Evan Britton, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, man. I'm so pumped for this. Me too, man. Been exciting just to hang out for the last hour or so. Likewise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a lot of awesome topics. We have football, we have the journey, we have cannabis, healing properties for things like CTE. We have consciousness, God, metaphysics, big questions as well, maximizing human potential. A lot of good stuff lined up, so pumped, so pumped. All right, let's start with the journey. Yeah. Was it Burbank, right? Is where you're raised? Middle school and high school, yeah. I was born in New York City, lived in Brooklyn until I was 10. My mom moved my brother and I out to LA, Burbank. Around 97, 98. So went to middle school and high school in Burbank, California. The dream to play football and to play in the NFL started when I was about seven or eight. My grandparents' house in Connecticut, watching on the news, the Jets and the Giants in training camp. I just thought to myself, I want to be one of those gladiators. I want to be one of those warriors that goes and competes, goes to battle every Sunday and my mom would never let me play. She was worried I'd get hurt, for good reason. But finally, my freshman year of high school, with the help of my dad convinced her to let me play. And that was it, man. Everything from that moment on, how I thought, how I carried myself, how I ate and how I trained, the way I lived was in alignment to reach the top of that mountain, which was playing in the NFL. So, you know, and I was very blessed. I was surrounded by great people. My mother, both my parents were very intuitive, holistically minded people. Food is medicine, exercise, drink plenty of water, use whatever natural means are available before going to a doctor to be prescribed some sort of medication or whatever it might be. So that really infused my athletic life. And pretty shortly thereafter, I don't know, my mom was so, she's a, we come from this long line of mystics. My earliest American ancestor is a woman named Mary Bliss Parsons. She came to the U.S. or came to America in 1630 with her husband, Cornette Joseph Parsons. She was on trial for witchcraft three times. And really, I mean, when you break it down, what was witchcraft? At that time, it was being in tune with nature, you know, living with the earth, being disconnected from the stark, ice cold, religious, you know, philosophy of the era. And so you were, women in particular, were cast as witches and she got off every time, lived to be in her 80s, had 11 kids, one of them named Eben. He was killed in a battle with Indians at the age of 21. And yeah, so I think all of that, this internal knowing, this understanding of how the body works. My mom, you know, I grew up, my mom had a lot of really interesting. There was a lot of darkness in my childhood. My parents getting divorced, a lot of mental health issues, depression, anxiety, alcoholism, substance abuse. And, you know, so that my childhood was laced with a lot of darkness, a lot of difficult times, but in the midst of all of that, my mother and my father, who, you know, my dad was always sort of a beacon of light, even in his sort of inability, you know, to, you know, he was very much dealing with his own shit, his own darkness at the time as well, but he was always a very stable force while my mom was in a very difficult time. But even through that, you know, I remember she was, she had this boyfriend and as difficult of an environment as this guy created, he also, with my mother, they would go to these cadaver studies and they would do autopsies and look at the human body and learn about it and she had all these books of anatomy and it really gave her this very intricate understanding of the human body and how it works. From a kinesiological perspective to a physiological perspective, she really understood how to get the body out of pain, which was incredibly important in my early career as a football player. And especially as a young kid, I had a number of growth spurts that wreaked havoc on my back. My back was always going out when I was a kid. I mean, I was, you know, I remember being 11, 12 years old and my back would go out. I couldn't walk, you know, and I'd be laid out on my back on the floor and my mom knew exactly what exercises to do to get out of pain, to get back onto my feet and, you know, my dad was always very intuitive with that as well. So I was very blessed. And when I was freshman year of high school, I'm playing football and my mom would drag me and my brother to yoga classes. So that was sort of, you know, along with the brutality of the collision sport that I was, you know, just starting on, starting on this adventure into football, I had this great foundation of holistic healing and ancient knowledge of, and at the time it was very intuitive because since then, you know, I had no idea that yoga could be so beneficial, but intuitively it made me a better football player.  So I'm very grateful for that. So that's where the football dreams started, man. And the lineage of mystic tradition, which is so interesting that almost 400 years ago you're coming from this deeper spiritual mysticism that then sort of bubbles up in your lineage to your parents, which then you take on intuitively, which makes sense today that you are who you are because it wasn't just undergoing the process of, it wasn't just football. You fell in love with creative writing, which also makes a lot of sense with the mystic tradition. And then, and that's why I would also say that you're a really good writer because you can find on his website, you can find really good, well-articulate writing.  And yoga means union in Sanskrit, union with what? The divine, your own unique relationship with the divine with both the unity of everything and also the unique self-actualization of your gifts. And so of course it makes people better athletes. Right. Of course it makes people better creatives, better parents, better everything. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's beautiful and makes a lot of sense. Yeah.  I love that. That was kind of one of those main influencers, not only in balancing out football with yoga. So you had that style, but you also had balancing it out with creative writing. Do you feel like that was one of the key influences in you picking that up? Yeah, it's so interesting talking about this because every time I do an interview where I talk to someone about my life or my history, my past, my path into football and out of it, things come into more clearer context, you know? Because at the time, I've only recently, only in the last couple of years learned about my deep family lineage. And part of that is in my purpose in this lifetime, which is rectifying a lot of my family pain and trauma. Absolutely, you know, to answer your question, from the time I was a little kid, I had this sort of intuitive understanding of things. And that's not to say that I had it all figured out or I haven't made immense amounts of mistakes and been through tons of chaos and created chaos throughout my life. But I had this understanding of sort of how to do it, what it was I was always looking for.  Knows what it's all about, you know? And as little kids, we look up at adults and we go, they know, they know what it's about.   For the diamond necklace that is already around your neck. Exactly, exactly, exactly right. I think that it's like that perfect balance between knowing you are already it, but also knowing that we're a work in progress always as well. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I had this really beautiful blend of, and that's who I am as well, which is really interesting. For instance, my birthday, October 14th, is the day of moderation in this birthday astrology book that we have. It's pretty funny and it's to the T, what my day is, you know? I'm a Libra to the utmost, the scales. I'm four days before I'm the 10th, October 14th, Libra. And you're the day of moderation very deeply aligns with your middle path. Exactly, exactly, you know, so as you start to, for me, as I've learned about myself, as I've taken looks at my life, as I've, you know, been given distance from this thing, this everyday reality of, you know, being in this constant state of trying to do things, succeed, attain, produce, create, aspire, et cetera. And you can, for me, through the practice of meditation, yoga, breath work, psychedelic experiences. It's given me this great distance to be able to look at my life and go, wow, I'm exactly who I am, you know? This is exactly who I am and the stars say it so as well. So, you know, my grandmother is an Academy Award-winning actress, her name's Estelle Parsons. She won Best Supporting Actress and Bonnie and Clyde. Her husband, my mother's father, who I never met, his name is Richard Gaiman, he's a famous American writer, wrote countless stories for Playboy Magazine, wrote a number of books. My father's a painter, he's an artist, as well as he was a very accomplished D1 basketball player at Jacksonville University, I think, in a very vibrant way. You know, my mother ran a handful of fashion magazines.  And these men were saints, you know, for the most part, as far as what they meant in my life and my brother's life and what they did for us. And I mean, we would spend three months of the summer up in Connecticut, and we did nothing from sun up to sun down, it was all sports, every sport under the sun that you could think of. And in that experience, in the midst of going outside and shooting hoops all day or throwing the football around or going to the baseball diamond hitting countless balls and fielding grounders and all of it, there were art books, there was great literature, there was a recognition of the great thinkers of the world. So I had this beautiful blend of brutal physical competition with very high level artistic philosophical thinking. It makes perfect sense, I love that. Right, and so I feel really blessed to have had that, you know, and somehow my football career was going exactly as it was supposed to, you know, given my mind's eye trajectory, because I really had it and it was visualization, you know. I said, I'm gonna play in the NFL one day. That's right. And people would say, oh, that's cool, but what's your plan B? And I'd say there's no plan B, you know, that's what I'm gonna do. The North Star was very clear. Pulley and Hill think and grow rich, you had that visualize and the universe fills it in. Yes, yes. And I knew, you know, and exactly, I put it into my mind's eye, my mind put my body into action, you know. And so that took care of itself and I was surrounded by the right people and did the right things and everything came into alignment and somewhere around my sophomore year of high school, I fell in love with writing. And then I found this writer, Brett Easton Ellis, who's written less than zero and a handful of books are really fun. It's like, you know, very drug induced. His first book, Less Than Zero, he wrote in like a crack bender at Bennington College in his creative writing program in two weeks. And I was like, wow, you can major in creative writing. That was where it kind of sparked this idea. And I said, okay, I wanna find a college that has creative writing as a major. So I'm getting tons of offers around my junior year, going into my senior year. I've got, you know, 50 full scholarship offers from schools all around the country, the whole Pac-10, Oklahoma, Tennessee, you know, LSU. And it really came down to who had a creative writing program in Arizona. I went on a trip to visit there. They were very aggressive in their pursuit of me, which I appreciated. And I liked the guys there and I liked what they were doing. I liked how they talk, but I came in, I went to a visit there, and the woman who was giving this presentation about what the school offered said, well, we have a creative writing program that's top 10 in the country. Some people think it's the best in the world. And I said, boom, that's it, you know. So I chose Arizona because I could major in creative writing. I could play football, I could be part of this building a legacy, which has since sort of been completely obliterated by the administration of Arizona, unfortunately. But I could really be a part of this thing and I could do what I wanted to do off the field, you know, which was major in creative writing and pursue my artistic passions as a storyteller. So there you go. Makes so much sense looking back and connecting the dots because as you're talking about being up in Connecticut, you have your three uncles, you guys are going hard on all the different sports, which is fantastic for the body, fantastic for coordination, for so many different aspects to aesthetic and physical. Yet it's balanced perfectly with art, with the literature, with philosophy, with the greatest thinkers. That style of balance is that synthesis. If science and spirituality or of athleticism and spirit, that's really powerful. And it makes so much sense leading up to why, you know, you had these profound moments, sophomore year, you're like, I can do creative writing. Makes sense going to Arizona for a program that could fulfill that passion and creative writing, that North Star, that process was really beautiful hearing you talk about that. Something that we're obsessed with on the program is catalyzing other people's both self-realization of the unity of all being in existence, but also the self-actualization of their unique North Stars, which really require that style of, there's no plan B, don't ask me about that. And I know that I have to grind and work hard every day, but that's the fire under my butt that excites me. It brings me meaning and fulfillment every day to achieve that transcendent noble aim of mine. I love that. It's really interesting what's the thing that you say that because these are such manufactured ideas. It's like plan B and what you're gonna do with your life. It's like, is there a plan B to your purpose on the planet? You know what I mean? Yes, I do. This is such nonsense that we've created in our sort of, I don't know what it is, it's the industrialization of the human mind. We've been civilized out of our humanity, like we're talking about. Like talking about you at 19, being at the University of Minnesota and saying, dude, how do I make this happen? And the guy goes, we'll come out to Silicon Valley, dude.  Because that's the line of, that's a trajectory to get the job I want, and all that, et cetera. It's like, no man, we're not here to try and figure out what we're supposed to do with our lives. I said this the other day in a post, I watch Nature all the time and obviously as a student of the great mystics. I'm watching these hummingbirds in my backyard and they're just floating from flower to flower collecting nectar.  Ultimately, there's no nihilism. Everything has deep meaning and purpose. And you came here with an intention to flower a specific sole purpose, an artistic execution and actualization into the world. And when we take it from that angle, it makes it much more evident for us as we're waking up and piercing the veil over time. It's thinning and thinning and thinning. And then we realize more and more our own true nature of our awareness and consciousness. And we also realize what our true North Star is and how there's absolutely nothing to do besides that. That's the only purpose is those realization and actualization. And yeah, we can unpack more. I love that. Yeah, as we go. Yeah, you've... What do you think that is? Why are so many people stuck in not being able to access that or see through that? It's just layers of distractions. It's likely the way we purposely designed the reality to be that way because it makes it fun. Because if you came knowing, yeah, so we come forgetting and then as the Greeks said, it's an amnesia or remembrance that occurs. And we remember what the true self is, that we share that infinite self and that we are here to bring a gift. Yeah, and we're here to bring a gift. Well, what's the opposite of remembering? Dismembering. Oh, amnesia. Well, we come in dismembered. Oh, dismembering. There you go. We come in dismembered and we remember. And we remember, yeah. Yeah, we usually say forgetfulness, amnesia and remembrance and amnesia. And this would be a good way to bring up, like what was going on was that you lined up this really interesting alignment of the stars in your own life where you had a familial mystic tradition that made it really clear that you had this perennial spirituality that was kind of built in in art and literature and philosophy, great thinkers, but also you had this incredible harder physical, sport, athletic, science side of things at the same time that you were balancing that with. And then that kind of led you into the football, the creative writing, the, which also ended up in a sense as you're kind of getting through Arizona. This is kind of maybe one of the more interesting transitory moments because you had this north star of the NFL draft, but that there's this, there's this also strange. I don't know if you were feeling it at the time in Arizona, but that there's a strange like, what am I actually putting my body through in this process? And only later downstream do we realize things and become an advocate like you are today for cannabis to heal rather than opioids and CTE and all these problems with the actual physical vehicle of the body after it undergoes concussions and all of these devastating physical injuries. And so were you feeling that also at the time at Arizona too? I was very much in a warrior manifest destiny mindset at that point, you know, this was my life.  So, you know, from the time I was a sophomore in high school, my right shoulder would subluxate. It would pop in and out of the socket and it wasn't a full dislocation because it would literally slide out and slide in and excruciatingly painful. And I played through that for years and years and years and it would happen at least once a season. And I knew how to deal with it. I knew how to manage it. I knew how to do all the little exercises to keep the tiny muscles in there, the stabilizer muscles strong and healthy so that I could keep playing and doing what I had to do to play to high level. So, I was really for a long time I was functioning with great reckless abandon as far as my body and mind went, you know. And I lost connection with myself, you know, through the process of chasing this dream, chasing this idea of making it to the NFL. When I got to the NFL, finally in 2009, I was drafted by the Jaguars, 39th overall in the second round. And, you know, football for me was always a very, it was always a love-hate relationship, you know. I loved it because it was this place where I could exact my rage, my inner rage and fire on others and be celebrated for it. I could physically dominate people and be praised. Gladiator, you've been saying that. Yeah, but at the same time, it was super painful. It's a grind, football is really difficult, you know. But I loved that enough that that kept me going and I had something to prove to the world. I had to show the world through the darkness of my childhood, I had to show the world how much I was to be feared, how scary I was, how tough I was, how badass I was. So, football was my vehicle to prove that, to everyone else. And then I get to the NFL and I realize, fuck, I'm still not enough for myself, you know. I haven't proven anything, you know, at the end of the day. I've been an all-American, I've been all-conference, I've been all this, I've been team captain every year that I've ever played football. Here I am and I'm still not enough for myself.  People loved me and I wasn't enough, you know, for me.  Yeah. One of my other favorites, you know, he talks about how there's no disconnecting the mind and the body. It's one thing, the mind, body, vehicle. And when you think about that rationally or from a logical standpoint, it makes sense, right? I mean, you don't think about opening and closing your hand, you just do it. It's all part of the, you know, the synergy between the mind and the body. It's just one thing that's in constant flow. And that transcends to emotionally and psychologically, psychically, all the things happening, they transcend into your physical tissue. So my body started breaking down. You know, at first I dislocated my shoulder, my second year in the NFL. Was done for the season. All that subluxating, finally, it fully dislocated against the Kansas City Chiefs. That was also during a time where I'd just blown out my back. So going into my second year, I herniated the disc in my back, L5S1, had excruciating sciatic pain running down my leg, causing numbness in my right foot. I was in an immense amount of pain coming into the facility at 5.36 o'clock in the morning, get treatment, get in the hot tub, get rubbed down, get this, get that, just to get myself into a state where I could play. And I was starting. That right tackle. So it was a bit of a gift from God, a gift from the universe that my shoulder against the Kansas City Chiefs week, seven or eight. I fully dislocated my shoulder. I dislocated it in one play, popped it back in, finished the drive, came out, told our athletic trainer, I'm like, dude, I need a shoulder stabilizing strap, the shoulder harness. Cause we're about to go out for a two minute drill before the end of the half.  Cause I gotta get back on the field. So he runs, gets the shoulder harness, laces me up, tightens it in, I'm like, okay, I'm back out on the field. Two plays in, I'm past blocking, shoulder goes out again. This time I can't get it back in. So I'm running off the field in the, in the midst of this two minute drill. Three team doctors couldn't get my shoulder back in for about three or four minutes.   Finally they get it in, take me into the locker room. I probably took some viking in, you know, got undressed, put my sweats on, went back out onto the field. I'm in this haze of opiates and I've got a massive dip in my mouth. And I'm just thinking to myself, I'll be ready for next week. Yeah, wow. You know? That's nuts. And it wasn't until after that game where I went in and met with the team doctor and he said, you know, you're done for the year.  You need to have surgery to fix this. And, you know, that was the first time of my entire football career. So that's my second year in the NFL where I wasn't gonna be able to play because of an injury. And that, you know, that was a big moment. That was a big, humbling experience. But I was still in the warrior mode. I'm like, okay, I'll have surgery. I'll come back next year to be even stronger. Jeez.  And then the next year, the lockout happened. So the owners locked the players out because we couldn't come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement in 2011. So I went back to Arizona, finished my degree, got rehabbed in my shoulder. Meanwhile, my back is still a mess. I hadn't addressed it yet. Still have sciatica running down my leg. And... You're insane. In this funny, when I'm growing up, I have my friends that are playing football because I'm gonna play different sports, but I didn't play football, but my friends, closest friends that are playing football, telling me about all these stories about, because some of them are literally playing tackle.   And it's so interesting hearing about that perspective of that, in many ways it also resonates as like this entrepreneurial grind where people just treat, as you were saying, their mind body as nonsense, where really it's that sole vehicle where you have to have, which we'll talk about in a bit, but you're obsessed with that nutrition, that sleep, that exercise, those, the combination of that along with your North Star is the only sustainable way to actually do it. Yeah, yeah.  But the trauma leads to the treasure. Exactly now. This is so cool. Exactly, exactly right. So I had a few more years of that. The next, so the next year was the lockout, shoulder was better, training camp starts because we didn't have any spring because of the lockout, no spring OTAs. So we came right into training camp and it was really, it was evident right away, my back was still an issue. I'd come in, I'd be in there for two or three plays, I'd come out, I couldn't feel my right leg. That was just a mess.  He said, you gotta just have back surgery, man. At that point I had had a number of epidural injections right into my spine that did nothing. So I said, okay, I'm gonna have back surgery. So I had back surgery. That was life changing.  Wow. Her knee to disc surgeon, oh, huge pain, hugely painful. And sciatica is hugely painful. Yeah, yeah, it was brutal. It was the most brutal pain I've ever experienced. I mean, it would be blinding at times, literally blinding, like I couldn't see, couldn't drive the car. But just like that pulled the piece of glass out of the. It was brilliant, you know? So, but wait. So come out of surgery, they wanna get me rehabbed quick. And rehab was pretty quick for that. The recovery was pretty fast. Which I started on basically right away. The only issue is I came back, I was feeling great back to my rookie level production. I started, I came back, we needed somebody to play left guard, I moved into left guard, never played left guard in my life. Played six games of the year, and they're like, you're on track to be an all pro.  So it's about week seven or eight, this is 11 weeks after surgery, we're in Pittsburgh to play the Steelers and I can't get out of bed. My back is completely seized up. Whoa, whoa. And it took another month, so I couldn't play that. I tried, my dammit, I went into the locker room early. We were in Pittsburgh, came in early, tried to get warmed up. I'm like, I'll be fine, I'll be fine, it pops some pills.   And I'm like, yeah, and I tried to get up, I couldn't get up, they're like, all right, Ed, you're not playing today. So it was a game time decision. And it took about another month for them to realize that I had an infection in the disc. Which was, oh man. You know, it was, I had to go on eight weeks of intravenous antibiotics, the nurse came to my house every day and injected me with these. Well, this is, this is insane.  I couldn't walk around my house. I was paralyzed. Seizing up, good, yeah. I'd be walking. Geez. I was, it was the Monday after that, we had come home and we had a Monday night game against Baltimore. And I was like, I'll be good to play, you know? And I'm walking from the player's parking lot into the facility and literally I was brought to my knees with a spasm in my back. So I was done for the year. Again, eight weeks of intravenous antibiotics. That's so insane. Every day nurses come in the house. Yeah, every day nurses come in. My wife is pregnant at the time. So it was a bit of a blessing. I got to be home and be with that and, you know, and experience the birth of my child, which was really a life altering experience. Melting of the man's heart. Big time. Big time. And just seeing the strength of my wife and her power as a woman is incredible. You know, that's a podcast in itself. But so, I was about ready to be done at that point. Well, actually, you know, to be honest with you, man, no, because that was my third year. That's just three seasons. It's crazy. That's three seasons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.  In the midst of being at home, recovering from this infection in my back, I had, I'm watching the Today Show. I turned on the Today Show one morning and I see Jacksonville Jaguar's team sold. Head coach fired. That's how I found out that, because I wasn't going, they didn't want me going into the facility anymore. At that point, it's with the infection. I just, you know, keeping it as safe as possible. So I find out the team's been sold. Head coach is fired.  You know, I have one more year on my contract.  I do that. I come back. Got a new head coach, this guy, Mike Malarkey, which his name says it all. And it was a terrible year, you know. I completely lost my love for the game. I'd lost, I'd give it, you know, I felt completely betrayed. I was benched four games into the season after the first game of the season, we're playing the Vikings and I have a dude thrown into my left ankle. Get a low high ankle sprain, which really should have been a six to eight week recovery. They have hurried me back in two weeks. Like, you should be able to play. I'm like, all right, man, but I can't push to my, I can't push off my left leg to move right. Like you should be fine. I'm like, okay.   These coaches were my father figures, my, you know, these were my people, my family, my, and all of that I feel completely betrayed. No one could really talk to me about what was going on. I was trying to figure out, you know, why am I being benched? I worked my way back, got earned the starting spot back the next week and then was benched for the rest of the season. And I just took myself out of it at that point. So after that season, I was really ready to be done. I mean, the team went one in 15. That was, that's a really painful. Yeah, it's horrific.  And you just know where the season's going. It's not fun, you know. And there's this balance between what you're describing as coaches and brotherhood and family with also some strange perverse capitalistic incentives where it's like, well, you can no problem, two weeks, low, low, high ankle sprain and a high ankle sprain is really bad that sometimes requires surgery. But I had a low, high ankle sprain. So it was on the cusp. So I didn't need surgery, but it needed a good solid recovery time to repair, you know?  There's all sorts of, you know, psychological things happening. Take some of the pharmaceuticals, some of the painkillers and, you know, perform. And so there's this whole like kind of gladiator mentality that you're talking about. It's like taking the player and throwing them on before they can actually heal fully. And that's, so there's that balance between that too.  Yeah. The NFL and for the Jags and I mean, we're talking all the shoulder dislocations, the herniation, the infect surgery, the infection, the low, high ankle sprain, the shattering confidence, having to get back on, earning your spot back, about to be all pro, but not. And then having one in 15, I mean, this is nuts going through the change in ownership and coaching like all of the birth of your daughter as well through that process. I mean, that's a nuts four years. And it definitely births a beautiful treasure into the world, having all of that experience. Oh yeah, man. Yeah, absolutely. It's not even the Bears yet. Yeah, yeah, exactly.  Talk to my wife, talk to my father in particular, talk to some teammates. So I had this incredible teammate in the Jags, his name's Brad Meester, he's a starting center for them for 14 years.  I don't know if I could do this anymore. He said, Ed, I think that every year. He goes, you know, man, for the last, you know, however many years he said, I think that every year, I'm done after this. Jeez. And he said, I just give it one more shot, you know, and see how it is. And he said to me, he's like, you know, man, I know how you feel. See how it goes, you know, maybe give it a shot. Let another, get yourself signed by another team. Maybe you find your love for the game again. Yeah. Maybe you're reinspired to play. And if not, you know, you're done. Yeah. So I said, okay. So I had a couple of workouts and went and worked out for the Seahawks. And you're like about 30 or no, you're 26, 25. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh, you're only 25 or 26? Yeah. At the time. At the time, yeah, and you went through all of that. Yeah, yeah.  So I go, I work out for the Seahawks. They were like, we'll let you know if we want to sign you. I fly from Jacksonville to Seattle, spend 24 hours, work out for them, meet with everybody, fly back to Jacksonville. The next day I get on a plane, fly to Chicago. Work out for the Bears right away. They're like, yeah, we want to sign you. We want you to stay here, you know. So from that moment on, and it was like, I was in tears. I didn't know if I wanted to do it anymore and hear this team wanted to offer me a new contract. So I thought that was great, you know. And I just took it and I sort of, you know, played it as it was and sort of fell in love with it again. Had a great year. Got to be the sixth swing tackle and they carved out this nice blocking tight end, monster tight end role for me, which I was really successful at and I brought a lot of production to the offense. The Chicago Tribune even wrote an article about how much more productive the offense was when I was in there. So I'd play like 20 to 30 snaps a game. I was perfect, you know. And I fell in love with it.  I didn't have to be a starter. It was a great bunch of people. Chicago's an incredible sports town. It was a great experience. I lived right in the city, you know. And so it was a great football. It was the football experience I needed to feel good about being done, you know. Yeah, and also have a good taste of the game as well. Yeah, yeah. And it was like, this is what, yeah, yeah. So I had a one year deal there. And after that year, I thought, man, I could really get a solid free agent contract out of this. Nothing really came. So I signed back with Chicago for one year and at that point, all the magic was gone. The coach's egos got really saturated in the energy of the team. The team fell apart. All the magic of that first year in Chicago is really gone, you know. And I have to, I mean, football is an energy game. It's all energy. It's the ultimate team sport. And it's a trickle down from the top, you know. So the success of a team on Sunday is really a, it's a, it's a extension or it's a illumination of the success of the inner team. You know what I mean? That's right. So ownership, front office, head coaching staff, players. You know, it all works down. The more that the inner world of everyone involved is enlightened. Yeah. And in alignment. And in alignment, yeah. It all flows on the field on Sunday. It all flows on the field on Sunday.  Right? Yeah, of course. Companies, of course. So it was a beautiful experience, you know. Looking back in my football career, it was such a beautiful experience of understanding concepts of success. Or the concept of success. What makes something successful, you know? And it all comes back to the same thing.  Are you in alignment with your truth? Are you in alignment with your energy, you know?  That's it. So, I mean, there was a time where football or talking about all of this was really painful and difficult, and even watching football. I couldn't watch football for the last three or four years and this year I'm watching just about every game. Just because I have such an appreciation for the dance, you know, the art of it. You know, the art of competition. And I can love that and I can be in that. And I feel super blessed, man. It's fun to come and talk about it and to re-dive into that old box of memories because it gives me new context around the experience, you know? You're now diving into it from a much more enriched wiser perspective and yeah, it does. It's like revisiting that book or movie or song after several years of the evolution of one's own awareness. So, one more thing on that before you jump in. You know, I was for a long time and this goes into something else I've been thinking about. You know, I looked at my career as a failure. You know, my football career, because I had this idea I'm gonna play 10 years in the NFL. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna become this. So, for a long time I was draped in shame and doubt and this feeling like my football life was a failure, you know? And so, like you said, being able to apply that lens of wisdom and distance from it now, I have such a great appreciation for it all. All right, let's hit this from so many different angles. All right, one of the angles is that, like athletes have this incredible relationship between the mind and the body as a vehicle in order for it to execute whether it's football, soccer, basketball, hockey, baseball, tennis, golf, sports that are team-driven, sports that are solo-driven. And there's a ridiculous amount of people on the planet that have been through this sort of athletic process where it's a, it's this realization in some way over time that occurs, which is that this body is a divine vehicle and that we have to do a better job at individually taking care of it and also having the incentive structures in the sports industrial complex, let's say, that takes care of the true soul and not kind of having that perverse incentive of trading out cogs in a machine type thing. And so there's, we've got to have that more holistic, health-driven, soul-driven perspective on it. And then the other thing that you were mentioning I thought was super interesting was kind of like, in a sense this is in chapter six of high-level perception, this part on the evolution of consciousness where it's almost as though whether the, it's happening in the sports arena or whether it's happening in the entrepreneurship arena, as we were saying, or whether it's happening in the civilizational arena, the more that you have people in places of power that have egoic levels of consciousness, the more you're going to have misery unfold. And the more that you have people that have experienced transpersonal or non-dual states of consciousness, higher level states of unity, God, consciousness, the more they realize the self in the other and then there's no interest to self-deal and hoard and have perverse incentives for just one's own sake. And so this is really important because it ties into that first thing that I was saying, which is that overall realizing that mind, body, spirit, complex and that soul that's there and treating it that way with the next generation architectures that are more around flourishing and less around extraction and stuff like that. That was, I think, a key takeaway. Now, I want to ask you the question around how did you identify that throughout that entire process that rather than using painkillers, opioids, that there was this revelatory process for humans that was unfolding, which was the emerging market of cannabis and healing through that. And then take us through kind of also like the activist process in these last couple of years. Yeah, that's a great question. I can't believe you only went six years but you underwent all of this insanity compressed in a six year. It's kind of mind boggling thinking about it. I always gravitated towards cannabis or plant medicine. I remember when I was like 15 or 16, it might have been sparked by watching the movie Altered States. Have you seen that movie?  And he starts going and does doing these peyote trips.  And he'll take the peyote and he'll get in his float tank and he devolves into like a caveman. And then he runs a muck in the city. And so he's like experimenting with this. And eventually it goes haywire because he starts doing it too much and at the end he's like fighting through a complete decomposition of his physical body. Which is, it's really interesting and terrifying. I recommend it for anybody who's interested in these sorts of ideas. But I had this interesting calling or gravitation towards doing a peyote journey. I still haven't done that. Peyote sort of got quiet throughout my football career and ayahuasca emerged as I sort of started down the spiritual path. But cannabis was always very intuitive. I was always very interested and curious about it. So really my, I did it, you know, I smoked weed once or twice in high school and had very intense experiences, very terrifying. Like didn't want to do it again. And it wasn't until college when it was at the end of the season, we were all, it was a get together of all the O-linemen. We had a bonfire in the backyard and someone brought a joint. We started passing this thing around and, you know, it was a great experience of brotherhood and sort of ceremonially putting a period on the season and that experience that we had all been through together. Great hardship, great physical hardship, giving it everything we had, being physically and emotionally exhausted from the year and really getting to come together and have this moment, this ceremonial moment of togetherness and brotherhood and acknowledging what we had been through together. I remember waking up the next day and I said, my God, if I had been up drinking alcohol all night, I'd feel like hell today, but I feel like I could go play football again right now. And I carried that with me. It was really, it was so intuitive. It was such a real experience of feeling as though I had been healed in this way. You know, and obviously I wasn't totally healed, but energetically I felt rejuvenated. So I always kept that in the back of my nervous system, I guess you could say. So dealing with cannabis throughout your college career is very tricky, there's drug tests all the time. They're at random, you never know when they're gonna happen. So you can't really use cannabis in college as an athlete. I think you also wrote in one of your posts that you can use cannabis in the MLB and is it in the NHL, is the other one? I believe MLB doesn't test for it. I don't think the NHL tests for it or if they do test for it, there's no punishment as long as there's no issues happening, no on the field or on the ice or off the ice issues happening that are of concern. In the NFL, cannabis is under the substance of abuse test, which is an annual drug test. And you generally, you have an idea of when that test is gonna happen. It's gonna happen sometime between when you first report to the facility in the spring around April. It can happen anytime from that day to about the first week of training camp. So you've got April, May, June, July, August, about a five month window where you have to be very mindful because this annual substance of abuse test could come any time. But once that test happens, you're free to use cannabis at will. Oh, interesting. So once you get a hang of that, you talk to the guys, sort of, the cannabis users, they come together, you know? Yeah. They find each other in the locker room. And I was always very... And there's a big difference between the psychoactive THC components and then the more bodily rejuvenating potentially. Other cannabinoids, CBDs, this type of stuff. Huge difference, like that was... Definitely, but at that time, you know, there wasn't all of this.  There was no CBD tinctures and this strain and that strain. It was just, you know, pay way too much for an ounce of, you know, God knows what. And I would say, I would argue that, you know, this idea of recreational cannabis use, you're most people, if you're using cannabis, you're using it to self-medicate for some one issue or another, whether that's to de-stress or to deal with back pain, whatever it might be. Creative strategy is another one that we, so there is the medicinal side of it, sleep as well and digestion and all these other pain, all this other stuff, but then there's rare diseases that are healed with large doses of hemp CBD. We've had people on our show who love that. Oh, definitely, definitely. But then there's also the creative strategy side of things, which is super interesting because what happens is there's, in neuroscience, we have the default mode network and what micro dosing enables is the slow releasing of the grip and then you enable new creative connections to happen. As long as you basically anchor the creative strategy session in execution, like the next week, the next days and the next week, that way you actually actualize the goals rather than only staying in creative strategy mode. Anyway, there's the creative side as well, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you can get very nuanced, obviously. But so as gladiators, as warriors, I found cannabis was very intuitive, many guys. I say 50%, one of my teammates on the bears, Marty Bennett, Martellus Bennett, who's a great tight end. When he came out of his career, he said that he thought more like 75% of guys use cannabis. So there's that, so I used it very intuitively. It became, it was a very intuitive medicine for me as my physical body wore down and my emotional body was in a constant state of stress. Cannabis was really the one thing, I could come home, I could smoke a little weed and I could feel totally decompressed, I could leave football there and I could relax, I could rejuvenate, I could get a great night's sleep. Meanwhile, having all, having this experience, this firsthand experience of being handed a thing of opiates, taking a prescribed dosage, feeling irritable, insane, rage at the surface of my consciousness when I'm in the most vulnerable position, you know, dealing with a dislocated shoulder, having a herniated disc in my back, where I literally needed people to help get my, get myself dressed, needed help doing everything. I was in a state of complete chaos, waking up at two or three o'clock in the morning with withdrawal symptoms on a prescribed dosage three days in. I've since, since coming out of my football career, I had a DNA test done where it said that I have a variance in my genetic sequence that makes me highly susceptible to opiate side effects, which is really interesting. So opiates, I knew they just weren't, they didn't work for me. They made me feel really insane, really intolerant. They didn't do much for the pain. They made it really difficult to sleep and get rest and heal. So cannabis really intuitively, I kept coming back to it because I could decompress physical, emotional, psychologically. Psychologically, I could get a good night's rest. I could come home and connect with my family and friends. I could live a decent level quality of life for the amount of pain that I was in. So coming out of my football career and towards the end in Chicago, I don't think I took any opiates anymore. I used, as far as pain management goes, I used cannabis basically solely as my choice for pain management during my last couple years. So I come out of my football career, like I said, I was completely obliterated, physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, had no idea who I was, complete loss of identity, no idea what I was gonna do to make money and put food on the table. Geez, that's another thing is the whole athlete after career thing. Yeah.  Yeah, absolutely. And what about the money that is being made while the players are in the athletics as well? To be able to actually allocate that adequately towards long-term wealth creation so that afterward, that we have the... Yeah. And this is... It's all good, right? Yeah, we're good this time. That was just an update virus protection. Yeah, we're good this time. So... Yeah, that's another nuts thing. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's a whole podcast. In itself. We have to be set up for that long-term wealth creation and also to do things after age 30 or after age 40 if you go 10 years or 20 years or five or 15 or however long. But we have to be set up to do something and there could be a whole industry in just working with athletes on long-term wealth creation and doing things after they finish their careers. That could be a whole interesting industry. Okay. Absolutely. Man, you're gonna get these little bits from me because these are things that I've been thinking about for a long-ass time and that we just don't... We haven't had enough athletes come on the program to unpack this type of stuff. So you're pulling some really good triggers from me on wanting to correct perverse incentives, think long-term about these types of things. I love it. It's great though. So I'm sitting there, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do with my life? And my wife goes, well, it's time to write your book. It's a stack of journals from the time I was in college just keeping notes throughout. She says, now it's time to write your book. I said, okay, it's a great idea. God bless my wife, you know. So I started writing a book. My football agent passed me off to a literary agent, went down the rabbit hole, wrote up a whole book proposal. Publishers liked it, but they wanted either more dirt or the red carpet story of a paint man in a Tom Brady. So... What does that mean?  You know, I don't know. I was like, well, this is the story. This is Charles Buchowski. Yeah, exactly. As an offensive line, then. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. That's actually funny. Only now after you say that, is there some sort of like visual resonance to me to that? But it totally makes sense now. Go all the way. Yeah, yeah. That's you. That's for sure, Leo, now I like it. Yeah, man, so... They didn't like that, though. Well, I think that a lot of people liked it. I think they liked it. There was great feedback. Some of the publishers who were most interested said, well, we already filled our sports book quota for the year, so we have to pass. It's that thing we talked about. The corporate publishing monster. So I was like, okay, man. So I wrote this article. I wrote a massive article for sportsillustrated.com and it got a huge amount of reach.  And I was like, dude, I didn't name you. I didn't, I really, I was just talking about my experience. From the heart. I don't know what else to say. You want me to say that.  And I was like, no, I didn't.  But, you know, it was what it was. It was what it was. You know? So I had a very heated exchange with my former head athletic trainer from the Jags. God bless him, Mike. I hope you're out there. Lots of love to you, man. But so it sparked this new thing of, then I got a call from a producer who's doing this documentary, Take Your Pills, which is on Netflix, which documents my whole Adderall experience, which is a whole other thing. But then I get connected to, so Cannabis was this very integral part of my healing experience throughout my football career. So I got connected to this guy, Kyle Turley, who was one of my childhood heroes, all pro, all offensive tackle. We had had the same agent and he was very much the tip of the spear in the Cannabis as medicine for pro football players movement. Is that called NeuroXPF? Yes, that's his company. That's his CDD company, NeuroXPF. And believe it or not, NeuroXPF, and again, Kyle Turley. Turley. Turley, yeah. Kyle Turley, shout out because. Yeah, love Kyle. Because Kyle Turley and NeuroXPF are what, are what Sarah Baker and Kristen Price from Hoop Beauty use to heal their rare cluster of diseases. And they use those large doses of hemp CBD, NeuroXPF, in order to be able to heal. And they traveled around the world to different physicians to the best of the best. And they could not figure out how to heal that cluster of rare diseases. And they were, they're teenagers, bro. They're teenagers. They can't get through the rare cluster of diseases. They're undergoing losing hair prom, like not being able to move, grip a pencil, et cetera. All this different type of stuff. And it was Kyle Turley and NeuroXPF and hemp CBD. So I just wanna shout out because if he's, that's also coming at an athletics angle as well. We should have Kyle on that. Yeah, you should, definitely. That's a good one. Kyle's incredible. He's a revolutionary, you know, through COVID. He's been saying CBD will take care of COVID. That's it. He's gotten a lot of flack for that, but I think he's right on that. He's an absolute revolutionary and we need him. So I got connected with Kyle and Kyle said, this was probably five years ago now. Kyle said, Eb, I'm doing a cannabis conference out in Phoenix. I'd love for you to come and tell your story and speak, you know, at the time I was like, man, all right, I don't really know what else, what I'm gonna say, but I guess I'll just say how cannabis helped and how I feel cannabis helped me during my NFL career, et cetera. So I was like, yeah, Kyle, I'd love to. Anyway, I can support you because, you know, he was such a prototype of what I was seeking in my football experience. So I go to this cannabis conference in Phoenix and it's Kyle Turley, Nate Jackson, who played tight end for six years for the Broncos, also New York Times bestselling author, one of my good friends. I highly recommend his first book, Slow Getting Up, which is an incredible detailing of the football experience, Ricky Williams and me. And we're in this huge conference hall, there must have been 500 to 1,000 people. And I'm looking around this room and it's military veterans and it's cancer survivors and it's these families with Dravet syndrome, these mothers of children who have these severe seizure disorders who have all been healed by cannabis, you know, and here we are having played professional football and, you know, beyond, I don't know, for me there was no really other way. I'm just sort of following God at that stage, you know. And I'm telling my story, I don't know what it means and I tell my experience of how I use cannabis just about every day throughout my football career and dealt with all these injuries and how I feel like I came out of my career in better shape because of it. I'm looking around this room and I'm just sort of in awe at the breath of people that this affects in a positive way. And so next up comes Kyle Turley and he starts talking and he opens up with the federal government as a patent on cannabinoids as neuroprotectants and antioxidants, it's patents 6,630,507. And I'm just like, and he goes on to say how through scientific studies, the, you know, the department, the NIH, these government bodies, governing scientific bodies have done all these scientific studies to see how cannabinoids can help heal the brain from damage and can also help prevent damage before it occurs in the brain. They have a patent on it, cannabinoids as neuroprotectants and antioxidants. And you write about this in your blog post on the subject.  And then he goes on to talk about how we all have an endocannabinoid system in our bodies and our bodies produce our own endogenous cannabinoids, mirror replicas of the cannabinoids found in the canvas plant, anandamide, the bliss molecule to perform all sorts of issues. You know, our endocannabinoid system is involved in how we feel and deal with pain, our appetite, our sleep rhythm, and our mood among myriad other things. So my mind is blown and all of a sudden my entire experience as a football player, because I was coming from this place, you know, my cannabis use throughout my football career, I kept it very private because as a team captain, as a team leader, as a guy that coaches always look to to set the example for the team, my inner dialogue about my cannabis use was wrapped in shame. It was I can never let anyone find out about this because I'll lose all credibility as a leader in this locker room.  I need to learn as much as I can about the history and science of this plan and how it works and it validated everything and it really set me on this path of to not put too fine a point on it, just being a truth teller, man. I've been seeking out the truth. Especially when there's such a wide breadth of people that have been healed thanks to cannabis and now you're with the help of what Kyle's saying, you know, protective, antioxidant, endocannabinoid system. What's actually going on on a planetary scale with the secretion of this and all the different cannabinoids, all the different dosages, all the different applications of it and so- And meanwhile, you know, meanwhile my football brethren are in dire straits. Guys are being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's and dementia, CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is really the, you know, the major issue affecting football players at this stage, which is a degenerative neurological disorder caused by the subconcussive hits and the constant hits to the head. And I'm like, here's this medicine.  So I formed an organization called Athletes for Care, which was basically all of us ex-pro athletes who had had this experience, which was a lot. And continues, it seems like every day there's people coming out of the woodwork talking about how cannabis has affected them in a positive way. And I think really it comes down to this, you know, corporatization, corporatized mindset in the athlete. You know, I can't say the truth about my experience because I'll lose endorsements. I'll lose my contract. I'll lose this and that. And, you know, for whatever reason, I was blessed with a very anarchical stance and a passion for resisting the powers that be and the so-called authority figures that claim to make all the rules and, you know, break through all of that with just the truth of the experience, you know. So it was a very powerful thing that happened for me in my life after football to really set me into what it is I'm here to do, you know. Man, seeing the brothers in athletes, seeing the sisters in health care, seeing all the different use cases that indigenous have been applying it to seeing the myriad benefits and then seeing that all the brothers and sisters that are also jailed and in that process because of it. So, I mean, this is, yeah, this is a really big awakening. Planetary-wise, one thing that I would say about the emerging market of cannabis and hemp is that, and I would say that the same thing applies for psychedelics and entheogens and the same thing applies for decentralization, blockchain, cryptocurrency, smart contracts, is that as we have these massive emerging markets happen, it's super important to inclusively stakeholder everyone in the fruits that emerge from them because usually what happens is that you get the people that come in early and make the investments that reap the vast majority of the benefits and then the rest of the people get breadcrumbs and that rather it's that everybody should be steak-held in the growing pie of the massive emerging markets that are happening in this case. Absolutely. Yeah, so that would be one thing. Yeah, that's a, if you wanna get involved, there's a great movement, The Last Prisoner Project headed by Steve DiAngelo that you can support and that's all about getting the non-violent marijuana possession people out of jail because there's hundreds of thousands of African American men and women who are serving way too long in prison sentences that should be set free and meanwhile, all of this is putting a lot of money in people's pockets. Yeah, meanwhile, the DEA teamed up the CCA. I know, I know. I know, it's horrible and I'm grateful. We've had Steve on the program and I agree. You have? Yeah. Oh, nice. Yeah, I love him, adore him. He's the man. Yeah. He gave us several times the breakdown of the multi-decade process that we've undergone with the liberation of cannabis on the planet and there's, think about all the creative economic value that the hundreds of thousands of people can be driving to our planet by not being just sitting in jail rotting away. Absolutely, man. Yeah. So then, now where did that launch you into ebb and flow, podcasting, book writing, hot box with Mike Tyson? You know, you kind of have your found passion for making the case for cannabis to athletes and disseminating that. So yeah, walk us through these last, especially a couple of years. So I started Athletes for Care, which really provided this new community of like-minded individuals and also to establish a safe third party resource for athletes coming out of their careers to come and get information, education, financial opportunities, work opportunities, et cetera.  I'd always had this, obviously there's the love of writing, which writing is sort of, it's like going into the gym for your mind, you know, for me. It's to take the ideas that are happening in here and put them into some concrete format, whether that's on a pad of paper or in a computer, et cetera. You know, it's a great way to flesh out ideas and come to terms with things and figure things out and understand concepts and synergize ideas, et cetera. But beyond that, I had a radio show in Jacksonville. I got to know the music director of the local NPR station. I became really good friends with him and he said, Eb, I have some open slots that I need to fill. Do you want your own radio show?  You know, I came in and got to hang out with him one day and I was doing a charity event at the time. And he said, we could pub, we could do a little PR on your charity event and why don't you bring in a playlist of music and we'll play that as well and we could talk and I'll show you how I do things. So I just fell in love with it. He gave me my own time slot. I got to make my own show called The Number 73. You'd probably find somewhere where I did playlists of music intertwined with poetry readings, literary experts, or excerpts, you know, and I would make it all in a theme. So one was dreams, one was my, you know, childhood in Brooklyn, you know. So that, and I remember also having this experience I think about it a lot these days. I would be in the locker room and just loving the exchange, the conversation in the locker room, you know.  And I thought to myself, I'd love to have a job where I get to talk to people in life after football. At one point I thought maybe that was psychiatry or being a psychologist, which I'm, you know, that's very deep in everything I'm interested in. But that's sort of as, because of my inner vibration of an artist, it's manifested itself in podcasting. So through the cannabis world, like I said, Nate Jackson was a good friend of mine. He lives down in Venice. I said, dude, let's start a podcast. So that started with the Mindful Warrior podcast. I was like, we can just start talking about this experience of being ex-football players and life after football and how to heal yourself and, you know, the process of figuring life out from the point of view of an athlete. So it started there. That evolved into Caveman Poet Society. We had to change names because there was a Mindful Warrior out there already. In the midst of that, you know, I'm still doing, we're doing speaking around the country, around the world at cannabis conventions, talking about cannabis as medicine for athletes and the benefits of it and, you know, protecting against CTE or being a remedy to CTE, et cetera. So I was cultivating this repertoire as being an expert in the field of cannabis as medicine for athletes, football players in particular. An old team doctor of mine, this is now early 2018, calls me up, or maybe God, it was 2017, calls me up and said, Ebb, I'm coming out to LA next week. Mike Tyson's cannabis company is putting on a Cannabis and Medicine Summit. And I think I would really like to introduce you to them. I know I've been following your career since you left and it looks like you're one of the leading voices in this movement. I said, wow, okay. I mean, I've met, and at that point I felt as though I had met a lot of the players in the game, I had no idea Mike Tyson was even involved in cannabis. So I said, okay, I get introduced to Mike and his business partners. I end up having to put on the entire panel. I emceed it, I put together a whole presentation. I brought in a number of NFL, NHL, MMA fighters, some doctors, some neuroscientists to come and do this really incredible panel that we filmed a long story short there. They said, Ebb, this is Mike's business people. He said, Ebb, we love your energy. We want you to just keep coming and hanging out here. We'll pay you. I said, sure, you know. So that evolved into, eventually they said, Ebb, we want to start up Mike's podcast. We know you have a podcast. Can you help us produce that? So next thing I know, we're starting up hot boxing. And at the time it was really interesting meeting Mike because he was in a very dark place. He was really struggling very much, still afflicted by his vices and the grips of addiction. So throughout that process, the first episode of hot boxing that you can find on YouTube is with this guy, Dr. Jerry, who's a toad shaman, five MEO DMT.  And, you know, in the process of that, I really, I healed a lot of my own pain through my experience with Mike and seeing this guy who is really a demigod of American culture. You know, he's our modern day Hercules. He's been at unimaginable highs, devastating woes, been in prison, been, you know, charged, convicted of rape. He's been at, you know, just the complete devastation of his entire life multiple times over and reimagined himself and found his way out of it and reemerged him.  Yeah, yeah.  You know, we get so attached to who we're supposed to be and how it's supposed to look and what success is and, you know, the shame of all our failures and being wrapped up and not realizing all of these dreams and fantasies and ideas we had of ourselves early on and just getting wrapped up in all of that and it's like, let all that shit go, man. And just who are you? What are you here to do? What's your truth in the moment?  And it's a constant process. You know, we took this, my dad just, just my dad just moved out of Brooklyn, New York, lived there for 40 years. And during high school, he actually moved out of Brooklyn, came to LA, saw my brother and I get through high school, hated LA, moved back to Brooklyn. So he's there now again for the last 15 years. He just left Brooklyn and moved to Tucson, Arizona. And we spent the week there. That's my wife and daughter. We spent the week there and it was beautiful.  I had this really interesting thing about my relationship with my dad and how close we are emotionally and energetically, how much we've been through together and yet we've always had this space between us, you know, because my parents were divorced. I got to see my dad once a week and then at times when we moved across the country from each other, I'd see my dad once a year. And I was feeling really grateful for this experience and now having him closer. And I actually, I want to move to Tucson. I want to get out of LA. That's kind of where I've gotten to, especially through COVID, you know, my wife has a thriving estate planning, law practice here, which, you know, we'll figure that out and maybe it'll be a partial move at first, which is fine, but towards the end of the trip, I was having this dread sort of descend over me. And, you know, I feel very deeply, it's one of my gifts. My dad has said to me, since I was a little kid, he said, Ab, you're so sensitive, you know, which at times I took very critically, but that's really, I've come to cherish that, my sensitivity, because I feel so deeply, you know, I feel unbelievable highs of joy. I feel soul crushing lows of despair and grief and sadness. And I was feeling, you know, and a lot of my childhood was draped and dread and uncertainty and I started having this feeling of dread.  I'm really getting into that, you know, wherever it is, because we're constantly, you know, in my own spiritual evolution, in my conscious evolution, we spend so much time trying to redirect and get out of the feelings that we're feeling and go somewhere else.  So I started having this dread, sort of just sort of start to trickle down. And it was the Friday we were leaving on Saturday. And I had this really beautiful experience of just allowing it, man, and just feeling it and being like, wow, what an incredible experience to be here, and like, this is it, you know?  It disintegrated, it was gone, and it was like, wow, I'm still here, you know? Self-realization embodied, anchored, got a consciousness, Christ consciousness, unity consciousness, it eradicates all of those roots of misery, anchors right into the present moment, the bliss, peace, joy, peace, love, compassion for everyone, everything, perfection, infinite, absolute, it's amazing. I mean, and to consciously re-baseline to that is the thing, it's the paradox we were talking about. You are both perfect, and you want to work your way into a place where you can re-baseline that infinite, absolute, peace, joy, bliss, state of being, and also become an artist from that place. So you write your book from that place. Every business deal you do comes from that place.  Other countries around the world, geopolitically comes from that place. Everything comes from that place, and that's ultimately one of our big keys that we're unraveling on the program and trying to really embody in the awakening in Los Angeles, because you're going, sounds like you might be going to Tucson and we're like, maybe. Well, I'm here, you know.  There you are, that's right. And I'm not in any hurry. It's just, you know, man, as my life, as I get older, and here I am on 33, you know, and I feel like I've lived multiple lifetimes. Six years, yeah, it sounds like it. My brother, that six-year chunk of time sounds like a whole lifetime, that six years. Yeah, and everything you've learned and packaged from it and are now bringing as a treasure from that, it's so awesome. Yeah, man. So, you know, it's just I'm slowing down. I said this to someone while we were there. I said, I'm slowing down faster and faster these days. I hear that for sure, my man. You know? Yeah. So I just, you know. It's like a balance, though. Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, I love LA. I convinced my wife to move back here, you know. Her family's from Pasadena. So I convinced, I love LA, I love it, you know. It's been always such a, you know, you can really express yourself here, you know.  That's it, that's it. And it's not, there's no boundary for that. And I've always had such a great appreciation for that. And I think, you know, I still have work to be done here. Totally. For sure. But yeah, man, you know, it's like, it doesn't even, it doesn't matter where I am. It's just like, this moment is it, you know? Yes. And you are it, like we said. You are it.  Because we just spend, we spend so much time, especially in America, I think. You know, we're really. The subject focuses on the object. Yeah. All the time. Yeah. And it atrophies the muscle of the subject investigating its own awareness. Yes. And realizing that diamond necklace already around the neck. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the key. We're gonna get that into the heart of the most influential people here. We gotta do that. Well, that's the thing.  We'll be making all the decisions. That's it too. So you'll be running for president. That's it, yep. I'll be, you know, somewhere. We'll have our animated series and anthologies and all these ways of memetically disseminating these deeper self-realizations. Yeah. As you were telling me about your story, I found it so cool that, you know, you had to seize, I just, I love sharing these moments because you really have to seize the opportunity that you're given when, you know, when Kyle is talking to you about these cannabis summits and the way that people are gathering, healing their biggest traumas and across different industries, people are healing themselves, whether it's athletes or healthcare or any sort of aspect, you put together the panel. You put together the panel of brilliant minds. You have to be a synthesis in order to do that across those different disciplines to share those stories. And then you get exposed because once you knock, knock, knock, you answer that door and you really work hard at setting up something beautiful. What happens is knock, knock, knock, the next door comes and the next door is something really another rocketing opportunity, your own podcast, all of the guests that you get to feature on your podcast and learn from like a sponge, you know, the knock, knock, you know, we trust you with the Mike Tyson and his investor group that wants to really rocket cannabis to the next level, also rocket healing. Mike sounds insane, by the way, the ups and downs because those, you know, your ups and downs are nuts. A lot of other people's ups and downs are nuts. Mike's are insane. And, but to find where he is now sharing his treasures with you on the program, and you act as this really nice catalyst because Mike kind of leans back a lot and kind of inserts wisdoms strategically. And you kind of draw out the wisdoms of the guest that's on the program and also insert your strategic philosophy and wisdom along the way. And I think that he definitely needs that and that you work at a good spot in that process. And so you're basically both advocating for, in a sense, awakening to the, both the healing processes that occur from the traumatic unfoldings of people's insane ups and downs, but also really shining those treasures and catalyzing the shining of the treasures on the other side of those. You guys are both catalysts for that. And so, yeah, you have many strategic metaphysical perspectives that are enabling you to be that shining beacon right now. And even our back and forth today is really deeply resonant.  And it's very much so highlighting the journey. And I just, I know that part two and beyond are like really focusing in on what we just unpacked there which is that God consciousness that exists right here right now, but that we atrophy the muscle of the awareness and that consciousness of investigating its own nature and especially children that we must be the catalyst for them to do that process that then enables the sustainable development goals to be solved and so many other things that we want to do. Yeah, yeah. I really wanna snap people out of the illusion that they're living under, you know, taking life for granted.  People just take life for granted, you know? I was thinking about this the other day and even sitting here with you, you know, when you're really, it's funny, it's funny. It is, yeah.  Like even when we're here like communicating and having this dialogue and sitting across from each other, you know, there is this perspective, this lens, this container put around it of me being the interviewee and you being the interviewer, you know? And so my mind just naturally starts to put all sorts of expectations and perceptions around what you're gonna say so that I can be prepared to respond in a specific way. And I was thinking about this with my wife the other day and I'm sitting there and I'm watching her and I'm looking at her and we're talking. I was thinking to myself, my God, look at how magnificent this is, you know? Like how magnificent it is to sit in front of this being. Who is just a completely fluid stream of life happening.  You know, I have an issue with guys like, for instance, Saad Guru. I don't know if you know much about Saad Guru. Yeah. Who's a great. I'm balanced about that. I think we're about to go. Great spiritual teacher. But he also, you know, he has this thing where he said there's no, basically it's all here. Stop trying to do anything. There's no process. There's no nothing. It's there. It's you're there already. And while that is true. And the other thing, you know, that is it, is it roomy or it's roomy about the pearl necklace that you're always seeking is around your neck. So there is that. You are everything. You can in your container, there's everything you will ever need to be all that you are and all that you are destined to be in this universe. You know, but at the same time, there is a process of realization. That's it. You know, especially when you're in the modern era. That's it. Because we've been programmed and conditioned with so many layers of relatability and understanding and perspective. So, you know, in my relationship with my wife, I'm sitting there and I'm having a discussion with her and I'm noticing, wow, I've got this sort of, there's this veil of perception where I'm relating to my wife through an expected flow of dialogue. But when I let go of that. That's it, yeah. I have no idea. Like, dude, like you and it's like, it's so when you let go of that. And it's not like you can just do that. You know, you can't really do that without putting the work in. It's a muscle. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You really step into the magic of life, you know. Enlightenment is a habit. Yeah, yeah. And so we re-baseline ourselves into that place that you speak of and it ends up just transforming our energy completely. One of the most, I think, important things to do in this process is to do what we call Omni-level perception, right? Ted AchaCoso brought this up when I shared with him. Yeah, I love Dr. Ted, man. Exactly, yeah, exactly. Yeah, we both had him on. Yeah, exactly. Because what it means to have Omni-level perceptions, it means that you can take on the perspective of everything happening at once. And that means outside of my own conscious agent perspective, I go to, well, what's Ebb feeling right now? How is he perceiving me while I'm perceiving him? And how's the audience perceiving this? And how's China doing and Saudi Arabia doing? Kenya, what are they up to right now? Can I hold the whole planet at once? Can I hold that whole Omni-level perception happening? And then that's only this planet. That's not, that's this one song, universe, out of everything that is potential. And so, when we start expanding ourselves to that degree, like even for a moment there, I just, everything became way less dense. I felt way more light. And I'm curious, once we take our visions to the next level and we keep creating that as we talk about, when we can fill 50,000 people into a sports stadium that's empty 90% of the time and we put them in there for a full day on what we're talking about right now, wow. Yeah, one day, man, we're gonna do that. We are going to do that at the end. Probably be sooner than we realize, you know? Dr. Ted said the most incredible thing I think I've ever heard when he talked about enlighten them. He said, everybody thinks enlightenment is about what you gain. Really, enlightenment is about what you lose, you know? And I was like, fuck, that's it, man, you know? Just the letting go, the constant letting go, you know? I have a practice where I'll take walks. I love walking, walking is one of my favorite things. And walking and breathing. And I'll breathe in, and on every exhale I'll just think to myself, let go, let it go, let it go, let everything go, you know?   And like, we're doing the show notes, which we have to do, you know? We have to have this perspective to relate to from, you know? We can't really, you can't come in here as a being of light. It's like no one gets it, there's no context. What you're bringing up right now is so fascinating. I was just thinking about it like 10 minutes ago while we were talking is like, what is most optimal? Let's say, let's just do an experiment right now, okay? Let's say that, let's say you come on the show, right? And this is usually what would happen on episode two with a guest. Because usually in episode one, what I try and do is I try and unpack the really, basically the roots of the seed and its fruits, right? And so that way people, when they feel your aroma in part one, it's usually the fullness of your aroma from top to bottom as much as we can. And then in part two, usually what happens is we can dive right into the metaphysic and the consciousness and all the other kind of abstractions but also embodiment work that we're talking about right here at the end. Now my question would be, what if in part one, we just went there? And I don't know yet, I don't know yet because it feels strange kind of bypassing that first part of it. That's been a big question of mine and podcasting because I think to myself, is it interesting doing, because I know how I feel when I have to go and dive into my life story and I have to unpack it all. But to some extent for me right now who I am, that's necessary to give people an understanding of what I've been through, where I'm coming from to give you the goods of what I know. But you have someone like Tony Robbins come on, or you have Snoop Dogg, or someone who's very well known and you can dive right in because they have this sort of built in understanding. Sure, sure. But sometimes as a podcaster, it's like, well, let's start with, just tell us where you come from. Yeah, yeah. You know. And I've made it part of my art with podcasting. Let's see how we can tap into who this person is through this moment right here, right now, where we're at, where we came in here. Let's jump into the meat of the moment. Yeah, yeah. And let that, let's let that fling us back to this moment in time where such and such happened. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Stuff like that. So it would be like if we jump right into it, we're gonna jump right into it. Like if we jump right into the consciousness and the metaphysics, maybe there's a moment where it goes, well, actually, and one of the reasons why I feel this specific way about the nature of being is because when I was 22, this happened and then we maybe go for three, five minutes on that, then we come back to the, you know. So there's all these different ways to explore the artistic expression on the canvas of the dialectic, and I'm still, I'm surrendered in intuitive flow in terms of what optimization means in that regard because I know that after doing 700 of these, it just ends up naturally finding its way, right? The star is there, but it's very sandy in terms of where there's no attachment, there's no craving, there's no solid, shamed up way of having to achieve. So when we talk about the stadium as well, it's that we know intuitively that that's within the star and the trajectory and the planetary awakening, but we're not attached to having it happen at SoFi Stadium in 2023 on June 15th. Watch this. Watch this. I think it's gonna happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's gonna happen, but we just, we're loose about, yeah. But we're also, you know, it's funny, it's a balance because the two polls that I like to say on this are people like, we've been talking about these paradoxes, they're fantastic of you already are it, and you're also constantly rebaselining that enlightenment as a habit. Another good one for this is where you have people like Gary Vaynerchuk that talk about eating shit for 10 years as an entrepreneur, which is true. And then you have Peter Thiel, who says that why can't you achieve your 10-year goal in six months? Right. And so I agree with those two polls as well. And so it's, when you wake up in the morning, it's not so much about, I'm surrendered to intuitive flow, cool. I can just do whatever. Yeah, you know, it's like, actually you should still do that show with that today. Like, yeah, it's not like, I'm just gonna go to the park instead or whatever. I know, it's very interesting, isn't it? It's all a paradox. It's all a paradox. It's an enigma. It's all a paradox. Yeah, it's an enigma wrapped in a paradox. Yeah. Because of course, man. I'm surrendered to the intuitive flow. I'm gonna make it to the NFL one day. Yes. You know? Yes. But the steps of manifestation. Exactly. Or actualization. And so you see that thing, you visualize it. You know what it looks like.  And then something happens in the mind, body, synergy, where you just program yourself into it. Yeah. You know? That's it. I have a- And that's part of the game, going back to this thing.  Why would we do any of it? You know? If it was easy, everyone would do it. As my dad always says. You know? Yeah. I have an interesting thought for you, because you have a nine-year-old daughter. We just had Maya on the show yesterday. Uh-huh. And it was our first kid on the show. By the way, I don't wanna- And like kid- Yeah. I got a- I probably got a role pretty soon. Rap soon. The reason why I bring this up is because children, their state of consciousness, their state of awareness, their state of awe, their state of play, their state of creativity, their state of not being dogmatically pressured into an economic machinery as a cookie cutter, as a cookie cut gingerbread cookie. Like that, your daughter and you know, Maya yesterday and I would look at potentially what sort of children can do to loosen adults up to the investigation of their own awareness as they engage with their child or children in general because that's hyper-catalytic for this process that we're talking about of immersion. Absolutely. The children, the child's, all of a sudden, you know, Maya was like, let's go on the roof. And I was like, man, I've been here three weeks and I haven't even went on the roof of this building. Haven't even had the thought of it. I haven't even had the thought of it, exactly. And we went on the roof and hung out up there for like 30 minutes yesterday. Yeah. This is the type of stuff I'm talking about. Exactly. Yeah. I feel very blessed, you know, that my parents are very much that way. Like my dad is 63.  And it's never really been about money for my dad. It's been about creating from his heart space. And he just moved his whole life from Brooklyn, New York to Tucson, Arizona.  And his girlfriend is a welder and also an incredible artist. And my wife and I were talking, and my wife really said this. She's like, what an inspiration to see this, to have this example in our lives of what you can do, you know, at 63, you know. And my wife comes from a very sort of, I love my in-laws to death, but they're just very buttoned up and sort of buy the book.   And children, you know, that's such an important thing. You know, we get so rigid in our conditioning. We get so rigid and we get attached, you know. We get attached to what it's supposed to look like, how it's supposed to be, what success is. I've got to make this amount of money. And what if you say forget that and let the universe take care of that, you know. And just enjoy the play of life, you know. Easier said than done. We're gonna unpack a lot more of this. Yeah, we gotta do another one. We will, we absolutely will. And I also wanna, as lots of people know, the link in the bio below to the Ebb and Flow podcast is there, the iTunes links there. You can also find the Spotify link on Ebb's website. And his Instagram's great as well. It's got a lot of inspiration on it. And one thing that we're gonna try and do as well is we're gonna aim to actualize the synergies between our nodal clusters of influence. And so we're gonna hopefully see a lot of nice interchanges between the powerful leaders that we have on our programs and stuff like that. Definitely. There's that. There's so many great creative thoughts for us. The very last question that I like asking super silly, what's your favorite food? My favorite food? Meal or like one singular piece of food? You get to pick. Okay. I would have to say a great grass-fed ribeye and a salad, green salad with avocado. That's my go-to. How do you like your ribeye cooked?  Yeah. I know they like to go medium rare, but I like it just a little bit more done. Yeah, likewise, yeah, like medium wells kind of thing. Just some sea salt. Sea salt is what you do, yeah, interesting. And then grass-fed. Grass-fed. Grass-fed is the thing. Yeah, grass-fed is the thing. Have you went and hung out with cows on the farm as well? No, I'd like to though, man. That's a fun thing to do, yeah. You know, I've been a fan of Dave Asprey and the Bulletproof. I sort of intuitively found my way to, just very intuitively found my way to intermittent fasting and a ketogenic diet. That's it, yep, yep. And that just works really well for me and I'm currently reading Superhuman by Dave Asprey and just listening to his breakdown of the minutia of healthy fat and the issues with industrial meat.  It's really interesting, man. And in the midst of it, we have this, there's a heavy vegan thing that I think is being dispelled by the day. That's right, yeah, I would definitely agree with it. Which is really interesting. The funny thing is refined sugar is fucked, period. Which is hilarious. It doesn't even matter what you do. It's like everybody knows that all eight billion people on the planet should definitely not be drinking Coca-Cola in mass, which is so interesting. But then the microbiomes of people are different for if they should be more ketogenic or maybe if they should be a little bit more car or plant. Yeah, exactly.  Stay away. That's so funny. Stay away, I know. Thank God, I mean, I think we're coming to that realization as a global culture, but. Yeah. It blows my mind if I see people drinking soda. I know. I even had a Coke in probably at least 10 years. When I see the person drinking a soda, I'm like, fuck, really? Really, yeah. You know? That's one of the benefits of California. Not only is it like the sixth largest economy on the planet as a state by itself, which is super interesting, but like Silicon Valley and Hollywood and San Diego are like really obsessed with health in many ways and they lead the world in many ways in that regard. Mental health may be otherwise and stuff in LA, but specifically health wise, there's so many different, like dude, you can get a $2 little smoothie thing that actually has fruits and vegetables in it rather than the $1 Coke or whatever. So people have figured out that, all right, lots more to unpack. Yeah, a lot of food. We have so much more. Oh my goodness. And wow, what an epic conversation. It was so lit that we had the first one cut.  Super interesting that that happened. Very interesting. So we'll stitch these together into the episode that we'll publish as the final here. Shortly, you guys will see that. Thanks for tuning in live for all those that did. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below on the episode, on all things that Ed was teaching us about. Have more conversation with your friends, families, coworkers, people online about the future of leveraging cannabis as medicine as healing for us, for all things about the slowing down the investigation of consciousness and awareness of that truth. And support the artists, the entrepreneurs, the spiritual leaders, scientists, engineers in your communities around the world. You can support us. Our show links are below. You can support us. Follow the ebb and flow podcast. Follow him on Instagram as well as links in the bio below. Check out the iTunes and Spotify version. It's coming to YouTube. Thanks, brother. Also, which is great. Thank you, brother. Getting better and better at putting it up on YouTube because I know people want that. We want to see your emotional reactions, responses. That's right. Thank you. That's it. That's it, guys. That's it. Much love. Much love. Build the future. Manifest your dreams in the world. We love you very much. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you soon. Peace.


I heard they're bringing Developer Day to Octane this year with all sorts of events like talks, demos, workshops, games. You name it. Oh, me? I'm going to be at the start-ups half the hour. If you want to hang out, you can grab the Developer Pass. Or you can go all out with a full conference pass at octa.com slash octane. See you there.