Healing Soul Sickness Through Consciousness Exploration

Podcast Highlights

• The potential of the third wave of psychedelics.
• Practical ways to ensure safe, effective experiences.
• How to craft a microdosing protocol.
• Transcending the fear of death and addressing “existential malaise” through psychedelics.
• How Paul F. Austin used plant medicine to heal and integrate his own shadow.
• Paul’s view on the current state of the psychedelic industry, and how to live a fulfilling life.

Show Links

1. Wellness Force Media
2. Wellness + Wisdom Podcast
3. RUNGA
4. Tao Te Ching: A New English Version
5. Book, Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna
6. Book, Iron John: by Robert Bly
7. What If Money Was No Object? – Alan Watts
8. Synthesis Institute

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Podcast Transcript

0:00:02.2 Paul Austin: When we're looking at that healing of the soul malaise, the existential malaise, and why they're so helpful for purpose, to get back to your question, is when we root in our lovability, when we release the shame and the guilt that we've been conditioned into to be a certain type of person, then what opens up is an honesty and a truth about what it is that we really wanna do, what it is that we really want to create in the world around us.

[music]

0:00:35.9 PA: Welcome to the Psychedelic Podcast by Third Wave, audio mycelium, connecting you to the luminaries and thought leaders of the psychedelic renaissance. We bring you illuminating conversations with scientists, therapists, entrepreneurs, coaches, doctors, and shamanic practitioners, exploring how we can best use psychedelic medicine to accelerate personal healing, peak performance, and collective transformation.

[music]

0:01:10.7 PA: Hey, listeners. Today's episode is a bonus episode. It is the mic switched. Josh Trent, who hosts the Wellness and Wisdom Podcast, he ended up interviewing me about microdosing, about psychedelic work, about shadow, about evil, the role of archetypes and masculinity. I sent a private voice note to Josh after we did the interview and let him know that he was one of the best podcast hosts that I've ever been on. So it was just a really deep dive. This one's longer. It's about an hour and a half, but I know you all are so used to hearing me interview other folks about psychedelics and you'll finally get a long form interview where I'm on the other side. You get to hear a lot of my thoughts and perspectives as it relates to microdosing, as it relates to psychedelics, as it relates to masculinity, as it relates to good and evil, as it relates to shadow work. So this is really a full flushing out of my philosophy and how psychedelics overlap with that. So I do hope you enjoy it. If you do enjoy it, please leave us a review on iTunes or just drop me a note, a personal note about the podcast. We'd love to hear from you all. But before we dive into today's episode, a word from our sponsors.

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And so without further ado, we bring you Paul Austin and Josh Trent on the Wellness and Wisdom Podcast.

0:04:02.0 Josh Trent: You know what's interesting to me about these medicines is that they've been around for millennia. And I think about even what you do as a host, as a speaker, as an entrepreneur. And I'm like, Third Wave, huh? I wonder what that's about. I went to your site. It's right on the homepage. It was like in the first wave, these medicines were used as a sacrament as this holy beautiful sacrament where people would be in ceremony, like true ceremony. Then like 1938 or so hit. And then the sixties came on and that was like the psychedelic revolution. But we're in this third wave, Paul. It's one of the aspects of who you are and what you do in the world, man. I got to hang out with you at RUNGA and actually did a microdose, which was a unique experience we can talk about, but there is this third wave. So if people have seen your face or they maybe have seen your face, but they haven't heard of you, tell us about the third wave. Obviously people can go to the website, but in your heart right now and your experience of life, what is this third wave of the conscious use of psychedelics, including microdosing?

0:05:04.4 PA: Yeah, that's a great opener. So I'm a huge fan of history, a huge student of history. It's what I studied in undergrad. It's what I continue to study basically every day is what it, is what it feels like. And so when I started working with psychedelic substances many, many years ago, I had these insightful, mystical, spiritual, illuminating experiences where I came to realize that I had this spark of divinity inside of me. And that as a result of that, that life was something to be grateful for, that life was sacred, that life was about something much greater than just me, I, the ego that I was navigating everyday reality with. And a few years after that first experience, I was an entrepreneur and I was looking at what was coming next. And it was clear that psychedelics were having this resurgence of interest. There was more clinical papers that were being published on psychedelics. There were a lot of major podcasters like Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss who were starting to publicly talk about their own psychedelic use as well as interview researchers and other folks in the field.

0:06:16.5 PA: And then of course, everything going on with cannabis, with medicalization and then legalization, it was clear that there was a reframing around illicit substances. And so as I started to go deep into the rabbit hole of psychedelics, I came to realize, like you mentioned at the beginning here, that these have been used for eons, really since the beginning of human consciousness. If we go back to Terrence McKenna and Food of the Gods and how psilocybin was used to sort of spark that first emergence. And so when I was looking at the history and studying what had happened even in the more recent history in the fifties and sixties, it was clear that not only was there millennia of sacramental, ceremonial indigenous use, but that there was also over 1,000 clinical papers that had been published on the efficacy of LSD in the fifties and sixties on everything from alcoholism to addiction to end of life anxiety.

0:07:14.2 PA: And so when I was thinking about this third wave, I was really looking at how do we balance those two approaches? How do we balance the sacred, the sacramental, the ceremonial, the indigenous, the ritual that comes with that, the community and healing that comes with that with the precision and efficacy and sort of intellectual knowledge of this second wave of psychedelics of what we learned about the clinical applications and how do we take like a both and approach to finding where is the balance point between those two? I often think of the Tao Te Ching and Taoism where we talk about the middle way.

0:07:56.4 JT: I was literally just gonna say it sounds like the middle way. It sounds like the Tao Te Ching. I love that, Paul.

0:08:01.8 PA: Right, exactly. Yeah.

0:08:02.3 JT: How do we find that? It's so fleeting. It's like this target that moves all the time. And I can see how in the sixties it was almost like a dropout culture. It was like, "Hey, we're going to do these medicines, but they're not medicines. They're just party drugs." And then there's the other side of it where it's like very anti. There's nothing to do with them whatsoever. And any even taste of anything that's an entheogen or medicine of any kind is somehow evil. There's got to be a middle way, which we're going to explore today, man.

0:08:30.0 PA: I can't wait. And I think that middle way has a lot to do with ceremony. It has a lot to do with community. It has a lot to do with plant medicine, which we can talk about the difference between maybe plant medicines and synthetics like LSD or MDMA. And this is even, I had the opportunity in the last several years to start a legal psilocybin retreat center and this is the balance that we struck with it. It's called Synthesis. And it was essentially what is the synthesis of the sacred ceremonial use with modern cutting edge science sort of information. So let's, I mean, we'll flesh this out further. And then to land it on sort of microdosing and the topic of microdosing, because I'm sure your listeners have heard about microdosing or read an article about microdosing. You've probably talked about it on the podcast prior. I saw microdosing as embodying that middle way as a way that we could start to actively work with these substances and start to build a relationship with them without having to go into that full mystical dose, which tends to, for a lot of people, create a sense of disassociation.

0:09:37.3 PA: And so that microdose is a way to mainstream psychedelic use. So everyone can experience a tangible benefits without having to worry about the sort of risk profile of an Ayahuasca experience or 5-MeO-DMT or anything like that. And of course there are trade-offs to all of these. There are upsides to the mystical doses, but for newbies, for beginners, there's also a lot of challenges.

0:10:01.5 JT: Let's go to the practical. The practical is there has to be, I think three things and you talk about it perfectly on thirdwave.co; safe, structured, responsible. So let's go into each one of those things because I've done three or four solo cast on my experience down in the jungle. People know that I had my soul ripped off and pushed back in and I had what the native Americans call soul loss. I had a shattered psyche. We also just did a show with Ben Greenfield that you and I were chatting about where he has completely removed himself from plant medicine. So here we go, right? You and I, Paul, we're like on a page in a book here. We're trying to figure out how do we be of service to the world? How do we use these medicines in a conscious way? The safe, the structured, the responsible, when we look at the safe, first of all, let's even talk about what that is. What are the ingredients? What are the components in your experience with your journeys across the world, and also really, I think being the foremost, one of the foremost leaders in the psychedelic consciousness world, the ethical and conscious use of psychedelics. What does it mean to actually be safe? And by the way, is safety even ever guaranteed whether psychedelic or not?

0:11:13.1 PA: These are great questions. So I'm gonna back up and come from a slightly broader frame, which is why we emphasize safe, structured and responsible. And that because, and that's largely because these plant medicines, these psychedelics are agents of chaos. We could say, right? They facilitate and catalyze chaos, which can often lead to beneficial change, but not always. And so this sort of safe, structured and responsible use is think of it as a container for that chaos, which allows an individual to go into an experience to ensure that they actually feel like they can hold the complexity that they're about to become immersed in. So when we look at safety, safety could be the dose level that someone is looking to work with. So if any listeners are relatively new to psychedelics, they don't really have prior experience with plant medicine. Sometimes it's helpful to start with a substance or medicine like ketamine or MDMA, which tends to be shorter lasting. Ketamine lasts for about an hour to an hour and a half. MDMA lasts for maybe four to five hours. And they're very soft compared to like an Ayahuasca or 5-MeO-DMT.

0:12:21.5 PA: So sometimes safety is the type of medicine that we're using. Sometimes safety is about the amount of medicine that we're using. So if someone is new to psychedelics, they might choose to start with a microdose because it's going to be a safer entry point for them to start to feel into what this medicine is. So I think the type of medicine, the amount of medicine, and I think most importantly is what's the set and setting that you're doing it in, right? What's your mindset going into it? Have you prepared adequately for it? What's the physical setting in which you're in? Are you doing it at a music festival? There's a bunch of strangers and sort of things going on? Or are you at home safe and calm with a friend or a guide or a therapist who is there to support you and help you through it? Because I think that's another huge element of safety is a lot of folks who have maybe heard about psychedelics in the media, who started to read about psychedelics, their next question is often, okay, this sounds like something I would love to do. Now, how do I find a great provider? How do I find the right clinic, the right retreat center, the right therapist or coach to work with?

0:13:32.1 PA: And I think that's another huge element of safety is especially as psychedelics become more popular, we're hearing a lot of stories of people who just sit with unethical shamans or unethical therapists or unethical people who sort of label themselves as a plant medicine facilitator, but really have minimal experience. And so I think the other key point of safety is who are you choosing to surrender to? Who are you trusting to be within that very, very vulnerable state as you go into plant medicine?

0:14:03.5 JT: That's really big. We'll get to the other two 'cause I wanna expand and then go just like a little bit deeper on what you said. When we had Ben on the show and I was kind of poking and prodding and challenging him in a healthy way, I was like, so I've had transformational experiences with entheogens and plant medicines that literally altered the course of my life in a loving way forever. I would never substitute them for any talk therapy or really, Paul, any experience I've ever had. And in full duality, I've also had experiences where, like you were saying, the safety was not pure. The shaman was not coming from a pure heart. The medicine was not grown or harvested or boiled and served in the right most intentional way. And I think about this question of safety that I asked you, and I understand at third wave, a big part of what you do on a global scale is giving people that first piece.

0:14:52.8 JT: Like understanding that safety has some key ingredients, which you unpacked, very important. I'm super glad you did that. And I also want to reiterate here, there is no such thing as safety in this life. To live is to be unsafe. So whenever we are entering, Paul, and I'm curious how you feel, into a space where we're going 4 and 5D and beyond, even if it's the most loving intentional space and everything is perfect, it ticks all the boxes in your guides and in your programs, you have, I'm sure seen situations where people had to go into the realm of danger to get some wisdom, to bring that wisdom back home to their own body and their own heart so that they then could lead life, I guess you could say more safe because they're more aligned. And when we're more aligned, we actually attract less negativity, less danger. So what are your thoughts on this? Like, I understand the safety aspect is huge, but also we have to come to terms with to be a human being is to lead an unsafe life.

0:15:52.6 PA: I love this, this dynamic that we're setting up here because it is sort of what it hits at is the difference between physiological safety and psychological safety. And it also hits at what are the trade-offs that we are making in order to have a catharsis of trauma in order to face our internal demons. Well, in order to feel safe enough, in order to feel assured enough that you can go into those dark crevices of your subconscious and your unconscious, it's helpful to be in a physiological safe place. It's helpful to be able to fully surrender with an understanding that then you can go into those shadows of who you are with enough courage and enough sort of even breath to face what you need to face. 'Cause I think the other element to emphasize here, the sort of flip side of safety is the individual needs to have enough courage to face their demons in going into this. And so the example that I thought of when you were bringing up this sort of dynamic is rites of passage in indigenous communities. Where, for anyone who's seen the movie 300 about ancient Sparta, there's a scene at the beginning of that film where the young general has to go out and kill a wolf with a spear as he's backed into this corner.

0:17:18.5 PA: And that's his initiation. And that was a common initiation in many places. The men would have to go out and they would have to kill a wild animal or they would have to be, not abused, but really just physically tormented by the elders and their community at the risk of death oftentimes. And death was possible and death was common. And yet what we find in these indigenous communities who use plant medicines is you can still facilitate that near death experience psychologically without putting someone at physiological risk. And so this comes back to like the point that we were talking about before, which is this third wave of psychedelics is if we're looking at precision and efficacy of how we use these plant medicines and we're asking in particular, I think for us as men, this is a really common topic is how do we facilitate that near death experience? How do we facilitate rites of passage to let men know that life is inherently unsafe and yet you have enough agency, you have enough capacity to navigate that in a way with courage and bravery. And I think psychedelics help, plant medicines help to facilitate that. So to come back, physiological safety in a container is critical 'cause that allows someone to go deep into the shadow to have the courage to face those demons even if the mind says, "This is unsafe, this is unsafe," but at least the body can feel like, "Okay, I can go into this. I can surrender. I have that capacity to do so."

0:18:48.5 JT: You know, that was so brilliant. Everybody rewind right now, watch that again, listen to that again. Because when you contrasted the physiological and the physical and the difference between the two, I'm thinking about psychoneuroimmunology, where thoughts become things, the science, literally the science of how our thoughts become health and health issues and disease. And I flash back to this conversation I've had with so many friends, maybe we even talked about this at RUNGA. And I'm thinking about how many times in my life that my mind has told me that something is so unsafe, but it actually wasn't physically unsafe. It was just perceived as mentally unsafe. And I really want people to get that 'cause what you just said, I've never actually had somebody verbalize and articulate in that way. Can you go just one layer deeper into maybe some of how the brain actually functions and what comes up in conversations with your lectures, your students, and the things you do around the world. What do people tell you their mind tells them when going into a microdose or even a macrodose? What does that even look like in your experience?

0:19:52.8 PA: So this is a great question. So I'll kind of on the topic of psychoneuroimmunology, let's talk a little bit about the neuroscience of what happens when we take a psychedelic and a plant medicine, 'cause it's gonna tie into your question, as well as some of these aspects that we talked about as it relates to courage. So there's an almond-sized part of the brain called the amygdala. And the amygdala is our fear response center. And as we know, fear and having fear is a healthy, normal aspect of survival. If we didn't have an amygdala, if we didn't have a fear response, then we would just jump off cliffs or jump out of windows or do really ridiculous, crazy stuff and not be able to really survive like we know how to survive. However, with those of us who have had a traumatic experience, particularly with something like PTSD or even smaller traumas around, for me, my trauma was, I wasn't accepted and loved in community growing up. So I was ostracized. So I never felt really accepted by my peer group. And so I have a trauma where I have a fear of social situations at times and being outgoing and being extroverted. And so what happens...

0:21:02.4 JT: That's so funny, Paul. I would never have thought that about you.

0:21:04.6 PA: Right. Well, and that shows the amount of work I've done with psychedelics and other things to really overcome that and see through that. Right?

0:21:12.8 JT: Amazing.

0:21:13.8 PA: And what happens when we work with psychedelics in particular MDMA, but also psilocybin, is it dampens that fear response in the amygdala. So if the mind is sort of going, like, "I can't talk about this," or "I can't confront this," or "I can't face this," when we take a psychedelic, it actually dampens that fear response. So all of a sudden, this sort of reactivity that was present around a thing that we perceive to be as challenging is no longer present. And so we can actually go forward with that and move into that rather than being held back and constricted by fear itself. So the way that that shows up then, and what the mind might say when it comes to going through with a high dose experience or even a microdose experience, the biggest thing is what if I have a bad trip? What if I lose my mind? What if I never recover from it? And so oftentimes, this comes down to set and setting. The mindset before this comes down to how we frame, how we prepare for the experience. That's just a simple point of communication like, "Hey, challenging experiences do happen. You are safe in this container." People who, this is important to note, you should not do a psychedelic if you're predisposed to schizophrenia or you are predisposed to any of that.

0:22:37.8 PA: But assuming that's been vetted, these are more or less physiological safe substances. And even if in the throes of an experience, you have some stuff that comes up, what you need to focus on, this is what I tell folks, is surrender, allow, accept, breathe. Because oftentimes, the challenge that comes up in a psychedelic experience is when we try to block or suppress or constrict. And what we really need to do is just allow all of these emotions that we normally repress, sadness, shame, anger, guilt, to come to the surface. 'Cause oftentimes that is the fear of the mind. It's what if I actually allow these shadow emotions that I normally keep tucked away to be seen, to be heard, to be present? And then of course, the mind, the ego has to deal with, well, how will I change as a result of that? 'Cause there's also a sense of the ego wants to stay how it is. The ego is all about survival, if you will. And again, that's necessary. That's important. It's not like we just want to get rid of the ego. But oftentimes, that survival instinct, that personality that we've constructed for ourselves, at some point, it's just no longer... That story that it's been telling us is no longer relevant. And so we need to be pushed over the edge.

0:24:02.3 JT: Wow. I got to pause you. There's so much there. Good Lord. Okay. So the first thing that we get to unpack is earlier when you talked about the difference between if we're next to a cliff, it's probably a good thing that we have some rational fear, because then we won't fall off the cliff. So I wanna let people know there is a good thing, I'm not trying to demonize fear. And, Paul, this is so refreshing after our conversations we've had with Hamilton Souther and with Ben Greenfield on the podcast. You're bringing a whole new understanding of this, which I really appreciate. And I think about the irrational fear, where it's like, if I go into a social situation, I'm gonna be judged. I'm not gonna be accepted. I've definitely been, I've been bullied in high school myself. So part of my shadow is that I try to be perfect on the outside so that people can't see that on the inside, I'm just vulnerable like everybody else.

0:24:49.0 JT: And that's real for me. And so what I do with my microdosing, and I wanna know what you feel about this, for people that deal specifically with that, Paul, that first part, the irrational fear of showing up in a social situation or the irrational fear of stage fright or the irrational fear of, fill in the blank it could be anything that the mind constructs. Is there a specific protocol that you like to follow or, and, or what's the pre frame for letting go of those aspects of the ego that is essentially trying to keep us safe? And so there's compassion there, but at the same time, it blocks us from living a life fully expressed.

0:25:28.8 PA: Another great dynamic that you're setting up because you're coming back to the, the physiological safety versus the psychological safety, right? Where all of these elements that you talk about, the irrational fear of stage fright, the irrational fear of how we show up in a social situation, even the irrational fear of, you know, the projections that we make on our significant other about how they might feel about something or where they're at, right? That is all psychological, right? There's nothing physiological dangerous about any of these things. And yet they're felt to be just as real as something that is physiologically dangerous, right? And I think that's important to emphasize because we're not saying that these are not things to, these are things to not take serious. These are things to not pay attention to, 'cause they are, and they're felt just as real. And we see this in terms of nervous system dysregulation and et cetera, et cetera. So in terms of practicalities, right? Like what is that, that protocol that we set up for something like microdosing? And let's stick to microdosing for now, 'cause I think that I'll have to keep this within, within a reasonable lane for your audience.

0:26:29.9 PA: You know, when we look at microdosing, microdosing is not just about the day you take a low dose of a psychedelic. We're really looking at a microdosing protocol in terms of what are you committing to for the next 30 days as an intention that you wanna cultivate and how can microdosing support you in facilitating that intention? So to use your example, and this is very specific to me, when I first started microdosing, when I was around 24, the intention was, as it relates to social anxiety, to minimize my alcohol use, 'cause alcohol was something that I commonly use to help sort of overcome that social anxiety and be more outgoing.

0:27:14.2 JT: Most people do. Alcohol is the number one drug.

0:27:17.4 PA: Exactly. And how could microdosing be used as a substance, as a tool to be more open, to be more extroverted without having to rely on alcohol? And so the intention that I made in that microdosing protocol, again, assuming I'm microdosing two or three times a week for let's say 30 to 60 days, is I was very intentional then about putting myself in social situations when I was microdosing to confront that fear, to confront what it is that was holding me back with an understanding that what... So I was microdosing LSD at the time, and we can talk a little bit about the differences between LSD and psilocybin, but something that LSD does is it's more dopaminergic. And so that means it's opening up the pathways for more dopamine to be created when you're microdosing with LSD. And dopamine is tied to extroversion, being more social, being more outgoing, being more talkative, being more open necessarily. And so when we look at then sort of the intersection of all of that, I knew I had this sort of knowing, this confidence that I was physiologically supported by the microdose that I was taking. So there was sort of a confidence or trust in the substance itself that it was helping me to be more extroverted.

0:28:35.6 JT: Yeah.

0:28:37.4 PA: And I still had to make the choice to go into that situation, to go to the bar, to go to the dinner, to go to the friend hangout, whatever it was, and feel safe and comfortable and seen in my own skin without having to revert to alcohol. And the reason I emphasize that choice part is because when we talk about psychedelics, when we talk about plant medicine, when we talk about microdosing, the thing that matters more than anything else is what I call willful participation. And that means you have to be willing to make that choice. You have to be willing to participate in the intention that you've set for yourself in order to see that change and transformation. It's not just, "I'm gonna take this and things are gonna be fixed," you really have to show up for yourself. And so when it comes to this example, show up in those context in those settings where normally you would feel that fear and use that microdose to help, again, dampen the amygdala response, facilitate more extraversion so you can show up in a way that actually helps you to overcome and rewrite that story that had held you back for years and decades and however long it might have been.

0:29:49.0 JT: When people actually start into the integration of taking the correct dosages and, you know, we can talk about a little bit of maybe Jamie Wheal's had done a calendaring system and how that might be the same or different as to what you're doing with third wave. But when people start actually doing that, one thing I love that you said is you said that they must have the willful participation that I believe is tied to courage. And I wonder, Paul, if courage is both a spirit and beast because our spirit is courageous, but what dampens the spirit is maybe a belief that it can't shine and then what dampens the beast is all the different myelin sheaths and the pathways of what goes on on a neurological level when we go through micro and macro trauma. Can you expand both of those? Because on one side we do have a soul contract. How do these medicines help our soul contract be fulfilled? Our soul actually breathe and express itself. And then also from a physicality side, non-spiritual, how does that actually help the brain form new connections, new loving connections to be fully expressed? 'Cause really what we're talking about here is just being free, being expressed.

0:30:53.8 PA: Another great dynamic. I gotta give it to you. And you probably hear this all the time, but these are phenomenal questions.

0:31:00.2 JT: It's all the stuff I wanted to ask you in person, but I was waiting.

[chuckle]

0:31:03.1 PA: You're like, you're doing such a service to your, like, I just wanna step back a sec and say, you're doing such a service for your audience, for the general public to set these questions up in such a way. 'Cause it hits at all of these sort of middle way points that we set up the frame at in the beginning.

0:31:19.8 JT: Thank you.

0:31:19.9 PA: The spirit beast, the physiological, the psychological.

0:31:21.4 JT: And I'm genuinely curious.

0:31:25.2 PA: And it's a great framing. So I'm gonna do my best 'cause there's quite a bit there. So let's talk, let's talk first about the spirit.

0:31:31.3 JT: Everyone lean in. Here we go.

0:31:31.8 PA: And then, [chuckle] and then we can get into the beast element. 'Cause the spirit element is the immortal aspect of who we are. Right? It's, the soul is the immortal self. The soul is something that exists beyond time and space. The soul is something that is not contained into just a physical body. Right? The beast, however, is that physiological part of us. It is the meat and the bones, so to say, it is the organic matter. It is even maybe we could say the ego part of us that needs to navigate everyday reality and fuck and love and eat and run and kill and, you know, do all these other sort of primal wild things that we are here to do as human beings. And so I would love to root this in my own felt experience when I first did and had a macrodose LSD experience. So I was 19 years old and I'll talk about how this maps onto some of the clinical research that's been done with psychedelics as well. But I was 19 years old and I did a reasonably high dose of LSD, about 250 micrograms of LSD and it's had this classic ego death experience where the, there was such a significant shift about who I was before and who I then perceived myself to be after.

0:32:49.8 PA: Who I was before was I was Paul Austin. I was this individual born in Granville, Michigan to two, you know, parents, a social worker and an educator. I had two sisters, you know, I played soccer, played violin, et cetera, et cetera, who I was after was God in some way. There was a spark of divinity that came through that I came to recognize that I was part of something much greater than myself, that I was the tree that I was standing in front of, that I was the lake that I had in my purview when I was on LSD, that I was the friend that I was sitting next to as we were going through that experience, that I was everything else that was around me, that I was interconnected, that I was a being that was both myself and all of this energy that surrounded me. Right? And so that is that feeling of spirit, of the immortal timeless spirit that exists within all of us. And what they've shown, what's so interesting is what they've shown in clinical research out of Johns Hopkins is that high doses of psilocybin, which is the active ingredient in magic mushroom, catalyzes a mystical experience almost on demand for about 80% of people who work with high doses of psilocybin. And what that means, that mystical experience means that you're essentially connecting to source, to God, to something greater than yourself, to oneness, to whatever you wanna sort of put the label and name on it.

0:34:18.5 PA: There's a felt experience of interconnectedness, of non-duality. And the reason that's so important, and this will tie into the beast element as well, the reason that's so important is because in particularly Western culture, Western industrial culture, we have a distinct fear of death. And there are so much that we are held back by because of that fear of death. There's so much that constricts us as a result of that. So oftentimes after people have this mystical experience with psychedelics, they see through the veil of existence, they realize death is in fact nothing to be feared. That is just the next passing on. It's the next sort of thing that happens in the evolution of energy. And because there isn't that fear necessarily of death, they feel free then to choose whatever path that they feel most aligned to choose. Because prior oftentimes to that experience, and I especially speak for myself, I was conditioned to choose what I thought my parents wanted me to do, what I thought my community wanted me to do, what I thought my friends wanted me to do. And all of a sudden when I had this mystical experience, I was released from all of those external obligations and could actually pursue a path that I felt was most true to the downloads that I had received from this mystical experience. And I know there's a lot there, but I just like...

0:35:39.2 JT: Wow. No, it's beautiful. It's so good, man. I'm really, really happy. I'm really, really stoked that we're exploring this one fragment, this one line, this connection, because I have been feeling a lot lately. I don't know if it's like the solar system or just the time on Earth or the compression that we're experiencing as a collective, but on an individual level, what you're describing, this conditioning, I have been releasing right now so much conditioning around letting my light shine, being an integrated person, which means I have a healthy ego and I also express from that healthy base. So I don't do things because my ego wants to get something. It's more like my ego just wants to express. And I think that's a really beautiful thing.

0:36:25.1 JT: I wonder how you would explain your own process around having a truly integrated ego. First of all, how would you define that? Because what we're talking about here is like somebody that's balanced in beast and spirit, somebody that is taking care of their physicality. They're using these medicines on a micro, maybe macro level through the help of your guide that we talked about. And they're having a lot of changes on a, I guess you could say neurological level and also on a spiritual level. They're both happening. What has happened for you potentially recently or just beyond what happened when you were 19, when you shared that amazing story that really allowed you to see how both your beast and your spirit was up leveled in a way that you fundamentally shifted forever. What was that process like for you?

0:37:14.9 PA: It's a great lead into setting up the beast and then how that played out. So I wanna, I'm gonna, you know, we talked about the spirit and then the beast element, you know, and how that then played out and how am I balancing becoming an integrated person? And am I integrated and what does even that path and evolution look like? And are there measuring sticks for that? And, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot within that...

0:37:35.0 JT: I think it's not a measuring stick, but we definitely can feel when someone's integrated. We can feel when they're, they have a healthy fun ego.

0:37:43.6 PA: We feel their presence. We can feel their sense of safety. We can feel the way that they listen to us. We can feel their sense of feeling comfortable in their own skin. We can feel that they're not driven necessarily by ego or superficial items, like, you know, I don't know the clothes that they wear or the amount of money that they make, or those are all secondary to their purpose, to the way that they show up in the world and to the way that they listen to others in many ways. And so that beast element then it's going back to the both and dynamic, right? And when I had this mystical experience, what came through as a truth is to facilitate true physiological wellbeing. Let's root in physiological wellbeing. I had to remember the way that I had lived as a human for all of those ancestral years before Paul Austin was born. In other words, I had to root back into, you know, I started to eat paleo after that high dose psychedelic experience, 'cause I started to realize that the diet and food that I ate, it really mattered where those plants and where those animals came from and how they were raised. And, you know, I cut out gluten and I cut out processed food and I cut out a lot of sugar and, you know, really helped me to root into that. I started to wear the Vibram five fingers shoes at that time, those, 'cause I wanted to feel the earth and get back to barefoot and sort of...

0:39:08.8 JT: Did you ever wear 'em on a date?

0:39:10.8 PA: No, definitely not.

[chuckle]

0:39:12.0 JT: I feel like that would be like date repellent. You show up in five fingers. She'd be like, no.

0:39:17.6 PA: Right.

0:39:18.6 JT: Okay. I digress.

0:39:21.3 PA: So, and it also got into like, you know, meditation and it got into how much artificial light was I exposing myself to and how many EMS was I exposing myself to and all the things that I'm sure a lot of your listeners are aware from a wellness perspective in particular. And the thing that I rooted in is I often go back when I think about this, this frame, so to say, the beast frame, the primal frame, is I think of this story, Iron John, which was a book written by Robert Bly, where he talks about the wild man who goes into the swamp and starts to bucket out all of the water in the swamp to get to the bottom, you know, to get to that, to the, to get to that nut. And I see psychedelics as a tool that helped to accelerate our capacity to bucket out all that water and get back into that wild man, into that primal part of who we are, remembering again, that our relationship with these medicines is ancient and the information that they put us in touch with is ancient. And the more we can listen to that, the more alive we actually become, the more nourished that we feel. And even how that looks then on a physiological level is we, we're more motivated. We have a higher sex drive. We feel more compassion and love and gratitude for the environment around us.

0:40:47.7 PA: We probably have a better memory. We can learn quicker, right? There's a lot of downstream effects from that, that sort of touchstone, if you will, of the primal wild side of us. And so that's how I would frame sort of the spirit-beast conversation, right? Fear of death is eliminated when we realize our soul is immortal through plant medicines. And there's a gratitude and appreciation for this one life that we get to live in the Josh Trent bodysuit, in the Paul Austin bodysuit. So why not live it to the truest of our abilities and create the life that we want to exist with that. And so the way that I did that sort of back to the question that you had then led into is the way that I did that was simply saying, hey, I don't have any interest in getting an MBA. I don't have any interest in working in a corporate job. When I was 21, I moved to Turkey.

0:41:35.1 PA: I lived in Istanbul for a couple of months, and I lived in Izmir for nine months where I taught English. Soon after I moved to Thailand, where I sort of followed the four-hour work week playbook from Tim Ferris and started my own online business and worked, you know, out of cafes in Thailand. And then in 2015 started Third Wave. I was 25 at the time when I started Third Wave. And the core of that back to these experiences is if I only have one life to live in this bodysuit, and I have one gift that I can give one really core, strong, beautiful, amazing gift, one mission to live for that, knowing what I, what I knew, kind of feeling this existential crisis that we're going through. And some people would say it's a mental health crisis. Some people would say it's a meaning crisis. Some people would say it's a climate crisis. Some people would say, you know, add on to...

0:42:24.1 JT: I would say it's all them.

0:42:25.1 PA: As you will. It's all of them, right? What is, what is, and I was thinking about this, you know, in 2015, what is one thing that I could do that would help humanity as a species to adapt and grow from this existential crisis? And what I landed on is normalizing the intentional responsible use of plant medicine as a tool for growth, adaptability, creativity, innovation, leadership, wellbeing. And so that's why I'm here now. That's why we're having this conversation. That's why I've gone into all these rabbit holes is because there's the spirit part of me feels so strongly about the health and wellbeing of humanity. And the beast part of me wants to do something every day that I feel excited and motivated and challenged by. And so this mission of normalizing intentional and responsible psychedelic use is my gift. It's my expression of this lifetime that I think will have the greatest impact possible for all of the things that I mentioned before.

0:43:34.9 JT: And this is why you've had the success you've had. I know that success hasn't always been super easy. It's not like it was gifted to you on a silver spoon, but I will say there is a resonance with you and myself because I started the podcast in 2015. So maybe like there was an alignment there either from a planetary perspective or just a personal perspective. I'm a, I'm 42. So I'm, I think I'm about nine or 10 years older than you. And so I think about if someone would have given me this conversation that you and I are having right now, when I was 18, 19, 20 years old, can you imagine what that might've opened up for you or I at that age if we were gifted a conversation like this, that wasn't... Wasn't about partying, wasn't about hedonism, wasn't about getting as much out of life as you can. It was about how do I be of the deepest service from my heart? By the way, what is a heart even? How do I be of service from that place?

0:44:32.8 JT: That is a fundamental conversation that I think society and religion and even parents or epigenetics is like thirsty for on the deepest level. It's so thirsty. We are so thirsty. We're starving and we're thirsty for this conversation about truly being of service. And what I'm about to say, Paul, isn't it to shame anyone. I don't think it's possible from at least my beast, my spirit, to lead a life that isn't purpose-based. I think there is gonna be some kind of mental, spiritual, emotional cost to leading a life that is not focused on a purpose. And by the way, your purpose could be being the best mom, being the best dad, being the best business owner. You don't have to be a "entrepreneur". Can you dive into that a little bit? The intentional use of psychedelics in alignment or as a fuel substrate for someone's purpose or maybe, maybe even giving them the courage to live their purpose in the first place.

0:45:30.9 PA: When you were talking through this, I wrote down existential malaise, right? As a phrase, right? There's a sense of, there's soul sickness that we now have as Westerners. And I know I mentioned Westerners, but that's who we are. That's our culture. That's what we were grown, raised in. Unfortunately, you know, this Western industrial frame has been exported everywhere now, which is a separate topic and separate conversation. But as a result of that, the things that we have been conditioned, let's say, to find value and meaning in the house that we buy, the car that we drive, the job that we have, the accomplishments that we have been able to accomplish, the sports teams that we were stars of in high school, whatever it is, the girlfriend, the trophy wife, whatever it is, that has been so part of the mainstream narrative. People are now, especially in the last couple of years since this whole pandemic situation.

0:46:37.4 JT: I call it the theater. Then I won't get flagged by the Google robots. I just call it theater, the health theater, the lockdown theater we've been experiencing.

0:46:48.8 PA: There's an understanding of how sick we really are. And so when we, a lot of people will go into plant medicine or into psychedelics because they have depression or they have PTSD or they have anxiety or they're struggling with addiction, alcoholism or tobacco or whatever it is. Or maybe they'll even go into it because they wanna be a better parent or they wanna be more creative or they want to be a better leader. Whatever the external thing is, what I often find, and this is just as true for myself, is there's some level of soul sickness there that we're asking for help with and that plant medicines in particular are a phenomenal tool to heal that soul sickness because what they allow us to experience is unconditional love. And when we experience and feel that unconditional love from source, from oneness, from God, from something beyond, from even nature, whatever it is, we remember how lovable we are. And when we remember how lovable we are, when we remember the purity of who we are, then it gives us something to anchor in outside of plant medicine to remember, so to say, that we can continue to come back to that place of wholeness. And you'd asked about what does it mean to be an integrated being? What does it mean to be on that path?

0:48:15.1 PA: And whenever I think of that, I think of wholeness because love, even if we had phenomenal parents, and I will say publicly, I love my parents. They raised me quite well. They were always there. They went to my sport games. They went to my violin concertos. They attended everything. They were attentive. We were middle-class. I had food on the table. Everything was great. And yet, by nature, they are imperfect. By nature, their love is still conditional. Our community's love is conditional. Our friend's love is conditional. It's always based, even if it's subconscious, on, well, if you do this for me, I will do this for you. God's love, source's love, the thing that is beyond that is absolutely unconditional. And so I think when we're looking at that healing of the soul malaise, the existential malaise, and why they're so helpful for purpose, to get back to your question, is when we root in our lovability, when we release the shame and the guilt that we've been conditioned into to be a certain type of person, then what opens up is an honesty and a truth about what it is that we really wanna do, what it is that we really want to create in the world around us.

0:49:42.2 PA: And when we can sit in that space of silence, when we can sit in that space of knowing and honestly ask ourselves, if, Alan Watts has this classic YouTube, it's like a 3-4 minute video, which is something along the lines of, "If money was no object, what would you do?"

0:50:00.1 JT: What makes you itch?

0:50:01.0 PA: Exactly.

0:50:01.4 JT: I love that video.

0:50:03.7 PA: And I think ultimately, we haven't quite gotten into the larger collective conversation, but when we're talking about new paradigms, when we're talking about what comes beyond Western industrial capitalism and extractivism, one thing that I often root in is the flip side of existential malaise is existential wealth. And how do we reframe from an orientation or incentives driven by financial wealth, which is at the end of the day, just an abstract number, to existential wealth, the wealth of being? How do we create a new paradigm? How do we create communities that allow for a sense of all of our physiological needs being taken care of, the food and the water and the sleep and the love and the shelter and all of those things? Because then at that point, the capacity to focus on, well, what is our purpose? What does life mean to us? If I could create without any of those restrictions, what would I create? And thankfully, you and I have that capacity now, which is beautiful. Now, how do we allow for more folks to tap into that?

0:51:16.5 JT: Well, also there's so much in what you said, because I think about whether you believe in Maslow's Triangle or not, there is some truth to taking care of the beast first and the needs of the beast first. You and I are afforded, Paul. We are afforded. This is why I'm so grateful. Like truly, I'm so grateful. God, I can like, I mean, it almost makes me emotional just to share this with you right now, because the fact that we get to do what we do, it is an honor. Like it is a deep honor to be able to hold these conversations, do the work on ourselves, shine the limelight on it publicly, not because we're so special, but because we're special like everyone else. And so I just wanna say that. And I think attending to the needs of the beast, financial, food, shelter, security, like all these things have to be in place. And the answer, I believe, to one of your questions is how do we have this existential wealth? How do we have this wealth for all? I think we have to be a vibratory match for it. I think we have to take care of ourselves and lead our lives in a way where it's actually a space for that existential wealth to live inside of.

0:52:20.6 JT: In other words, if I'm not being something or if I'm not doing my best to live in a vibrational way, that I'm actually a conduit, a spaciousness to hold that way of being, it's not gonna live within me. It's also why I took on an entity once in a ceremony, because that entity would not have come into me unless there was space for it to live. That was for my own healing. I think the majority of entities actually enter people because they want healing. They wanna give that person a lesson. So I'm curious how you feel about this. The vibrational match is actually what we need to become as an individual and a society in order for existential wealth to truly exist, in order for the beautiful world that we all know is possible to exist. What do you feel about that? How do we actually do that? Obviously, it starts with us, our food, our water, our sleep, our hydration, our breath, all these pillars that we talk about so much on Wellness and Wisdom. But how do you expand that so that people can actually understand it and feel it, this existential wealth and the vibratory match of that?

0:53:27.5 PA: So what I wrote down is that sort of relationship between the vibrational match and the lovability. So back to the point about this felt sense of unconditional love, it first starts with anchoring and rooting in that. Because once we feel that, once we experience that, once we have that memory, so to say, of that, once we can anchor in that in a week to two weeks to three months to six months, let's say after a plant medicine journey, then it acts as an anchor for all of the patterns of behavior that come after it. And then there's an awareness of in which ways are we not practicing that? In which ways are we still holding onto stories that we are not worthy? In which ways are we holding onto stories that we have things to be ashamed of? In which ways are we holding onto stories that tell us that we aren't lovable necessarily? In what way do we eat? In what way do we sleep? In what way do we exercise? In what way do we meditate or maybe not meditate that is an indication of that as well? So I think first themselves. Or silence ourselves, right? 'Cause there's also a sense of speaking out if there's boundary...

0:54:41.6 JT: Who am I to express? Who am I to share my truth?

0:54:44.8 PA: Exactly. Exactly. So first and foremost, it starts with, I think anchoring into that. Secondary to that, I think is a reframe, a recognition that a lot of what we are told we need, we don't need. So after those high doses of psychedelics that I did when I was 19 and 20, the reason I pursued a path that was more unconventional is 'cause I wanted to experience what it would live like to live with just a bag, a 25 liter bag and travel the world for six months. So minimalism, right? All these things that we supposedly need, we don't really need. So how do we reframe that? And this goes into sort of the spirit-beast conversation as these plant medicines help us to go and root in actually the things that matter most are not my job, my status, my accomplishments, my title, things that are tied to sort of the superficial ego. The things that matter most are the way that I love, the way that I listen, the way that I show up for friends, the commitment that I make to a purpose that is greater than what I am. And so after the lovability, then comes the reframing around what actually matters to me. And then after that, then it's sort of who am I choosing to be in relationship with? Right? So oftentimes, right? You're, you know, there's a classic phrase, you are the average of the five people that you surround yourself with, which I think is quite true.

0:56:14.8 JT: That shit's real.

0:56:16.3 PA: It's 100% real. We are our environment.

0:56:17.0 JT: That is real.

0:56:17.9 PA: We're way more sensitive and adaptable to our environment than we realize in many ways. So who are you choosing to be in relationship with? Who are your mentors? Who are your friends? Who are your lovers? Who is your family, so to say, chosen or, you know, given, if you will. And how are you being very intentional about the people that you choose to cultivate and create deep relationships with? Because to go back to then the sort of practicality of this, we probably talked about this at RUNGA. You know, you and I know plenty of people who are, let's say, buying land in Costa Rica or buying land in Texas, and they're looking to set up some sort of intentional sort of resilient community where they're starting to farm and permaculture...

0:57:00.4 JT: I think that was on a meme that I saw. We're gonna link right now, Paul. I have to interrupt you. There was a meme that was passed around. It made me laugh so hard. We're gonna put it on screen right now. And I think the core aspects was like, "Know someone that knows Aubrey Marcus, has a podcast, microdoses, has a crypto portfolio." And then a big one was looking at buying land to create an intentional community. It was like the funniest meme because there's so much truth in it, man. So we'll make everybody laugh, or laugh together 'cause you're so right. But there is. There is this, there is a genuine call.

0:57:31.8 PA: And so who do you choose to do that with? Right?

0:57:33.9 JT: There's a genuine call for this.

0:57:35.6 PA: And who do you choose to create that with? Because then who you choose to create that with will help to develop what is the frequency of that space, of that land, of that area, of that mission, so to say. So getting back into a vibrational match, you first cultivate you. You first remember what it is to be lovable. You first remember what it is to be in that every day. And then how do you build relationships with others so you can create coherence? You can create an energetic sort of vortex of that. And that's a second podcast or that's a whole nother thing around like, well, how do we set this up and what is that? But I think it's emerging. It's not clear yet. But the sort of pieces will fall into place about how we do that. I think what we can take responsibility for right now is who are we choosing to be in relationship with?

0:58:22.8 JT: This is beautiful. The podcast that is right after yours. So if everybody's listening to this live, just wait one week, or if it's already out, go listen to it right now. It's Paul Levy. So we have Paul Austin with us talking about these microdosings, these safety situations and the intentional use of these medicines. And then we also have Paul Levy, who's gonna be talking about the soul sickness that you touched on, and he calls it wetiko. And this is like the fundamental virus of the mind of the soul that really is on planet Earth. And I remember we did the three part series with Paul Chek, you know, All is God, which is like one of our premier series we've ever done. And he wrote on a piece of paper to me, Paul, I'll never forget this. He wrote the word live on the piece of paper. And then he turned it around. He said, read that to me backwards. What does it say? And I was like, oh, it says evil, because if God is everything and no thing at the same time, and if God is the dark and the light, and if all is God, because that's what we are, we are God, but we're made from the source of God, then really evil is actually just a byproduct of living. It's part of life itself. And I wonder how you'd unpack the soul sickness conversation just a little bit more.

0:59:40.0 JT: This is actually quite philosophical, which I'm cool with. I mean, I love this. I love this so much. So I think about the way that in my life there's malice in me, there's hatred in me, there's evil that lives in me for sure. And I know it lives in you, it lives in all of us. But how do you personally make sense of this and how have potentially psychedelics, the intentional use of psychedelics, allowed you to be at peace and more acceptance of the evil and the malice that lives inside of you and really inside of all of us? What wisdom can you share about that?

1:00:14.5 PA: So when I think of evil, darkness is another word that comes up. Satan is another word that comes up in the Judeo-Christian lens. Shadow is another word that comes up. Right? The feminine, which I know will be controversial, but the feminine is another word that comes up. And the word evil itself has, it a very specific connotation. And I think from a Judeo-Christian lens, it's really associated with Satan in that way. So I think if we're to move, let's say, beyond that aspect of our cultural conditioning, if you will, and we're really to ask, what is it to live with our shadow? What is it to live with all of the wild and primal parts of ourselves that we've had to tuck away in order to show up in a polite and reasonable way in a domesticated landscape? Now, there's elements of that that are necessary. Right? Again, when we're in relationship, things that would be perceived as evil would be murder, rape, stealing. All of these things should never be done. All of these things, I don't think are just part necessarily of, I mean, they could be part of the shadow, but they're also behaviors that as men, as human beings, it's a hard no almost always.

1:01:46.0 JT: Yeah. They're fringe edge expressions of an unintegrated darkness. They're like very, they're so far out of line that they've lost touch with all of light itself.

1:01:55.8 PA: Exactly. And so when we work with plant medicines, then these sort of dark shadowy elements that come up, that are often, especially when you're working with something like Ayahuasca that comes from the forest...

1:02:09.4 JT: The vine of death.

1:02:10.6 PA: The plant of death, it has the snake that sort of symbolizes it. Again, the snake in the Adam and Eve story symbolized Satan. So there are all these sort of connotations that I think we are familiar with, these sort of mythical archetypal elements that we do associate evil with shadow, with the feminine, with darkness. And so I think there is an element when I even hear this, when I talk about this, it's how do we put evil in its place and recognize, look, this is what it is and sort of distinguish what is the shadow, what is the prime on the wild side that we still need to integrate and get in touch with and allow to express and allow to be loved with an understanding that in doing that, that actually transforms the energy of evil into an orientation of bravery and courage and sort of a vivacity for life. That's what comes up. I get the duality and I also feel like we, yeah, just like to reiterate, we have to be, I love words. We have to be mindful of what is the connotation of this word and how do we discern between evil and all these other things that I mentioned prior.

1:03:31.8 JT: It's beautiful. I think about the things that have happened for me and that's a key use of language, for me. I do believe from my life experience, not that I just read in a book somewhere, but from my own life experience, I believe that everything is chaos seeking order and that even if there is evil, it is of service in some way. I fundamentally do believe that even if I don't understand it. Now people could say, well, what about Josh, you know, like the plane riot of kids from Ohio that crashed or, you know, there are certain things that no matter how much you and I tried to intellectualize the meaning of them, it would be disrespectful for us to do so because we're not honoring the mystery of why these terrible things happen in the world in the first place. Sometimes I have this sense and I wonder how you make sense of this. Sometimes I have the sense that even though fundamentally just very, very, very sad, very heinous things happen for people, when they happen for people, it's because it's some type of an example for the rest of us to love more, to have more compassion.

1:04:33.8 JT: You know, when people are born with a child with an arm missing or when people are born with a child that has sickle cell anemia, or I think about John Wineland's daughter who passed, you know, like there's so many people in this world that are so loving, it breaks my heart wide open. And maybe that's the whole point, Paul. Maybe the whole point is that these experiences that we witness or that happen for us and for others, maybe the whole reason they happen is it's God showing us how to crack our heart open even more and have even more compassion and love and honestly surrender, which is a key part of what you teach in your courses and in your programs. How do I surrender to the thing that is so shocking to my nervous system, that is so shocking to my mind, because at the end of that surrender is peace.

1:05:22.5 PA: I have nothing to add to that. I think that's perfect in the way that you've, you framed it is that opening, right? That sense of, and again, to open, to be affected, we have to be in relationship. Right? And so even if the suffering isn't ours, even if it's not my child, even if it's not my parent, even if it's not my friend, if it's, you know, my brother's, and I use that term not necessarily like bloodline, but my brother's or my sister's child or friend or parent, that is an opportunity to feel as well. And so being in relationship in that way is central to the feeling. And I think this can even be sort of extrapolated to nature and the environment when we use, and they've shown this in research with plant medicine. We use plant medicine, we become more sensitive and aware to the environment. We feel more responsibility for wanting to take care of the environment. And so that's, you know, like when I was 19 and first doing acid and I felt sort of the thing that was happening with the degradation of our environment, that to me, more than anything, created this sickness and through sickness, this anger.

1:06:43.0 PA: And then through anger, this motivation to actually, what can I do to actually be of service here to heal this disconnection, to heal this relationship? Because I think our relationship to nature is one of, if not the most important things that we can cultivate for wellness, for health, for spiritual, you know, wellbeing, et cetera, et cetera.

1:07:08.6 JT: And it's spoken from your mouth and heart because of your own life experience. Like the caves of anxiety and depression, have you explored those? And if so, what were those like for you personally? A lot of people that find the Wellness and Wisdom Podcast, they find us because we rank really highly in the mental health categories, which I think is beautiful because at the end of all of that is whatever spiritual line we're either ignoring or accepting, that's what I believe creates a lot of the mental health issues in the world. But I'm curious for you, man, have you explored or have you been gifted these experiences, even though at the time they did not feel like a fucking gift, you were in the cave of anxiety and depression. And if so, how did that manifest and how did you heal through that?

1:07:48.1 PA: I mean I would say that was most of, most of my adolescence, most of my teenage years, most of my college years, most of my twenties, even. You know, I was never diagnosed as a depressive or diagnosed with anxiety. I was never on any sort of medication, you know, never took SSRIs or Benzos or antipsychotics. And yet because of that core trauma when I was 10, 11, 12 of being ostracized and somewhat bullied in my peer group, there was this, this sort of deep resentment that I held onto and that was often directed towards people in my life. And that block, so to say, that separation is what kept me, I think, in more of a state of depression than any, than anything else. I, you know, I have moments of anxiety when I drink too much coffee or when I've been exercising too much or, you know, maybe in stressful periods of business, but it's always more acute than chronic. But certainly, you know, depression was often tied to a feeling of loneliness, to a feeling of isolation, to a feeling of not being good enough, to a feeling of not being lovable, to a feeling of shame around who I was and the way that I showed up. And so even, you know, even though I talk a lot about psychedelics and performance and leadership and wellbeing and all these other things, one of the core healings that I experienced when I started to work on psychedelics was a letting go of all the shame that I had accumulated from being raised in a more traditional religious home in, in West Michigan.

1:09:37.1 PA: All the shame about who I was and the way that I had been made fun of or mocked for years and years. And that healing path started when I was 19 through the awareness that LSD brought, 'cause that core awareness was, "Oh, I'm not the problem." And I think it was a huge reframe. I have nothing to be ashamed of. It's the culture and community that I've been raised within that stigmatizes individuals who are different or think uniquely, which I happen to be one of them. And when I had that reframe, I was like, "Holy shit, I'm totally free to do and create whatever it is that I wanna create." 'Cause I don't have to worry about what other people think whatsoever. Right? And yet, if I'm honest, like that was 19 for the next 10, 11 years, I still, and still to this day, sometimes struggle with aspects of low self worth. I still sometimes struggle with the sense of, you know, my business isn't big enough. The money I make isn't enough to do what I wanna create. The product that we've created isn't the... There are still these tendencies, these shadow elements that I'm aware of, of not feeling necessarily worthy. And so while I don't necessarily have bouts of deep depression or anything like that, there are certainly weeks that will happen where I don't feel as great as other weeks. And I think that's normal and natural and part of existence and life. And it's not something that needs to be numbed, right? It's just something that needs to be felt.

1:11:17.4 JT: Man, I'm like, for all of you guys watching us on YouTube right now, my fists are in the air because what you just said, the normalization of being weird is actually amazing. Like there's so much normality actually in being weird and in being different. It's not that normal is normal. It's that I think Paul, that being weird and being a little bit like eccentric and like expressing yourself in different ways. I think that's actually how we were intended, but yet we're brought up in environments where unless you're in the status quo and you're speaking and living and breathing the common narrative, you're looked at as being weird, and that weirdness is then ostracized. And I think it's because it goes back to something I heard Jason Silva talk about on Brain Games once. He said that when the researchers did the deepest studies of the brain, that it was connected to a part of what they called empathetic wiring. So we are all put in this world to have empathetic wiring because for millennia we were in tribes, and if you believe something different than your tribe, you could actually be ostracized from a tribe. And that did have severe consequences. That did mean that you weren't gonna eat. That did mean that you didn't have shelter. So that's still within us. That's living and breathing within us.

1:12:32.6 JT: And I wonder how you've made sense of this in some of your more recent microdoses, or maybe if not yourself, Paul, somebody that you've coached, somebody that came to one of your retreats, somebody that you witnessed literally go through transformation where they were able to see the empathetic wiring and how that was working in their life in an unhealthy way by them silencing themselves to then after three, six, nine, 12 months of doing intentional work with psychedelics, how did that unpack for them? How did that give them greater expression that was something more sustainable for the longterm?

1:13:10.4 PA: And again, what you're hitting at is physiological safety versus psychological safety. And I just wanna bring that up again, that dynamic, because I think it's critically important that, like you said, when... In our sort of wild primal ancient years, when we were ostracized from our community, that was physiologically dangerous.

1:13:29.3 JT: It was real.

1:13:31.5 PA: It was real like it would kill you. The chances of that happening now, it's still real, I don't wanna discount that. That still happens if you walk down any street in New York and see how many homeless people that you find. That's still a real thing in many ways. And yet we've more or less overcome that. And so particularly in a Western way, we've been much more looking at sort of the psychological health. And sort of to root your question, I suppose, I'll talk about a coaching client that I worked with last year and who continued to do our coaching training program for Third Wave. And she was a former tech executive. She had worked for Meta, which used to be Facebook and Instagram. And she was in a place or a position where she made a lot of money. She made a lot of wealth. She was becoming more aware of how these big tech corporations often talk about being "conscious," but at the end of the day, never actually practice that. It's not embodied. It's not actually happening in any significant way. And she just had this space where she was able to leave and quit her corporate job that she had done for 10 years and just left it behind because she wanted to not only do deep psychedelic work, but more importantly, find a path that felt healthy and nourishing, sustaining, purpose-driven, where she could shift from being, let's say in the corporate rat race to being a leadership and executive coach.

1:15:14.2 PA: Because what she was inspired by is a lack of that conscious perspective in this company, Facebook, Instagram, Meta, whatever you wanna call it. And knowing that actually embodying these conscious principles, these principles of awareness is central to business. And so she felt like she needed to leave that and be transformed herself through psychedelic work so that she could then coach other people, other executive leaders in how do we actually embody these principles and bring them in to the business workspace. So they're not just things on a paper, but they're actual values or principles that we live by. And so the way that I worked with her was a six-month intense coaching container with both high doses and microdoses. And she went from essentially being in a frame, the strongest example that I can think of is even though she had left the corporate workspace, she was still somewhat occupied by, I need a PhD or I need credentials behind my name, or I need something to show that I'm credible to an external audience. And a lot of our coaching was you can let go of that, you can let go of that, you can let go of that. You don't need any of those things. What you need to focus on is cultivating depth, presence, awareness, authenticity, because by cultivating that, then the way that you show up will exude that. No one at the end of the day cares about the credentials at the end of their...

1:16:53.5 JT: Unless you're a brain surgeon or something that really needs it, but that's like very slim.

1:17:00.3 PA: Right. But the way that you show up, your presence is what matters most. And psychedelics then helped her to sort of be okay with that, to settle into that, to not have to worry about how will this be perceived externally, but to really focus on her internal landscape and to cultivate the lovability that we've talked about so that way she could show up in a sort of executive work environment and teach that to others so they could bring it into their organizations.

1:17:28.1 JT: I'm sure that at Meta, there's probably, and really any large tech platform, there is definitely some, I guess for lack of a better term, consciousness appropriation, where they're speaking in a way and they're acting in a way from an outward lens that they are a conscious company, that they care, that it's part of their core values. But saying and being are so different when it comes to like a monolith or a massive corporation that has payroll due and there's so many things that are involved in actually running a company. Do you think for yourself that part of the beauty of the Third Wave and what you're doing is that you'll never actually scale to a point where you would lose your core values, where you feel like you would have to sacrifice or appropriate the conversations around consciousness or psychedelics? In other words, are you happy that you can remain a certain size forever until you leave the planet?

1:18:27.9 PA: Yes is the short answer to that. There is a level of, and there's a level of contentment with not being necessarily a VC-backed startup with millions of dollars in capital financing to grow and develop. What I often think about is the unicorn versus the zebra. I don't know if anyone's talked about this on the podcast before, but there's this sort of framing around sustainable business models. And so oftentimes we hear in let's say the VC or startup world like a unicorn, unicorn, unicorn, which is basically a billion dollar valuation. And what this article points out and what I've really sort of locked into is that unicorns are not real, which I think is important to emphasize. Zebras are. And so when we look at framing, and again, the language you use is important. When we look at framing, sort of the goal is to become a unicorn, a billion dollar valuation. There are a lot of trade-offs that you make when you look to scale that quickly and that fast. And a point that they make in this article is that the only thing that grows that quickly in nature is cancer. The only thing that grows as quick as a unicorn in a startup is cancer.

1:19:49.9 PA: And so we've experienced sort of the downsides now of Facebook and the downsides of Instagram and the downsides of Airbnb and the downsides of Uber. And then all these sort of things where like, "Hey, we'll worry about these second order consequences later." They are now coming back full force and looking us in the face. And so when I started Third Wave seven years ago and what I continue to hold to is we are a for-profit business. I do wanna continue to grow and develop. I think we're still early on in terms of where the psychedelic space is going to grow into. And this is what I wanna be doing for the next 30 to 40 to 50 years. So there's no rush on my end where this has to grow and scale to be sold. There's no rush on my end to reach a certain number because that number is gonna make me or whoever happy. I also have very few investors and they're the ones that I do have are all aligned with sort of this orientation. So the focus is much more on creating a really, really stable foundation, ensuring that we listen to our customers, ensuring that we provide products and services that work as we say they work. And to have a vision of how this can grow in the next 30 or 40 years, 'cause I really see in terms of what we're building, it's an ecosystem, right?

1:21:10.9 PA: This third wave of psychedelics, it's not just a podcast or it's not just these educational guides or it's not just a microdosing course. We now have a training program for practitioners. We have a directory or a discovery platform for providers in the psychedelic space. When it's legal, we'll roll out a supplement of some sort, a medicine that people can use. At some point, I wanna buy a retreat center and have retreats. So it is this really large vision of kind of going back to the beginning of our conversation. What are the ways, what are the things, the products, the services, the transformation that we need to provide in order to ensure that psychedelics become culturally integrated, right? To become integrated into business, into society, into healthcare, into politics, into education. And how will that transform the paradigm that we currently live within? And the last seven years, were really focused on de-stigmatizing psychedelics, educating people about their pros and cons, helping people to find providers. For me, the next 30 years are really focused on integration. Now that we are aware that these are powerful tools, now that we are aware that we can have access to them in really powerful ways, how do we actually integrate these insights and perspectives and ground them so they're not just another drug experience, but that the values and insights that come from them actually become integrated into the world around us?

1:22:40.6 JT: Oh my God, Paul, there's a double-edged sword there because the more that things become more online and more mainstream, the more that governing agencies and governing bodies step in, so-called to be of service, and I'm doing air quotes for you all listening. But really what they want to do is extract value and control the loving effect of many things. Look what happened with medicine. Look what happened with the hemp industry and marijuana. Look what's happened with almost everything in this world where all of a sudden when something grows, it becomes so large that it's so-called now needs a body, now needs a governing agency. I actually like that some of these medicines are something that are legal in some countries and not legal in others. What is your take on that? Because there is a school of thought where if we legalize everything, it opens up the floodgates to more governing laws and more rules. And then there's the other side of it where if everything's legal, then it's legal and people can participate in programs and go through their own experiences as they wish. But it sure does seem to be a catch-22, a double-edged sword.

1:23:45.1 PA: In terms of the legal landscape, I'll talk to what's going on right now and then extrapolate about how I think it will grow and evolve and why I think some regulations are helpful and important and provide a couple of concrete examples. So right now, there's like three main things to pay attention to. One is legality, so legal adult use of, let's say, psilocybin, which is happening in Oregon. So in November 2020, Oregon legalized psilocybin for adult use. You still need to go through a licensed practitioner in order to get access to it, but in about four months, in 2023. And so there's the Oregon Health Authority that's helping to create regulations for that. But by and large, it's available to anyone who's 21 and older. You don't need a clinical indication to get access to it. People can't charge for the medicine itself. They can only charge for the service that they're providing. And they've done a really good job of helping to land that in such a way where they're listening to all the different sort of voices that need to be heard to ensure that it's not over-regulated, but also to ensure that there's enough sort of safety protocols put into place because of some of the inherent risk that comes with these medicines. So I find that to be the middle way more than anything. Colorado has a similar ballot, a similar initiative on the November 2022 ballot to pass, and that will likely pass.

1:25:09.6 PA: And then beyond that, you have sort of decrim. So cities like Oakland and Seattle and Detroit have decriminalized all plant medicines, which means that no one could get thrown into jail anymore for using these, which is phenomenal. But there's also no legal regulated access necessarily. So it still leaves this gray area of how do I actually access these? And that creates some challenges or difficulties for those who are relatively new to psychedelics. And then the other flip side, which is much more government regulation, is organizations like MAPS and Usona and COMPASS Pathways that are bringing a synthetic form of psilocybin through clinical trials. And so that synthetic form, it's both MDMA and psilocybin will be brought through clinical trials. They expect that to be medicalized by the end of 2023, if not in sometime 2024. The downside to that is there's patents on some of these compounds. The government has a lot of sort of regulation about how they can be used, where they can be used, when they can be used. The upside to that is health insurance will cover all of these treatments, and they're not necessarily cheap because a psilocybin experience lasts for six hours. You need a highly qualified therapist at let's say 200 bucks an hour to sit there and be there for the full six hours.

1:26:35.4 PA: They provide psychotherapy before and after. They do usually two or three sessions in total over let's say 10 to 12 weeks. So it's usually a bill of about $15,000 to go through in that way. And so it would be helpful to have health insurance that covers it because that's quite expensive. And in many ways, it's cheaper than just being a SSRIs for 30 years. And that's sort of the trade-off is if we can heal the thing, then let's heal it. The downside is that the upfront cost is pretty expensive. And so, again, I mentioned the Oregon model. What I like about the Oregon model is it really allows for the ceremonial use, the use in community, the use in groups. You need one facilitator for every eight people who are using the psilocybin.

1:27:27.5 PA: And I think that allows for enough wiggle room while still having some level of oversight. Because when I think about this, I often think about my parents who born and raised in the Midwest, they've never done psychedelics. And I think about what would be required for them to feel safe and comfortable going through with a psychedelic experience. And so sometimes knowing that there are safety protocols in place, knowing that there are the therapist or the doctor or whoever that they're working with has been vetted in a certain way, it just allows for more accessibility. So these are some of the trade-offs. This is the general frame of what's happening. It's still a bit of a wild west out there 'cause a lot of the work that's being done is underground, which has its own risk profiles. But that's...

1:28:15.0 JT: I think it's really, you described it in a really great way. And I think it's really important to note that all change goes through essentially three stages. And I feel like where we're at right now is what was totally regarded before as not true and there's no possible way that psychedelics would ever be legalized. If you would have told people in the 60s or in the 70s, especially in the 80s, right? When there was the whole Miami drug craze and all that, if you would have said that Oregon would have the laws it has or that medical marijuana would have been granted or the juxtaposition that we're at now where I think there is a profit-driven model. I think people are coming into the psychedelic space because they wanna make money. I think that is influencing in Congress because of all the different people that are putting their hands in the pot there. But essentially I think where we're at now, which is really an exciting time, is what used to be considered false is actually now true. You and I have known it to be true that there's so much healing that can be found in these medicines. But you know, it's interesting, Paul, I am not neither pro nor against plant medicine. I am actually just pro freedom.

1:29:22.4 JT: So I think if somebody can find freedom of spirit, freedom of self, freedom of community, freedom of any kind, and they do it through a vehicle of safe, intentional use of psychedelics, well, then so be it. I think that's beautiful. But I think that we can't get off this podcast without asking one more thing. And that is if you really boil it down to like one or two or three things, your mission in this world and what Third Wave is representing for the healing that's being needed, that's being called for, would you say that your mission will always stay the same or would you say that that mission could potentially change? In other words, the conviction of which you spoke about your mission now, because of how quickly the landscape changes and because of how fast things move in this world, the minute that people are talking about blockchain or the minute that people are talking about psychedelics, you know, turn on the news or look online the next day and it's totally different. Do you feel like your mission that you have in your heart right now, that you have in your being right now will always stay the same?

1:30:30.9 PA: Yes. And the tactical element of how that's carried out will naturally adapt to what's being asked for. And yet the fundamental truth that these medicines, the integration of these medicines as allies on the path towards healing and cultural transformation is necessary to address the existential crisis that we're facing. That truth, that mission will always remain the same. Now what is being asked for, you know, like I said, the last seven years was more destigmatization and general education, whereas the next seven years will be much more around the safety of providers and the vetted verified folks. But that North star of cultural transformation through intentional psychedelic use, I don't see that changing at any point in my life. Now we could revisit this in 20 years and see if that was actually the case. But the way that I feel now is huge. It's a good question, right? 'Cause it really...

1:31:55.8 JT: It's a good question but also in the question one could say, how could anyone ever answer that? Right?

1:32:02.2 PA: Exactly. Yeah.

1:32:03.1 JT: Like there's really no way to answer that. It was more just from my space of curiosity about how steadfast you are in your passion. And I definitely feel it from you now. And I felt it when I met you in person. And I think about all the things that are coming your way, one of them being the, I think it was History 101, the Netflix special that you posted about? Share with people where they can dig into that. What was that all about? That was the first time you were on like a major film or documentary series?

1:32:27.6 PA: Yeah. And it was funny 'cause I really didn't find out about it till the morning that I logged onto Twitter. I had some footage that was done through a public TV station in Germany through a documentary that they had beyond four years ago. And I logged onto Twitter yesterday morning and all of a sudden I'm featured in a History 101 episode on psychedelics. It's like a 25-minute episode on psychedelics. And there's just, you know, like a 30-second blurb about me, Paul Austin, and I had a, I was the frequent microdoser was my subtitle, which is pretty hilarious. So it was like a nice little surprise yesterday. And there's a few other things that, you know, I have my first book coming out in not first, but an updated version of my Mastering Microdosing book coming out in November. So there'll be some more things that come about as a result of that. And when I really think about where we're at culturally, this is really just, just getting started, you know, seven years in and just getting started. So it's an adventure. It's a challenge, which is why I love it. And I'm really grateful to be doing this work for the world.

1:33:34.7 JT: That's beautiful, man. And I love the pace of your growth too. I feel like I'm just getting started as well. Like with the millions of people that have heard my voice, which is kind of a crazy thing to even say like, wow, millions of people have heard my voice. How is that even possible? It's possible because my intention is pure. I'm here to serve just like you. And at the end of the day, this ain't about me. And really, Paul, isn't even about you either. I mean, like I started this podcast, we're very special, but we're not that special because everyone actually is special. And I think about the people that are looking for that purpose, that are wanting to maybe enhance their coaching practice or just really wanna have a deeper dive into themselves. Like this is, tell us a few of some of the ways that this is possible with what you're doing. I know you have a certification program. I know that you have obviously worked with some pretty high echelon people at some of the tech companies that you've talked about. So everything's gonna be linked at joshtrent.com/thirdwave, but what are people actually going to receive when they get into the microdosing, the mini class? And then also what other things do you have that can help them go on a journey either of self or of helping others?

1:34:42.6 PA: So starting with the microdosing mini course is a, it's a fantastic way just to get a lay of the land when it comes to microdosing. We also have a podcast, The Third Wave Podcast, which this episode, this recording will also be republished on. You know, we have a full fledged microdosing course. We have a mushroom grow course where people are looking at how they can grow their own mushrooms or source their own mushrooms. We support on that. If there are any practitioners, coaches or therapists or doctors or anyone of that nature, who's listening to this, who's interested in really deepening their understanding of psychedelics, what I call the skill of psychedelics, 'cause they wanna start to bring it into their practice, we have a six-month facilitator training program, coaching training program. As part of third wave, we're going through our third cohort right now. We'll start the fourth cohort in February. If any listeners are potentially interested in that, they can reach out to us through the link that you provided as well. And then most of all, you know, it goes back to like, I've, we've, with third wave, we've set up the education, we've set up the providers, we've set up the trainings, we've set up even a community.

1:35:54.3 PA: And so for those who are listening at home, it's really up to you. What is it that you want? Where is it that you are at in your journey and how is it that we could support you? And so for any listeners, you know, just reach out to us if we can support you in any way on the link that Josh has noted, I'm sure there will be lots of resources to dive into. And this has been an honor to do this podcast with you today. Thanks for being such a fantastic host.

1:36:18.4 JT: Paul, we've had quite... We've had quite the spiritual tennis match, the emotional understanding tennis match. And also I feel like one thing that we really explored is just two people that are in a male body having conversations that maybe some people have never heard or maybe they're hearing it for the first time. Men actually speak like this. Now, if they've listened to the show before, obviously not. They've heard many conversations similar, but I really loved what was unique about this exploration was the ways in which you shared about your own life and the ways that you've overcome some of these shadows in the cave. I think it's so universal, man. I think it's so powerful to actually speak to that and to be honest about that.

1:37:00.1 JT: And the fact that microdosing or even macro or just the healthy use of psychedelics was a part of that, that is something that I celebrate. And that's one reason why I really felt called to have you on the podcast and to have this refreshing conversation where we're not really trying to convince anyone that they should or should not do psychedelics. It's more about presenting the information, sharing your wisdom, and then how do we live our life well from that? And that's essentially the last question that I have for you is, how do we live our life well? What does wellness even mean to you? It's a very large question, but I'm curious about your answer. How does Paul Austin define wellness? How would you live your life well, today and forever.

1:37:46.8 PA: Stillness, the spaciousness to be still is a word that comes up. Having that spaciousness to listen is often what I think about because through stillness and through listening, we're then able to attune ourselves to what it is that we need, what it is that our partner needs, what it is that our community needs, what it is that our environment needs. So I think stillness, stillness and listening and the presence are the three things that come up. And especially in a world of noise and chaos and busyness, the choice to be still, the choice to listen, the choice to show up with presence wherever we are is I think in many ways a radical choice. And in cultivating that, all of these other elements that we talked about, plant medicine and diet and the beast versus the spirit and the physiological versus psychological, the information that your listeners need, the information that I need, the information that you need, it is there. It's there to be opened up into. And we just have to make that choice to pay attention, I think more than anything. So stillness, listening, presence, those are the three things that come up.

1:39:21.7 JT: I love that you did in the rule of thirds. That was really eloquent. I think that the rule of thirds is basically what the Fibonacci sequence in life is built on, man, is this understanding of beginning, middle, end, or inside, outside, and inside as well on a deeper level. I think that the rule of thirds is so beautiful. I love that you just spoke that into existence. And, Paul, what an incredible conversation. We covered so much ground. Obviously everything is linked at joshtrent.com/thirdwave, but what did we miss when it comes to the ethical, the moral, the heart centered, even just the practical use of these microdoses, these medicines, is there anything that you could leave us with that maybe we didn't touch on?

1:40:05.1 PA: I would say start low and go slow. That's a piece of advice that I always give. You can always take more.

1:40:10.1 JT: Good advice.

1:40:12.8 PA: You can never take less. Do plenty of research beforehand and also realize that no amount of research and intellectual learning will prepare you for what it is that you are going into and for what it is that you need to surrender to. And then have a trustworthy friend or guide or coach who can support you on that path. Because inevitably as you deepen that sense of listening with plant medicine there will be trials and tribulations, there will be challenges, there will be catharsis and so to feel supported in that process is necessary to really fully integrate from what might come up for you as you start down this path.

1:40:53.0 JT: Love it and love the courage that is gonna come from this conversation, especially when people start exploring these things for themselves. And that is the key, for yourself. Don't take my word for it. Do not take Paul's word for it. Go to joshtrent.com/thirdwave and take your own word for it and actually do the practices and go through the calendaring system. And so many good things we spoke about Paul. I am super grateful for you, man. I'm grateful that we connected at RUNGA. I'm grateful to see you in Encinitas when I go out there for some podcasting. So until I see you again, until Paul and I see everyone again, we're both wishing you love and wellness.

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1:41:52.0 PA: This conversation is bigger than you or me, so please leave a review or comment so others can find the podcast. This small action matters more than you know. You can find show notes and transcripts to this podcast on our blog at thethirdwave.co/blog. To get weekly updates from the leading edge of the psychedelic renaissance, you can sign up for our newsletter frequency at thethirdwave.co/newsletter, and you can also find us on Instagram at @ThirdWaveishere or subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/Thethirdwave.