Yale's Head of Spirituality & Mental Health on How to Live a Fulfilled Life

Happy New Year, everyone. Welcome to 2024. It should be a big and exciting year for the Alchemist Library, so make sure you stay tuned. And we're gonna start off hot today because we have Dr Anna here. Dr Anna discusses various topics in the world of mental health, spirituality, personal growth. She's an absolute wealth of wisdom. She has a fascinating background, studying in over 70 countries, learning from Buddhists to working in South America with Shamans, in India with Gurus. She's now on the staff at Yale where she's the head of spirituality and mental health. So I'm just pumped to get into this one for you guys today, going to leave it at that. Catch you guys inside Peace. Dr Anna, thank you so much for being here today. I'm excited to have you.

Thank you so much, Ryan. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

So if there was one concept from your work that you would want to stress to people, what do you think that would be?

I think that you know there's two different ways that people can live life. There's the path of comfort and complacency and the path of growth and transformation. The path of growth and transformation is where you are constantly seeking to be the best version of yourself, constantly looking within with introspection, self-knowledge, psychological understanding, psychospiritual upliftment and trying to figure out how to transform and metabolize difficult experiences into opportunities. So I would want to give people the capacity and tools to do precisely that and to really live life from the place of growth and transformation, as opposed to comfort and complacency. Not to say that we shouldn't enjoy life and be comfortable at times, absolutely, but to be able to really balance those two things and live a life of transformation.

I love that. If I had to describe what I was trying to accomplish with the podcast, I think that was succinct, exactly what it would be, and the phrase that comes to mind is the obstacle being the way, and I think that, with your work and with this whole world of just mental health as a whole, being able to understand that concept and really internalize it does so much good for people.

Yeah, I believe so too, and I feel like you know, we all encounter challenges and the obstacle, of course, is the way, because you look at that obstacle and ultimately the obstacle is the messenger and what you want to do is you want to metabolize the message and release the messenger. The obstacle eventually goes away or becomes much less important when you figure out and assimilate what you're supposed to learn from it and how you can uplift your own consciousness through that experience and then how you can share that with others.

So how do you think we should go about thinking about doing that Exactly? How do we raise their consciousness in a way to be able to do that?

Yeah, I think there is multiple steps and for everybody you know where they start is different. First, you identify your pain point. You identify that obstacle and you can ask yourself what is that thing that keeps coming up in your life again and again and again, often much to your chagrin and dismay and despite your best efforts to change it? What is the source of pain in your life? The source of pain is where the light comes in. It's exactly that what you need to focus on and understand. Why does this keep showing up in your life? Why is this the challenge that your soul has chosen to overcome in this lifetime?

By virtue of you know, as Sigmund Freud would describe something as a repetition compulsion. It keeps coming up again and again and again. It's that difficult thing for all of us. So, first, identify what is your obstacle, and the obstacle has many different ways that you can think about it. Right, sigmund Freud called it repetition compulsion In Kabbalah. From a spiritual perspective, you can call it a soul correction, and you could know your soul correction by that point of pain that comes into your life again and again and again. For someone it could be having a healthy relationship. For another person it could be being more independent For another person. It could be overcoming your fears or overcoming addictions. Whatever that is to really know what your pain point is and start to come up with a roadmap of what that can teach you about yourself and how to overcome that.

What is the book of the Kabbalah? It's something that I've heard a lot of people talk about.

Definitely so. Kabbalah is a form of mysticism. It comes from the Jewish tradition or the Christian tradition. There's Christian Kabbalists and Jewish Kabbalists. So you can think of like the Bible or the Torah as the rule of law and Kabbalah is the commentary, the mystical commentary, on that rule of law. And another way to think about it is Kabbalah is the study of how energy works in this world, like what you, as a human being, need to do in order to have the energy of life work with you rather than against you.

The study of how energy works. It's so funny, I think, that for the longest time, the concept of energy and synchronicities and these things that are considered more woo-woo they're starting to move into the mainstream more and more. But why do you think that is?

I think that society is ready for that and I think that it's happening for a lot of different reasons. Number one people are finding that the tools that they had, that were non-spiritual tools to address a lot of life's problems, are failing them. A lot of the psychological tools, a lot of the social tools, the biological tools. They're needing something greater. They're needing a connection to something greater than themselves, and that also entails a connection to the deepest part of yourself, your divine essence. I think that's one of the reasons.

Another reason is, I think, because psychedelics have come onto the picture. So not only do psychedelics offer a novel biological mechanism to treat many difficult to treat psychological and psychiatric illnesses, psychedelics also offer a connection to spirit. So they offer people this glimpse into something greater, sometimes, not always, but you certainly can have these transcendent psychedelic experiences. So I think that psychedelics being more in the mainstream, such as ketamine, brings those experiences more into the mainstream as well. And I think the third reason is just because we have a mental health crisis and it began before COVID, but it was certainly accelerated and exacerbated by COVID and we haven't come out of it. So we need increasingly more powerful tools to be able to transcend that, and spirituality is one of those tools.

Absolutely. I love this holistic approach to mental health that you've taken of incorporating kind of the all aspects of it. You see, in the mainstream it's either a pill or therapy and they don't provide too much wiggle room between outside. The lines of that and psychedelics seem to be this incredible way to face that obstacle head on and you almost create the space to deal with those obstacles in that space. Do you have what psychedelics? How should someone think about what psychedelic to do, how to go about doing that safely and properly if they start to feel called towards that?

Yeah, I think it's a great question and you know, the legal psychedelic in all states is ketamine and ketamine. There's a lot of evidence that it can help with depression. It can help with alcohol addiction, it could help with PTSD and a number of other conditions. There is some evidence that it helps with anxiety. There's some evidence that it could help with OCD. There is some evidence that it could even help in some cases with certain forms of bipolar. So it's very interesting. There's like more and more evidence for that.

Ketamine is also starting to be used in group settings. There's several papers published currently with the group use of ketamine, which helps in numerous other ways In addition to helping people tackle the conditions I just mentioned. It also helps with the loneliness epidemic. To be able to do something like that that could be potentially transcended in a supportive, safe group setting is really really powerful, and not everybody has the luxury of being able to afford or have access to one-on-one therapy, especially for trauma. So this is another thing. There is a fascinating film that's recently come out with psychiatrist Gita Vahid and trauma therapist Bessel Vanderkalk, where they're using group ketamine sessions together with psychodrama to help people process some of their traumatic experiences with really positive results. So ketamine is certainly one thing people could consider because it's legal and available in most states.

Now there is other medications that are available in some states and legal in some states, such as psilocybin. Hopefully psilocybin will be available to more people in more states, but you can certainly go to a state where it's available, such as Oregon, such as Colorado, and psilocybin is available both as a microdose, in microdosing fashion, and microdosing. There's less evidence, but numerous people and studies are beginning to come out that show some evidence for psilocybin microdosing, especially when you stack it. So when you use the microdose of psilocybin together with some lion's mane, some niacin and then some other stacking protocols, so that's very exciting. And then psilocybin also has in higher doses, where you actually have what you can consider it a full dose or journey experience with that.

People are showing benefits both in academic studies and more community settings for also depression, for death anxiety, existential anxiety of that nature, for trauma therapy and numerous other conditions as well. And the final medication that's going to be coming down the line shortly is MDMA, and this is the studies by Rick Doblin and MAPS, and I think by the middle of 2024, mdma may be legal in a therapeutic setting to use for trauma, and I think that will be a very positive development. So these are a few things. And then there's other psychedelic medicines that are not legal in our country but are legal in other countries and are particularly good for treatment-resistant addictions, such as Ibogaine and ayahuasca, and then other things that probably will be studied, such as LSD and other psychedelics as well. So it's exciting what's going to be coming down the pipeline.

It absolutely is, and especially with the ayahuasca stuff. It's something that's fascinated me in going down those rabbit holes of YouTube, of hearing people talk about their own experiences with it. There's almost some things in the experience that, for the logical mind, it's very hard to wrap your brain around, and some things that make you have a propensity towards maybe there is a higher power, maybe there is some spirit there that's helping, guiding you towards a light. It's fascinating the stuff that's going on with ayahuasca.

Absolutely, absolutely, yes, and I've had numerous patients have those experiences in places where it has been medically legal and then come back into my practice to integrate that and it's amazing what they have experienced. And it's true, you're exactly right that the experiences people have are not linear and can't really be predicted, or something that you can say I'm going to have this ayahuasca experience and then this is going to happen. No, on the contrary, you set an intention, but the medicine, as with many plant medicines the idea is that there is a spirit to this plant and that you are joining together with the spirit of this plant and opening yourself up to the plant, giving you what you need. You're relying on the plant's natural intelligence, of course, together with higher consciousness, to be able to take you to the kind of experience that's going to be helpful and transformative for you. So I think you're exactly right the experiences could be very positive and very unpredictable.

Absolutely. And one thing in the ayahuasca and you mentioned it as well with the ketamine is doing it in a group setting. And something that I've noticed through doing breathwork is there's something to a group setting, there's something to doing things with people. Maybe it's an energy, I'm not quite sure, but in the breathwork I've experienced on my own, versus doing it with other people, even doing the exact same breathwork, the experience is so much more intense and stronger when you do it in the group setting. It's so interesting.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right and I think that we are not islands.

We're all social creatures and we're all so connected and interconnected with one another.

And when we can use the power of a group to heal, a certain field is created with the energy of the group and that in and of itself has healing potential.

Another place where that is really relevant is, for instance, large-scale meditations, like I've gone to some Joda Spens and meditation retreats, where you have maybe 2,000 people all healing together and there's such an elevation of consciousness that happens that people are able to enter this field. That's created by all these people meditating together and we're all at different levels. But if people are advanced meditators at very high levels meditating around you, that can just pull you up by virtue of that, because we're connected to those people. And so I think that when you have a healing experience in a group setting, all the healing that takes place in the other people also takes place in you and vice versa, and conversely, you also could take on a lot of the difficulties of those people. So I mean, we're very poor as beings, so you have to, in those settings, also protect your energy in a way but, also be open to the upliftment of the group.

So it's a very interesting thing, but ultimately, yes, I believe that groups and social camaraderie in that way is very healing in and of itself.

What have you learned from doing a Joda Spensa meditation retreat? His work is quite interesting and wide-ranging in a lot of ways. What do you learn from those experiences?

Yeah, I've had very powerful experiences and actually so I'm starting a center at Yale. I'm on faculty at Yale and I'm starting a center Mental Health and Spirituality Center which is going to be a bridge between Yale Divinity School and Yale Medical School, and I got the inspiration to start the center after my book, fulfilled, came out in 2017. And that's when I had permission from Yale to start it. But at that time I knocked on a few doors and it was clear it was not the time. And then it was two years ago that I was sitting at a Joda Spensa meditation retreat and then I hear this voice the time for your center is now. Go knock on the doors again. And so I knocked on the doors again and it was clear that it was the time.

And what happened in those ensuing five years between my first getting the download that the center needed to start and then being able to start it, was that the psychedelic movement and ketamine really entered the picture in our country and in our mental health landscape as never before, and I think that's why the psychiatry department, as Yale, was much more open to you know, having a center that bridges spirit and medicine. So for me, it's been very powerful and very uplifting. It's a big commitment. You take off a whole week to meditate, but to also be able to meditate for a week, what a privilege and what an honor to be able to do that. So it's been just really lovely when I've done it.

It is, and one of my favorite quotas is so many people will spend what's the exact quote, but it's of the. I'm paraphrasing here. But essentially what it's saying is that people will spend so much money having other people listen to them when they don't ever take the time to listen to themselves. And just sitting in that meditation and reconnecting with that inner intuition telling you it's the right time to start. The center and I'm sure there's so many, if you just quiet your mind there's a. Taylor Sheridan is the creator of the show Yellowstone and he has a fascinating quote in where he says most people fail in life because they can't hear the whispers pointing them in the direction they're supposed to go. And reconnecting with that intuition such a beautiful thing and I really think it's at the core of what you do is allowing people to hear themselves.

Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree and I feel I think you're exactly right that listening to yourself really is key, and the first exercise of my book is an exercise to allow people to do precisely that. It's really just an exercise to ask yourself every day, what do you most deeply want? And to ask that of your mind, to ask that of your body, to ask that of your soul, and be open to how the answers show up. And as you ask that question, it's like you're priming yourself to start to excuse me gather the answers to that and be open to what it is that you most deeply want.

And you know the answers can come like you could know, I want love, I want security, or it could be like I want a burrito, like you're hungry here and you know, and a burrito could also be a metaphor you want nourishment, you want something delicious and hearty, and you know. And so, yeah, there's all these different ways of listening to yourself, and I think you're exactly right, ryan, that oftentimes we will do everything so as not to have to listen to ourselves, because if we listen to ourselves, we have to then take responsibility for what's being shown to us, and many times we have no desire to do that. We kind of want to live, you know, the life that we're supposed to live, as opposed to the life that maybe, at the soul level, we, you know, really want to live at the deepest level.

It reminds me of the hero's journey, because when you embark on that path, of the road that's traveled, let's say, or the path that you're really called to do in life, it's difficult and there's always a bit of apprehension. You don't always feel perfectly aligned with it at the start, or there's some fear there that holds you back from embarking on what you're supposed to be doing. And I really think that that's a purest form of prayer, like just sitting down and asking yourself what you most deeply want.

Really at the end of the day it's perfect, yeah, I believe that and also it helps you get in touch with your subconscious mind if you keep asking that, because we have our conscious mind where I could say I want this ABCD and these are the things I know. But there's a deeper part of you and you can also see, in addition to what you want, what is actually showing up in your life, and then you can get a sense between the delta, the distance between what you consciously are saying you want and subconsciously what's actually showing up. And sometimes the work we have to do is to shift deeply held subconscious beliefs to be in line with our own worthiness to receive what we want, our own capacity to have what we want, to really draw in what we most deeply want and align with that.

It's beautifully said, I mean it's funny. It leads to secret niceties and in my own life I had quite strange and strong synchronicities pulled me towards starting this podcast. And then in the months lead after that, I've kept a journal for probably like three, four years now and in reading the journal entries before I started the podcast, I noticed I was somebody who really wanted to start a podcast but had no idea that I wanted to start a podcast if that makes sense to you. And it's funny how when you they, you almost get pulled towards these things in some way, these omens if you will leading you in a certain direction and it's almost hard to make sense of.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Yeah, and synchronicities are like that, you know, there's like certain things in life that are so clear boom, go do this. But there's other things that are much more subtle. It's like life pushing you in certain directions and that you have choices. We all have choices always and there's certain things that you know are such strong attractors of your destiny path that one way or another it's going to happen for you. And there's other things that you have a lot of choice whether they happen, how they happen, if they happen. You know so.

But I think that's exactly right, that it's the little coincidences and the magic of life. And if you're open to that, the synchronicities will guide you for your highest good. And I think the most important thing with that is to every day ask and declare like every morning, I declare today's going to be a day of magic and miracles, and almost every day of my life is a day of magic and miracles. Synchronicities come, magic happens, miracles happen and it's beautiful. It's beautiful to live in that kind of world.

And then, if those things aren't happening, if there is the opposite happening in your life, you try to understand what? How am I contributing to that? What needs to happen. None of us are going to have lives that are purely magic and miracles, without obstacles. Obstacles just are a part of life. All of us are going to get sick, all of us are going to die, all of us are going to lose what is most, you know, fundamental and dear to us. That's unfortunately part of life's path. But all of us can also be joyful to succeed, to love, to have amazing things happen, and so it's really balancing those things and being able to ride the ups and downs of life and really enjoy the ups and temper the downs to the degree that we're able.

I think the beauty of that is it almost doesn't matter in the truth of it, in the sense of if you believe that miracles are going to happen to you, they just will happen to you because you will see the science of that pointing you in the direction right. Like it almost doesn't matter whether what the truth of that is, because if you are looking for those things, they almost just present themselves naturally.

I think that's true. I think that's true, right. It's also what you see and how you see your life. Perspective is key, and that's why gratitude right there are all kinds of things that could be difficult in one's life and you can focus on the difficulty and see your life through that lens. And sometimes it's hard not to, because we are also human and we have emotions and things are hard. But, on the other hand, there's also so many beautiful and amazing things in everybody's life, no matter who you are, and so to be able to have gratitude and be grateful every day and to be able to come from that space shifts your perspective and draws in all the more energy of gratitude.

So what's a good practice for people to reconnect with gratitude?

Yeah, I think, just every day, a few times a day. What am I grateful for today? In the morning? What are three things I'm grateful for? In the afternoon, what are three things I'm grateful for in the evening? What are three things I'm grateful for? And like, looking at everything, I'm so grateful that I have amazing parents, amazing friends, a beautiful home, that I am healthy, that I had a delicious breakfast today, that I'm able to pursue my dreams, that I'm able to do these podcasts, that you know, whatever that is, anything and everything and every day, like focus and three different things three times a day.

That's beautiful. I mean, I love this. I love that your book is called Fulfilled, because the root of what I think we're all trying to accomplish in life is the art of living, or living that fulfilled life. Like you said, what are some things for people that we haven't discussed so far that you think are is pretty fundamental to living that fulfilled life?

Yeah, I think living a fulfilled life is three things. One is authenticity knowing who you really are and doing your best to live accordingly. And this is taking off all the masks that we wear and all the expectations of others. It's not to say we're not going to live up to other expectations, but really knowing where those expectations end and where you begin like having that distinction of who you really are authentically. That's number one. Number two is soul corrections.

So the other way to live authentically is by living in accordance with your soul correction and your soul contribution.

The soul contribution is the contribution that your soul has come to make in this world, the way in which you can give to the world uniquely based on your unique set of talents, abilities, interests, who you are. And your soul correction is those challenges that your soul has come into the world to overcome. So knowing and seeing that as part of your life purpose, the combination of your soul contribution and your soul correction, is your soul purpose. And then the third part of being fulfilled is connecting to part of something greater than yourself, and that's being able to honor synchronicity. Figure out what that something greater for you is. For some people it's God, the universe source, mother nature, and for some people it's a set of collective values like hope, love, trust, perseverance. You do not need to be a believer in God to be connected to something greater than yourself. You just have to really have that perspective and recognize that our life here is part of a whole and we're interconnected and interdependent with everybody and everything.

I wanted to ask you how we can have more synchronicities, but I think that you kind of answered that in that last, in that last answer. Right, let's reconnecting with those three things.

Definitely, definitely, and the way to have more synchronicities is number one.

ask for them, declare it every day I'm going to have more. Today is going to be a day of magic and miracles or today is going to be a day of synchronicity, magic and miracles. For me, magic and miracles are on the spectrum of synchronicities. They're the same thing. So, as you're declaring that today is going to be a day of magic and miracles, you're opening yourself up. That's number one, and then number two is doing the counting and actually seeing all of the magic that comes up in your life and being able to claim that's for me, that's my synchronicity. Today, that little magical thing happened. I claim that I own that. More of that, please, and just keep going with that dialectic being aware of it, asking for it, thanking the universe for it, and then just seeing more of it show up.

That's fascinating. I haven't thought about it in that way. So it's really just looking for them, declaring them, understanding or really identifying what some of these things are so that you can better identify when those come up in life.

Absolutely Just being aware, being aware and open. The more aware and open you are, the more you welcome and invite it in.

What have you learned about overcoming fear?

Yeah, I mean fear. My favorite mnemonic about fear is false evidence appearing real. The majority of our fears are just that false evidence appearing real or illusions. Most fears never come to pass. And yet fear has a very strong evolutionary component.

We've developed our fear instinct, or our fight or flight instinct, to escape from hungry alligators for our survival. But in this day and age we don't really need to worry so much about surviving. We will survive. And actually back then people didn't have food to eat. Now more people are dying of overeating and the consequences from heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, then a famine, and these days nobody has to run away from hungry alligators and really fight for their survival in the same way. This year, now, this year, this time, this is more about having the psychological and emotional strength to overcome the challenges that come our way, especially in our country. It's dealing with anxiety, it's dealing with depression, it's dealing with our mental health epidemic. This is how we need to use our capacity to overcome our fear. It's to deal with more of the emotional stresses that come up in life.

Yeah, it's hard right. I mean, we're so primed for a world of scarcity and we live in one of just pure abundance, so almost reprogramming yourself to be able to show up correctly in this world is it's no easy feat.

Exactly, that's exactly right, and so, like I like the stoic perspective that life depends on the right perspective and the right action. And the right perspective is seeing things accurately and seeing things from an abundance mindset as opposed to a scarcity mindset. That's key, that's really pivotal, and based on that perspective, you can then figure out the proper action. But if you don't see things correctly to begin with, if your lens is clouded by a scarcity mindset, which so many people's lens is, unfortunately, then the way in which you respond is also clouded Absolutely.

I mean, I think the clearest example of that is financially. You see things and you see finances as so scarce it's going to be harder to make money. You're going to see less opportunities because things take money to make money in many ways, and I love that concept of just reconnecting with abundance.

Absolutely, absolutely. And you could do that for everything Abundance financially, abundance in love, abundance in miracles, abundance in synchronicities. You could have any abundance that you choose, but you have to welcome it in, call it when it comes in. Thank you for that, I love it. More of that, please, and just really work with it at the level of intention and at the level of your psychology.

I think a lot of people's apprehension to this concept of abundance versus scarcity is they think that you just need to manifest and think these things without putting in the hard work in the real world to make these things happen, or being the person, or really thinking about things, like becoming that person that's worthy of the abundance, versus just thinking. I'm worthy of the abundance Absolutely.

Absolutely Right. Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing God helps those who help themselves, right? So you're exactly right.

And in.

Kabbalah. They say that there's three things that you want to do to manifest Maximum work in the physical world, so like work as hard as you can make it happen. Then complete certainty that it's going to happen. And then maximum work in the spiritual world. So it's a combination Just working in the spiritual world, praying and expecting sure, great, wonderful. But if you don't do things in the physical world, you limit yourself. So we have both the physical and the spiritual world from which to manifest.

Our actions are very powerful manifestation tools as well, and I talk often about the masculine versus feminine way of manifesting. The masculine ways go out, make it happen, be deliberate, be action-oriented, awesome. The feminine way is create an intention, and it's more about being Become the person who is worthy of achieving what you want, and do that by elevating your vibrational frequency to the level of that person. You know. It's the person who has what you want, who has that abundance and actually like, feel the emotions of that abundance, and so at the end of the day, it's both. It's not just one or the other, but it's both. If you do both, you're that much stronger. It's interesting because sometimes people work so much in the masculine way of manifesting that they don't allow the feminine way of manifesting to come in. Sometimes people work so much in the feminine way of manifesting that they don't do enough in, you know, the three-dimensional world to make it happen. So ultimately it's a balance and a dialectic between the two and you have to devote.

I love that it's. It's like that concept of yin-yang and reconnecting with both those energies.

Exactly, and that's really what it is. The feminine way of manifesting is the yin, the masculine is the yang, and then, when you balance, you do the both together.

Yeah, you don't see too many people who are good at reconnecting those two things together. It's very rare that you have an individual who is perfectly integrated with those two aspects of themselves. So really the way to do that is how you just described right is working very hard in the physical world to make things happen, but also working very hard in the spiritual world to reconnect with gratitude and really just listening to yourself deeper and feeling what it's like to to have those things. So it's working hard in those both aspects to create that more aligned individual.

Exactly, exactly, and finding the person who's in between.

Absolutely so. You mentioned stoicism a little earlier and that piqued my interest because it was something that you know, that concept that we started the podcast with of the obstacle being the wet. It's so fundamental to their teachings. What's your thoughts on stoicism?

Yeah, I mean I love. I think Ryan Holiday's book is called the Obstacle is the Way. It's an excellent book and I think that that's exactly right. Like your point of pain, often it's karmic, often it's, you know, especially the big pains in your life. Often it's something that your soul maybe has even chosen beforehand. And to be able to see that pain not just as something that is there to ruin your life and a source of, like you know, strife and suffering, but really is that thing that will transform you, and to see it as such and to work around that and let yourself be changed and transformed by it, I think that's really what it's about and that's why I really love stoicism. Stoicism helps you see things through the right perspective on life and then, from that right perspective, taking proper action. And I love how Ryan Holiday's writings about stoicism in that regard.

Me as well, and one thing that I have so much respect for you for is the confidence in the awareness you have in the spiritual world, and I think a lot of people fail to reconnect with the spirituality or reconnect with spirituality as a whole because they have a lack of confidence within it. How did you develop the confidence in the spiritual world that this is actually a thing?

Yeah, I mean, I struggle with it very much so, and I think that the spiritual is definitely a thing. I see magic in my life all the time, and yet faith is something that I'm constantly have to be working on, and I've also had my faith tested many, many times and continue to have it tested. But I also realized that when I am co-creating with the divine and when I'm aligned with the spiritual world, my life is better, not only my physical reality, where things happen and I manifest things much faster, but also my psychological reality. So I feel, ultimately, that it's a practical thing for me to believe. It's a little bit of Pascal's wager. Pascal's wager was that if you believe in God and you're wrong, you lose nothing. If you believe in God and you're right, you gain everything. So why not believe?

I love that Pascal's wager. It's such a beautiful way to think about things because it just makes your life better to believe in these things and at the end of the day, it's a win-win in believing those things.

Exactly.

So we mentioned addiction a little earlier in this conversation, and addictions are something that all of us have and so many people struggle with. What have you learned about addictions and overcoming them?

Yeah, I mean, usually we think about addictions as drug and alcohol addictions most common, so behavioral addictions, which is like workaholism, addiction to your iPhone, sex addiction, addiction to eating food sometimes. But then I think the addiction that many people overlook is psychological addictions, and that's addictions to power, achievement, money, sometimes certain emotions like anger and things like that. Now, all of those things are things that, in moderation, are positive, right. Everybody wants to have achievement, to have maybe a little bit of power, fame, money, to be angry sometimes. It's healthy to be able to be angry, to set your boundaries.

The time that these psychological things become addictions is that the more that you have, the emptier you feel. And this is what I work with so many of my clients and patients on Psychological addictions around achievement, around fame, around money. They have everything but they're still not happy, and actually, the more that they have, the emptier they begin to feel. And so it's helping people reclaim their power over addictions by figuring out what is the most powerful and important thing for them really, how do they reconnect to themselves and share from that space and how do they escape these addictions to all these accoutrements of success that society deems, as you know, so important and noble.

It's such an interesting dichotomy and paradox in a way, because when you think about ego in particular and the example that's coming to mind is, there's a professional boxer, his name is Deontay Wilder, and he blamed his last loss on doing ayahuasca, because he said that his ego, in a fighting sense, was serving him so well. But then when he went into that spiritual realm and it overcame some of those things, it hindered his ability to perform in the cage. So it's just fascinating the dichotomy of success in the physical world versus success in the internal world.

Totally. That's such an interesting point, right? You know, you think about people's wounds and how so many people's wounds and them feeling less than and not good enough are a product of deep childhood trauma. But then you suddenly, and because of that trauma, people don't feel good enough. So they're constantly proving to themselves in the world that they're good enough, and in proving that they accomplish great heights, they create amazing companies, our number one in the world, and this that this incredible boxer. And then one day their ego is healed and they don't need to prove that to anybody, and suddenly their capacity for accomplishment plummets. And then they're like what happened? Now I want my ego back. And then they're like maybe I don't need my ego, Maybe the way that I was getting my sense of self worth back then isn't the way I need to get my sense of self worth anymore. And then their life changes. So it's very interesting the story that you told.

Absolutely. It goes back to like what's feeling you right, Because a lot of people have fuel that's negative. But then there's also those few exceptions of individuals who are highly driven but their fuel is love and their their fuel is totally good things and wanting to become worthy of their blessings, and it's an interesting dichotomy. It's something easiest thing to run off of love versus the the negative fuels is probably a bit easier, but in the long run it's gonna make you more unhappy.

Exactly exactly Right. And those negative fuels lead so many people to accomplish great heights. You can use them for your advantage, and then you could make a different choice when you no longer need that to drive you and to define you.

It's fascinating. Is there anything that you think is fundamental that we have yet to discuss today?

No, your questions have been great, ryan, thank you.

I appreciate that. I thank you so much for taking the time to do this, like I complimented you early, or the holistic approach that you take is so beautiful, and to see someone like yourself who's so well educated and is working at Yale and is really pioneering these incredible projects connecting both the science to the spirituality, it's an it's inspiring to see and I thank you for doing the work that you do.

Thank you so much, ryan. It's a pleasure, and thank you for doing this podcast and reaching all the people with your message. Thank you, I appreciate you.

Thank you, bye Awesome.