00:00:00:02

Luke

True science, you know, true scientific inquiry, investigation, experimentation. Is really just an exploration of spirituality. This is like from the quantum level to the gross level of matter. All of that is consciousness expressing itself and consciousness could be synonymous with the spiritual realm, like there's nothing here, that's not the spiritual realm, so to investigate the world of form through the scientific method is actually just. Investigating one spectrum or one expression of consciousness.

00:00:54:21

Ronan

Hello everyone and welcome to Field Tripping. Today we have fellow podcaster with us, Luke Storey. We chat about good and evil, addiction and sobriety, self-love and more. Before we get started, here's your reminder to subscribe to field tripping updates so you never miss an episode. Towards the end of the episode, we'll go into "How To" segment where listeners can call in and ask a question for me to answer. If you have a question about mental health, psychedelics or anything we've chatted about, drop us a note at FieldTripping@KastMedia.com or leave a voice recording at speakpipe.com/fieldtripping. And as always, if you love the show, leave us your thoughts in a review on Apple Podcasts. It's much appreciated and helps us reach new people to help educate them on psychedelics. Your thoughts help us a lot. 

Now it's time for some news to trip over. While ketamine is a remarkable antidepressant. It is also an effective anesthetic that is commonly used for surgeries. But what if a patient with depressive symptoms undergoes surgery during which ketamine is used? A recent systematic review of such cases suggests that there's an antidepressant effect up to three days after the procedure. Patients in these instances were anesthetized. So in theory, they didn't have any conscious drug induced experiences. Still, they tended to experience benefits, implying that there is an antidepressant effect from ketamine that is not dependent on the drug experience itself. While these short term antidepressant properties may not rely on a conscious experience or psychotherapy. It's likely that the enduring effects of ketamine are maximized when ketamine administration follows the psychedelic assisted psychotherapy model. Speaking of ketamine assisted therapy, a recent study completed by the company, Awaken, found that ketamine is an effective treatment for alcohol use disorder. The study's findings show that ketamine, when combined with therapy, resulted in total abstinence in 162 of 180 days in the following six month period. Achieving an increase in abstinence from around 2% prior to the trial to 86% post-trial. The results for relapse at six months showed that the Ketamine + therapy group's risk of relapse was 2.7x less than the placebo plus alcohol education group. Finally, a big announcement out of Field Trip this week. We received a notice of allowance for our patent for FT104, our novel molecule in development. This is a big milestone for us because it confirms that FT104 is novel and has utility, at least in the U.S. Patent Office's eyes. And unlike organizations that are pursuing trials for psilocybin and MDMA. This will give Field Trip a right to commercialize FT104 without competition for a longer period of time, probably in the range of 14 years by the time we get approvals to market it. There's been a lot of discussion around IP in the psychedelic sector, and while we recognize that some of the concerns are legitimate, we feel confident that what we've invented with FT104 is truly novel and meaningful, and we're incredibly excited to keep moving forward with it. 

Now onto today's conversation. I'm here with Luke Storey. He is a writer, teacher of meditation, metaphysics and biohacking, lifestyle design expert, founder of the School of Style and host of the popular Life Stylist podcast. Luke has spent the past two decades refining the ultimate wellness lifestyle, and his personal experiences with addiction and recovery, as well as health and wellness, have led his path down to sharing his wisdom through media and mentorship. His teachings combine primal health and ancient spiritual practices with the most cutting edge natural healing and consciousness expanding technologies. Luke, thank you for joining us today and welcome to Field Tripping.

00:04:47:00

Ronan

So to begin, Luke, this is probably long departed from your memory, but you were actually the first ever guest we booked to be on this podcast, Field Tripping. It was back in March of 2020 after Ben Greenfield was kind enough to make an introduction. But like a day or two before we were supposed to record, I chickened out because I had no idea what the fuck I was going to talk about on a podcast, and I canceled last minute. So to start, please accept my apologies for the chicken shittery, a term I just coined while preparing for this podcast...

00:05:17:23

Luke

I like that!

00:05:18:02

Ronan

...for the last go around. And second with my first question for you; you know, you've gone through a lot and it seems that your life has gone through a lot of evolutions. What gave you the courage, speaking of courage, to strike out on your own and build the business and lifestyle that you've built to this point?

00:05:35:14

Luke

Well, I think it's just...That I spent a long time in a career which was working as a celebrity fashion stylist in Hollywood. That's totally random and a completely...really long and probably not an interesting story, but I dress celebrities for a living essentially, and the entire time I was doing that, it was about 17 years in my free time. And even longer than that, I was pursuing spirituality, consciousness and all things physical health, which has since been coined "biohacking." But it used to just be you were a health nut, you know? But I had a lot of profound struggles with addictions as a kid and into my twenties. And when I was 26, I was fortunate enough to be struck sober. And part of that was just getting into detoxing the body and fortifying the body and going to India to learn meditation and doing all the things right, all the yoga and every spiritual book and self-help book that I could digest and sitting at the feet of teachers and just absorbing information so that I could transform myself. Meanwhile, kind of having this double life where during the day I'm running around trying to find the perfect pump for some actress in Beverly Hills. You know. And it was a fun career. I mean, I always kind of put it down because it wasn't ultimately my purpose, and it was just something I fell into as a broke musician and I was kind of living that double life. And so in all of my downtime, I was doing breath work and kundalini yoga and ice baths and all of this stuff, and then wake up in the morning and play the Hollywood game about which I was not passionate. And then I formed a business in 2008 called "School of Style." That's still a business to this day, all these years later, where I would teach people how to do what I did for a living. So it's a school to teach you how to become a fashion stylist, essentially. And it was a great business, and I found that I was really passionate in the teaching and lecturing part and just putting together the courses. For the first ten years, we did live classes all over the country and then in 2018 or so we went online. So I had some familiarity with content marketing, content provision, events and got quite skilled at public speaking and doing that. And in addition (at least so I think, people pay me to do it so there must be at least a few other people that think I'm OK at it) self-proclaimed expert speaker. But I was also part of a twelve step group for, you know, a couple of decades and did a lot of public speaking there. And I think that I really kind of... grew my my skill for speaking to the students in a way that I could convey information and then in my addiction recovery program became, I don't know if skilled is the right word, but I learned there how to speak from the heart and to really convey authentic, vulnerable truth.

And so I'm working as a fashion stylist, just kind of doing it for the money, frankly, because I had no other skills that were viable. And it was fun and creative and sometimes exciting, and there were things about it that I liked. But it just got to the point where I didn't want to do either of those things anymore, run that school, because I'm teaching. I'm passionate about teaching, but I'm not passionate that point about what I'm teaching, right? And so probably due to my lack of self-esteem at the time, I didn't really... I'm just on the journey learning about myself and exploring consciousness and evolving spiritually, right? That's my number one mission in life and still is. And because I'm always kind of looking at the next thing to work on. It took me a while to realize that by that time, by the time I started my podcast and doing speaking and things like that in 2016, I was a bit slow to realize that I had actually accumulated some wisdom in those years. And people started sharing with me as I would go to see these speakers at conferences and listen to podcasts. People started to say, "Why don't you do that?" And I'm like, "Oh no, a little old me, I couldn't do that, you know?" "Well, you know, you have a lot to offer," and I thought, "Do I?" And so once I became convinced that I had enough to offer to perhaps create a platform out of, you know, what I was... the things that I had learned and integrated, and also kind of an ongoing sort of immersive journalism approach to my path, I just kind of threw caution to the wind and luckily had that business that helped fund the launch of the brand that is me now. But I, in one fell swoop, just quit my styling career, started a podcast and and from that podcast, all sorts of other opportunities availed themselves, especially in the public speaking and holding workshops and things like that. And it was not easy. Now it's easy because I'm so on mission and I am just so aligned with my purpose that making a career, making a living out of it is really secondary to what I do, you know? 

The more I focus on just serving and helping people and improving myself in all the ways. It seems to pay the bills, but I was fortunate where I had a... So I took like my personal expense budget from that business and use that to pay my podcast producers and things like that for the first year. So I paid to produce my own content and disseminate it in the world for quite a while before I started to actually be able to monetize what I'm doing, so to speak. But like you when you went to launch your podcast, it was really scary. Especially...interviews were easy for me because I just love learning and I maybe have decent people skills. But what the roadblock for me was the first episode. Because that...I don't know. Is that somewhat traditional where if you're a host, that your first episode is where you kind of tell your story, right? And so I remember writing out this kind of a manuscript and just bullet point in some of the touch points in my life and things that might help give people an understanding of who I am and what I'm all about. And that was terrifying because I was faced with the prospect of having to decide how vulnerable and revelatory and personal I wanted to be, and with my past and addiction and things like that, which I talk so freely about now, that was, for me, kept very private. I didn't run around music video sets being like, "Hey, I'm a recovering heroin addict", you know what I mean? It's just that I was even sober or anything like that, and that was such a huge part of my story. I was really the impetus for my whole journey was the suffering around that particular era, which was much longer than it should been

00:12:44:13

Luke

And then I said, You know what, I'm just going to, I'm just going to go all out and just be who I am. And maybe a few people will be helped along the way that relate to the struggles that I've overcome and and even the ones that I'm still working on, you know? So that was kind of how it started, and I guess it happened in perfect time, but I do look back and go, "Wow, it's so crazy that I did something for a living for so long that I had to really work so hard to muster up a passion for and an interest in." Whereas now it's like my passion for what I'm doing is just boundless, and it's more about actually containing it to keep myself focused, so that I have some sort of a plan, you know, about what I'm doing because I just... I'm like shiny things syndrome. There's so many exciting things in the world and especially in the realm of psychedelics and plant medicines. I mean, it's just I feel like we're in such a renaissance as a species, and I'm just on the wave of that. So it's like now more reeling myself in then feeling any sort of contraction in terms of how much I want to put myself out there, it's like I need to put myself out there less, I'm sitting here at my desk more often, you know, working on the nuts and bolts of the whole thing, you know?

00:13:58:00

Ronan

Yeah, there's a beautiful synchronicity that exists in this, which is you were supposed to be the first podcast guest on the show and then I chickened out. And now you're actually the last podcast guest on this season. And then probably this formulation of the show and your story times perfectly with some of the struggles that I'm dealing with right now. You know, throughout the podcast and just life in general about, like, what is my value? What is my wisdom? You know, where do I get my self-esteem from? And so it's kind of really nice that this loop kind of closes with you as the guest. So, so thank you for being here and thank you for sharing that. I was struck, a pun not intended, but it's appropriate, that you said you were struck sober when you were 26. Why that choice of words?

00:14:48:05

Luke

Well, I think... I frame it that way because... I think that I had very little to do with it. I think the part that I played in it was... having sort of a buried, buried, buried, a buried seed within me of buried potential. And I saw at the very end of that period in my twenties that there was just this ever so slight chance that I could make something of my life that would hold more value and meaning. Which actually, interestingly enough, came to me in a totally unconscious, unintentional unplanned mushroom ceremony a few months before I checked myself into rehab. And on that note, I'll digress for a second. I had blocked out that memory or not identified the correlation there, or perhaps even causation to some degree of that medicine experience until I was probably 22 years sober and had then gone and done ayahuasca. And I remember at some point thinking back on like...you know, why didn't I ever have any awakenings when I was using psychedelics as a teenager and in my twenties, which was a really bad idea, but I was trying to escape from the pain of being me. By using psychedelics, I thought, I wonder why I've never had like a spiritual awakening. Right? Because so many people have that transpire. And then I was taken back to that night and I realized that I had sort of a mini little nervous breakdown in this mushroom journey, which was also accompanied by all sorts of other drugs and stuff. This is very murky waters that evening, but that was the night when I realized to myself that it was going to be time very soon to get sober and that I just couldn't live the way I was living anymore. So the seed was, Wow, I should really be sober. I have no idea how to do that, and it's a terrifying prospect and one that I had much aversion to. But that was my first contribution to it and then perhaps some applied courage to actually be willing to sequester myself away in a treatment center and go through the steps necessary and the bravery to know that if I were to do that, that there was going to be at least one day I was going to wake up without my anesthesia and then I think the rest is mostly a gift, and that's why I framed it that way of being struck sober. 

I was gifted this depth of surrender that enabled me, as...I wouldn't say, I was an atheist, but agnostic at best. And I started praying the first day in rehab. I mean, that's all I was given. That's the only tool I was given. I wasn't given any medication to wean off all the stuff that I was on. I tried to get it and they said no. And they recommended that a course of action will be to go back to my room and get on my hands and knees and pray. And I thought, could we maybe get some Dilaudid instead? Like...Pray? But that's what I did. And from that moment until this moment today, it's...God in a few short weeks it'll be 25 years since I've used any addictive, mind altering substances. And I'll add the asterisk they're addictive or, you know, patterned substances I might say. We can get into that, but I really was struck sober. There was a gift that had been bestowed upon me where the prayer that I had so, so humbly and earnestly submitted before this ambiguous higher power that I was seeking to build a relationship with, or at least to be granted some reprieve from my suffering, even though I didn't believe in that God that I prayed to it still extended it's omniscient, benevolent power and love in and on my life, and from that moment until now, I've never, ever had the thought or craving to use drugs or alcohol. I've been addicted to a lot of other stuff.

And had and applied the same formula to that like, OK, I give up, I've had enough. The white flag of surrender God, please take this from my life or show me how to do it, give me the power to do it. I'm willing to do my part, and I think that's the thing with addiction. Why so many people have such a terrible time escaping from it is, is it...it does require so much humility and so much willingness, all these principles of the twelve steps really, in order for the barriers and armor of the ego and the intellect to be... to subside enough to allow the grace of God in. And that was the thing that I guess I did. But even that, you know, if I'm honest, that sense of humility and that willingness to seek the help of a higher power, even that is a gift, really. Even that was given to me. There's a lot of people I've known over these years that never got even that gift, let alone the gift of having those just non stop cravings and obsessions of addiction be removed.

00:20:42:15

Luke

You know, it's just they can't even get to the point where they go, OK? I don't know how to run my life. Maybe there's something out there that can help me. You know, because the pride and the close mindedness and the arrogance of most alcoholics and addicts is insurmountable. You just, you can't get past the armor of like, it's everyone else's fault. I don't have a problem. Even if I do have a problem, it's my problem. Don't tell me what to do. I'm going to fix this myself or I'm not going to fix it because I'm fine and everyone else just needs to leave me alone. You know, this total deflection of responsibility and self honesty and the powers of self-deception that most addicts have, it's really a phenomenon. It's insane. And for anyone that's never struggle with addiction or known someone, you could watch the show Intervention, ya know, I don't know if it's on anymore. I used to love watching that show because I'd watch it just be like, "Oh, thank God, thank God I had the grace that I was given to get out of that. But you can watch a show like that and just go... It's so obvious to the viewer that everything in that person's life that's causing them and the people around them pain is completely of their own doing, you know? So just to get to that point where you say, you know what, I did this to myself, A and B I'm in it of myself alone, using all the willpower I can muster, can't beat this and C that I'm willing to consider, not believe, but just to consider to just crack the door open that there could be some sort of creative force in this universe that might hear me if I ask for help and might guide my thoughts, feelings and behaviors to create a life that is free of addiction. So that to me, it was something that just happened to me, I was just I allowed myself to be in the right place at the right time and create the circumstances around my thought processes that would facilitate that Grace, to enter into my life, and it did, and so for the past 25 years, I've been asking the question, Who was that? Who is that? Where are you? Can I have more of you? Can there be less of me to allow more of you in? Call it God. Call it what you may. And applying really that same formula to any problem I have in my life of. Just like...OK. I'm willing to do my part and exert whatever willingness and effort that I need to, and ultimately know that the results of those efforts are up to this greater intelligence that has so brilliantly designed this human experience of duality. And so it's just like how much deeper can my surrender go? And out of that surrender, what am I going to be guided to do with my time and energy?

00:23:53:16

Ronan

Thank you for sharing. A couple of questions kind of come out of that. The first one is... we'll start with maybe easier one to answer. Maybe not. What was the answer to that question of who is this? Who are you? And I'm sure it's an ongoing conversation, but where are you in the conversation of who was that that had that divine inspiration in you?

00:24:21:10 

Luke

You know, it's interesting to think, of course, it's impossible to define or explain. And that's what makes it fun, right? Because you cannot...you can never pigeonhole this thing we call the creator, right? It's just like, I think what's happened for me is... The frequency bandwidth of that energetic beam has just gotten wider and wider over time, where it's not so much like who is that or what is that? It's more like what is not that? And there's nothing left. Other than that. So I think in the beginning, it was like not that I had a deity to pray to or something like that, but it was like there was a separation between me and that God that I was seeking communion with. And so there was a me over here and a god over there, and there was all this stuff blocking us from having an experience or a relationship. And so I sought to remove all of those blocks so that I could get closer to that one thing, and that's evolved into the awareness that it's all one thing. You know, the thing is everything, the black hair, everything. I am everything. We're all everything. And there's nothing that is not by design. And so then it's about building the awareness. Around when I start to believe in the separation again, which is essentially when I fall back into the density of duality and start seeing myself and God as separate or another person from myself as separate or my environment, nature as separate. And that sense of false autonomy and isolation between myself and consciousness. Like a consciousness is over there, I got to go get some rather than just, wow, what if I really just embody the consciousness that I am? And then there's no longer such a hide and seek game with finding God because it's not finding something. It's just actually acknowledging what is here. There's no... there's not like a spiritual path, I don't have to be a spiritual seeker, I just have to be a spiritual acknowledger.

00:26:53:23

Ronan

Right.

00:26:55:17 - 00:27:16:10

Luke

Of just letting go of pretense and all of the things that make the 3D material world seem so real of just allowing that to be as it is and just sitting in the knowingness that there's nothing that's not God, including myself and on a good day, there's moments of that. And I would say over time, there's longer durations of that and shorter durations of believing the simulation that it's all separate and that it's all compartmentalized and that God's in this, but God's not in that and that, you know, I have to go chase this thing called God so that I have some sense of ease in my life. Hmm. And it's... Dude, it's crazy because it's the formula is so simple, but it's like. The patterns that we build to be able to cope with our reality, using our senses and being in a body as souls. The patterns are so ingrained, the patterns of separation and and even add to that the kind of the psychological constructs that we've built around religion or around spirituality around me and a God and all these sorts of things, it is dense and it takes increasing levels of surrender. And I think also study, that's something that's been really big for me is just going to so many lectures and just hammering my intellect with truth and knowledge and podcasts and audio programs and books. And just, I mean, I'm still this way. I was listening to Alan Watts podcast this morning. It's like. And every time I listen, I'm like, Oh, yeah, I forgot about that thing or I didn't know about that thing, right? It's like the same things being said over and over again, but there's so much programming and maybe even... Maybe even inherited programing of just the human condition through my lineage and just to limit the lineage of all humanity, there's so much of that to kind of weed through to just get to the ultimate truth, which at this point to me presents itself as there's only one thing and that thing is consciousness and my life and my sense of well-being, success and happiness is 100% dependent on at what stage or level of consciousness I'm able to exist. And the higher that consciousness can be. Meaning just closer to love of love. Meaning capital L, not romantic love, but just unconditional love of being alive and love of the experience that I'm having. The closer I can get to that. The more ease I find I'm able to experience on a day to day, moment by moment basis, you know. But that density is always there waiting, you know, you just step out into traffic and it's like, I'm a person again. So it's kind of like the game for me is kind of walking between both worlds and and acknowledging that if I was meant to be a celestial angelic being at this point right here today, I would likely not be in body anymore, and I would be some sort of inter-dimensional guardian angel of sorts, or who knows what right?

00:30:25:18 

Luke

The fact that I'm still in a body tells me that part of the game is being here and doing the earthly thing and playing the role of Luke Storey. And as long as I don't fall too far in either one of those worlds, I seem to be able to function and also have a continued experience of my version of sobriety, you know, which is not being in any kind of active addiction or taking any kind of substances that would dull my consciousness or awareness of spirit.

00:30:57:08

Ronan

There's so much in there. I guess I'm going to start with saying, you know, my wife, Stephanie, is kind of going through the same thing and she's kind of landed on, I think starting with the pandemic has really forced her to confront a lot of things and she's kind of landed in that that zone and that belief of, you know, we're all part of this universe consciousness for all part of love. And to me, it sounds amazing, you know, it sounds really lovely, but then I get into that, you know, disbelief of like, if that's true, why, why is it so fucking complex? Like, why is it so hard to navigate between the two? It just like runs up against my intellect and then so I try to lean in and then my ego comes in and says, this is stupid, and it just makes no sense. How have you kind of suspended your disbelief? Because at some point along the way you had that disbelief. And I think the vast majority of people do, although I do think that is starting to shift, and that's a really great thing.

00:32:01:19 - 00:32:35:00

Luke

Well, I think one of the huge blocks to self-realization and to having an experience of God is the very difficult reconciliation of why evil persists. And so we think, well, if there truly is this benevolent creator. Why would this creator create social strife and suffering and wars and torture and rape and pedophilia? And God knows what? Right? And that is a huge stumbling block until, at least for me, subjectively, this has been my ongoing experience until I expand into the possibility, again, that it's not that these fluffy unicorns and rainbows over here are God and that famine in this other country is not God. So I need to stay with God, so I don't have to experience those things that I categorize is not God. Rather than that. What if I let go of the idea that the world needs to be changed at all? What if this world is created with such perfection that it allows me such a broad spectrum of experience and such a boundless playing field of learning and evolving opportunities so I can come into this world, I can be born in a ghetto or born into an abusive, dysfunctional family lineage. I can be at the lowest level of consciousness where I rob, steal, I'm violent. And via my own spiritual will, because of the vastness of contrast that's available to me in duality, I can in one lifetime go from that to being a saint. If we didn't have the contrast and the polarized side of duality that we view as evil didn't exist, there would literally be no reason to be here. If you subscribe to the idea that what this thing is about is going to the material plane to an incredible school that's full of infinite lessons and possibilities. So it's like, if the world was completely free of all things that I would perceive as evil, I would have no spectrum of consciousness in which to evolve and elevate and grow. And so if the world was meant to be that way, by this creator, then the world would be that way. And it would be an angelic realm where everything was just unbridled expansion of love. Right? But because it's not, it makes me feel a lot better to know that it's all by design. And so if it's by design, what's the purpose and the purpose to me, just logically, even intellectually, let alone like what my spirit feels and intuition feels, is that this world is exactly perfect for a soul to enter and to have such a massive opportunity for evolution because of that contrast.

00:35:50:17

Ronan

Right.

00:35:53:12

Luke

You know, I don't know if I'm like a boy whistling in the dark, and that just makes me feel good or that's the way it really is. But I find that that gives me a much higher perspective when I find that I'm getting pulled into the density of the "problems in the world," right, I can look at everything that's gone on over the past two years, which is at times terrifying and all the time shocking. You know we've allowed to transpire is just mind boggling. Yet if I if I zoom out to that perspective, that both sides of the spectrum of what I would view as good and evil are playing their roles, I mean, speaking of leaders and just policy and legislation and the medical system, education system, all these systems, financial systems of the world that they're all so perfectly cast with good guys and bad guys. I mean, it's like we literally live in Star Wars and it's just so perfectly scripted that there's actually a beauty in that. And when I see it that way. It doesn't absolve me of wanting to be one of the good guys, right? Of contributing compassion and love and service to the world as best I can, however imperfectly. I don't think, well, it's all like this on purpose, so I'm going to go out and start harming people or not stand my ground to those that I believe are right. It's like there is born out of that, a sense of integrity and a sense of duty for all things good and all things love. But I find that I'm much more effective in making that contribution when I'm not vilifying and condemning God or the players on the other side of that duality as being anything other than the way they're supposed to be. So I might think that there's a a diabolical character named Anthony Fauci and my Ego's just like God. I want to see him in prison. I want to see him hung because I believe that he's harmed a lot of human beings. I don't know. That's my perception. But that person is playing their role with such utter perfection, right? Because that person playing their role on what I would deem diabolical and evil is giving me the perspective and the opportunity to go in the polar opposite direction if I deem that is evil on that side of duality, well, what's the other side of that? If we're going to play the duality game and just pretend like I'm separate from that entity and that entity should be acting in some way other than they are, according to my rules of the world. What if I just allow them to be who they are? And I just keep elevating my consciousness and trust and hope that by doing so that whatever portion of this ocean I'm in, all ships will rise. In other words, I don't need to fight the evil or fight the darkness. I just am invited to make my life brighter and to make all the light around me brighter. And I think this is the thing that many of us don't want to assume responsibility for. Because it's much easier to vilify the other side or blame God for allowing evil to perpetuate. It's much harder to heal your relationship with your mom, to do shadow work to heal your core wound, to forgive the person that abused you, to even just put some real effort into opening your heart in your day-to-day interactions with people at the gas station and the mortgage broker you talk to on the phone. And you know the landscaper outside is making noise that you want to go hit in the head because of his leaf blower. That's my big thing. Or you know, it's like, what if I spent the energy rather than trying to change the world? What if I spend that energy just to change my consciousness and my perception of the world? And in so doing, make every effort and every minute interaction, thought, feeling, deed to contribute love. You know, and if I really want to change the world, I mean, it seems that's the best way to do it, but that way it doesn't give the ego any juice because then there's no one to fight. There's no more villains, there's no more bad guys. There's just entities and humans. Perhaps both, really? I don't know. It's another conversation. There's these energetic beings on both sides of the equation, the scale of like good and evil, right? And this creator's sort of monopoly game that's been created or chess, maybe rather. And it's like rather than trying to convert these guys over here on that side of the playing field or on the board, what if I just keep doing my thing over here and just trust that this is the greatest contribution that I can not only make for those about me, but it's truly the biggest contribution I can make for myself. Because then my perception starts to expand and I start to see, OK, I get it like, this is all a

boafo journey. I mean, this is all a game. And in one sense, it's not even real. It's real, but it's not. I mean, the material world and the melodrama of the human experience, man, the more I can lean into that, the more I can actually be here in the 3-D and pay the bills and do my work and have a body and pretend like I'm normal. But there's a bigger part of me that's kind of tethered to consciousness as a whole. And that's really in love with the whole thing, as terrifying as it might be at times. There's kind of a, you know, as I said, a 30,000 foot zoomed out view that's like, Oh, no, I don't need to change anyone. I might not even need to change myself. But perhaps rather than trying to change myself and wrestle myself into being someone or something that I'm struggling to achieve that...perhaps it's like I just need to become more awake and just higher, higher mind, higher heart, higher being, lighter body, laughter, fun. It's like, what if I could just laugh at this whole thing that some people call a pandemic? It's like not laugh at the people that have been harmed by it and things like that but I mean in terms of like my anger toward who I think is responsible or my fear around. How it or they could harm me and all of that, what if it's just like I just keep my head down and I just keep doing my work on myself and bringing along anyone who finds that path intriguing?

00:42:58:18

Ronan

I have zero interest in talking about COVID and going into the politics of it at all. But I did want to use the example of Anthony Fauci, which is again without going into the specifics of it. How do you reconcile that in his heart and in his head? And I believe that he is acting with what he believes to be the best interest of those around him. How do you reconcile that your worldview and the higher level of love and goodness... How do you reconcile it with that notion of evil, even though that in his world, in his view, I'm making an assumption about his perspectives, but I genuinely believe he's not actually intending to do harm, that he's doing the same thing and they're very different.

00:43:52:14

Luke

Absolutely. I think that. I want to figure out how definite I want to be in a statement, but I think I can stand by this for myself. I think that. In any given moment. Every human being is truly doing what they believe to be the right thing. And that could be said of Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, all of them, right? These are humans that have created and held themselves to certain ideals and their ideals, to the vast majority of people, especially the people that have succumbed to their ideals would say bad idea. But to that person, what they're doing in every moment as they wreak havoc on their society or someone that, you know, commits an act of violence or perpetrated rape or something on someone like even that person on a one to one cause and effect relationship is doing what they believe to be right at that time. And that gets really interesting, because then it's like, well, then are they absolved of guilt, then where do we find justice when a vast swath of people disagree with that person's perspective that they're doing what was right because right and wrong are subjective. You know, then it becomes perhaps is that person objectively causing harm, it's like a democratic spiritual evaluation, right? Like, could you take a Mao? And could you get enough people on the planet to say, yeah, that was the right thing to do? Right? Probably not, because you get a Hitler. Definitely not. Right. I think more people are aware of Hitler than Mao. But I mean, just to think of like, wow, what we perceived to be genocidal maniacs. So then it's like, OK, if everyone's doing what they determined to be the best course of action and their actions caused great suffering, how do we stop them? How do we not condone their behavior and that to me, goes back to the same thing. I believe this Anthony Fauci, just to take any one of the people I view as ghouls in the world who are doing much harm, whether they need to or not. It's not my job to stop them. B, it's my job just to help people and to keep doing my work. It's going back to that fighting, fighting the darkness and rather than just working on the light, and some people would see that a spiritual bypass. But within working on the light I've known in my life and my journey, there have been times where the highest expression of my true self and the highest expression of my love is to fucking stop someone in their tracks very firmly. And without negotiation, just you're going to fucking stop now what you're doing is wrong, period. And that could even I mean, it hasn't in my experience, but. Could even be a righteous anger or a righteous, almost self-defense of violence in some cases, right? So it's like, yeah, that that person is doing what they believe to be right. And in my own integrity, I believe so deeply and inherently that what they're doing is harmful to people that if I was in the position to have to stop them, I would say someone breaks in your house and they're going to kidnap one of your kids, right? Well, hey, they're just doing what they believe to be right. No, there are appropriate actions that one can take in the name of true good of actual love and perseverance or survival, right? But that again, to me, that's like going, I mean, it's so nuanced and it's like it's 1,000,000 ways to look at all of this, but I'm just hearing like how I reconcile that again with like, well, how could if there's this loving God OK? In and out of religion? That's generally the depiction, right of deities and avatars and gods. It's like, oh, no, they're just here to do good. Well, then how could they allow these maniacs to persist? And why do these maniacs even exist? Well, it goes back to that. It creates a spectrum so I can observe someone who's harming large groups of people. And I can either hate them or I can go, Wow, let's be as opposite of that as we can. You know what I mean? It gives me perspective. It gives me contrast. It gives me like, Oh yeah, if I ever get any ideas like that, I'm definitely going to not entertain them and fulfill them as actions. I'm going to keep doing my work. So it's interesting, though. I mean, it's very nuanced because I really don't think that human beings will can motivate them to take action that they don't believe is the right thing to do. Now where that falls short is they likely in those situations believe it's the right thing to do for themselves, selfishly, for their own desires and aspirations? Or they might just have a misguided ideology that says, no, this is what's right for the world. We need to purify this race or whatever kind of maniacal idea they're acting out. But I do think inherently that, you know again, not to not to condone wrongdoing, but I really believe everyone's innocent. You know, it's like everyone is literally doing the best they can, however misguided and wrong, they might be. And it doesn't mean they're innocent that there shouldn't be retribution or justice if those people need to be removed from society or need to be held accountable for their actions. But those are also spiritual laws that are built into the system. You know, justice is a spiritual principle. And you know, there are repercussions for one's actions and who enforces those and how are they done so humanely and all of that, I don't know. But it seems to me, just broadly speaking, that the checks and balances of the spiritual world are very real and they're identifiable and they are sustainable and effective. It's just, you know, again, a matter of like, well, who gets to choose, who's the one implementing these, these rules and laws, right? And in a sense, no one has to because consciousness itself does it. And we call it karma, right? You know, no hair on your head will be uncounted or something like that. I believe it says in the Bible or somewhere, right? It's like consciousness knows everything from all time. Consciousness has no beginning and no end in. There really is no now to speak of. There's no present moment. It's just one big, endless, infinite moment and everything is recorded. Every thought, every deed, every emotion. Everything that transpires in this known universe is on record because in one sense, it's actually still happening. If you take out clocks and calendars, it's all just it's all now. It's all a big now. And so. When I find myself going, Oh man, I hope they get that person and throw them in prison and send them to Guantanamo Bay. It's like, I don't even need to wish for that because the hell that the hell that and I don't mean hell like biblical hell, but just the hell that one is inviting upon themselves by knowingly inflicting harm on other people is a hell that I can't even imagine experiencing. You know, having done a fair amount of medicine work, I mean, I've had glimpses of my own shadow, which isn't even that gnarly. And it's not somewhere I would want to spend any time, you know, so. We do what we can logically to prevent people from harming other people. We do our own work and we let God sort out the rest.

00:52:17:19

Ronan

It's like that expression, kill them all, let god sort them out.

00:52:19:15

Luke

Yeah, yeah. Totally, totally.

00:52:23:05

Ronan

Do you ever find...I've got so many questions, but I don't want to spend too much time belaboring this. Do you ever find a conflict between science and your spirituality? And then how do you reconcile that?

00:52:33:02

Luke

True science, you know, true scientific inquiry. Investigation. Experimentation. Is really just an exploration of spirituality. It's like from the quantum level to the gross level of matter. All of that is consciousness expressing itself and consciousness could be synonymous with the spiritual realm, like there's nothing here, that's not the spiritual realm. So to investigate the world of form through the scientific method is actually just investigating one spectrum or one expression of consciousness. Where we get hung up, I think, is in pseudoscience or scientism and materialism, nihilism. Where one branch of what we would broadly call science is in denial of or ignorant of the fact that all form is an expression of formlessness, and then we get caught up in sort of a hamster wheel of trust the science, trust the science. That's that whole scientism thing. Or if I can't see, touch, feel here it's not real. Or furthermore, if I don't think it can be real, then it's not real. Which is the limitation of the intellect, right, but I think true scientific inquiry is, anything is possible unless it's empirically proven not to be so. Some things are not possible, right? There are limitations to the material world. There are things that can be done and things that can't. But I think true science is broad and open minded and inquisitive and curious and intelligent, and whether it knows it or not is just exploring the dance form coming out of the formless.

00:54:45:05

Ronan

There's certainly an element of ego involved in modern science. There's no doubt about that. It seems that intention and design go hand in hand. So with this being our first podcast actually of 2022, I'm curious to know what was your resolution for 2022, if anything?

00:55:01:23

Luke

Oh my god, you know, it's like... I've read a number of different business books and kind of have my finger on the pulse of entrepreneurship and productivity and just achieving goals and things like that, and everyone says, Oh, you got to write down your goals constantly and every quarter, especially every new year. Yeah. You know, write it down. If you don't write it down, it's not real. If it doesn't go on the calendar, it's not real. And this year I've just bought a house out here in Austin almost a year ago, and we're just in the middle of the most insane renovation. I mean, everyone said, Oh, all the renovations are insane, and I'm like, No, you don't understand this is like eleven months that was supposed to be four months. So normally in December, I would take time off, be reflective, start thinking about what you know, what I've accomplished in the different realms and then think forward, you know, what do I want to see in my life and what I want to manifest this year in a concrete, sort of focused way, and I just did not have the opportunity to do that. It's just like I've been run in and gone out there to Christmas Day off. Maybe. But I think, you know, other than deeper intentions and just the the inner work and inner experience, what this year about for me and on kind of the manifestation front is having a kid with my with my wife, Alison, to fill this beautiful big house that we've been building with laughter and dirty diapers and crying. And you know, that's what so I hear, which has been. For me, something historically, I've been extremely afraid of just being a dad, having a kid, I've been fiercely independent since I was like two. And, you know, I'm just so in love and I'm so interested in. Having the most full rich experience of being a human that I can, that we're really leaning into that. So I'm hoping that that comes to fruition and I've done a lot of work around the fear, and now I'm actually pretty excited about it and feel that it's not even, you know, like, Oh, that'll be cute to have a kid, but more like, it's really part of my purpose here. So that's pretty huge for me and on a lot of levels. And then I have started working on a book last year and then, you know, moved after 32 years in L.A. to Texas and all of that and then working on the house and all these other things. So it's like it's been kind of coming together piecemeal. I mean, it took me like a year basically to finish the proposal. Just because I've done some of the writing. But the proposal, as I learned in my first book experience here, that the proposal is so gnarly. It's way harder for me than the actual book part. But I would like to see, you know, at least lining up the avenues to get that book out and completing writing it. And, you know, assuming it probably come out the following year. So birthing two things, you know, birthing a kid and birthing a book. And I think those are those are so big they've kind of eclipsed some of the other, you know, stepping stones of what I want to accomplish and things like that, but just finishing our house and really creating an amazing healing sanctuary for our friends, family and community and our future family and and finally, putting everything I've learned in the past 51 years into a book into something tangible that I can be like here. Here's the whole thing so far, it is really exciting to me, and I don't really do a lot of writing in my day to day life. I used to write like the intros for my podcast and stuff, and I handed that off years ago. But once I sit down and do it, I actually really enjoy it, like long-form writing. And it turns out I'm pretty good at it, too. I think I have a gift for it. There's many things I'm not gifted in, but writing seems to be one of them, and so it always feels good to do something. You feel like you're competent at like I get afraid of writing, like all authors and writers do the writer's block all of that stuff. Resistance, as Stephen Pressfield calls it. Very real. But like once I actually sit down and touch the keyboard, I'm like, Oh my God, this is amazing. And I read it back and I go, Shit, I'm moved by what I just wrote, which is a good sign. So I think that's what 2022 has for me is just homesteading and book writing and also continuing on with the rest of the stuff I'm doing. I just launched a blue blocking eyewear brand called Gilded. You can find that, by the way, shameless plug, GildedbyLukeStorey.COM. So that's really exciting to kind of have my own first product. And, you know, I'd be working on expanding that this year because blue light is something I'm really passionate about in the health space. And other than that man, hopefully just kind of recovering from this past year of renovation, how frankly and reframing that experience as something positive and educational and just getting in our house, man, I can't wait.

01:00:22:07

Ronan

Are you shipping to Canada with Gilded? Because I wouldn't mind getting my hand on that?

01:00:26:10

Luke

I think we do. Yeah, yeah, we do. I think we do ship to Canada and we have prescription and readers and we'll soon have kids as well. Yeah, it's funny like now, now that I'm working toward having a kid like so much of my content and stuff is around kids. I'm preparing myself so like researching organic bedding and, you know, EMF free baby monitors and stuff like that kind of preemptively learning about that side of alternative health and biohacking and stuff. Yeah, there's a lot of great stuff coming out in the kid realm. It's exciting.

01:01:01:10

Ronan

Cool. I guess...Late last year, we had Michael Pollan on the podcast and we had a great conversation. And one of the roflections I took out of that conversation is that actually children are the ultimate psychedelic because they take whatever you give them and they meet you exactly where you are, and if there's anything more psychedelic than that then I don't know it. So you're in for a treat. You know, it's got its challenges, for sure, but there's a lot of love and a lot of wonderful things that go with it.

01:01:33:11

Luke

That's great.

01:01:34:08

Ronan

I think the biggest thing is that you don't understand what life was like before you had children, like it really does, at least for me, create like a demarcation point beyond which before which is just like, it almost didn't exist. It's kind of funny.

01:01:46:16

Luke

You know that roflection is universal amongst parents and especially fathers that I talk to. All my friends here have kids. I mean, everyone seems to be in a relationship and have kids, kind of the age group, I guess. And just people that have converged on Austin are family oriented for whatever reason. So I'm always quizzing the guys, like, how does this work? How does that work? What's it like? How do you still do your thing? You know, all the other questions that a, you know, to be parent would have. And everyone says that same thing, you know, but overwhelmingly and I think this has helped me really lean into it, is every man I know who is a father has expressed the sentiment that their kid or kids have been their greatest teacher, but not just in a sort of trite way, but like no like real teacher like the teacher capital T where there's there are gifts awaiting you. This is what they tell me. Essentially gifts awaiting you that you have no idea even exist. And that, to me, is exciting. That's what that's what gets my curiosity piqued, you know, it's like, Oh, OK, yeah, I think I kind of got this figured out a little bit.

Let's see what's beyond this. This level of ale, you know?

01:03:05:19

Ronan

Totally, totally. My resolution for 2022 is actually to work on building my self-esteem, and you touched on fatherhood, and I guess that's really what we're talking about here, and one of the things that I've been learning is that a lot of self-esteem comes from the father, from the mother comes unconditional love and from the father comes self-esteem. That just tends to be the way things happen, and it seems that while I've had a lot of courage in some respects, being able to launch businesses in psychedelics starting after a failed attempt, a podcast like this one, despite all the discomfort it had and still has for me, the last couple of months of 2021 really shined a spotlight for me on just how flimsy my self-esteem actually is. What in your mind is the best way to build self-esteem? You know, it seems like you've gone on this journey quite a bit, and I'm starting to learn and get a sense of some ideas and I think it really comes down in a lot of ways to evaluation. But what advice would you give to me about how to build self-esteem and self-love if you've got any?

01:04:11:01

Luke

That's so, that's so good. You know, I think this is something that most, if not all, humans face at some point. I mean, I think unless you had, you know, the ideal mother and father like you just described, right, you're just getting affection and unconditional love and warmth from your mom and your dad's like, Go get em, kid, you can do anything you know, unless you're getting that all the time, you know? I think many of us suffer from self-doubt or, you know, just a low valuation of ourself. two things come to mind for me because this is something I've worked on a lot. I've made some progress. I think still when I see this come up for me is when I fail to advocate for myself and to stand up for myself, to speak my truth, to uphold or create boundaries with other people. Then I kind of route down underneath that, well, like, why am I allowing that to happen? It's like, Oh, because you don't deserve to be heard. You don't deserve to have autonomy, et cetera. But I think I've made progress in terms of...How few fucks I give truly of what other people think of me, like other people's perception of me, generally holds less sway than it did in the past, and that's continuing. For me, it's just like, how do I carry that into when I need things to get uncomfortable and confrontational in my life? That's when I find that I received a little bit and feel disempowered. But ultimately I think it stems from the same thing. You know, what's helped me immensely is. I think first and foremost, the acknowledgment that's like, wow, I've not loved myself as much as I could have. Why is that? What is it that I believe to be falsely wrong with me? How do I believe myself to be flawed? And what is the root of that? What experiences in my past gave me the message that I was unlovable? And for me, they're very clear and obvious, and there's a few huge punctuation points in my childhood that, you know, helped me to arrive at that false assumption. And, you know, then, so that's kind of like the inventory of like, OK, where is this coming from? And ruling that out and working on healing that? And then the other side of it is more on the proactive side of just God. How can I start to build into my mindset and into my habits like self-care? I mean, not self-care, like going and getting a, you know, a foot rub which it could be inclusive of. But self-care in terms of like, no really being in my heart and being in my body and truly appreciating the relationship I have with myself and also within that. Expanding on the perspective that every version of myself at every age that I've ever experienced in this lifetime is still in me and part of me. It's not like, Oh, that was five year old Luke and this is 51 year old Luke and that was a different entity there at five know that five is still right here. I still am that five year old, right? 

It's like Russian Dolls. You take them apart and you just keep finding another one inside. I think you could take a 62 person like me in Russian Doll me and you find me as an infant coming out of the womb, you know? And so it's an acknowledgment and an active love affair with all versions of one's self. And within that, the experience is imbued with deep forgiveness of one's mistakes. Right. So it's like part of that inventory of like, Oh, where have I gone wrong? What am I doing wrong? That's harming my self-esteem? And then the converse of that is God, how can I just shower myself with more love, like proactively in a reliable way to build into my thoughts and feelings, how much I love all parts of myself in all versions of myself and reparenting oneself. You know, I've had this experience so many times in medicine ceremonies where it's like me as my adult self of being more self realized than I was at any point prior in my life because it keeps growing in that capacity. But to really go back and find these points at which I was stuck before and really bring that version of myself back to my body now and just envelop those selves with love. Right. And it's those touch points in those mistakes I've made or harm that's been perpetrated upon me that I blame someone else for as the perpetrator. All of those, you know, core wounds from the deepest to the more superficial is to really go back and just be with those and sit with those as the adults in the room now, right, that it's like, "No, I'm here now, Little Luke, Medium Luke, Medium to late Luke, and current Luke. We're all here together not to sound schizophrenic, you know, but we're all here together. And how can I love all of those parts of myself? And this is something just ongoing for me. Oftentimes when I meditate, usually at the end, I'll just kind of I'll have self-talk to myself. That's just like, dude...Fucking good job. That's to me, that's the most loving thing I think I'd say to myself is I'm like, Man, you're doing great, you're doing great, Luke. All of you Lukes in there. You know, you made some mistakes. You've struggled. You've definitely hurt some other people unintentionally along the way. Maybe a couple drivers on the freeway intentionally. You know, I've never been so maniacal that I've actually, you know, harmed someone in a meaningful way. But you know, we're clumsy. We stumble through life and shit happens. And you know what, we want to be accountable and make amends for those things.  It's like, I think, within the amends within of making amends to myself and also acknowledging how I've harmed myself and sort of apologizing to myself, if that makes sense, you know, like God, I'm sorry I did that to you. I'm sorry, I put you in that position. 

You know, it's sort of like an observer witnessing consciousness, who is the overseer of my relationship with myself. And from that part of myself or that vantage point coming in to some of the lower realms within myself and giving love and acknowledgment and acceptance and say, Man, you're doing good, you're OK, you've made so much progress, you know, and putting some energy into, you know, the flip side of humility right there is we think of humility as well, don't be conceited, you know, be humble, be small, right? But there's another side of humility, which is really just the converse side of ego that tells me I'm less than rather than more than or better than. And what if I could actually explore a fuller expression of humility where I actually rise up to be as big and fucking awesome as I am also. You know, it's it's it's false humility to downplay someone's gifts, so maybe I could take a compliment better, not let it go to my head, but just go, Yeah, you know what? I am badass and I still have some work to do right and in different areas. So the self-love and self-esteem, it's so multifaceted. And I think mine, for the most part, you know, the improvements I've made have really been informed by plant medicines. In those experiences, you know, I've gotten to go in to the depths of my wounds on such a deep level and do so much foundational healing, that's what's left when those parts of myself are healed. What's left is just self-love and self-compassion and self forgiveness and just, you know, an embrace of one's self, even physically at times, if not metaphysically and just saying, Man, you're OK, you're you're worthy, you're so deserving of love. And the last thing I'll add to that. That's been really helpful to me is when I'm with someone that I deeply love, like, like my wife, Alison, that just walked in, I look at her in such divine perfection. When I just observe her, when I experience her, even if she's having a moment, you know, like all humans do. There's this perfection and this innocence and this this boundless beauty and depth. And I look at her and I'm just in awe. And I have a sense she looks at me in the same way. What if I could look at her, someone that I love and honor as deeply? What if I could actually reflect that point of view upon myself. Because I am that also otherwise I wouldn't have eyes to see it. Right. I'd be like, Oh yeah, there's that lady. She's pretty. You know, or whatever. You know, the fact that the fact that I can pick up on her profound gifts and uniqueness means that there's something in me that resonates with that to where it becomes visible and the expression of it that I see within her is being expressed within me just by the celebration of how I experience her. And so more of that, you know, and that does take a little bit of effort and fine tuning. And it's not just something that automatically happens because you got a big paycheck or you got a bunch of followers on social media or some superficial verification that you are indeed lovable and worthy of being here. It's an inside job. It's got to come from the depths of my being that says, like, no man, we're here. You're brilliant, you're great. And also, let's keep getting better.

01:14:11:11

Ronan

Well, on that note, I'm going to offer a compliment that you hope you receive, which is you have been a wonderful podcast guest, as well as your wife, Alison, who was a wonderful podcast guest. So I want to express my sincere gratitude for you joining us today and being on the podcast and sharing your thoughts. And thanks for having the ability it's been. It's been really amazing. It's been a pleasure and I've learned a lot. So thank you.

01:14:35:17

Luke

Yeah, likewise, man.

01:14:41:13

Ronan

Every once in a while, I stop and think about our place in the universe. We live on a tiny rock in the middle of an almost incomprehensibly almost incalculably large amount of dark, empty space. And when I leaned into that thought just a little bit, it becomes incredibly uncomfortable just how seemingly insignificant each of us are. The only possible conclusion that I come back to is that we meaning all life on Earth, are here for a reason. Otherwise, the existence of existence itself makes no sense. There has to be some form of consciousness that is able to perceive the universe. Otherwise, there is no purpose to the universe or frankly, even the fact of the universe. Existence needs to be experienced or documented in some way. Otherwise, there will be never any trace of it. And before you start getting too worried that this line of inquiry is going to go far off the deep end of Wu Scale, hold on. I'll try and bring it back to some level of rationalist thinking. And keep in mind that as batshit crazy as some of these thoughts sound, quantum physics theories suggest that matter exists only in a state of probability until observed by some other force. So what I'm talking about is kind of scientific, actually. Why am I raising these points? Well, because my conversation with Luke, that's really what he's found. He's leaned into the idea that there is something higher on a deeper, visceral level, not just on an academic one like I'm prone to do. And I really, really respect that. But it also caused me a different level of discomfort because I'm worried that the spiritual path can often lead people to ignore science, though I haven't quite crossed the chasm of spirituality with conviction that Luke has leaned into, I'm quite certain that whatever the reason for our existence, we need to integrate emotion and spirit with logic. That's the unique element of the human experience in my mind. As Tom Robbins says, it doesn't matter how sensitive or how damn smart and educated you are if you're not both at the same time. If your heart and your brain aren't connected aren't working together harmoniously, well, you're just hopping through existence on one leg. Frankly, I'm a little bit worried that there are too many people hopping around on one leg these days, one leg or the other. My sincere hope is that Luke and others like him have both feet firmly planted. But I suppose only time, whether it be linear or just a figment of the human mind, will tell.

01:17:10:12

Voicemail

Hi Ronan, my name is Abbey, and my question is how do I go from being a traditional therapist to a psychedelic therapist? I'm currently pursuing a career in mental health and also in school as well, and I'd love to know the important differences between psychotherapy and psychedelic psychotherapy protocols. Thank you very much.

01:17:34:22

Ronan

The author, Mark Twain, once responded to a question by saying, "I was gratified to answer promptly. I said I didn't know." And truthfully, there's some of that going on here right now, which is I'm not a trained therapist and I'm not a trained psychedelic therapist. So what I'm sharing is based on my limited knowledge. But I am happy to share with you. I think the most significant difference between traditional therapists and psychedelic therapists is by and large, most psychedelic therapists have experience with psychedelics. It is truly an ineffable experience. It is so hard to articulate what it's like to go through a psychedelic experience without having gone through it yourself. And so I think if you speak to most psychedelic therapists, they would identify the need for experiential training. Having the psychedelic experience is that your clients are going through as one of the essential components to being an effective psychedelic therapist. Beyond that, I would suggest that the key considerations are proper training. There are a number of different organizations right now offering psychedelic therapy training specifically, such as the California Institute for Integral Studies, which offers a masters, I believe in psychedelic therapies. MAPS offers training for MDMA assisted therapy, and of course, we at Field Trip offer training for ketamine assisted therapy as well. There are other organizations such as Fluence and others, but Field Trip, MAPS and CIIS are certainly the most prominent, and so I'd suggest you look into training around those. Otherwise, I think the most important thing to being a great therapist and psychedelic therapist is just a whole lot of empathy and care. And if you bring that to the equation, I'm sure you will do incredibly well. Whether it's just in traditional therapy or psychedelic therapy.

01:19:23:05

Ronan

As a quick reminder, you can record your “How-To” question for us, and we'll play it on the show. Just go to speakpipe.com/fieldtripping or you can email us your questions at fieldtripping@kastmedia.com. That's Kast with a K. Also, please follow, rate, and review our podcast and sign up for our newsletter at FieldTripping.FM or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening to Field Tripping, a podcast that's dedicated to exploring psychedelic experiences and their ability to affect our lives. I'm your host, Ronan Levy. Until next time, stay curious, breathe properly and remember, every day is a Field Trip if you let it be one. Field Tripping is created by Ronan Levy. Our producers are Conrad Paige and Amanda Elliott, and associate producers are Sharon Bella, Alex Sherman and Macy Baker. Special thanks to Kast media and of course, many thanks to Luke Storey for joining us today. To stay in the loop, check out the Life Stylist podcast and visit his website, LukeStorey.com.00:00:00:02

Luke

True science, you know, true scientific inquiry, investigation, experimentation. Is really just an exploration of spirituality. This is like from the quantum level to the gross level of matter. All of that is consciousness expressing itself and consciousness could be synonymous with the spiritual realm, like there's nothing here, that's not the spiritual realm, so to investigate the world of form through the scientific method is actually just. Investigating one spectrum or one expression of consciousness.

00:00:54:21

Ronan

Hello everyone and welcome to Field Tripping. Today we have fellow podcaster with us, Luke Storey. We chat about good and evil, addiction and sobriety, self-love and more. Before we get started, here's your reminder to subscribe to field tripping updates so you never miss an episode. Towards the end of the episode, we'll go into "How To" segment where listeners can call in and ask a question for me to answer. If you have a question about mental health, psychedelics or anything we've chatted about, drop us a note at FieldTripping@KastMedia.com or leave a voice recording at speakpipe.com/fieldtripping. And as always, if you love the show, leave us your thoughts in a review on Apple Podcasts. It's much appreciated and helps us reach new people to help educate them on psychedelics. Your thoughts help us a lot. 

Now it's time for some news to trip over. While ketamine is a remarkable antidepressant. It is also an effective anesthetic that is commonly used for surgeries. But what if a patient with depressive symptoms undergoes surgery during which ketamine is used? A recent systematic review of such cases suggests that there's an antidepressant effect up to three days after the procedure. Patients in these instances were anesthetized. So in theory, they didn't have any conscious drug induced experiences. Still, they tended to experience benefits, implying that there is an antidepressant effect from ketamine that is not dependent on the drug experience itself. While these short term antidepressant properties may not rely on a conscious experience or psychotherapy. It's likely that the enduring effects of ketamine are maximized when ketamine administration follows the psychedelic assisted psychotherapy model. Speaking of ketamine assisted therapy, a recent study completed by the company, Awaken, found that ketamine is an effective treatment for alcohol use disorder. The study's findings show that ketamine, when combined with therapy, resulted in total abstinence in 162 of 180 days in the following six month period. Achieving an increase in abstinence from around 2% prior to the trial to 86% post-trial. The results for relapse at six months showed that the Ketamine + therapy group's risk of relapse was 2.7x less than the placebo plus alcohol education group. Finally, a big announcement out of Field Trip this week. We received a notice of allowance for our patent for FT104, our novel molecule in development. This is a big milestone for us because it confirms that FT104 is novel and has utility, at least in the U.S. Patent Office's eyes. And unlike organizations that are pursuing trials for psilocybin and MDMA. This will give Field Trip a right to commercialize FT104 without competition for a longer period of time, probably in the range of 14 years by the time we get approvals to market it. There's been a lot of discussion around IP in the psychedelic sector, and while we recognize that some of the concerns are legitimate, we feel confident that what we've invented with FT104 is truly novel and meaningful, and we're incredibly excited to keep moving forward with it. 

Now onto today's conversation. I'm here with Luke Storey. He is a writer, teacher of meditation, metaphysics and biohacking, lifestyle design expert, founder of the School of Style and host of the popular Life Stylist podcast. Luke has spent the past two decades refining the ultimate wellness lifestyle, and his personal experiences with addiction and recovery, as well as health and wellness, have led his path down to sharing his wisdom through media and mentorship. His teachings combine primal health and ancient spiritual practices with the most cutting edge natural healing and consciousness expanding technologies. Luke, thank you for joining us today and welcome to Field Tripping.

00:04:47:00

Ronan

So to begin, Luke, this is probably long departed from your memory, but you were actually the first ever guest we booked to be on this podcast, Field Tripping. It was back in March of 2020 after Ben Greenfield was kind enough to make an introduction. But like a day or two before we were supposed to record, I chickened out because I had no idea what the fuck I was going to talk about on a podcast, and I canceled last minute. So to start, please accept my apologies for the chicken shittery, a term I just coined while preparing for this podcast...

00:05:17:23

Luke

I like that!

00:05:18:02

Ronan

...for the last go around. And second with my first question for you; you know, you've gone through a lot and it seems that your life has gone through a lot of evolutions. What gave you the courage, speaking of courage, to strike out on your own and build the business and lifestyle that you've built to this point?

00:05:35:14

Luke

Well, I think it's just...That I spent a long time in a career which was working as a celebrity fashion stylist in Hollywood. That's totally random and a completely...really long and probably not an interesting story, but I dress celebrities for a living essentially, and the entire time I was doing that, it was about 17 years in my free time. And even longer than that, I was pursuing spirituality, consciousness and all things physical health, which has since been coined "biohacking." But it used to just be you were a health nut, you know? But I had a lot of profound struggles with addictions as a kid and into my twenties. And when I was 26, I was fortunate enough to be struck sober. And part of that was just getting into detoxing the body and fortifying the body and going to India to learn meditation and doing all the things right, all the yoga and every spiritual book and self-help book that I could digest and sitting at the feet of teachers and just absorbing information so that I could transform myself. Meanwhile, kind of having this double life where during the day I'm running around trying to find the perfect pump for some actress in Beverly Hills. You know. And it was a fun career. I mean, I always kind of put it down because it wasn't ultimately my purpose, and it was just something I fell into as a broke musician and I was kind of living that double life. And so in all of my downtime, I was doing breath work and kundalini yoga and ice baths and all of this stuff, and then wake up in the morning and play the Hollywood game about which I was not passionate. And then I formed a business in 2008 called "School of Style." That's still a business to this day, all these years later, where I would teach people how to do what I did for a living. So it's a school to teach you how to become a fashion stylist, essentially. And it was a great business, and I found that I was really passionate in the teaching and lecturing part and just putting together the courses. For the first ten years, we did live classes all over the country and then in 2018 or so we went online. So I had some familiarity with content marketing, content provision, events and got quite skilled at public speaking and doing that. And in addition (at least so I think, people pay me to do it so there must be at least a few other people that think I'm OK at it) self-proclaimed expert speaker. But I was also part of a twelve step group for, you know, a couple of decades and did a lot of public speaking there. And I think that I really kind of... grew my my skill for speaking to the students in a way that I could convey information and then in my addiction recovery program became, I don't know if skilled is the right word, but I learned there how to speak from the heart and to really convey authentic, vulnerable truth.

And so I'm working as a fashion stylist, just kind of doing it for the money, frankly, because I had no other skills that were viable. And it was fun and creative and sometimes exciting, and there were things about it that I liked. But it just got to the point where I didn't want to do either of those things anymore, run that school, because I'm teaching. I'm passionate about teaching, but I'm not passionate that point about what I'm teaching, right? And so probably due to my lack of self-esteem at the time, I didn't really... I'm just on the journey learning about myself and exploring consciousness and evolving spiritually, right? That's my number one mission in life and still is. And because I'm always kind of looking at the next thing to work on. It took me a while to realize that by that time, by the time I started my podcast and doing speaking and things like that in 2016, I was a bit slow to realize that I had actually accumulated some wisdom in those years. And people started sharing with me as I would go to see these speakers at conferences and listen to podcasts. People started to say, "Why don't you do that?" And I'm like, "Oh no, a little old me, I couldn't do that, you know?" "Well, you know, you have a lot to offer," and I thought, "Do I?" And so once I became convinced that I had enough to offer to perhaps create a platform out of, you know, what I was... the things that I had learned and integrated, and also kind of an ongoing sort of immersive journalism approach to my path, I just kind of threw caution to the wind and luckily had that business that helped fund the launch of the brand that is me now. But I, in one fell swoop, just quit my styling career, started a podcast and and from that podcast, all sorts of other opportunities availed themselves, especially in the public speaking and holding workshops and things like that. And it was not easy. Now it's easy because I'm so on mission and I am just so aligned with my purpose that making a career, making a living out of it is really secondary to what I do, you know? 

The more I focus on just serving and helping people and improving myself in all the ways. It seems to pay the bills, but I was fortunate where I had a... So I took like my personal expense budget from that business and use that to pay my podcast producers and things like that for the first year. So I paid to produce my own content and disseminate it in the world for quite a while before I started to actually be able to monetize what I'm doing, so to speak. But like you when you went to launch your podcast, it was really scary. Especially...interviews were easy for me because I just love learning and I maybe have decent people skills. But what the roadblock for me was the first episode. Because that...I don't know. Is that somewhat traditional where if you're a host, that your first episode is where you kind of tell your story, right? And so I remember writing out this kind of a manuscript and just bullet point in some of the touch points in my life and things that might help give people an understanding of who I am and what I'm all about. And that was terrifying because I was faced with the prospect of having to decide how vulnerable and revelatory and personal I wanted to be, and with my past and addiction and things like that, which I talk so freely about now, that was, for me, kept very private. I didn't run around music video sets being like, "Hey, I'm a recovering heroin addict", you know what I mean? It's just that I was even sober or anything like that, and that was such a huge part of my story. I was really the impetus for my whole journey was the suffering around that particular era, which was much longer than it should been

00:12:44:13

Luke

And then I said, You know what, I'm just going to, I'm just going to go all out and just be who I am. And maybe a few people will be helped along the way that relate to the struggles that I've overcome and and even the ones that I'm still working on, you know? So that was kind of how it started, and I guess it happened in perfect time, but I do look back and go, "Wow, it's so crazy that I did something for a living for so long that I had to really work so hard to muster up a passion for and an interest in." Whereas now it's like my passion for what I'm doing is just boundless, and it's more about actually containing it to keep myself focused, so that I have some sort of a plan, you know, about what I'm doing because I just... I'm like shiny things syndrome. There's so many exciting things in the world and especially in the realm of psychedelics and plant medicines. I mean, it's just I feel like we're in such a renaissance as a species, and I'm just on the wave of that. So it's like now more reeling myself in then feeling any sort of contraction in terms of how much I want to put myself out there, it's like I need to put myself out there less, I'm sitting here at my desk more often, you know, working on the nuts and bolts of the whole thing, you know?

00:13:58:00

Ronan

Yeah, there's a beautiful synchronicity that exists in this, which is you were supposed to be the first podcast guest on the show and then I chickened out. And now you're actually the last podcast guest on this season. And then probably this formulation of the show and your story times perfectly with some of the struggles that I'm dealing with right now. You know, throughout the podcast and just life in general about, like, what is my value? What is my wisdom? You know, where do I get my self-esteem from? And so it's kind of really nice that this loop kind of closes with you as the guest. So, so thank you for being here and thank you for sharing that. I was struck, a pun not intended, but it's appropriate, that you said you were struck sober when you were 26. Why that choice of words?

00:14:48:05

Luke

Well, I think... I frame it that way because... I think that I had very little to do with it. I think the part that I played in it was... having sort of a buried, buried, buried, a buried seed within me of buried potential. And I saw at the very end of that period in my twenties that there was just this ever so slight chance that I could make something of my life that would hold more value and meaning. Which actually, interestingly enough, came to me in a totally unconscious, unintentional unplanned mushroom ceremony a few months before I checked myself into rehab. And on that note, I'll digress for a second. I had blocked out that memory or not identified the correlation there, or perhaps even causation to some degree of that medicine experience until I was probably 22 years sober and had then gone and done ayahuasca. And I remember at some point thinking back on like...you know, why didn't I ever have any awakenings when I was using psychedelics as a teenager and in my twenties, which was a really bad idea, but I was trying to escape from the pain of being me. By using psychedelics, I thought, I wonder why I've never had like a spiritual awakening. Right? Because so many people have that transpire. And then I was taken back to that night and I realized that I had sort of a mini little nervous breakdown in this mushroom journey, which was also accompanied by all sorts of other drugs and stuff. This is very murky waters that evening, but that was the night when I realized to myself that it was going to be time very soon to get sober and that I just couldn't live the way I was living anymore. So the seed was, Wow, I should really be sober. I have no idea how to do that, and it's a terrifying prospect and one that I had much aversion to. But that was my first contribution to it and then perhaps some applied courage to actually be willing to sequester myself away in a treatment center and go through the steps necessary and the bravery to know that if I were to do that, that there was going to be at least one day I was going to wake up without my anesthesia and then I think the rest is mostly a gift, and that's why I framed it that way of being struck sober. 

I was gifted this depth of surrender that enabled me, as...I wouldn't say, I was an atheist, but agnostic at best. And I started praying the first day in rehab. I mean, that's all I was given. That's the only tool I was given. I wasn't given any medication to wean off all the stuff that I was on. I tried to get it and they said no. And they recommended that a course of action will be to go back to my room and get on my hands and knees and pray. And I thought, could we maybe get some Dilaudid instead? Like...Pray? But that's what I did. And from that moment until this moment today, it's...God in a few short weeks it'll be 25 years since I've used any addictive, mind altering substances. And I'll add the asterisk they're addictive or, you know, patterned substances I might say. We can get into that, but I really was struck sober. There was a gift that had been bestowed upon me where the prayer that I had so, so humbly and earnestly submitted before this ambiguous higher power that I was seeking to build a relationship with, or at least to be granted some reprieve from my suffering, even though I didn't believe in that God that I prayed to it still extended it's omniscient, benevolent power and love in and on my life, and from that moment until now, I've never, ever had the thought or craving to use drugs or alcohol. I've been addicted to a lot of other stuff.

And had and applied the same formula to that like, OK, I give up, I've had enough. The white flag of surrender God, please take this from my life or show me how to do it, give me the power to do it. I'm willing to do my part, and I think that's the thing with addiction. Why so many people have such a terrible time escaping from it is, is it...it does require so much humility and so much willingness, all these principles of the twelve steps really, in order for the barriers and armor of the ego and the intellect to be... to subside enough to allow the grace of God in. And that was the thing that I guess I did. But even that, you know, if I'm honest, that sense of humility and that willingness to seek the help of a higher power, even that is a gift, really. Even that was given to me. There's a lot of people I've known over these years that never got even that gift, let alone the gift of having those just non stop cravings and obsessions of addiction be removed.

00:20:42:15

Luke

You know, it's just they can't even get to the point where they go, OK? I don't know how to run my life. Maybe there's something out there that can help me. You know, because the pride and the close mindedness and the arrogance of most alcoholics and addicts is insurmountable. You just, you can't get past the armor of like, it's everyone else's fault. I don't have a problem. Even if I do have a problem, it's my problem. Don't tell me what to do. I'm going to fix this myself or I'm not going to fix it because I'm fine and everyone else just needs to leave me alone. You know, this total deflection of responsibility and self honesty and the powers of self-deception that most addicts have, it's really a phenomenon. It's insane. And for anyone that's never struggle with addiction or known someone, you could watch the show Intervention, ya know, I don't know if it's on anymore. I used to love watching that show because I'd watch it just be like, "Oh, thank God, thank God I had the grace that I was given to get out of that. But you can watch a show like that and just go... It's so obvious to the viewer that everything in that person's life that's causing them and the people around them pain is completely of their own doing, you know? So just to get to that point where you say, you know what, I did this to myself, A and B I'm in it of myself alone, using all the willpower I can muster, can't beat this and C that I'm willing to consider, not believe, but just to consider to just crack the door open that there could be some sort of creative force in this universe that might hear me if I ask for help and might guide my thoughts, feelings and behaviors to create a life that is free of addiction. So that to me, it was something that just happened to me, I was just I allowed myself to be in the right place at the right time and create the circumstances around my thought processes that would facilitate that Grace, to enter into my life, and it did, and so for the past 25 years, I've been asking the question, Who was that? Who is that? Where are you? Can I have more of you? Can there be less of me to allow more of you in? Call it God. Call it what you may. And applying really that same formula to any problem I have in my life of. Just like...OK. I'm willing to do my part and exert whatever willingness and effort that I need to, and ultimately know that the results of those efforts are up to this greater intelligence that has so brilliantly designed this human experience of duality. And so it's just like how much deeper can my surrender go? And out of that surrender, what am I going to be guided to do with my time and energy?

00:23:53:16

Ronan

Thank you for sharing. A couple of questions kind of come out of that. The first one is... we'll start with maybe easier one to answer. Maybe not. What was the answer to that question of who is this? Who are you? And I'm sure it's an ongoing conversation, but where are you in the conversation of who was that that had that divine inspiration in you?

00:24:21:10 

Luke

You know, it's interesting to think, of course, it's impossible to define or explain. And that's what makes it fun, right? Because you cannot...you can never pigeonhole this thing we call the creator, right? It's just like, I think what's happened for me is... The frequency bandwidth of that energetic beam has just gotten wider and wider over time, where it's not so much like who is that or what is that? It's more like what is not that? And there's nothing left. Other than that. So I think in the beginning, it was like not that I had a deity to pray to or something like that, but it was like there was a separation between me and that God that I was seeking communion with. And so there was a me over here and a god over there, and there was all this stuff blocking us from having an experience or a relationship. And so I sought to remove all of those blocks so that I could get closer to that one thing, and that's evolved into the awareness that it's all one thing. You know, the thing is everything, the black hair, everything. I am everything. We're all everything. And there's nothing that is not by design. And so then it's about building the awareness. Around when I start to believe in the separation again, which is essentially when I fall back into the density of duality and start seeing myself and God as separate or another person from myself as separate or my environment, nature as separate. And that sense of false autonomy and isolation between myself and consciousness. Like a consciousness is over there, I got to go get some rather than just, wow, what if I really just embody the consciousness that I am? And then there's no longer such a hide and seek game with finding God because it's not finding something. It's just actually acknowledging what is here. There's no... there's not like a spiritual path, I don't have to be a spiritual seeker, I just have to be a spiritual acknowledger.

00:26:53:23

Ronan

Right.

00:26:55:17 - 00:27:16:10

Luke

Of just letting go of pretense and all of the things that make the 3D material world seem so real of just allowing that to be as it is and just sitting in the knowingness that there's nothing that's not God, including myself and on a good day, there's moments of that. And I would say over time, there's longer durations of that and shorter durations of believing the simulation that it's all separate and that it's all compartmentalized and that God's in this, but God's not in that and that, you know, I have to go chase this thing called God so that I have some sense of ease in my life. Hmm. And it's... Dude, it's crazy because it's the formula is so simple, but it's like. The patterns that we build to be able to cope with our reality, using our senses and being in a body as souls. The patterns are so ingrained, the patterns of separation and and even add to that the kind of the psychological constructs that we've built around religion or around spirituality around me and a God and all these sorts of things, it is dense and it takes increasing levels of surrender. And I think also study, that's something that's been really big for me is just going to so many lectures and just hammering my intellect with truth and knowledge and podcasts and audio programs and books. And just, I mean, I'm still this way. I was listening to Alan Watts podcast this morning. It's like. And every time I listen, I'm like, Oh, yeah, I forgot about that thing or I didn't know about that thing, right? It's like the same things being said over and over again, but there's so much programming and maybe even... Maybe even inherited programing of just the human condition through my lineage and just to limit the lineage of all humanity, there's so much of that to kind of weed through to just get to the ultimate truth, which at this point to me presents itself as there's only one thing and that thing is consciousness and my life and my sense of well-being, success and happiness is 100% dependent on at what stage or level of consciousness I'm able to exist. And the higher that consciousness can be. Meaning just closer to love of love. Meaning capital L, not romantic love, but just unconditional love of being alive and love of the experience that I'm having. The closer I can get to that. The more ease I find I'm able to experience on a day to day, moment by moment basis, you know. But that density is always there waiting, you know, you just step out into traffic and it's like, I'm a person again. So it's kind of like the game for me is kind of walking between both worlds and and acknowledging that if I was meant to be a celestial angelic being at this point right here today, I would likely not be in body anymore, and I would be some sort of inter-dimensional guardian angel of sorts, or who knows what right?

00:30:25:18 

Luke

The fact that I'm still in a body tells me that part of the game is being here and doing the earthly thing and playing the role of Luke Storey. And as long as I don't fall too far in either one of those worlds, I seem to be able to function and also have a continued experience of my version of sobriety, you know, which is not being in any kind of active addiction or taking any kind of substances that would dull my consciousness or awareness of spirit.

00:30:57:08

Ronan

There's so much in there. I guess I'm going to start with saying, you know, my wife, Stephanie, is kind of going through the same thing and she's kind of landed on, I think starting with the pandemic has really forced her to confront a lot of things and she's kind of landed in that that zone and that belief of, you know, we're all part of this universe consciousness for all part of love. And to me, it sounds amazing, you know, it sounds really lovely, but then I get into that, you know, disbelief of like, if that's true, why, why is it so fucking complex? Like, why is it so hard to navigate between the two? It just like runs up against my intellect and then so I try to lean in and then my ego comes in and says, this is stupid, and it just makes no sense. How have you kind of suspended your disbelief? Because at some point along the way you had that disbelief. And I think the vast majority of people do, although I do think that is starting to shift, and that's a really great thing.

00:32:01:19 - 00:32:35:00

Luke

Well, I think one of the huge blocks to self-realization and to having an experience of God is the very difficult reconciliation of why evil persists. And so we think, well, if there truly is this benevolent creator. Why would this creator create social strife and suffering and wars and torture and rape and pedophilia? And God knows what? Right? And that is a huge stumbling block until, at least for me, subjectively, this has been my ongoing experience until I expand into the possibility, again, that it's not that these fluffy unicorns and rainbows over here are God and that famine in this other country is not God. So I need to stay with God, so I don't have to experience those things that I categorize is not God. Rather than that. What if I let go of the idea that the world needs to be changed at all? What if this world is created with such perfection that it allows me such a broad spectrum of experience and such a boundless playing field of learning and evolving opportunities so I can come into this world, I can be born in a ghetto or born into an abusive, dysfunctional family lineage. I can be at the lowest level of consciousness where I rob, steal, I'm violent. And via my own spiritual will, because of the vastness of contrast that's available to me in duality, I can in one lifetime go from that to being a saint. If we didn't have the contrast and the polarized side of duality that we view as evil didn't exist, there would literally be no reason to be here. If you subscribe to the idea that what this thing is about is going to the material plane to an incredible school that's full of infinite lessons and possibilities. So it's like, if the world was completely free of all things that I would perceive as evil, I would have no spectrum of consciousness in which to evolve and elevate and grow. And so if the world was meant to be that way, by this creator, then the world would be that way. And it would be an angelic realm where everything was just unbridled expansion of love. Right? But because it's not, it makes me feel a lot better to know that it's all by design. And so if it's by design, what's the purpose and the purpose to me, just logically, even intellectually, let alone like what my spirit feels and intuition feels, is that this world is exactly perfect for a soul to enter and to have such a massive opportunity for evolution because of that contrast.

00:35:50:17

Ronan

Right.

00:35:53:12

Luke

You know, I don't know if I'm like a boy whistling in the dark, and that just makes me feel good or that's the way it really is. But I find that that gives me a much higher perspective when I find that I'm getting pulled into the density of the "problems in the world," right, I can look at everything that's gone on over the past two years, which is at times terrifying and all the time shocking. You know we've allowed to transpire is just mind boggling. Yet if I if I zoom out to that perspective, that both sides of the spectrum of what I would view as good and evil are playing their roles, I mean, speaking of leaders and just policy and legislation and the medical system, education system, all these systems, financial systems of the world that they're all so perfectly cast with good guys and bad guys. I mean, it's like we literally live in Star Wars and it's just so perfectly scripted that there's actually a beauty in that. And when I see it that way. It doesn't absolve me of wanting to be one of the good guys, right? Of contributing compassion and love and service to the world as best I can, however imperfectly. I don't think, well, it's all like this on purpose, so I'm going to go out and start harming people or not stand my ground to those that I believe are right. It's like there is born out of that, a sense of integrity and a sense of duty for all things good and all things love. But I find that I'm much more effective in making that contribution when I'm not vilifying and condemning God or the players on the other side of that duality as being anything other than the way they're supposed to be. So I might think that there's a a diabolical character named Anthony Fauci and my Ego's just like God. I want to see him in prison. I want to see him hung because I believe that he's harmed a lot of human beings. I don't know. That's my perception. But that person is playing their role with such utter perfection, right? Because that person playing their role on what I would deem diabolical and evil is giving me the perspective and the opportunity to go in the polar opposite direction if I deem that is evil on that side of duality, well, what's the other side of that? If we're going to play the duality game and just pretend like I'm separate from that entity and that entity should be acting in some way other than they are, according to my rules of the world. What if I just allow them to be who they are? And I just keep elevating my consciousness and trust and hope that by doing so that whatever portion of this ocean I'm in, all ships will rise. In other words, I don't need to fight the evil or fight the darkness. I just am invited to make my life brighter and to make all the light around me brighter. And I think this is the thing that many of us don't want to assume responsibility for. Because it's much easier to vilify the other side or blame God for allowing evil to perpetuate. It's much harder to heal your relationship with your mom, to do shadow work to heal your core wound, to forgive the person that abused you, to even just put some real effort into opening your heart in your day-to-day interactions with people at the gas station and the mortgage broker you talk to on the phone. And you know the landscaper outside is making noise that you want to go hit in the head because of his leaf blower. That's my big thing. Or you know, it's like, what if I spent the energy rather than trying to change the world? What if I spend that energy just to change my consciousness and my perception of the world? And in so doing, make every effort and every minute interaction, thought, feeling, deed to contribute love. You know, and if I really want to change the world, I mean, it seems that's the best way to do it, but that way it doesn't give the ego any juice because then there's no one to fight. There's no more villains, there's no more bad guys. There's just entities and humans. Perhaps both, really? I don't know. It's another conversation. There's these energetic beings on both sides of the equation, the scale of like good and evil, right? And this creator's sort of monopoly game that's been created or chess, maybe rather. And it's like rather than trying to convert these guys over here on that side of the playing field or on the board, what if I just keep doing my thing over here and just trust that this is the greatest contribution that I can not only make for those about me, but it's truly the biggest contribution I can make for myself. Because then my perception starts to expand and I start to see, OK, I get it like, this is all a

boafo journey. I mean, this is all a game. And in one sense, it's not even real. It's real, but it's not. I mean, the material world and the melodrama of the human experience, man, the more I can lean into that, the more I can actually be here in the 3-D and pay the bills and do my work and have a body and pretend like I'm normal. But there's a bigger part of me that's kind of tethered to consciousness as a whole. And that's really in love with the whole thing, as terrifying as it might be at times. There's kind of a, you know, as I said, a 30,000 foot zoomed out view that's like, Oh, no, I don't need to change anyone. I might not even need to change myself. But perhaps rather than trying to change myself and wrestle myself into being someone or something that I'm struggling to achieve that...perhaps it's like I just need to become more awake and just higher, higher mind, higher heart, higher being, lighter body, laughter, fun. It's like, what if I could just laugh at this whole thing that some people call a pandemic? It's like not laugh at the people that have been harmed by it and things like that but I mean in terms of like my anger toward who I think is responsible or my fear around. How it or they could harm me and all of that, what if it's just like I just keep my head down and I just keep doing my work on myself and bringing along anyone who finds that path intriguing?

00:42:58:18

Ronan

I have zero interest in talking about COVID and going into the politics of it at all. But I did want to use the example of Anthony Fauci, which is again without going into the specifics of it. How do you reconcile that in his heart and in his head? And I believe that he is acting with what he believes to be the best interest of those around him. How do you reconcile that your worldview and the higher level of love and goodness... How do you reconcile it with that notion of evil, even though that in his world, in his view, I'm making an assumption about his perspectives, but I genuinely believe he's not actually intending to do harm, that he's doing the same thing and they're very different.

00:43:52:14

Luke

Absolutely. I think that. I want to figure out how definite I want to be in a statement, but I think I can stand by this for myself. I think that. In any given moment. Every human being is truly doing what they believe to be the right thing. And that could be said of Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, all of them, right? These are humans that have created and held themselves to certain ideals and their ideals, to the vast majority of people, especially the people that have succumbed to their ideals would say bad idea. But to that person, what they're doing in every moment as they wreak havoc on their society or someone that, you know, commits an act of violence or perpetrated rape or something on someone like even that person on a one to one cause and effect relationship is doing what they believe to be right at that time. And that gets really interesting, because then it's like, well, then are they absolved of guilt, then where do we find justice when a vast swath of people disagree with that person's perspective that they're doing what was right because right and wrong are subjective. You know, then it becomes perhaps is that person objectively causing harm, it's like a democratic spiritual evaluation, right? Like, could you take a Mao? And could you get enough people on the planet to say, yeah, that was the right thing to do? Right? Probably not, because you get a Hitler. Definitely not. Right. I think more people are aware of Hitler than Mao. But I mean, just to think of like, wow, what we perceived to be genocidal maniacs. So then it's like, OK, if everyone's doing what they determined to be the best course of action and their actions caused great suffering, how do we stop them? How do we not condone their behavior and that to me, goes back to the same thing. I believe this Anthony Fauci, just to take any one of the people I view as ghouls in the world who are doing much harm, whether they need to or not. It's not my job to stop them. B, it's my job just to help people and to keep doing my work. It's going back to that fighting, fighting the darkness and rather than just working on the light, and some people would see that a spiritual bypass. But within working on the light I've known in my life and my journey, there have been times where the highest expression of my true self and the highest expression of my love is to fucking stop someone in their tracks very firmly. And without negotiation, just you're going to fucking stop now what you're doing is wrong, period. And that could even I mean, it hasn't in my experience, but. Could even be a righteous anger or a righteous, almost self-defense of violence in some cases, right? So it's like, yeah, that that person is doing what they believe to be right. And in my own integrity, I believe so deeply and inherently that what they're doing is harmful to people that if I was in the position to have to stop them, I would say someone breaks in your house and they're going to kidnap one of your kids, right? Well, hey, they're just doing what they believe to be right. No, there are appropriate actions that one can take in the name of true good of actual love and perseverance or survival, right? But that again, to me, that's like going, I mean, it's so nuanced and it's like it's 1,000,000 ways to look at all of this, but I'm just hearing like how I reconcile that again with like, well, how could if there's this loving God OK? In and out of religion? That's generally the depiction, right of deities and avatars and gods. It's like, oh, no, they're just here to do good. Well, then how could they allow these maniacs to persist? And why do these maniacs even exist? Well, it goes back to that. It creates a spectrum so I can observe someone who's harming large groups of people. And I can either hate them or I can go, Wow, let's be as opposite of that as we can. You know what I mean? It gives me perspective. It gives me contrast. It gives me like, Oh yeah, if I ever get any ideas like that, I'm definitely going to not entertain them and fulfill them as actions. I'm going to keep doing my work. So it's interesting, though. I mean, it's very nuanced because I really don't think that human beings will can motivate them to take action that they don't believe is the right thing to do. Now where that falls short is they likely in those situations believe it's the right thing to do for themselves, selfishly, for their own desires and aspirations? Or they might just have a misguided ideology that says, no, this is what's right for the world. We need to purify this race or whatever kind of maniacal idea they're acting out. But I do think inherently that, you know again, not to not to condone wrongdoing, but I really believe everyone's innocent. You know, it's like everyone is literally doing the best they can, however misguided and wrong, they might be. And it doesn't mean they're innocent that there shouldn't be retribution or justice if those people need to be removed from society or need to be held accountable for their actions. But those are also spiritual laws that are built into the system. You know, justice is a spiritual principle. And you know, there are repercussions for one's actions and who enforces those and how are they done so humanely and all of that, I don't know. But it seems to me, just broadly speaking, that the checks and balances of the spiritual world are very real and they're identifiable and they are sustainable and effective. It's just, you know, again, a matter of like, well, who gets to choose, who's the one implementing these, these rules and laws, right? And in a sense, no one has to because consciousness itself does it. And we call it karma, right? You know, no hair on your head will be uncounted or something like that. I believe it says in the Bible or somewhere, right? It's like consciousness knows everything from all time. Consciousness has no beginning and no end in. There really is no now to speak of. There's no present moment. It's just one big, endless, infinite moment and everything is recorded. Every thought, every deed, every emotion. Everything that transpires in this known universe is on record because in one sense, it's actually still happening. If you take out clocks and calendars, it's all just it's all now. It's all a big now. And so. When I find myself going, Oh man, I hope they get that person and throw them in prison and send them to Guantanamo Bay. It's like, I don't even need to wish for that because the hell that the hell that and I don't mean hell like biblical hell, but just the hell that one is inviting upon themselves by knowingly inflicting harm on other people is a hell that I can't even imagine experiencing. You know, having done a fair amount of medicine work, I mean, I've had glimpses of my own shadow, which isn't even that gnarly. And it's not somewhere I would want to spend any time, you know, so. We do what we can logically to prevent people from harming other people. We do our own work and we let God sort out the rest.

00:52:17:19

Ronan

It's like that expression, kill them all, let god sort them out.

00:52:19:15

Luke

Yeah, yeah. Totally, totally.

00:52:23:05

Ronan

Do you ever find...I've got so many questions, but I don't want to spend too much time belaboring this. Do you ever find a conflict between science and your spirituality? And then how do you reconcile that?

00:52:33:02

Luke

True science, you know, true scientific inquiry. Investigation. Experimentation. Is really just an exploration of spirituality. It's like from the quantum level to the gross level of matter. All of that is consciousness expressing itself and consciousness could be synonymous with the spiritual realm, like there's nothing here, that's not the spiritual realm. So to investigate the world of form through the scientific method is actually just investigating one spectrum or one expression of consciousness. Where we get hung up, I think, is in pseudoscience or scientism and materialism, nihilism. Where one branch of what we would broadly call science is in denial of or ignorant of the fact that all form is an expression of formlessness, and then we get caught up in sort of a hamster wheel of trust the science, trust the science. That's that whole scientism thing. Or if I can't see, touch, feel here it's not real. Or furthermore, if I don't think it can be real, then it's not real. Which is the limitation of the intellect, right, but I think true scientific inquiry is, anything is possible unless it's empirically proven not to be so. Some things are not possible, right? There are limitations to the material world. There are things that can be done and things that can't. But I think true science is broad and open minded and inquisitive and curious and intelligent, and whether it knows it or not is just exploring the dance form coming out of the formless.

00:54:45:05

Ronan

There's certainly an element of ego involved in modern science. There's no doubt about that. It seems that intention and design go hand in hand. So with this being our first podcast actually of 2022, I'm curious to know what was your resolution for 2022, if anything?

00:55:01:23

Luke

Oh my god, you know, it's like... I've read a number of different business books and kind of have my finger on the pulse of entrepreneurship and productivity and just achieving goals and things like that, and everyone says, Oh, you got to write down your goals constantly and every quarter, especially every new year. Yeah. You know, write it down. If you don't write it down, it's not real. If it doesn't go on the calendar, it's not real. And this year I've just bought a house out here in Austin almost a year ago, and we're just in the middle of the most insane renovation. I mean, everyone said, Oh, all the renovations are insane, and I'm like, No, you don't understand this is like eleven months that was supposed to be four months. So normally in December, I would take time off, be reflective, start thinking about what you know, what I've accomplished in the different realms and then think forward, you know, what do I want to see in my life and what I want to manifest this year in a concrete, sort of focused way, and I just did not have the opportunity to do that. It's just like I've been run in and gone out there to Christmas Day off. Maybe. But I think, you know, other than deeper intentions and just the the inner work and inner experience, what this year about for me and on kind of the manifestation front is having a kid with my with my wife, Alison, to fill this beautiful big house that we've been building with laughter and dirty diapers and crying. And you know, that's what so I hear, which has been. For me, something historically, I've been extremely afraid of just being a dad, having a kid, I've been fiercely independent since I was like two. And, you know, I'm just so in love and I'm so interested in. Having the most full rich experience of being a human that I can, that we're really leaning into that. So I'm hoping that that comes to fruition and I've done a lot of work around the fear, and now I'm actually pretty excited about it and feel that it's not even, you know, like, Oh, that'll be cute to have a kid, but more like, it's really part of my purpose here. So that's pretty huge for me and on a lot of levels. And then I have started working on a book last year and then, you know, moved after 32 years in L.A. to Texas and all of that and then working on the house and all these other things. So it's like it's been kind of coming together piecemeal. I mean, it took me like a year basically to finish the proposal. Just because I've done some of the writing. But the proposal, as I learned in my first book experience here, that the proposal is so gnarly. It's way harder for me than the actual book part. But I would like to see, you know, at least lining up the avenues to get that book out and completing writing it. And, you know, assuming it probably come out the following year. So birthing two things, you know, birthing a kid and birthing a book. And I think those are those are so big they've kind of eclipsed some of the other, you know, stepping stones of what I want to accomplish and things like that, but just finishing our house and really creating an amazing healing sanctuary for our friends, family and community and our future family and and finally, putting everything I've learned in the past 51 years into a book into something tangible that I can be like here. Here's the whole thing so far, it is really exciting to me, and I don't really do a lot of writing in my day to day life. I used to write like the intros for my podcast and stuff, and I handed that off years ago. But once I sit down and do it, I actually really enjoy it, like long-form writing. And it turns out I'm pretty good at it, too. I think I have a gift for it. There's many things I'm not gifted in, but writing seems to be one of them, and so it always feels good to do something. You feel like you're competent at like I get afraid of writing, like all authors and writers do the writer's block all of that stuff. Resistance, as Stephen Pressfield calls it. Very real. But like once I actually sit down and touch the keyboard, I'm like, Oh my God, this is amazing. And I read it back and I go, Shit, I'm moved by what I just wrote, which is a good sign. So I think that's what 2022 has for me is just homesteading and book writing and also continuing on with the rest of the stuff I'm doing. I just launched a blue blocking eyewear brand called Gilded. You can find that, by the way, shameless plug, GildedbyLukeStorey.COM. So that's really exciting to kind of have my own first product. And, you know, I'd be working on expanding that this year because blue light is something I'm really passionate about in the health space. And other than that man, hopefully just kind of recovering from this past year of renovation, how frankly and reframing that experience as something positive and educational and just getting in our house, man, I can't wait.

01:00:22:07

Ronan

Are you shipping to Canada with Gilded? Because I wouldn't mind getting my hand on that?

01:00:26:10

Luke

I think we do. Yeah, yeah, we do. I think we do ship to Canada and we have prescription and readers and we'll soon have kids as well. Yeah, it's funny like now, now that I'm working toward having a kid like so much of my content and stuff is around kids. I'm preparing myself so like researching organic bedding and, you know, EMF free baby monitors and stuff like that kind of preemptively learning about that side of alternative health and biohacking and stuff. Yeah, there's a lot of great stuff coming out in the kid realm. It's exciting.

01:01:01:10

Ronan

Cool. I guess...Late last year, we had Michael Pollan on the podcast and we had a great conversation. And one of the roflections I took out of that conversation is that actually children are the ultimate psychedelic because they take whatever you give them and they meet you exactly where you are, and if there's anything more psychedelic than that then I don't know it. So you're in for a treat. You know, it's got its challenges, for sure, but there's a lot of love and a lot of wonderful things that go with it.

01:01:33:11

Luke

That's great.

01:01:34:08

Ronan

I think the biggest thing is that you don't understand what life was like before you had children, like it really does, at least for me, create like a demarcation point beyond which before which is just like, it almost didn't exist. It's kind of funny.

01:01:46:16

Luke

You know that roflection is universal amongst parents and especially fathers that I talk to. All my friends here have kids. I mean, everyone seems to be in a relationship and have kids, kind of the age group, I guess. And just people that have converged on Austin are family oriented for whatever reason. So I'm always quizzing the guys, like, how does this work? How does that work? What's it like? How do you still do your thing? You know, all the other questions that a, you know, to be parent would have. And everyone says that same thing, you know, but overwhelmingly and I think this has helped me really lean into it, is every man I know who is a father has expressed the sentiment that their kid or kids have been their greatest teacher, but not just in a sort of trite way, but like no like real teacher like the teacher capital T where there's there are gifts awaiting you. This is what they tell me. Essentially gifts awaiting you that you have no idea even exist. And that, to me, is exciting. That's what that's what gets my curiosity piqued, you know, it's like, Oh, OK, yeah, I think I kind of got this figured out a little bit.

Let's see what's beyond this. This level of ale, you know?

01:03:05:19

Ronan

Totally, totally. My resolution for 2022 is actually to work on building my self-esteem, and you touched on fatherhood, and I guess that's really what we're talking about here, and one of the things that I've been learning is that a lot of self-esteem comes from the father, from the mother comes unconditional love and from the father comes self-esteem. That just tends to be the way things happen, and it seems that while I've had a lot of courage in some respects, being able to launch businesses in psychedelics starting after a failed attempt, a podcast like this one, despite all the discomfort it had and still has for me, the last couple of months of 2021 really shined a spotlight for me on just how flimsy my self-esteem actually is. What in your mind is the best way to build self-esteem? You know, it seems like you've gone on this journey quite a bit, and I'm starting to learn and get a sense of some ideas and I think it really comes down in a lot of ways to evaluation. But what advice would you give to me about how to build self-esteem and self-love if you've got any?

01:04:11:01

Luke

That's so, that's so good. You know, I think this is something that most, if not all, humans face at some point. I mean, I think unless you had, you know, the ideal mother and father like you just described, right, you're just getting affection and unconditional love and warmth from your mom and your dad's like, Go get em, kid, you can do anything you know, unless you're getting that all the time, you know? I think many of us suffer from self-doubt or, you know, just a low valuation of ourself. two things come to mind for me because this is something I've worked on a lot. I've made some progress. I think still when I see this come up for me is when I fail to advocate for myself and to stand up for myself, to speak my truth, to uphold or create boundaries with other people. Then I kind of route down underneath that, well, like, why am I allowing that to happen? It's like, Oh, because you don't deserve to be heard. You don't deserve to have autonomy, et cetera. But I think I've made progress in terms of...How few fucks I give truly of what other people think of me, like other people's perception of me, generally holds less sway than it did in the past, and that's continuing. For me, it's just like, how do I carry that into when I need things to get uncomfortable and confrontational in my life? That's when I find that I received a little bit and feel disempowered. But ultimately I think it stems from the same thing. You know, what's helped me immensely is. I think first and foremost, the acknowledgment that's like, wow, I've not loved myself as much as I could have. Why is that? What is it that I believe to be falsely wrong with me? How do I believe myself to be flawed? And what is the root of that? What experiences in my past gave me the message that I was unlovable? And for me, they're very clear and obvious, and there's a few huge punctuation points in my childhood that, you know, helped me to arrive at that false assumption. And, you know, then, so that's kind of like the inventory of like, OK, where is this coming from? And ruling that out and working on healing that? And then the other side of it is more on the proactive side of just God. How can I start to build into my mindset and into my habits like self-care? I mean, not self-care, like going and getting a, you know, a foot rub which it could be inclusive of. But self-care in terms of like, no really being in my heart and being in my body and truly appreciating the relationship I have with myself and also within that. Expanding on the perspective that every version of myself at every age that I've ever experienced in this lifetime is still in me and part of me. It's not like, Oh, that was five year old Luke and this is 51 year old Luke and that was a different entity there at five know that five is still right here. I still am that five year old, right? 

It's like Russian Dolls. You take them apart and you just keep finding another one inside. I think you could take a 62 person like me in Russian Doll me and you find me as an infant coming out of the womb, you know? And so it's an acknowledgment and an active love affair with all versions of one's self. And within that, the experience is imbued with deep forgiveness of one's mistakes. Right. So it's like part of that inventory of like, Oh, where have I gone wrong? What am I doing wrong? That's harming my self-esteem? And then the converse of that is God, how can I just shower myself with more love, like proactively in a reliable way to build into my thoughts and feelings, how much I love all parts of myself in all versions of myself and reparenting oneself. You know, I've had this experience so many times in medicine ceremonies where it's like me as my adult self of being more self realized than I was at any point prior in my life because it keeps growing in that capacity. But to really go back and find these points at which I was stuck before and really bring that version of myself back to my body now and just envelop those selves with love. Right. And it's those touch points in those mistakes I've made or harm that's been perpetrated upon me that I blame someone else for as the perpetrator. All of those, you know, core wounds from the deepest to the more superficial is to really go back and just be with those and sit with those as the adults in the room now, right, that it's like, "No, I'm here now, Little Luke, Medium Luke, Medium to late Luke, and current Luke. We're all here together not to sound schizophrenic, you know, but we're all here together. And how can I love all of those parts of myself? And this is something just ongoing for me. Oftentimes when I meditate, usually at the end, I'll just kind of I'll have self-talk to myself. That's just like, dude...Fucking good job. That's to me, that's the most loving thing I think I'd say to myself is I'm like, Man, you're doing great, you're doing great, Luke. All of you Lukes in there. You know, you made some mistakes. You've struggled. You've definitely hurt some other people unintentionally along the way. Maybe a couple drivers on the freeway intentionally. You know, I've never been so maniacal that I've actually, you know, harmed someone in a meaningful way. But you know, we're clumsy. We stumble through life and shit happens. And you know what, we want to be accountable and make amends for those things.  It's like, I think, within the amends within of making amends to myself and also acknowledging how I've harmed myself and sort of apologizing to myself, if that makes sense, you know, like God, I'm sorry I did that to you. I'm sorry, I put you in that position. 

You know, it's sort of like an observer witnessing consciousness, who is the overseer of my relationship with myself. And from that part of myself or that vantage point coming in to some of the lower realms within myself and giving love and acknowledgment and acceptance and say, Man, you're doing good, you're OK, you've made so much progress, you know, and putting some energy into, you know, the flip side of humility right there is we think of humility as well, don't be conceited, you know, be humble, be small, right? But there's another side of humility, which is really just the converse side of ego that tells me I'm less than rather than more than or better than. And what if I could actually explore a fuller expression of humility where I actually rise up to be as big and fucking awesome as I am also. You know, it's it's it's false humility to downplay someone's gifts, so maybe I could take a compliment better, not let it go to my head, but just go, Yeah, you know what? I am badass and I still have some work to do right and in different areas. So the self-love and self-esteem, it's so multifaceted. And I think mine, for the most part, you know, the improvements I've made have really been informed by plant medicines. In those experiences, you know, I've gotten to go in to the depths of my wounds on such a deep level and do so much foundational healing, that's what's left when those parts of myself are healed. What's left is just self-love and self-compassion and self forgiveness and just, you know, an embrace of one's self, even physically at times, if not metaphysically and just saying, Man, you're OK, you're you're worthy, you're so deserving of love. And the last thing I'll add to that. That's been really helpful to me is when I'm with someone that I deeply love, like, like my wife, Alison, that just walked in, I look at her in such divine perfection. When I just observe her, when I experience her, even if she's having a moment, you know, like all humans do. There's this perfection and this innocence and this this boundless beauty and depth. And I look at her and I'm just in awe. And I have a sense she looks at me in the same way. What if I could look at her, someone that I love and honor as deeply? What if I could actually reflect that point of view upon myself. Because I am that also otherwise I wouldn't have eyes to see it. Right. I'd be like, Oh yeah, there's that lady. She's pretty. You know, or whatever. You know, the fact that the fact that I can pick up on her profound gifts and uniqueness means that there's something in me that resonates with that to where it becomes visible and the expression of it that I see within her is being expressed within me just by the celebration of how I experience her. And so more of that, you know, and that does take a little bit of effort and fine tuning. And it's not just something that automatically happens because you got a big paycheck or you got a bunch of followers on social media or some superficial verification that you are indeed lovable and worthy of being here. It's an inside job. It's got to come from the depths of my being that says, like, no man, we're here. You're brilliant, you're great. And also, let's keep getting better.

01:14:11:11

Ronan

Well, on that note, I'm going to offer a compliment that you hope you receive, which is you have been a wonderful podcast guest, as well as your wife, Alison, who was a wonderful podcast guest. So I want to express my sincere gratitude for you joining us today and being on the podcast and sharing your thoughts. And thanks for having the ability it's been. It's been really amazing. It's been a pleasure and I've learned a lot. So thank you.

01:14:35:17

Luke

Yeah, likewise, man.

01:14:41:13

Ronan

Every once in a while, I stop and think about our place in the universe. We live on a tiny rock in the middle of an almost incomprehensibly almost incalculably large amount of dark, empty space. And when I leaned into that thought just a little bit, it becomes incredibly uncomfortable just how seemingly insignificant each of us are. The only possible conclusion that I come back to is that we meaning all life on Earth, are here for a reason. Otherwise, the existence of existence itself makes no sense. There has to be some form of consciousness that is able to perceive the universe. Otherwise, there is no purpose to the universe or frankly, even the fact of the universe. Existence needs to be experienced or documented in some way. Otherwise, there will be never any trace of it. And before you start getting too worried that this line of inquiry is going to go far off the deep end of Wu Scale, hold on. I'll try and bring it back to some level of rationalist thinking. And keep in mind that as batshit crazy as some of these thoughts sound, quantum physics theories suggest that matter exists only in a state of probability until observed by some other force. So what I'm talking about is kind of scientific, actually. Why am I raising these points? Well, because my conversation with Luke, that's really what he's found. He's leaned into the idea that there is something higher on a deeper, visceral level, not just on an academic one like I'm prone to do. And I really, really respect that. But it also caused me a different level of discomfort because I'm worried that the spiritual path can often lead people to ignore science, though I haven't quite crossed the chasm of spirituality with conviction that Luke has leaned into, I'm quite certain that whatever the reason for our existence, we need to integrate emotion and spirit with logic. That's the unique element of the human experience in my mind. As Tom Robbins says, it doesn't matter how sensitive or how damn smart and educated you are if you're not both at the same time. If your heart and your brain aren't connected aren't working together harmoniously, well, you're just hopping through existence on one leg. Frankly, I'm a little bit worried that there are too many people hopping around on one leg these days, one leg or the other. My sincere hope is that Luke and others like him have both feet firmly planted. But I suppose only time, whether it be linear or just a figment of the human mind, will tell.

01:17:10:12

Voicemail

Hi Ronan, my name is Abbey, and my question is how do I go from being a traditional therapist to a psychedelic therapist? I'm currently pursuing a career in mental health and also in school as well, and I'd love to know the important differences between psychotherapy and psychedelic psychotherapy protocols. Thank you very much.

01:17:34:22

Ronan

The author, Mark Twain, once responded to a question by saying, "I was gratified to answer promptly. I said I didn't know." And truthfully, there's some of that going on here right now, which is I'm not a trained therapist and I'm not a trained psychedelic therapist. So what I'm sharing is based on my limited knowledge. But I am happy to share with you. I think the most significant difference between traditional therapists and psychedelic therapists is by and large, most psychedelic therapists have experience with psychedelics. It is truly an ineffable experience. It is so hard to articulate what it's like to go through a psychedelic experience without having gone through it yourself. And so I think if you speak to most psychedelic therapists, they would identify the need for experiential training. Having the psychedelic experience is that your clients are going through as one of the essential components to being an effective psychedelic therapist. Beyond that, I would suggest that the key considerations are proper training. There are a number of different organizations right now offering psychedelic therapy training specifically, such as the California Institute for Integral Studies, which offers a masters, I believe in psychedelic therapies. MAPS offers training for MDMA assisted therapy, and of course, we at Field Trip offer training for ketamine assisted therapy as well. There are other organizations such as Fluence and others, but Field Trip, MAPS and CIIS are certainly the most prominent, and so I'd suggest you look into training around those. Otherwise, I think the most important thing to being a great therapist and psychedelic therapist is just a whole lot of empathy and care. And if you bring that to the equation, I'm sure you will do incredibly well. Whether it's just in traditional therapy or psychedelic therapy.

01:19:23:05

Ronan

As a quick reminder, you can record your “How-To” question for us, and we'll play it on the show. Just go to speakpipe.com/fieldtripping or you can email us your questions at fieldtripping@kastmedia.com. That's Kast with a K. Also, please follow, rate, and review our podcast and sign up for our newsletter at FieldTripping.FM or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening to Field Tripping, a podcast that's dedicated to exploring psychedelic experiences and their ability to affect our lives. I'm your host, Ronan Levy. Until next time, stay curious, breathe properly and remember, every day is a Field Trip if you let it be one. Field Tripping is created by Ronan Levy. Our producers are Conrad Paige and Amanda Elliott, and associate producers are Sharon Bella, Alex Sherman and Macy Baker. Special thanks to Kast media and of course, many thanks to Luke Storey for joining us today. To stay in the loop, check out the Life Stylist podcast and visit his website, LukeStorey.com.

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