someone's out on Vision Quest and a moose walks in, and I've had a bunch of moose encounters and moose medicine through the years on Quest, on the one hand, it's just a moose. It lives there. That's its home.

[02:09:20] It's a physical moose on the mountain. But on the other hand, there's the liminal reality, the imaginal, the spiritual realm where the moose is more than a moose. And it's showing up to teach you something about yourself. For me it was all about empowerment.

[02:09:40] Again, this was early on, 25 years ago, and facing all that low self-esteem. Moose, I later would find out when they're young, it's really, really tough for them. They've got those long legs, and their bodies aren't big enough to fully adapt to the harsh environment that they live in.

[02:09:59] And so generally speaking, juvenile moose survival rates are actually quite low. And so the moose have a tough go with childhood. But the time they make it to adulthood, those that make it, they're just beasts, and they tend to thrive really, really well.

[02:10:20] I had multiple, three different Vision Quests where a moose came. One time, it actually licked the back of my neck. Another time I had one [Inaudible] down 10 feet away from me. Another time one came in my dreams.

[02:10:33] Luke: And moose can be dangerous too, right?

[02:10:37] Tim: Particularly in the rut. Yeah. Or if you get between a mom and her babies.

[02:10:41] Luke: This rut thing, hold that thought. We have just tons of white-tailed deer around here, right?

[02:10:47] Tim: Yeah, yeah. I've been seeing some of them.

[02:10:48] Luke: We took to starting to feed them. They come every morning and visit. We've named them and stuff like that. I don't keep track of things like the rut, their mating season, but the county or whatever will put up signs, like, it's rut season.

[02:11:02] Oh, okay. So they're making babies, whatever. This year I noticed something very strange. It's like the bucks in the rut, they're like zombies. They act super weird. There was one that was coming, and he had a big old wreck, and he's destroying some of these cactus I salvaged from our yard. And I was so proud of them.

[02:11:24] I was bringing them back to life. They were beautiful. They were getting about this tall, this palm thing. And they would come and rub their antlers on it. And I was like, "I don't like that. We like to feed you guys." So I went out and tried to scare him, and he just like got in my face.

[02:11:40] And I was like, "Wait, I thought you guys were prey animals. What's happening here?" And he is just staring at me like zero F's given. And then I started to notice that behavior. They just walk in the middle of the road. They're just zombified. They're not--

[02:11:54] Tim: One-track mind.

[02:11:55] Luke: Yeah. Usually the bucks are more skittish than the does are on here. The does will come right up to you. The bucks, they're kind of lone wolfs. They're always by themselves. You can't get near them. Try to feed them, they get all skittish. I was like, "Oh, this rut thing is a trip." It is really cool to start observing that and then see the change in behavior, how they're just brain dead on testosterone.

[02:12:18] Tim: Oh, literally. Yeah.

[02:12:19] Luke: Is that, I'm assuming, the same kind of thing with a male moose?

[02:12:24] Tim: Moose and elk can certainly get that way. Sure.

[02:12:26] Luke: Have you've observed that, that they're like their behavior changes in that dramatic of a way?

[02:12:31] Tim: Oh yeah. From a hunting perspective, that's probably the only chance you really have, is a hunter to even get a male ungulate, a moose, deer, elk, is going to be during the rut. It's certainly a mature one. Mature animals like that, Luke, are just masters of the environment and their senses.

[02:12:55] And outside of the rut, how often do you see-- I don't know about down here. I don't live down here. But how often do you see those mature males like that? Not much at all. So yeah, yeah. I think that's really common in the ungulate family.

[02:13:11] Luke: So a moose would generally not be problematic or that dangerous with the exception of the rut when they're just on a different--

[02:13:20] Tim: Or as I said, if you get between a mom and her young ones, that's not a good place to be.

[02:13:26] Luke: Yeah. I think about the moose just because they're so freaking huge. The nature shows I watch, the hippopotamus and elephants are some of the most dangerous animals in Africa because they'll run you over.

[02:13:38] Tim: Just run you over and stomp you.

[02:13:39] Luke: Yeah. You're thinking about Cheetos and lions. It's like, yeah, they might outrun you, but the elephant could just come stomp your whole shelter into the ground, if you piss them off. I find that really interesting.

[02:13:53] Tim: Can I just finish that thought?

[02:13:53] Luke: Oh yeah, I'm sorry. I totally derailed.

[02:13:54] Tim: No, no, it's all good. All good. So I was actually almost done. So the meaning of that for me, the perfection of that for me was I had a tough go as a kid. And wow, I was at that transition point, '24 or so at the time, where I was really leaving childhood behind and adolescence and really stepping into my adulthood in a meaningful way.

[02:14:19] And it was like an omen of like, Tim, you paid your dues. Not that I haven't had more struggles since then, because I certainly have. But it's not like it was. I'm really in my gifts and my power and my passion and service, and moose has been a huge ally along the way.

[02:14:40] And so, yeah, Luke. Are you kidding? Everything out there is connected. And when we slow down and ask that question, why is this showing up? What is this teaching me? I look at that as this sacred question. What is this teaching me? We can always ask that about everything. And it's not just the moose and the hippopotamus and the hawks. It's also this human being in front of me and this environment I'm in.

[02:15:06] This moment, this emotion I'm having, this memory that's coming up. It's our full lived experience as human beings. And so in that sense, life really is a waking vision. We're working our way through this life always interrelated with everything else. And it's always informing us if we choose to open ourselves up.

[02:15:31] And especially the tough moments. When we face hardship and pain, we might be tempted to ask you, why is this happening to me? And the soulful response to that is slowing down. A lot of people have spoken about, why is this happening for me? What is the gift here? Even when it's most difficult.

[02:15:57] I remember, I don't know, this is probably 10, 12 or more, maybe 12 or 14 years ago, I just started offering rites of passage for boys in a bigger way, which involves a solo. This is like 13, 14, 15-year-olds. And we do sweat lodge. I run sweat. And I had a young guy come through, and I had a lot of connection with him.

[02:16:28 With this mentoring work, certain students come through that you particularly resonate with, and his journey had mirrored my own. Anyhow, he was just birthing his grief for the very first time at whatever, 14 years old. And we were in the sweat, and I could feel it bubbling up, and he just needed that support and someone to say, it's okay, and you can let that go.

[02:16:52] And so then it came and he was crying, and I was getting this release going, and he was a particularly expressive guy, which I am as well when it comes to emotions. And it got really cathartic and dramatic. The sweat ended and he's still crying and letting it go. And it got really intense.

[02:17:14] And all my staff were starting to freak out. They're like, "What's happening here, Tim?" And I'm, "It's all right, you guys. It's all right." And then the other initiates start going down like dominoes. And it was like his grief release was so strong, it was inviting that in others. Then my staff was really losing it.

[02:17:33] And I was just holding space for everybody. Had my hand on his shoulder and I had this transcendent experience in that moment. I was so happy for him because I could feel all that grief that he had held for all this time. And here he is having his moment of letting it go, and I felt such an honor to be there, witnessing it, being a part of supporting that.

[02:17:56] And I knew in that. In the transcendent moment, Luke, I flashed on all my childhood trauma and the pain and the bullying and the divorce and the abuse, all of it. And I was like, "Holy crap, I could not do this right now for this young person if I hadn't felt that trauma in my body as a kid myself."

[02:18:22] And it's like, not only had I come to peace with it and accepted it, but it was like I was actually grateful for those experience. I was genuinely thankful because they built the capacity in me to help someone else in that way. And that changed me. That was the true like sacred wound, sacred gift, two sides of the same coin.

[02:18:44] The coin flipped and I was like, "Holy shit, there was something good about that?" Are you kidding? I was convinced-- are you kidding? For 30 years, that was a black fucking scar on my soul. And now life, God, you're telling me that there was some good to that?

[02:19:03] Luke: That's beautiful.

[02:19:04] Tim: It was. Yeah.

[02:19:06] Luke: I've had the same awareness in many ways. The other side of that too, that's really special is when you've been through something and you have the empathy that comes out of that and you have the understanding, you can truly understand what that kid's going through.

[02:19:24] But I've also realized, you might be the only person that they will listen to and take direction from because they can't trust anyone that hasn't shared that flavor of experience. There's like really a superpower in that that--

[02:19:41] Tim: Understandably.

[02:19:42] Luke: Yeah. You have the ability to reach someone who's otherwise unreachable, because you can look them in the eyes and say, "I understand." And they feel you really do. You've really been there. It's difficult to listen to someone who's theorizing. You know what I mean?

[02:19:57] Tim: Forget it.

[02:19:58] Luke: That must be tough for you. Yeah. I've had a really rosy life, but you I'm here for you. It hits different than like, oh, let me tell you about what I went through. And then there's this comradery and mutual respect and trust that comes out of that. That's really powerful.

[02:20:12] Tim: Yeah, exactly.

[02:20:14] Luke: I want to ask you one last thing and then we'll wrap it up. Alyson was right. I was like, "Oh, about 90 minutes." Never. I'm just going to start saying it's four hours. I hope you don't have anywhere to be.

[02:20:25] And that is around something you said earlier. Everything is perfect. I think for those of us that are in a moment of difficulty in life, it's very difficult to see the perfection in it. And going back to what we were talking about, that there are no accidents, everything in consciousness, it just unfolding exactly as it's supposed to, even if it sucks from your particular vantage point. What I hear in that is the principle of surrender.

[02:20:52] Tim: Mm-hmm.

[02:20:53] Luke: Surrender. And I think that many people, myself included for a time, would see the principle of surrender as a position of weakness or complacency or allowing yourself to be victimized.

[02:21:08] To me, surrender is my absolute number one superpower because in the moment, over years of practicing that principle, I just know that whatever's happening is what's supposed to be happening, otherwise it wouldn't be so.

[02:21:24] This helps me so much in just reconciling the suffering that is part of this experience, not just within myself but in the world. Which brings me to a recent experience we had with our deer here.

[02:21:37] So Alyson had really gotten acquainted to this one doe and her little buck, fawn, who she named Buttons because he had his little antlers starting to poke out. And they were the two that would come the closest.

[02:21:52] And we built this trust with them where they come right up to the porch, almost eat out of your hand. We're getting close. You charm them in, and ooh, I almost got the hand thing today. Anyway, one day Buttons shows up and his leg been broken and just dangling off, and it just devastated Alyson because she's so sensitive and all that.

[02:22:16] And I was trying to empathize with her, but I just see that it's perfect. You know what I mean? It's just like, it was meant to get hit by a car and then it's going to go lay in the ditch and probably starve or freeze or whatever. And yeah, it's sad.

[02:22:32] It's not like I'm detached from the pain, but I'm just surrendered to what is. And so it was an interesting experience for us as a couple because I really feel what she's feeling and I understand why she's feeling, but I'm feeling differently because I just trust that Buttons is where Buttons' supposed to be and having the experience Buttons is meant to have.

[02:23:00] So sometimes I try to reconcile that surrendered worldview or point of view with not detaching so much that I can't feel someone else's pain or be in her experience with her in order to hold space for her. Does that make sense?

[02:23:20] Tim: Totally. Yeah.

[02:23:21] Luke: So when you observe challenges that your clients are going through, or I'm sure you've observed things in nature where the animals are suffering in ways that are unimaginable or just starving or has a broken leg--

[02:23:34] Tim: Or a forest gets clear cut.

[02:23:36] Luke: Right. I guess the question is, what is your experience of surrender, and how do you reconcile that with also still caring and proactively offering your heart and support to people who maybe aren't at that place of surrender in that particular situation?

[02:23:57] Tim: Great question, Luke. You got great questions, man, really.

[02:24:00] Luke: I'm glad it makes sense because sometimes I'm just--

[02:24:02] Tim: Oh no, I'm with you. I know.

[02:24:03] Luke: I have my little list on my, what do you call this? iPad? So I don't get totally lost or forget something, but oftentimes, I find it difficult because of my questions, I don't know what they are until I start talking. And sometimes I just lose the guest. I'm like, "Luke, it has to be a question in there somewhere."

[02:24:23] But I think that's what it is. It's like surrender, I think, is such a grounding life principle, but also we're in the world. So it's like being in the world, but not of the world, I think is a place of balance.

[02:24:34] Tim: Exactly, yeah. In the world, but not of the world. It's huge. One of the hallmarks and indicators I see of a human living a soulful life is the ability to hold paradox. Like, okay, I was abused when I was six. How's that perfect? Well, for 30 years it wasn't in my world.

[02:25:02] So when I say that, does it mean that it excuses the atrocities that humanity has and can and has committed? No, it doesn't. Does it mean we shouldn't try to be better human beings and better stewards of our earth and hit less deer and cut less forests and hit less humans and be kinder and more loving human?

[02:25:27] Of course, we should. Of course there's a collective vision that we're moving forward towards. And being empathetic and compassionate are huge parts of that. And I can only say this from personal experience, Luke. For me, what I know is, if I get caught in the opposite, it's not okay. It's not right. It shouldn't have happened.

[02:25:57] Dude, instant victim. I'm fucked. That shouldn't have happened. It was wrong. Why me? All of that. I know that stuff well. And ultimately it's not an empowered position to take. And so it's a paradox. It's like, no, it shouldn't have happened.

[02:26:20] Did I deserve it? Of course not. Of course not. And can I learn from it? Can I make lemonade out of lemons? Is there a silver lining to that cloud? Yeah, there is, if I'm willing to face it. And I think that's the key, if I'm willing to face it. All those years where I was the victim, I wasn't willing to face it.

[02:26:45] I hadn't birthed my trauma. I hadn't gone through what that young guy had gone through. So that's part of it. It's like night and day. It's like summer and winter. It's like male and female, masculine, feminine. How do I know the gift of wholeness if I haven't felt fragmentation? It's crazy.

[02:27:16] Part of me still wrestles with it. The day I die, I'm going to throw down with God and be like, "All right, motherfucker. Really? What the fuck? All of that pain, all of that suffering. You've been there? Fuck, man. It's tough. And yet that's a part of me."

[02:27:39] And there's another part of me that's like, "No, I actually feel that I do see the mathematical brilliance of it all." It's okay. Back to that mentor's words, it's okay. It doesn't mean it was right. It doesn't mean I should perpetuate that.

[02:28:04] But I can come to peace with these things and acceptance and learn from it and grow from it, and recognize that my experience of wholeness as a human being is informed by those moments when it's been broken. So, I don't know, I feel like it's like a Zen Cohen or [Inaudible] moment.

[02:28:32] Luke: I'm tracking you, dude.

[02:28:34] Tim: It's tough. I don't think you can scientifically name it and explain it and make it okay, but what I know is, I've seen so many people go through this and mostly myself, where it's like, hey, we got the choice. How do you want to spin this? Where's this going to take you? How's that going to work out for you? I've played it both ways, and there's only one choice for me.

[02:28:59] Luke: One way includes a lot less suffering.

[02:29:02] Tim: Yeah.

[02:29:03] Luke: I think the way I'm starting to see it is with the surrender and accepting what is, and then also making choices that are informed by what I believe serves the highest good for all of creation. That's my North Star. What's good for the totality of everything? I'm going to lean into that.

[02:29:21] But it's like the surrender also for me requires a radical open-mindedness and suspension of judgment from my particular position. So I could look at Buttons, the deer, and it could be the worst day of my life where I just go, "What is the meaning of this, and how could nature or God allow for this unnecessary suffering? Why did humans come and build this infrastructure and put cars on the road that injure these poor animals? They're just trying to coexist, etc.

[02:29:53] But it's like 90% of my life experience is based on how I'm choosing to view it from a position of neutrality or dare I see even positivity versus the 10%. The 10% of how I view it is creates the 90% of what it actually feels like and what my life is like. So I could look at Buttons, the deer-- and this is no judgment on my wife.

[02:30:21] It's beautiful that she's so feeling for the deer. But it was an interesting experience in that we held it so differently, and that's not a right or wrong. There was probably a lot of medicine in that grieving for her. Actually, there was.

[02:30:34] Tim: I'm sure there was--

[02:30:35] Luke: Actually, you know what? It's funny, I just remembered this. When we unpacked that, a lot of it had to do with our fertility journey and the fact that we haven't been able to have a baby. We had a miscarriage three years ago.

[02:30:49] So there was a lot of feeling behind that. So there was even medicine and beauty in that that was beneath the surface. And the injured, probably hopeless and now probably dead deer, were actually symbolic of something that was craving her attention, a deeper yearning.

[02:31:07] Tim: Yeah. I think of my indigenous teachers, what they might say-- I don't know, because I wasn't there and I haven't talked to Alyson about it, but what they might say is perhaps that deer even chose itself spiritually and made that sacrifice to help you all have that insight and that growth. And that's like, oh, shit.

[02:31:28] Luke: Totally, totally. Yeah. Like why did it choose us to have to share that experience of the broken leg? Right?

[02:31:36] Tim: Yeah.

[02:31:37] Luke: I've thought about too-- again, one of my favorite practices or disciplines is just when I'm seeing things from this perspective, I'm over here. I'm looking at that thing. It seems to be a certain way objectively. I like to flip all the way around behind it, and just go, "Hmm, what if I just did a 180 here and just looked at it radically different?"

[02:32:00] So I was thinking about Buttons, and one thing that I learned from buttons was to drive even more cautiously around this area where there's so many deer. And then I thought, I bet most people that saw him limping around, dangling this broken leg had the same thought and are probably driving more carefully.

[02:32:19] So maybe Buttons' sacrifice, whether it knew it or not, was to inform the neighborhood, like, "Hey, be careful." There might be a number of other deer that are now alive and haven't been hit by a car because of the cues that people took from Buttons. And that's just one of a zillion threads that you could take.

[02:32:40] But I find life is so much more manageable and interesting when we're able to make context malleable. It's like we see the objective content of a situation, but the context is literally infinite. There's infinite number of ways you can interpret reality. And the power to like create our own reality, I find, is in the practice and the discipline of just continually looking at things from a different angle and just being completely open-minded and humble to the experience and just letting life teach me in that way.

[02:33:21] Whether it's shit I endured as a child that now has become my superpower or whatever. In my case, becoming an addict, which for a time I thought, wow, I really got the shit into the stick in this lifetime that I had that propensity just built into me since I was a kid. But it's like my superpower because it's the thing that motivated me to find God.

[02:33:42] Maybe I would've just been watching football, ordering Domino's. Nothing wrong with that life if that's someone's path. But I think my life has been much more impactful as a result of overcoming those challenges and having a unique skillset that is valuable when someone needs that kind of help, as we were talking about earlier.

[02:34:04] Tim: Huge.

[02:34:05] Luke: Yeah. Well, man, I feel like we could chat forever. I really enjoyed this conversation. I guess we should let people know how they can work with you. Normally I give the show notes a shout out and probably don't need to because you can just look at your podcast app, folks, but it'll be lukestorey.com/tim. And then you can visit purposemountain.com to sign up for a Vision Quest or discover your purpose mentoring.

[02:34:38] Before we get out of here, just give us a little-- you've spoke to some of your programs, but maybe give us a little bit of a specific diagram of what you offer and who it might serve and so on. What are the programs? Now they have the website, what are the menu of options, and what might be appropriate for different people for where they are in life?

[02:35:02] Tim: You bet. And I should also mention, we also have the Wilderness School, and there's a separate website for that.

[02:35:09] Luke: Oh, okay. Cool.

[02:35:10] Tim: That's Twin Eagles Wilderness School.

[02:35:11] Luke: I feel like I need to do all this stuff.

[02:35:14] Tim: That one is just twineagles.org.

[02:35:18] Luke: And this is the one that's local, that has ongoing programs?

[02:35:21] Tim: Ongoing programs

[02:35:21] Luke: Okay. Got it.

[02:35:22] Tim: People fly out all the time for that. But yeah, in terms of what we're mostly talking about here today, Luke, I offer the in-person, 10-day Wilderness Vision Quest. You don't have to have any outdoor skills. If you've never gone camping and never been outside the city, it's all good.

[02:35:43] On the other hand, if you're a seasoned outdoors person with tons of experience and competency in that realm, that's welcome as well. And I get folks with all levels of experience.

[02:35:55] And then, yeah, with my one-on-one work, I have a nature-based purpose discovery, one-on-one mentoring package, where I work one-on-one with folks. It gets to be really customized. That's all from home, so we can do it on the phone or Zoom or whatever. And both those journeys are quite similar.

[02:36:19] They're both heavy on preparation and looking within, unearthing blocks and fear and resistance and doubt and trauma to uncover that brilliant light or vision within that's calling a person forward into their future and what they're really here to bring, what their unique gifts are, everything we've been speaking about.

[02:36:47] But they're different structures. One is like, hey, 10 days, Idaho wilderness. I want to elbow it out and be with a small group. And I run those. I have a co-facilitator, amazing woman who facilitates with me. And then we usually have an assistant or two. And then the one-on-one work, yeah, it's done from home.

[02:37:07] It also involves a solo quest. Not as long because I'm not there in person. People combine them. You can do both and combine them. But I think my work is really for people who are feeling that call to exactly what we've been talking about.

[02:37:28] People maybe who feel trapped in a life that's not their own. Just like, we can be separated from our home and feel alienated from our home, we can be separated and feel alienated from our soul. And the Vision Quest and all of this purpose discovery work is really geared towards helping a person come home ultimately to themself and to their world, to the earth.

[02:37:55] So yeah, it's wonderful work, and I love doing it. And on the other hand, if people are interested in the more practical skills, fire making and shelters and all of that, and the journey of mentoring-- that's another piece we put a lot of focus on, is training people to be mentors.

[02:38:17] So whether that's a coach or a facilitator and instructor of some kind, teacher, anywhere where you're helping other people, having a nature-based approach to that is usually a pretty big gap that can be filled. So if you're interested in that side of things, the Wild Twin Eagles Wilderness School is a great way to go. And we've got a variety of different programs on that side of things as well. I should also mention, I have very popular father-son wilderness programs.

[02:38:47] Luke: I was going to ask you about that.

[02:38:48] Tim: I take dads out with their boys and we do a big, five-day thing. And oh my God, they're so fun. And we get the emotional vulnerability going. We get the earth-nature vulnerability, and then the bond. We get that going.

[02:39:03] Luke: Dude, talk about--

[02:39:04] Tim: Super powerful, super impactful.

[02:39:05] Luke: Talk about the unbroken chain. You look at the world, dude, I just see a lot of people that didn't have a solid dad around.

[02:39:16] Tim: Oh my gosh. Huge, huge. One of the core wounds of our times and of our culture. Yeah.

[02:39:22] Luke: And also just the repercussions of the negative aspects of patriarchal society, of just toxic, wounded masculinity. Then the entire masculine spectrum being demonized. I don't watch normal TV often, but every once in a while, I'll catch something that's like every male figure or father figure is painted as an idiot. You know what I mean?

[02:39:56] It's just like there's a war on men, a war on masculinity. And for the feminists listening, listen, I understand. It goes after both sides. But I think that there's so much to be said for present, embodied fathers, bringing-- it's like if we want to see the change in the world-- it's not only boys, of course, but being a man, that's just where I lean into. But despite the faults that my dad had and all the healing that was required for him, so many of his positive qualities were instilled in me by just who he was.

[02:40:36] Tim: Exactly. Yeah. Modeling.

[02:40:37] Luke: He didn't tell me stuff. Just sitting there being maybe one year to 10 years old in that window and just go, "Oh, that's what a hard worker looks like." I didn't know that I was learning that. People always tell me, "Man, Luke, you're such a hard worker, and you're so dedicated and responsible." I'm like, "I am?" I don't know that.

[02:40:55] Tim: This is just normal life.

[02:40:57] Luke: Yeah, that's just what you do. And why that's one of the things I do, a positive quality, is just from my dad modeling that and just being the way he was. There were so many positive attributes that he had even before he'd really worked his stuff out. And then once he started working on himself, healing and dealing with his stuff, then it's like, wow, I learned so much more from him.

[02:41:21] And any of the good parts of me that make a contribution to the world, I owe to him and my mom on the other side too, of just the gifts I received from her and emotional intelligence and sensitivity and creativity. And the things that my dad lacked, my mom had. But it's taken a lot of decades to be able to see the value in both sides of that polarity.

[02:41:48] So I'm really stoked that you do that kind of work with boys and dads man. It's just important. As I was telling you earlier, I had a lot of opportunities to have those experiences with my dad when I was a kid, and culturally, I was too out of sync with him.

[02:42:04] And now I think back like, oh my God. It's like I had so many opportunities to learn how to hunt and fish, and I hated that stuff when I was a kid. And poor guy, he is taking me on these amazing experiences and adventures.

[02:42:18] Tim: Sharing his love with you.

[02:42:19] Luke: And I'm just crying and whining, and I just want to ride my skateboard and smoke weed and listen to Black Sabbath. And he is like, "Look at this herd of elk." And I'm like, "Don't care." So yeah, it's beautiful. So cool. I highly encourage any dads listening, man. That sounds like a really beautiful experience.

[02:42:38] Tim: Cool. Thanks, man.

[02:42:39] Luke: Okay, last question for you.

[02:42:41] Tim: Okay.

[02:42:42] Luke: Who have been three teachers or teachings in general in your life that have informed who you are today?

[02:42:50] Tim: Three teachers and or teachings?

[02:42:52] Luke: Yeah, it could be a general philosophy. It could be a person, a book, a principle.

[02:42:58] Tim: I've mentioned some already. Another one I'll say is-- this was not a direct teacher, but the famous Lakota, holy man, Black Elk. There's a book called Black Elk Speaks, written by John Neihardt. I read that, I think I was on my way to the Navajo Indian Reservation, 22 years old.

[02:43:27] I think I was stuck at a truck stop. For some reason, my truck had broke down in Holbrook, Arizona. I was there for a day or two, and that's all I had, was that book. I had almost no money. And I read that book, and oh my God. That was some of the early seeds that were planted for me on vision.

[02:43:47] He relays a big part of his vision in there and how it played out. And a lot of cultural teachings that frankly I'm still unpacking. A lot of those early mentors, good mentors, they have a way of staying with you even long after they're gone. That was one for sure, and that's a good book for people to check out.

[02:44:19] Yeah, I would definitely revisit my first teacher. His full name was Verne Foley, a funny name. But he was that history teacher in college and part Lakota, and just his open heart, his capacity to care, his connection that he embodied-- and he was older. God, he was probably in his 60s or 70s when I met him.

[02:44:47] And he's since passed. It's funny because I've had some amazing mentors. But he was more of a subtle one. But I still find myself admiring him, looking up to what he did, and working to be the man for others who he was for me. What am I saying here?

[02:45:11] Just the value of-- sometimes we don't have to be on a big giant platform or a stage or podcast or whatever it is to have an impact. And I think in our world today, I see a lot of people, including myself sometimes, thinking that it has to be that way to have an impact. But sometimes the greatest impact is just one human being at a time. And that's enough.

[02:45:41] Luke: So true.

[02:45:42] Tim: Yeah, that's a big one.

[02:45:44] Luke: Just real quick, that reminds me of a realization I've had at various times where I'll be, I don't know, out traveling out in the world, and I'll come into contact with someone who has a certain essence, a certain light in their eyes. It's just what we would perceive to be just your average person.

[02:46:05] Cab driver. I used to have a housekeeper in LA who had this quality. I think I've met enlightened masters in the world that don't even know they're enlightened and don't have a platform. They're just being themselves. But you feel good around them. They inform you through a subtle energy or a vibe, where it's just like they know who they are.

[02:46:31] They're comfortable in their own skin. They have some level of awareness or presence that really moves you. And it might be a brief interaction that just could change the trajectory of your life. Those are the coolest teachers to me. It sounds like your teacher. He's not trying to, oh, I'm going to have a big impact on this kid.

[02:46:50] He is just doing what he does. And all these years later, you cite that as someone who had such a big impact. So it speaks to how much power each of us actually have, whether we know it or not. We might be that mystery enlightened master to someone.

[02:47:08] Tim: Yeah, yeah.

[02:47:08] Luke: Yeah, it's cool.

[02:47:09] Tim: And what happens when we all actually embrace that? What happens to our culture? What happens to our world?

[02:47:14] Luke: Yeah.

[02:47:15] Tim: Last one is not a human. So a little out of the box, but the earth herself. Without a doubt, my greatest teacher and the simple opportunity that we all have all the time, going outside, bringing ourself, bringing our process, our grief, our hopes, our dreams, all of it to the earth.

[02:47:44] And having a space where that can be held safely and transformation's possible. It's right there outside our doors. And as we said, if we can open our mindset up and our heart set up that, yes, we live in an animate world. Yes, a hawk or a deer or Buttons can speak to me, and I can speak to it.

[02:48:08] It's amazing what happens out there. I always tell people, bring your process and speak it out loud, out in nature. What? Really? People are going to think I'm crazy. I know, I know, I know. Trust me, I [Inaudible] used to that a million times. But when you actually go and you believe, and you suspend disbelief, and maybe the earth really can guide me, try it actually with a good heart. See what happens.

[02:48:33] Luke: That's beautiful. I'm not certain, because I don't remember all 650 episodes, but you might be the first one that said the earth.

[02:48:41] Tim: Oh, really? Okay.

[02:48:42] Luke: Yeah. It's the first one I can remember, and it made me think of something that's like, we think of the natural world as-- many of us at least, unless we look deeper. It's like the earth is this lifeless template of like rocks and dirt and water. And then we think, there's trees and flora and fauna.

[02:49:05] There's living things on top of the earth. For some reason, it's such a stretch for some of us to think of the earth itself as a living being. And obviously humans throughout history have held that perspective, especially those that have lived closer to the earth.

[02:49:24] But that's something that I forget all the time. I think, oh, there's a beautiful redwood tree. Like, oh, I can feel its energy. Well, what about like all the life in the soil beneath it? What's happening under those roots?

[02:49:35] Tim: The dirt.

[02:49:36] Luke: Yeah. It's like everything is alive.

[02:49:39] Tim: Yeah, yeah.

[02:49:39] Luke: Which it's a much more interesting perspective to carry into the world, especially from, like how you just framed it, as asking for support and giving the earth what it is inviting from us. It's a beautiful reminder. There's one last thing I wanted to ask you. Famous last words. I think I'm done with my clever little last question, and then I think of something else I forgot to ask.

[02:50:08] When you speak to some of your offerings as a way to find one's purpose, how often do you find that someone in their various stages of life changes purpose? And I say that because I've felt like in the last 10 years or so, I've really found my purpose in terms of what I do in the world doing this.

[02:50:32] And lately I've been feeling like, yeah, that's nice. But as I continue to evolve, I feel like, hmm, I'm growing into something else, and I don't know what that is yet. So how often does that happen where someone has a very aligned, purposeful life, and then maybe hasn't realized that they've had some fundamental changes to their character or interest or values that are leading them into a different or even greater purpose?

[02:50:57] Tim: Mm. Another great question, and I could probably go another three hours on that one alone.

[02:51:02] Luke: I bet. I bet.

[02:51:03] Tim: But I'm keeping it brief.

[02:51:05] Luke: My apologies for dropping a big bomb at the very end.

[02:51:07] Tim: No, no, no. No problem. And it begs some deeper questions like, what is purpose actually, and how are we defining purpose? That's a big one. Does purpose change or does my relationship to it change and understanding of it change? I look at purpose as more than what I'm doing. I look at it also as who I'm being. So there's action, and for us guys, we tend to focus on the doing. I get it. I've spent most of my life doing.

[02:51:43] Luke: That's what I think of when you say purpose. I'm like, "What's my job? What do I do for work?

[02:51:48] Tim: Right, exactly. And that's part of it. But I believe a good purpose stems from a being state, my values as a human being, or even deeper, my essence. We call it a Vision Quest. There's a vision, an image, a picture at the core of my being, at my essence.

[02:52:14] And even that's just a metaphor. It's not quite literal. But it's like my work then is to align myself with my essence, with my soul, with my purpose. And so that counts for when I'm mentoring people in wilderness survival and finding their vision.

[02:52:35] But it also counts when I'm doing the dishes with my wife or all the mundane things. So my belief is that there's a core purpose where each born with that does not change. But that's so deep. It's like our essence itself. And then our understanding and relationship to that changes over time.

[02:53:03] And so practically speaking, we might have big chapters. I had 15 years of running Twin Eagles, who's just the wilderness school, super fulfilled. And then I had a huge existential crisis eight years ago where I stopped getting spiritual fulfillment from running the Wilderness School.

[02:53:21] And that's what two years later gave birth to Purpose Mountain. And me taking others on the purpose journey in a much more direct way. But that was huge, dude. It was massive. And now I've been doing that for eight years, and I feel comfortable in it. And I'm like, "Okay, is this going to last forever? Is there going to be another one?”

[02:53:39] So the expression of it does change. And the big thing to look for in terms of indicators is just-- yeah, I think it's simple. It's just do you really feel fulfilled, and are you having positive impact on others and this earth. If you're fulfilled and you're having that impact, and as you said, your passion and your gifts and all of that is aligned, that's good enough for me.

[02:54:11] But when those pieces start to fall apart or start to fall away, maybe you're not having the impact you once had, or you're not feeling that fulfillment, or the passion's not there. The short of it is that that's your soul evolving. That's you growing. That's the calling. Hey, there's something else.

[02:54:33] We're not meant to be static and just do the same thing over and over and over. We're meant to grow. We all know that. And so, yeah, there's an opportunity there. I've worked with lots of people. I've worked with like 18-year-olds that are just opening up to it for the first time.

[02:54:48] I worked with a ton of middle-aged folks that the midlife crisis, midlife opportunity, classic. I've got a freaking client right now who's 75 who's just diagnosed with cancer, and he is like, "I've got a handful of years left." And he doesn't feel like he's lived his purpose his whole life. He wants these final years to be aligned.

[02:55:09] And I'm like, "Damn, that's inspiring." I was like, "Holy shit." I don't know if I would have the courage to do that if I were in his shoes. That's so inspiring. I'm just like, "Oh my God, I hope I can say that when I'm 75. “So yeah, I don't know, those are a few thoughts.

[02:55:25] Luke: I love that, man. It's beautiful. I never thought about it in that way. It's like you have your core purpose, but then it manifests in different ways in terms of how you express who you are and what you are.

[02:55:40] Tim: And by the way, the whole point, I could say, of like a Vision Quest or Purpose Discovery is a heartfelt or soul felt experience of connection with that essence. The point of it is not like, okay, Luke. You're supposed to start a podcast called The Life Stylist and marry this woman called Alyson.

[02:56:02] Those things may be true, but the biggest guidance doesn't come with those downloads in that way or specific direction, although that can happen. But the biggest impact is one having a felt experience that's typically mystical and difficult to put a finger on or even describe of connection with the deepest part of who they are.

[02:56:26] And then it's like an energetic blueprint or bookmark, and you know how that feels. And then when you go do something like start a podcast or whatever it is you're doing, you get that same feeling, and you're like, "Okay, yeah, this is aligned. I know it." Can't quite prove it, can't quite put a finger on it, but I know.

[02:56:46] And then the work is less about rigidly following a certain structure or direction, but more about staying in alignment with that felt sense of feeling, if you will.

[02:56:57] Luke: Beautiful. Love it, man. Thank you.

[02:57:00] Tim: Yeah.