0103 with Landon 'Dirtyzen' Smith - Breaking Into The Abyss

[00:00:01] Intro: Hello and welcome to the junkyard love podcast Landon it's such a pleasure to meet you uh you know in Zoom person and uh I just right off the bat I just really want to thank you for your time and thank you for willing to talk to me and kind of like share some of your story and wisdom I think uh many people will be happy to hear from you

[00:00:20] Landon: Yeah thanks for having me it's a pleasure to be here yeah um

[00:00:23] Jacob: So you so you checked out a little bit of the podcast anyway so you can kind of get the format um it's really just conversational we can let it flow and go where it may um I would love to you Know there's no wrong or right way to do it but I would love to start with some form of Bio you know if somebody has never heard of you they haven't heard any of your of your um work on YouTube or Instagram or anything you post on social media or SoundCloud um maybe like just a an elevator pitch or a little bio would be a great place to start

[00:00:56] Landon: Yeah um I started off I'd say it's been maybe like two years or so since I started making chillstep mixes and originally um I didn't have any plans for it um in terms of social media like how far it would go I really just um was working through my own sort of issues and problems that I had in my own personal life and chillstep were kind of an outlet for those problems and you know I heard of ch mixes before people were making these videos online on YouTube and I was listening to um these philosophical mixes and it was mostly Alan Watts and there were other teachers that I looked up to and really resonated with and I thought how cool would that be to make mixes for those teachers and so initially I thought it was just a cool idea and I started to explore that and the more I listen to certain lectures like Ram Dass specifically is one of my favorite teachers the more I dove into his work I found that the mixes I was making was kind of an emotional outlet for me it was like almost therapeutic so I started doing these mixes and I thought you know I'll post them online and I'll just share it with other people and I wasn't really sure you know if anybody was going to discover those mixes right away I hadn't had many subscribers I think maybe only like 50 at the time and my intention wasn't to share it with other people to kind of get acknowledgement but just to share the joy and I started To notice the views just dramatically changed it kind of felt like overnight but it was like a progressive thing and Yeah it just sort of changed my life in the sense of finding my own purpose finding my own Dharma and things that um I could do to not only share my own sort of Joy but share what I've learned with other people and it started initially the chillstep mixes and then I think it kind of expanded and went more into teaching and so yeah I just would say that it started there with the chil mixes and then over time I started to venture out and just do things that I love and just share that with other people online yeah definitely yeah it was really cool to because I found you through the chillstep mixes as well um I want to say I think that maybe Gangi was one of the first ones that I had listened to from you and it was the first time I had discovered or maybe I had heard of you but that was the first time I had heard of gangaji and you know sent me into just a whirlwind of pleasure exploring her lectures she's got a lot of cool stuff on YouTube but um yeah I love that um because it sent me to your social media too and I feel like you're just like a wonderful follow on Instagram I think that um you've got an artist Eye that's for sure um you're definitely handy with the camera you post great photos and then there's always a great caption that really like sends me it kind of sends me back into myself and it's it definitely is very spiritual like even your captions just kind of what you're expressing about what you're going through what you're thinking about that day or kind of like you know maybe something that you have learned and you're working through in your own life you just typing that out in your captions is like Ah that's nice that's nice I think there's a lot of uh a lot of people probably resonate in relate I mean so you've gotten quite a few you know you can go on Soundcloud and listen to these and quite a few people comment on those and like thank you and you've told me that um people enjoy like going on Hikes listening to these mixes and stuff like has it been a lot of good feedback from other people yeah I would say that's the really important aspect of it that has really influenced the way I share myself online is the feedback I receive and so when I started posting initially it was on YouTube and then with the copyright issues I had to go over to SoundCloud but even in the comments section of the videos people would just share and they would just be so vulnerable about the ways that the chillstep affected them and some of them would share like I listen to this on my walks on my hikes or when I'm doing yoga and even meditation and it just brings me you know such peace and I listen to those stories in the comments and you know I've had people reach out to me like through email and even ask me for my number to just talk to me and share with me how it's affected them and it's so great to hear those stories because you don't really recognize that the things that you put out there and the things that you share with other people have such an impact and to be able to connect to those stories often I'll listen to my own mixes and I'll start to really feel into the mix itself and recognize how many people have actually listen to that mix and it often makes me emotional because I realize the impact of the mix and how far it's gone and just recognize that recognizing that can be an emotional experience to see you know how far it's gone yeah I mean it definitely Taps into like this little spring of Love of sorts I mean because it's you know a lot of the content of the spiritual lectures are very you know you said you're influenced by ramas you know he's he teaches the path of the heart as he would say or the path of love you know so it is this um I don't know it's cool to kind of be a you know an usher of sorts of like ah here's this great spiritual knowledge like there's some good stuff in here like check it out with some dope Tunes underneath it you know it's cool to kind of pass that along to people I love it yeah I found that the lectures sometimes at least for me can be quite dense and something I didn't recognize is people enjoyed the Paw so when the bass would drop people would be able to go into contemplation about what they just heard and I never really thought of it that way but I recognized in some sense that I related to that in a sense and also found myself in that contemplation when the music kind of took over and I really resonated with that um but when I first started the mixes um just the combination of the music with the talk the way I interpreted that process is I felt like the song had to be perfect in the sense of it had to convey the emotion that was being formulated in the talk and if the music didn't feel right I would go back and find another song and I think that's what really set my mixes apart from other people that were maybe trying to do the same thing and I've heard people make some incredible mixes not to say that you know mine's like the best but um it was the way I went about my process I think that set it apart from other things that people were hearing online because of it was tapping into that emotional aspect of it so the song really had to be perfect like if I try to mix and it wasn't going in a right direction I would pause it and just wait for another day and try again and I found that a lot of the mixes some of them well mostly all of them that I have on online now they all got me into that flow State there was no pushing for the finalized product it was all just complete flow and I realized that was you know one of the best products is when you can get into that flow State and there's no frustration involved in the process yeah you can definitely that's definitely a role of an artist is tapping into your own kind of intuitive knowing of if it feels forced then you're not going the right way you know like it has to feel kind of like this um you know to use Alan Watts's term Divine Play it has to feel like this fun smooth like ah of course that pause goes there ah there that one is you know it's uh it's very much I'm pretty fascinated um you know my friend Brent who was on the podcast um he had asked me a question that I think that you know I kind of butchered my answer but it but it made me think more and I contemplated quite a bit basically he was asking kind of what's the relationship between my own spirituality and my Artistry like what is the handholding there and it's really like set me into myself and really thinking about um you know my role as an artist and my like how Natural State I feel when I'm creating when I'm making something when I'm you know being a conduit of catching something from the Muse and trying to like paste it into a form that I can share with other people you know it's uh it's this it's this dance for sure um I mean so I want to guess pose the question to you how do you see you know your role as an artist and your own personal spirituality like do you see like how do they hold hands for you in your personal life like these two separate things seem so far apart but again they're kind of the same in a lot of ways yeah I would say that at first they seem quite separate and then the way they merge together for me is quite natural in the sense that it makes sense to do because you love being an artist and then you love the spiritual path and it almost makes sense to merge them together because it's just two things that you really love and you really enjoy and you know going back to what we were saying about how it you get into that flow it reminds me that ramas said something like this when you're playing the role and you're playing the role and it's just kind of coming through you quite naturally and you're not busy being in that role as an artist or as a Creator it's just that busness of creating and I really feel when I'm able to get into that flow um I really find that it they merge quite well both the creativity and the spiritual aspect of it yeah I hear that CU it's like um yeah like the spirituality is this Natural State already but then being able to express it without this yeah like T putting on the hat of like I'm an artist who shares about spirituality you know it's more just like here's some things that I'm expressing and here's how they can naturally Ripple outwards you know I love um I'm love that you mention Ram Dass is one of my favorites as well I feel like I spent so much time listening to Ram Dass um in people who listen to my podcast are probably sick of me like referencing Ram Dass but uh so be it um but yeah he I was thinking of um I don't know if you ever heard the lecture where he talks about how he was driving and he was just driving for a long way and he had his uh was it Mala or mandala and he's just repeating his Mantra and he's in his head and he's just like playing with his beads as he's driving and then he gets pulled over and um and there's this moment he describes it so nicely I forget the name of the lecture but uh it's he basically is just like bringing out this love in this police officer because he's not treating him like a police officer in a uniform you know it's just like another being and I'm another being and here we are and like he was talking Ron B was talking about how like the cop almost didn't want to let him go at the end cuz he's just like so in love with each other just being of just being you know two beings walking each other home as he would say rather than like I'm someone who needs to obey the law and you're a police officer and you can get me in trouble you know it's because we get so caught up in seeing ourselves and one another in our roles that we miss who we really are right so there is this beauty of like just allowing to be there and not trying to run to our identity and not trying to like hide behind our uniforms so to say you know yeah I find that merging the two as a Creator and then as someone who's also spiritual it really helps you see the role in a new way it helps you play the role and also detach from the role because I think you said you know we get we get lost in those roles and without the emergence of the spiritual aspect of it you can kind of get locked into your role as an artist and you know this is who I am and this is what I do and so I that's why I think it's quite natural to bring in that element of spirituality to it to help you detach from it as much as you can yeah very much so it's really been a really cool thing for me to com contemplate you know um it was something that was you know I it was obviously part of my thought process thinking about my role as an artist in my spirituality and how they hold hands but uh certainly since Brett mentioned that to me I think it's been more at the Forefront of my mind and uh you know how to do both of those things well because you know our spirituality is so personal you know it's so um as much as it's not personal actually in so many other ways it's very personal to like you don't really have to share it you don't have to have other people believing the same things you do you don't have to convince anybody of anything you know it's all that but it's also um like this very real experience that we can we can certainly feel you know if we're able to communicate it in some way or like draw a picture of what we're experiencing there's something within other people that is that is spoken to you know and I think that's like the core of art is really this how do you take this very personal thing this thing that seems very um you know you try to express it in plain words to other people and it almost sounds like icky because it's so personal and like ah it's your stuff you know you keep that to yourself sort of thing but it's but you know experiencing specific human emotions and um you know it's we're all very aware of just being human and how like difficult it can be and how painful it can be and how beautiful it can be and when we can find ways with our art to kind of Pierce the Veil of our identities and just speak to that like hey you know as Romas would say again like I'm in here you're in there how'd you get into that one you know that just that little essence of just being you know yeah I think appreciating the uniqueness of everyone's Journey which feels quite personal at times just appreciating that unique perspective in someone else can help you come back to that realization that you know this is something we all share and through the uniqueness of your journey you know with mine we can still see that it's a shared experience but yeah I found that Uniqueness in everyone and through their own perspectives and what they share online and teachers you know of all kinds just sharing their journey and you know really appreciating their unique path really helps you see that people go through this in different ways and they take different Journeys you know whether you're Buddhist or Hindu um just appreciating those unique paths all leading to the same realization yeah it's quite a beautiful thing to like the to poke at or you know shine a light on the through line between all of our experience you know like however we put it into the words however we try to like language a VI it you know it's all uh we're all kind of it's all the it's all the same Moon that the hands are pointing at you know so to say um man so I would love to I would love to ask you about your spiritual journey as far as like have you always been into this sort of stuff did you stumble upon lectures on YouTube did you grow up with like a you know Buddhist background up upbringing were you always spiritual like how did you even kind of first stumble into any of this sort of stuff I would say it started only just a few years ago um around 2016 I had my kind of Spiritual Awakening and I wasn't spiritual before that um you know my parents were religious in the sense of one was Christian and the other one was um into the Jehovah Witness which was really interesting because those two kind of conflicted with each other and I didn't really know where I stood with religion or spirituality and I didn't know much about spirituality in the sense of there being something um outside of the Normal um religious perspective of there being one God like one specific person and it could be like spirituality seemed something that was less personal it wasn't just a person you kind of look up to in the sky so I knew nothing about that really and then when I had my Spiritual Awakening I was really drawn to Buddhism first and actually I got into um Buddhism through someone online who was making spiritual videos about his path in Buddhism and he eventually went to Hinduism um I don't know if you know him his name originally was Ki Fresco and his name now is vadas oh okay maybe I think so I feel like that rings a bell does he have like a dark brown beard he does he had um he had uh dreadlocks for a while yeah okay yeah I'm picturing who you're talking about yeah he was just you know a normal guy in the United States lived in California and he was sharing Eastern philosophy online and I originally I think was drawn to exploring the philosophy after I went through a heartbreak back in 2016 and I really felt like a victim in my own mind and with the world and I kind of just was really depressed at the time and was really looking for something to alleviate the pain and I went online and was watching videos about spirituality and it was interesting not in the emotional aspect of it eventually I got into it more in depth into spir spirituality for that reason but I think what kind of drawed me in initially was um things like seeing auras and the Paranormal stuff and I was always kind of drawn into that but the more I kind of went down that rabbit hole the more I was um open to the emotional side of it of having inner peace and alleviating trauma and all these different things and so when I discovered badas he was making these videos about Buddhism and I had never heard anything about Buddhism or Hinduism or any Easter philosophy and I really resonated with it there was just something in me that had that recogn recognition that this was true for me in some way so I really dove into that um Buddhist rabbit hole for a while and then I kind of took on that label and I was like I'm a Buddhist and uh you know over time I watched him move from Buddhism to Hinduism he would share videos about the Sky ROM do and I initially thought to myself I don't know if I'll get into this Hinduism path because he's talking about this in a more devotional sense and I don't really there was something in me that had resistance to that um because it reminded me of how my parents viewed religion and I remember as a kid just saying to myself I don't need religion I don't need the Bible to be a good person and I kind of felt like it was something that people were depending on to live their lives in such a way that was like quote unquote perfect and um it was just something I had a lot of resistance to so initially I resisted Hinduism because of that devotional aspect but then I kept seeing him mention this person Rond do and I thought I'll just listen I'll just give it a shot you know and I listened to rams's lectures and I found a resonance in that and then I discovered his journey with his Guru and his path in Hinduism from being you know a psychologist at Harvard to going to India and then traveling down this Hindu path I was like oh this is quite interesting I kind of also took that that leap from Buddhism to him Hinduism and at first I started to say oh I'm Hindu now and I took on that label as well and then the more I learned in my journey the more I recognized um what's really behind all the labels and the trying to identify oneself with a particular path and I realized how so many religions Christianity as well and some aspects of it they all have that same truth to it maybe describe in different ways um so I really just kind of let go of all the labels and I was like you know wherever I can draw truth from um I'm just gonna go with that and not really say like I'm Hindu or I'm Buddhist you know so I would just say I'm on a spiritual path I'm spiritual yeah I really like that you just said wherever I can draw truth from I think I think I've landed in a very similar position W with my own path like um yeah I'm not caught up with trying to like figure out which one it is that is for me you know which one can I devote myself to fully and then I'll like have it all figured out and that's my identity from here on out you know it's for me it's been kind of the same thing is I keep just uncovering these the like layers of cloaks that I can take off like oh I don't need that one I don't need that one you know just in the pursuit of Truth and it has to like really feel intuitively um in alignment with like who I am or it feels like I'm forcing it you know and it's um I think I think a lot of people I think a lot of people to resonate with your path man I think um Wow since 2016 so it's interesting how many of us kind of start the spiritual path from trauma or heartbreak or like suffering you know it's like I'm always asking people you know like was it psychedelics that led you there was it was it tragedy um I think um it's so cool cuz like you kind of get to this point where the person that you have made or the person that you like unknowingly are or have been just simply doesn't work out for you any longer it just it's like it's almost like the person breaks and you're there trying to find some sort of grounding some sort of like way to go for forward you know some sort of um not even just new identity but like you know all the answers that you've heard from people around you or your parents or your family or whoever like you know you could try to just Jam them into this you know the old Square Peg and a round hole thing it just doesn't seem like anything fits and then so we're kind of sent into our own world of really taking it serious of man I've got to find something to give me answers like I'm suffering I'm heartbroken you know I've got to find something and then nowadays we have like we're talking about last night like the internet and social media and you know just YouTube lectures like what an incredible thing you know how many years ago would it be that in order to get this kind of spiritual knowledge you would have to know the right person and really like travel somewhere in the mountains the Tibetan mountains and give the right person the path password so you can go talk to the to the enlightened master so to say and he you know maybe he'll give you some answers but now we can we can be like walking on a path next to our house listening to enlightened Masters in our headphones and having profound legitimate you know Spiritual Awakening so it's I think a lot of people are kind of set on that path um I was telling you about um Brent um Brent Spirit who teaches a lot about Kundalini um he does like this Q&A these Zoom calls every week that have been really enjoyable I was mentioned to you last night that um a lot of people are like suddenly falling onto this path of Awakening and it's so destabilizing you know and so to find something that feels like home feels like something we could hold on to a little bit and kind of like it helps us get to The Next Step At least you know whether it's just a lecture or it's like one of your chillstep mixes or um I mean I wonder how many people you've introduced to Ram Dass alone just from like stumbling upon one of your mixes and then they went down the whole be here now Network like rabbit hole of wonderfulness you know yeah it's uh it's cool man it's cool like our paths how we stumble into it really is so cool yeah definitely I like you said going back to how you described the person breaking that was just so such a great image of how it worked out for me because that's the place I found myself in and I would say the breakup was just like the Tipping Point for me it was like a an accumulation of things I had gone through in childhood and at that point it felt like a breaking down um kind of like a death of the old way of doing things I knew something had to change and so when I stumbled into this one video in particular before I found radas it was just like the core of spirituality I think that was the title of the video and he mentioned like when people have this spiritual awakening oftentimes it can be quite random but sometimes it's through traumatic pain and I just remember tuning into that part and I really fell into that feeling of just being in such a low place and wanting to have this Awakening so again I fell into that rabbit hole through this video and just really realized um how the old way of doing things And looking for answers through my parents and through this kind of westernized version of religion just wasn't working yeah and then it's I mean I think so many people like you know that's something we hear often is kind of like the Western vers Eastern or um the Western mind you know that took me a while to kind of unwind well what do you mean like so I think fundamentally different as a Westerner than you know people who have experienced these spiritual teachings from a young age um I mean that's I've really fallen in love with the person who could bridge the gap between the Western philosophical spiritual stuff in the Eastern you know Alan Watson ROM dos super huge for me as well um so I wonder man what I always like to do with the with the podcast is like I always remember that not everybody is so dipped in all of these like spiritual terms or like even being open to the word spiritual I'm sure you've experienced it you know just like sharing your own interest with people I can watch people shut down like the second I say words like God or spiritual you know of course it makes sense but we have these preconceived ideas of what that already means and some of it is so there's such this quick reaction for a lot of Western people that the second we hear the word spiritual we're like okay dude you know it's like all right cool like I'm not listening you know but um sometimes I wish that I could like rename that word and just you know like find some sort of you know more welcoming sounding uh mouth movement for someone to like really get into it because it's not something that's so far out there it's really like a profound thing that can um enhance and explain a lot of our internal experience so I wonder do you have interactions with people who you know are not at all spiritual um but like you're able to maybe like introduce them to these topics in some sort of ways like how do you how do you describe spirituality to people who aren't immediately into it actually um one of my best friends He wasn't spiritual in this in the sense like I was like he was interested in some things like astrology and knew like a little bit of the basics but didn't really um grasp the whole who are you question and I could sort of notice that um but the more you just um explain things in quite a different way without using words like God and whatnot you can sort of see people take more interest in it and I noticed I had some trouble um with this myself because I found the word God was Troublesome and when I got into Hinduism the word of God kind of created some resistance in me and I think that's what initially um kept me away from it and then actually vadas posted a quote on his Instagram that made me think about it a little bit more deeply something like uh if you have trouble with the word God you have more work to do and I just thought what does he mean by that like what do I have to work on and the more I started to just be curious um and to be open to being wrong um I just sort of delved into the meaning of that word and the misconceptions that are around that word and a lot of people I think they pull back because of these misconceptions and the way the word has been used over the years and Hinduism allowed me the freedom to regain the power again of using that word God and reestablish it in a new way by recognizing that it doesn't have to be what I thought it was in the western sense of being Jesus Christ you know some guy that is in the sky it could be non-personal it could be an energy that pervades the Universe and you can use different words that make you feel more comfortable you don't have to use the word god um but initially that quote that vadas posted it made me want to figure out what my resistance to that word was and why I had the resistance um but initially I used words like Source universe and things that helped me feel more comfortable so I would encourage people to do what feels comfortable but always be open-minded to understand your resistance to certain words and really when I describe it to my best friend I try and use words that are comfortable for him and I find that the more I do that the more open e is and you can sort of see that transformation in people when they become a little bit interested in it and then they find more things that um that resonate with them they start seeking it out on their own time yeah I you described that so nicely I love that yeah and that does help to use different these different words you know because there's even certain scenarios where words like Source or um you know those can also be a turnoff for people so it is nice to kind of feel out people's comfortability and kind of um you know me I'm trying to trying to like notice when I do say something you know like oh I can see their body language is kind of rejecting that thing so like let me real back in and you know I don't I don't need to shove my terminology down their throat like I think there's something that we could both have a conversation about here that um you know I don't need to be a slave to my own interpretations and in you know specific words about what I'm talking about there's something within both of us that I'm trying to point to so whatever words I can add in or take away are uh you know helpful to that ushering in of epiphany in a way um I want to go back a little bit to um you mentioned astrology and you mentioned um I think that you've mentioned correct me if I'm wrong do you do tarot readings tarot cards I do yes yeah cool yeah so I'm um those are those are you know I don't have a ton of information I don't have a ton of knowledge about either of those things uh astrology or tarot but uh I will say I have some awesome friends who when they describe when they kind of like break apart those things for me or they kind of describe the way they interpret it or kind of how they do uh tarot readings it totally resonates I'm like oh that's awesome that totally makes sense um so as much as my knowledge is pretty sparse when it comes to those sorts of things I'm really fascinated by it um I wonder you know what have been your experiences with like tarot readings or even astrology like and even how did you get into that stuff like what sparks you with that stuff too I think I initially found a lot of my information um on YouTube and just sort of had a curiosity for it but I think that Curiosity was really um born out of one of my experiences I had at a spiritual convention they were having tarot readings and I kind of just decided to just get one that day and just see what it was all about and uh the guy that was doing the reading for me he was really hitting on a lot of um personal points in my life that I didn't think he'd have information about and it was so specific in the way that it just took what I was going through and kind of laid it in front of me and really confirmed my experience and I think that little bit of validation helped me come to terms with what I was dealing with and I think that's what terot and Oracle can do for people is show them where they're at in the present moment and I think a lot of people have misconceptions about tarot and um it being a medium to tell the future and while it can predict certain

[00:38:03] Jacob: Possibilities based on the energetics of the present moment it is more so about

[00:38:10] Landon: Where you are in the in the present moment how you're dealing with it and maybe some of the limited perspectives or beliefs that you have right now that are contributing to your situation so I find that I use tarot for myself mostly um I can do readings for other people but I initially did it for myself to have a better connection to what I would call God or source and to myself really and so the tarot kind of just helps me see where I'm at in the present moment and how I could navigate my situation with a little bit more awareness yeah absolutely it really is kind of a gift of knowledge you know as much as it's definitely one of those things that you know with anything like not just wholeheartedly believing 100% um or just like thinking this has all the answers or like you said you know like oh this can predict my future you know and I think most tarot card readers are really not even trying to do that I feel like if you just take a second to listen to them like most of them are pretty straight up and honest about you know like I'm not this isn't 100% like here's I'm reading these things and like take what resonates that sort of thing and um yeah I found um I've actually never had an in-person reading but I will say I'm pretty intrigued by um you know via my you know one of my vices and addictions is mindlessly scrolling on Tik Tok uh so it's kind of been fun to kind of see what different um you know like tarot card readers pop up and like it's kind of interesting to like you know again I think that it's like it's playing with the algorithm and it's you know it's watching what you're what you're hovering your finger on that sort of thing but I will say there's a little bit of fun play of as I'm scrolling through just to kind of like stop and go huh I kind of like the way that sounds you know it's I think there's it's there's a little danger in like you know not like really wanting all that to be true you know like oh this perfect video found me you know but um I don't know I find it fascinating you know I think it's fun yeah the with the tarot readings online and on Tik Tok they're really interesting because sometimes you can feel that pull to a certain reading because it's hitting something in you that's resonating with it and maybe the just of the whole reading isn't 100% accurate but again if there's a little bit of Truth in it why reject it and so sometimes I'll take little bits of videos that I find on the internet but it's really important for people to have discernment when a reading comes across because a lot of people are doing it for their own egoic reasons of making money and things like that and Tarot is I think such a sacred practice that should be preserved in some way for helping people in a more genuine sense and I think a lot of people when they're posting you know these videos on Tik Tok they can be do they can do such a disservice in the way they perpetuate someone's limiting beliefs so some of the tarot readings you'll say like you'll see oh your ex is gonna come back and you know and people can really be like oh my gosh she's coming back you know and that can do them such a disservice in the way they cling to something and you know while it may be true um you have to just use your discernment and see if the message is really keeping you in that um separate space or that attached space and it's really hard for people to have discernment so you know I try not to consume um tons of readings online I have like specific readers that I'll listen to and really that's just one reader um on YouTube her name's uh gemstone tarot she's an older lady she's been doing tarot since she was 17 and you can kind of tap into your own discernment um by using your intuition and just really seeing if it feels right for you but again if you don't have that space in you that is really

[00:42:42] Jacob: Aware of your own um addictive Tendencies or your own attachments it's really easy to um sort of cling to these readings that you're coming across online yeah I think yeah you got to be kind of careful because you can get made a sucker pretty quick you know like you could you could be kind of giving over your power in a way that you didn't really need to be or um you know I've noticed in myself that's the same thing as I try to discernment is something you know I learn firsthand because it was interesting to notice

[00:43:15] Landon: I think when that when the tarot reading stuff started first popping up on my feed there was times where even without really wanting to I was believing more than more of it than I really L on like found myself you know saying something just for example that you is like oh your ex is coming back or something I would have something similar and then I would notice that I mean like 20 times 20 times the rest of the day I thought about that thing that they mentioned like oh this is coming your way and then I kind of had to take a step back and go like well man if I'm like I'm like changing the way that I'm perceiving my everyday life based off of this kind of like random algorithmic Tik Tok video that popped up you know I should be a little more careful with my you know it's kind of like lending the power of my mind into you know someone else's whatever their reasoning is for posting the video it's just you know it's just kind of dangerous it's I think using discernment and then uh I mean I'm drawn to say even beginner's mind I think it's a pretty big Buddhist term if I recall is bringing The Beginner's mind of like just I don't know be being open to what they're saying but I don't know I guess just not believing it wholeheartedly you know right yeah yeah that's a big part of it if you go into it believing everything I could imagine that a lot of the times you'll be very disillusioned in your own life just you know taking the word of someone on the internet yeah it's really it's really giving it's giving your power over and you got to like it's a balance you know I think um you know so many people who have these sudden spiritual Awakenings or even just are on a spiritual path even if it isn't so dramatic and sudden as it is for other people um it's pretty easy to get sucked into the abyss of the algorithm whether it's Tik Tok or YouTube or whatever it is you know I think it's a I mean when I first started getting into it um I was so obsessed with just like sometimes it would spit out such cool videos on YouTube to me that I'm you know staying up till 2: a.m. just like contemplating the most just ESO far-fetched things ever and it's fun but you know as Ron BOS would say you've got to you know remember always remember your Buddha nature and your Social Security number you know like you got to keep one foot in on the ground with a lot of this stuff too so I want I wanted to ask you um and feel free to not share if you would rather not but have psychedelics played any role in your in your Awakening or have you any experience with that psychedelics I have yeah um well I first started with LSD and I will say that was a bit too intense for me it lasted for I say more than 12 hours and I remember taking it late at night and then having to do responsibilities in the morning and I didn't sleep all night so I had that experience and it was just it was all visual stuff you know I was just and all the trippy visuals and there was not a single part of me that was like contemplating philosophical things so that was just kind of an intense experience and then I thought to myself I'm going to try mushrooms and so I've done mushrooms um quite a few times I would say at least four times um I haven't used them in a really long time it's been a long time since I've used any kind of psychedelic um and those are the only two sub substances that I've ever tried and I had experiences with and when I did mushrooms it was definitely different than LSD it was it was a little visual I had that um breathing wall effect that people talk about where you can see your walls breathing and all that but it really brought me into my mind and I was contemplating things like the ego and I had some spiritual um basis before moving into psychedelics so when I was using the mushrooms I could contemplate these Concepts these spiritual Concepts because I had that um I familiarized myself with some of those and when I was drawn into I would say one of my most um important experiences that I've had on mushrooms um it started off being a really great trip at first um I remember just being at total peace when it first started I remember being in my

[00:48:01] Jacob: Kitchen summer windows were open kids were getting off the school bus and there was just this slight breeze in the air and I just remember sitting in the kitchen at the table and just kind of glancing out the window and feeling at complete peace and the only thing that I could think of um was this phrase everything makes sense and I don't know how to describe that or anything I was like thinking to myself like what makes sense you know I couldn't answer that question but I just felt like I knew I was at complete peace and then it was interesting that totally began to change and the trip the um the trip changed in such a way that it turned into a bad trip and I came down into my basement where I was living I live with family and I came down into the basement where I kind of reside and there wasn't a lot of light in the basement and I think that played into it I was by myself during this whole experience and I remember coming into the basement and just falling into like a depression and acknowledging my own

[00:49:20] Landon: Fears I didn't know I had and I think that when I was researching mushro muss there was a lot of um talk around how mushrooms bring out some of your deepest fears and so I was recognizing that maybe I was having that experience of just uncovering fears I didn't know I had and I remember when I was in that depression um during the trip the fear that came up for me was feeling alone and being alone and I really began to panic during the trip and I had to go online and look up ways to kind of reduce the effects of the Psychedelic and I went on YouTube and I was listening to this video and this sky was kind of like talking you through it like reminding you're tripping right now and to just to just breathe and relax I remember listening to meditation music kind of laying on the bed and just being all curled up in this really low space and just wishing that the trip would end and eventually it kind of um like I got past the peak of the experience of the trip and then I started to come down a little bit and started to feel more reassured of like it's coming to an end now and I'm returning back to my normal self and I realized that experience showed me the possibilities of Awakening and of the spiritual path and how one can you know be at peace and come to enlighten M and what it's like go more deeper into my spiritual path Lon you just uh you paused for a second will you just repeat that last sentence there it just skipped out just a hair I would say that psychedelic experience I had really helped Propel me forward into my spiritual journey more deeply because I recognize the potential possibilities of the path yeah nice that's yeah beautifully said thanks for sharing that too by the way I love to hear um uh what was the word that you were thinking of at the beginning before it got bad you were saying um like it's all okay or something like that it all makes sense it all makes sense yeah I was I was giggling because um for me when I do mushrooms uh for whatever reason uh well I think it's because I've like listened to so much romdas I feel like I hear romos' um gurus say um don't you see that it's all perfect and so like my that is kind of like a mantra that happens for me if I take any sort of mushrooms is I'll just be like ah it's all perfect don't you see it's all perfect and it kind of like unwinds whatever I was I was trying to hold on to um yeah I mean I love that you Shar that too because um you know as we're learning as as more and more of like the Psychedelic world is being spoken about and being worked into and like being you know scientifically studied and helping people with their mental health and like being applied to certain you know veterans and people with um you know like nonresponsive um major depressive disorder all these incredible things um one of one of the biggest things and it seems like it's just this casual like oh make sure you do this but one of the biggest things that you'll hear is set and setting you know like your environment your how you've set up your day making sure you have you know nothing super important to do in a few hours making sure the people around you are understanding or um give you your space like there's all these things about your set and setting to set up to give you like the most optimal um experience but also learning and finding ways for us to express as a culture that a bad trip isn't necessarily just that you know on the other side of it there's something to be taken from that um that you know is turbulent as the experience can be while you're while you're undergoing it like all you want to do is stop it and like how do I stop tripping out and I'm having a bad trip you know it's I'm glad you found that video that seems to be kind of helpful you know even just like reminding us to breathe and like oh dude you're tripping so it's okay just you know you're going to be fine that sort of thing is very helpful but um I think um you know that integration afterwards is I think you'll hear many people talk about psychedelics it's not just the trip that you're benefiting from it's like I mean sometimes there's like the following weeks and the following months even you're these things that you kind of Unearthed within you are now kind of being worked out and they're kind of you know they might have been on the peripheral side of your vision of yourself but they're kind of working their way in front of you for you to deal with um I did um and I still am not 100% sure where I land with it I'm hoping that hoping that I can continue to learn with it but I did micro dosing of siloc cybin for like five months um a couple years back and um it was interesting like the things like all of my preconceived ideas of why I was micro doing like okay well I'm dealing with major depressive disorder and I'm not going to do I'm not going to do anti-depressants ever again so like let's try maybe this will help with these things and blah all these like things about me that I thought I needed to fix I thought that those were going to come up when I was micro doing but instead one of the weirdest things I've talked about it before is I actually started accepting my like more like aggressive side of myself like I found myself at work like standing up for myself a lot more I found myself like being a lot more Stern in my conversations like areas that I hadn't realized that people were kind of like walking over me and kind of like mistaking my kindness for weakness sort of thing I started like calling people on their not in like a you it's not like I like became some sort of mean Tyrant or anything but just in the subtle way that only I could notice um the micro doing seemed to like bring this thing to the Forefront of my mind that I that I realized later on that you know like it's okay to be Stern it's okay to like feel anger honestly like anger is okay like it letting can't control you or like having outbursts you know nobody wants that but it's okay to like use this emotion of um you know like sternness and um you know if I truly think that something is right and I truly think something is we're standing up for it's okay to you know kind of like raise the tone of my voice a little bit once in a while it was very interesting because like that was not at all what I was thinking I would get out of micro doing you know in any way and um so it's very

[00:56:26] Jacob: Interesting man I think uh I wonder if so you said when you were doing that trip um there was like this feeling of being alone like when you went into the basement and the lighting was different and stuff do you think that the following months or the following you know time afterwards did that make you kind of look at your relationship with being alone in some ways did that like become more things to unwind for you it showed me the peace ful aspect of it like I said the possibilities of becoming more peaceful on the spiritual path but it also showed me things that I needed to work on and one of those things was feeling like I'm alone and what that really means for me and my relationship to loneliness now has changed quite a bit and I realized that the kind of loneliness that I was feeling during the trip um was feeling like I couldn't um count on people to be there for me and I realized that was actually my own insecurity and not really loneliness in that sense but more so um feeling really separate from people and having to understand what that really means for me and yeah that

[00:57:42] Landon: That trip was really interesting because like I said it showed me like the two sides of the coin and how you know this other side of it can really affect you on your Journey yeah wow I mean it's such an incredible thing I'm really excited for the future of like the Psychedelic studies you know of course helping people with PTSD and these sorts of things but you know um something that I probably said over and over on this podcast too as Terence McKenna would say like if the evolution of Consciousness isn't the way out then I don't know what is you know and I think the more we learn about ourselves and the more we learn about our identities and the more we're able to like take these experience es that happen while we're um under the influence of some sort of psychedelic drug and integrate them in a way that helps us understand who and what we are um I think I think allows us to act from that place of who and what we really are rather than our egoic you know like I'm you know I'm this police officer and so I have this you know power over people and they do what I said you know just like getting caught up in our roles and our identity which is so easy for the Western mind but there's a lot of uh there's a lot of valuable stuff like that can be gained from just like being shown who you truly are right like you just it's like so it's so freeing you know and so I know I um thanks again for sharing that man I love I love to think of the future of what psychedelics will bring our culture and kind of um and also on another side note like I don't know if freaks me out or if it excites me or both equally but uh I've heard uh this guy Hamilton Morris who is like very dipped into like the Psychedelic Community he talks about like with this new technology and new AI stuff they're going to be able to start synthesizing new psychedelics and like I mean what do we do with that like I mean I don't want to be the guine pig for that but also in some parts it's like how exciting you know but um I don't know if we could bring it in a way that helps us understand ourselves in the universe and our place in it and um you know also if exploring these new technologies with psychedelics can ease suffering you know I mean let's do it let's sail into the unknown you know it's kind of exciting yeah I mean not many people know and I don't even really know if I would call it like a micro dose but it was definitely not a full dose I definitely knew that I didn't want to take a full dose um this night I was experimenting with the mushrooms um but I thought I'm GNA take like a really small micro do and try and do a chillstep mix so the mix that I ended up completing was it's on my SoundCloud it's the only OSHA mix that I have right now and I remember um before I even started making the mix um I was really contemplating um the ego and the personality and my mind was just spinning circles on the mushrooms and just thinking about things and I remember saying to myself like it doesn't exist I don't exist and I remember just my mind kind of being blown apart during that and just thinking wow like it's just doesn't exist you know and it just gives you things to think about when you kind of come off your trip and you've kind of get your reality back of you know you can think about things that happened during the trip kind of explore um what that means to quote not exist um but I remember making the oosha mix and I heard you know his story and his kind of thing of like having all the rolls-royces and being this Guru that had a lot of scandals behind it and I remember just making the mix and listening to what he was saying and I was like well it sounds good so I'm just going to use it and just try and make this mix and when I listen to the mix um when I'm not on a psychedelic I realized that the mix is actually quite simple it was quite um not really complex or not really dense and it was interesting because when I was on psychedelic making the mix um I was like wow this is amazing like this is good stuff you this is the answers to the universe I found yeah right and I remember just vibing out to the music and just thinking such an incredible experience this is and I was so excited to post that mix to YouTube because I thought it was like the greatest thing I ever made and I look back now and it's a good mix but it's definitely not in my top

[01:02:42] Jacob: Three yeah well okay so I'm gonna put I'm gonna put a hard question to you um you know we've mentioned a couple times um I'm always kind of aware of the listener that like doesn't really know what the heck we're talking about but it's kind of interesting what do you mean when you say you don't

[01:03:02] Landon: Exist um I would say to that it can be a very complex answer I think the purpose of the spiritual path is to kind of understand that answer and you can kind of explain it and I'm not really the greatest with words but when I do try and make sense of it and explain that to someone else I would say that um your storyline of who you think you are like your childhood experiences and the way you relate to reality itself and kind of who you believe yourself to be um doesn't actually exist in the sense of like it's not the absolute truth it's relatively real but it's not it's not what you would call reality in the way that you think reality works and so that's a really hard thing to grasp and a really hard thing to explain to people and I think that when you have a spiritual awakening you can kind of understand what that means intuitively and you can feel what that means rather than um have some sort of specific explanation for it and I think the more you learn about it the better you can be at explaining it to other people and so I'm still learning ways to explain it better to people yeah know that's why that's why I

[01:04:53] Jacob: Prefrontostriatal like you know uh like I'm very sure about it you know and they're like what are you talking about cuz it's inevitably freaky you know it's just something that it's I mean basically in the first place even questioning like a self or uh like even just going to the point of you don't realize it but you have a jump off point like you have an identity that you act from and you've probably never really even thought about that fact before and you know there's a lot of stuff that you can there's a lot of questions that you can go through and there's a lot of videos on YouTube and stuff that can kind of unwind you know like so who are you um are you your arm no I'm not my arm I am my arm but I'm not just my arm okay like are you um you know who is pumping your organs right now is it you well no I mean I have organ they're inside my body but you know you can like just kind of unwind these things and realize that you're just much more vast and um I understand that it I understand sometimes when I explain it how I freak people out and so I'm always like backpedaling and um you know because it's kind of this beautiful freeing thing if you if you can kind of really um not in intellectualize it not really truly grasp it but there's kind of this feeling that it pokes in and it's um it helps you kind of like take off a little bit of like the really tight clothing of being a small separate self who is who is suffering you know rather than just like um the experience of Consciousness in the present moment so it's um it can get really freaky I feel drawn to I was just listening to um have you heard of Sam Harris Landon have you heard of him um yeah I believe you actually mentioned him to me before I think that's where I heard that name right yeah uh I sent you one of his lectures he has this lecture death in the present moment it's one of my favorites it's um it's a little dry it's a little like um it doesn't really have like a gentleness that a lot of spiritual teachers have because Sam is very like um he's very scientific with this stuff so it comes across a little cold and kind of like hardened in some senses but there's a lot of value but um basically and hopefully I don't butcher this too much but he talks about the best metaphor for this like no self thing or like looking for the self or um you know like a lot of meditations are kind of like they'll have some sort of cue Point um of you know you're in this meditative State and it'll go okay now look for the one who is looking you know and that's like what are you talking about you know and it's supposed to kind of like do this about face you find that there's nothing to find and it's kind of gets you to this peaceful open space of not looking for who you are like you kind of just instantly like in the just like you hit a bell it has this reverberating frequency after you hit the Bell it's kind of that like you just rest in this like there's nobody to find sort of thing so Sam Harris has this poter of look for the one who's looking um he gives this metaphor that essentially there was this um there was like a tour bus in Asia and uh there was all these people on this bus and they made a stop at some sort of like gift shop or something of the like and everybody got off and they had some time okay everybody meet back at the bus in an hour and there was people of different languages so there was language barriers um you know amongst all the participants on the bus and one of the ladies who was by her self she changed her clothing so like she went into the bathroom of this gift shop whatever and changed her clothing put her clothing in the bag um and then it was you know an hour had passed everybody was coming back on to the bus and the lady who was sitting next to the person um who had changed was like wait hold on we're missing somebody the lady that was that was sitting next to me you know wearing a red shirt or whatever like I'm not seeing her and so everybody again there's language barrier so it couldn't be like completely communicated and everybody started looking for this woman and then apparently it turns into like a search like you know nearly like call the helicopters like this lady is missing and what happens is the lady who had changed because the language barrier a lot too she didn't realize that she was there they were looking for her but she had changed her clothes they were looking for like a small Asian lady who meets this description and she didn't realize it this entire time so she jumps in on the search she's looking for herself and she doesn't even know it and so they like the hours go by you know it's deep into the night and then um the way Sam Harris explains it is like Suddenly at like 3:00 in the morning through whatever like conversations this lady suddenly realizes oh we're looking for me I'm helping I'm helping a search for me I was never missing and so a lot of the point with the looking for oneself is that she was never missing there's no self that can now be found like the way to call off the search isn't to find the lady that was missing it's to realize that she was never missing in the first place and a lot of the um that move in meditation of kind of like the ADV vant Zen way of uh like the meditative looking for oneself you realize there's nobody to find that metaphor kind of paints it nicely because it's not to complete this task we must find this lady it's to realize that she was never missing in the first place and so this nonself of how do I find that there's no me to see this like movement of looking back upon oneself and saying that you were never there isn't so much of a you know a success that you cross a Finish Line it's realizing like the it's almost a flaw in the question itself um and I found that he I was just listening to a podcast with Sam Harrison he repeated that he's repeated a couple times but he retold that story and so it's um it's fresh of my mind but um I can see how that's confusing um uh for many people who are like aren't super familiar with it but it's also this kind of fascinating story of going ah like okay so there was never really a there was never really a self to be found in the first place um and I don't know if um if any of the people that you listen to lecture-- wise if they if they have any of those sort of pointings to or anything stands out to you um about kind of the no self stuff but I don't know man does that resonate with you like do you ever have any of your experiences of kind of being like freaked out by the no self notion at all too I wonder um yeah it was hard for me to understand kind of what that meant um it was felt like a very loaded question I was like I don't I don't really know how to answer that and I feel like what helped me most actually a teacher that helped me understand it um was Muji because he um sort of did that peeling back of asking the question like are you your arm are you your body and you sort of go through that process of answering those questions and then you kind of come to this space where you're like okay well then if I'm not the body and if I'm not the mind then who am I and it sort of opens you up to that question in a way that you can understand it because I remember listening to um non-d dual teachers who um were quite different than ramdas and ramdas definitely speaks from the heart and he talks about very vulnerable things and that's initially why I was drawn to him um but there was a teacher um Rupert spir I think that's how you say his name but he's a non-d duel teacher and listening to his videos online at first were hard for me

[01:12:48] Landon: To understand and contemplate and he definitely said says things in a way that I think can be difficult for anyone to understand if they're new to that information and the more you're around it the more you start to understand it but I think Muji the way he teaches

[01:13:07] Jacob: His self- inquiry helps people um understand or detach from the things that they think they are and helps point to a deeper place and um the use of the word like just pure awareness that help you understand it a little bit more and kind of helps you put a name to

[01:13:28] Landon: It um even though it's quite formless in that way and the more I listened to or the more I used muji's process the more I started to understand um teachers like rert and sort of the non-d Dual way of explaining things and I think what's interesting is sometimes that way of explaining the nonduality um I have found has led me to um spiritual bypass and it's very

[01:14:06] Jacob: Interesting because ramas definitely incorporates the heart aspect of it and a lot of the non- teachers that I see emerging in the space and um teachers that are not well known right now but they're kind of doing their own little side gig and coming to their own realizations and sharing those realizations I found recently that um this might not be true for everyone but the way I perceived it really led me to some kind of spiritual bypassing um because it was this uh way of clinging to a spiritual concept like non-duality to take you out of your emotions and your feelings and so I kind of had to go through that um spiritual bypassing phase and recognize that that's what I was doing and I wasn't conscious of it so when I realized I was doing it I kind of had like all these recriminations towards myself of like you know I can't believe you bypassed in this way and the way you can kind of share that with other people and sort of um introduce them into spiritual bypassing um I really had a lot of Shame around that and so I had to understand how that happened and how I got to that initial bypassing and how

[01:15:38] Landon: Nonduality um is perfectly explained but definitely when you're perceiving it or when you're um introducing yourself into that information it's really great to also include your heart into those teachings as well yeah brilliantly said man I love That Could you um for someone who maybe isn't familiar with the term spiritual bypassing how do you describe it um recently I like to look at definitions online to really understand what it is because I was trying to decipher that uh when I was seeing myself do it and I recognized that for me it felt like a clinging to some kind of spiritual concept to initially avoid or have aversion towards emotions that you feel in the body and to um I would describe it as a pre

[01:16:35] Jacob: Pre- transcendental State it's a feeling of overcoming your emotions in some sense but really what you're doing is avoiding them but it gives the illusion um that you've kind of overcome the emotions of The Human Experience and you're more identified with your spiritual um identity in that sense yeah

[01:17:00] Landon: Yeah I like that and I think what's been fun for me is um like noticing how often I have different versions of spiritual bypassing come up like it's not something like okay I conquered spiritual bypassing I won't do that again it's like you know there's always some little other version that sneaks its way in it's like a constant unfolding it's like okay in which ways am I doing that same thing again oh I'm trying to like just insert that I don't have a self who could ever feel that bad emotion so it must not exist you know like it's a it can really get kind of like really get kind of messy you know and I think that um it's something that like can really be explored and it can really it's something that could take its own shape and its own form continuously too like I don't think there's even just like trying to trying to ask you to Define what spiritual bypassing is tough because it's like a continuous kind of thing that we always almost if you're on some sort of path or you're listening to any of these sort of things you kind of have to be keep you have to put yourself in check almost you know you have to really open new doors and see what kind of comes at you yeah i've recognized that the spiritual bypassing is a part of the path and to kind of push it away and hold some kind of Shame around it just

[01:18:22] Jacob: Really ins Stills the feedback loop and it's been really useful to kind of break that Loop when it starts to circle around and you start to have that shame of like I can't believe I did this and just sort of break in at that point and just have that awareness that um you were unconscious while you were doing it and if you kind of knew you were doing it you wouldn't do it right and you know there's people like Carl Young Who there's a quote can't remember it and it entirety but he says you can't chase Shadows of light you have to integrate Your Shadow cell and really what's happening is when you're when you're bypassing there's kind of like a split within you because one part of you feels one way and the other part of you feels completely different and you can't come to that um place where you transcend something if you're split in two different ways and so yeah it's really important to integrate those parts of us that feel one way and to really embrace our emotions and um hold the balance between um being on a spiritual path and also having a human

[01:19:36] Landon: Experience yeah very much so you I feel like what how it showed up for me a lot at the beginning was like this overwhelming level of toxic positivity I was like if it's not good vibes get it away from me you know like in any point um I actually use it as at the end of one of my songs is a Ram Dass quote um where he talks about like how he did all this work and he was meditating and blah and he got all this shaki and T and then he says but the problem was I wasn't free you know like you can reject everything that's negative or nasty and just not look at it but that doesn't mean that it's not there you know it's a it's another it's another trick we play on ourselves you know it's because part of you're not just a spirit ual being you know you're also a spiritual being you're very human too and you're going to get angry and you're going to have you know you know you're going to get a rash that itches that you got to itch and you got to take out the garbage and you got to you know there's all these things about um you can't just reject anybody that's coming about in your life I remember just more on my toxic positivity I had this friend group message that like would had just been you know just a friend group message you know they're just sometimes it's memes sometimes it's like you know just talking sometimes it's just you know just hanging out with your friends in a group message sort of thing and I remember when I first started going through all this stuff like anybody that would start sending anything that I deemed to be not positive I would respond back like hey I don't want to hear it man I'm going through a lot right now like keep that away from me and I was like trying to control the way that my like people that I loved my friends I was trying to control the way that they showed up and you know just like you better keep that away from me you're not going to be friends with me and like I see now how incredibly dorky that was of me and you know what but also you know just like you said very elegantly was um like giving myself patience because I felt really guilty once I realized what I had done I felt really like gross and like ah man like why did I try to control my friends and blah and that started this you know shame spiral and you know then you got to kind of give yourself some Grace it's like man I didn't know I thought that I was trying to do the right thing at the moment I thought that I thought that like the bad Vibe stuff was actually what was harming me you know when it was something that I just need to like understand more about myself and integrate all of those things you know it's not like you just integrate Only the Good fluffy stuff you know it's all of it's the Human Experience is not just seeking happiness it's it comes with depression and sadness and heartbreak and negativity and all of it you know it's the whole thing that you that you accept not just reject all the bad so it can all be good right yeah and I understand it in the way that you know we see things like non-duality and we listen to teachers like that who have a different way of explaining things as opposed to someone like ramdas and I kind of see that when you have these experiences where there's a lot of emotion in you and you your responsibility is to integrate those emotions but also recognize that you can't come to these higher realizations unless you intuitively feel it like within your body almost um you can understand things conceptually and you can have a lot of knowledge but I don't think that it really converts to wisdom unless you have some kind of experience or Awakening um which at times can be quite an emotional thing and I think the the way I was kind of bypassing it was understanding it intellectually um and then there were other parts of my body that weren't really um in that place of understanding because it hadn't integrated itself it was only trying to reach those things through the mind and not intuitively I would love to explore a little more on that I mean as someone who listens to a lot of these spiritual lectures um I think that you might have a good input on this like the

[01:23:47] Jacob: The like the intellectualizing versus the like just allowing it to kind of work in your body sort of thing um like the you know I think a lot of people if they listen to like a lot of the spiritual lectures that we enjoy um I think a lot like especially in the Western World we're kind of trained to like listen so we have the information so we can take the test later and get the answers right and get a plus on our report card you know but like a lot of this stuff is not I mean part of the most important thing while you're listening is trying is rather not trying

[01:24:27] Landon: To grab on to it the whole time not trying to intellectualize it like allowing your mind to think and explore and go oh what does that mean and all that stuff but being okay with the not knowing like being okay with kind of your feet off the ground sort of thing because a lot of those spiritual lectures I mean for me anyway um and let me know if it's like this for you it feels like it's working through me if I'm if I'm doing it right you know if I'm if I'm it's trying it's me getting out of my way intellectually trying to not hold it and grab everything that I'm hearing and trying to like compare it with other things I've heard and blah it's just kind of like listening and almost just having this internal head knot of like ah okay I hear that you know um I

[01:25:11] Jacob: Wonder I wonder how you parse those two things kind of like allowing it to work through your body versus intellectualizing it trying to grab on to it I think you said a very good point about um kind of not having a place to really put your feet on the ground and just reminds me of ramdas not having a place to stand and understanding that you may not know all the different complexities of it and just being open to the mystery and really having um nowhere to stand um allows you to be on different planes simultaneously and I think that intellectually when you're kind of grabbing on to something you're essentially putting your place um putting yourself in a place to stand and yeah I think really the purpose of it is to stand nowhere and to be on these planes simultaneously and to not be just in the spiritual plane and to also you know have your heart and the Human Experience which is can be described as a different plane than like the spiritual plane M yeah

[01:26:23] Landon: Yeah it's like it's all spiritual you know it's not this whole this whole separate thing you know it's not this it's and it's also not trying to take everything we hear and only fit it into spirituality you know it's like how to it's very much we're very much having a human experience and part of that is you know discovering our spiritual nature and those sorts of things but it's also all the icky stuff that comes with being a human too and getting mad and getting upset and having heartbreak break and you know farting and all of it you know like it's all it's all it's all you know right for the taking you know yeah the way I kind of um remind myself is it's the emotions and stuff that's not any less spiritual it's all part of the dance it's all it's all spiritual and it's when you begin to separate it and see it as something that's separate from your kind of spiritual understanding of something you begin to kind of push it away from yourself and it's when you see it as spiritual you embrace the emotions and pull them in closer yeah nicely said um I wonder what you think about like the modern spiritual lecture that's on YouTube and the like the guru nature so we' mentioned rhas you know tons of times a favorite of both of ours certainly um and he followed you know what's known as the p of the guru he found like a you know an actual like physical man who um who he like followed and he devoted himself too and like you know every word that his Guru said um you know was like everything to ramdas and this whole path of the guru um I wonder like the modern Guru sometimes I wonder if it's like literally YouTube lectures like I mean I have so many teachers I have so many teachers like I couldn't just pick one I mean there's I certainly have favorites you know I certainly have like certain people on online that I love listening to like you know many of them you include in your chillstep mixes um but I wonder like if the path of you know spiritual enlightenment or the path of the guru kind of does change in like have its own evolution of like cuz man think about how many how many dudes just like you and me get profound like

[01:28:55] Jacob: Spiritual you know advancement or like you know steps towards Enlightenment for lack of way better words there um just from like YouTube lectures like do you wonder about like the path of the guru kind of becoming its own kind of new thing in a sense it's really interesting because I remember um ramas talking about his relationship to maharaji and when he left his body um he was still kind of in his experiences through his day-to-day life and so anytime something would come up you know he would think oh it's just my Guru you know just sort of messing with me and having that uh relationship um has helped me in my connection to ramdas because I didn't know you know maharaji personally so there isn't quite the same pull that there is to ramdas and you know now that he's left his body um even when he was still alive I think I kind of created that same relationship to ramdas where if something was happening and I was caught in my day-to-day experiences I would just think of ramdas and think of his voice and what he would say to me in that moment and so in that sense um I would say he kind of became my own little Guru and then like with teachers online um there's so many teachers that I also look up to and think about their teachings and in my day-to-day life and kind of hear their voice as well so yeah I think that they all have this um potential to be gurus to me in any moment and I think um what I've been recognizing is some of the people that I my mind kind of puts up on a pedestal I come back to that saying um God Guru and self are one and the same and I recognize that these people are a direct reflection of that own um innate Essence that exists within me and so whatever knowledge I'm picking up on from someone else is just something that I already know and something I already am and so I I've kind of break that separation of like um putting that person up on a pedestal and kind of woring worshiping them in that sense and see it as worshiping myself yeah because it's um it really is in I mean many people say it certainly romed us it really is like a remembering rather than someone parsing entirely new knowledge to us and

[01:31:39] Landon: Then we like make our own decisions from there like when you allow like the spiritual lectures or these things that they're pointing at to work through you there is some sort of uh like you fall back into it where rather than lean forward and do the work and arrive there you know it is this remembering is really I think the best word when you're allowing the spiritual lectures to kind of work through you is it's reminding you who you are not teaching you who you are in a sense like I it really is I'm drawn to ramdas has this thing where he talks about this uh this lady who was sitting in the front row this older lady and uh he was giving his lecture and um he was he was just talking about the whole time this older lady she's just nodding her head like oh yeah that's it like you know I get it oh yeah you're saying it right that sort of stuff and then afterwards he talks to her and uh and he was curious he's like how do you like how do you know you know like what do you do what do you practice and she leans into him and she's like I knit and it's just this like oh it's just so wonderful you know like it's this thing that we already know like however you get there is okay but there's something about you know the Divine you what you think you are that's like that can't be taken away it can't you know even if language itself was erased like it's still there you know and so a lot of what these you know teachers or gurus or whatever are trying to share is um you know this thing that you've always been that you couldn't possibly not be and so it's just reminding you what you are not and it comes with it a remembering of all that you are yeah um the non-duality teachers uh kind of helped me come to this realization like in the western religion the tendency is to place God outside yourself and to worship this thing that is separate from you and I think even on the spiritual path like listening to rhas talk about his relationship to God and when you listen to that you can kind of still have that separation feeling in you of like this is God is something outside of me and I really came to recognize the ways in which I was doing that um to myself and how I was placing this kind of idea outside of myself and the

[01:34:19] Jacob: Nonduality teachings helped we recognize that um God that we speak of is the

[01:34:27] Landon: Self and the true self and it really just opened me up in a new Way because I stopped um identifying with my smallness and recognized um the vast expansiveness of who I really am and what that really means yeah absolutely it's a I feel uh so I have this and I got it years ago I have on my wrist one of my tattoos is only I can judge me and uh years ago is before I had any sort of spiritual background um and it was kind of like this jokey I'm sure you've heard the Tupac term Only God can judge me and I wasn't like religious or spiritual or had any I had I had no place for those words to sit in my life um I didn't grow up with any of that sort of background none of it was anything to me until I was like 26 actually but uh it's so funny because I walk around with this you know it's look at me right in the eye all the time it's right on my right wrist you know and it's funny because the meaning of the tattoo has drastically changed to me you know like this the eye on it is this very big Capital Eye and so now I see it not as this like small like oh you can't judge me I'm an individual you know like I'm so cool is what I was probably thinking when I got the tattoo but now it's like only I capital I can judge me and so as much as I was trying to be cool and get rid of the Only God can judge me it's like even more prevalent like the god that is that is within me is you know right here on my wrist yeah it's funny you say that I have like a similar tattoo story um at The time when I was like really young going through my teenage years I related a lot to metal music and what you would call sco and it helped me um kind of get to know my own emotional pain through that kind of music and there was a band um they did a lot of music where it was like spoken word poetry I don't know if you're familiar they're called law dispute and at the time I thought to myself that for my first tattoo I was going to get a law dispute tattoo and I was going to get some lyrics um to put on it's basically just like a flower on my forearm with a quote which is a lyric and it says we are not our failures and at the time I just thought you know it was just a cool tattoo you know whatever and then the more I look at like the quote itself we are not our failures I often look at that tattoo and I'm spiling through you know my own kind of Shame and whatnot and recognizing that I am not in fact my failures and my mistakes and so it's become a good reminder for me yeah it's so cool how you know a perception can change so drastically but still really hold a lot of a lot of juice still hold a lot of like really good stuff you know it as we transform you know is as much as like you know people without tattoos would say like oh you're going to have that forever like are you sure you want to have that forever and um it's as much as it's like you know it's a reflection of who we were at the time there's also a relationship with our with our art on our body that is well what does it mean to me now you know and we can continually ask oursel that and uh you know for me with any of my tattoos I would never I would never say like oh I don't like that anymore and I'm embarrassed of that like I've always kind of scratched my head when people are like they regret their tattoos it's like man that's truly who you were at that time and your reflection when you look at it now shouldn't be shame or regret or any of those sorts of things it's like a it's a reminder of how far you've come if like if you don't if you're not into that thing anymore or it doesn't speak to you in the same way like that's awesome actually you know it's nothing to be to be bummed about or like try to put yourself down for who you were when you were younger it's a it's a you know it's all memories of who you once were it's all it's all cave paintings of your Evolution you know it's a cool thing yeah it definitely like you said it just reminds you of the past version of you that you really identified with and you see the ways you identified with this storyline you had of yourself and it's just interesting to look at now the ways in which you perceived yourself then versus the way you see yourself today yeah and then like finding space to give yourself grace through it and like you know to recognize man I was I was pretty mean to myself I was tough on myself I was blah but I'm not anymore and that's pretty cool you know like just I love it I think it's a it's magical thing you know I mean is you know maybe if I had like a swastika on my forehead maybe I might be saying something different but you know I think uh we all grow and we all like become new versions of ourselves and that comes with who we once were and it's accepting that you know it's kind of like the you know the inner child work you know you don't you would never speak meanly to like if there was a six-year-old version of yourself standing next to you wouldn't be so rude and disrespectful and insult him and put him down you know if he was standing right next to you would be kind and you would be understanding of why he thinks the way he does at that time and you see that now you have these different experiences and so you bring love to who you once were you don't it's I have this line the ego the ego doesn't like change nor grit but loves to feel withhold you know it's not about trying to destroy the ego it's not about trying to destroy who you once were it's how can you love them for exactly who they were from who you are now you know it's a constant practice um brother we are we are getting up here in time I don't want to keep you too much too much longer but um I'd love to kind of as we round the final lap here um what is what is the future of your chillstep mixes and where do you see yourself heading um you know what direction are you heading with your spiritual work in the you know you're very much an artist and I wonder kind of like where you see yourself are you going to continue to share these sorts of things are you going to keep making mixes um I hope it's a yes and I hope yes you'll say yes that um you'll continue to like share your awesome pictures and like your life and your perspective on your social media and stuff too are you planning on continue going forward with this stuff yeah um for a while I kind of like really stepped away from the mixes and wasn't sure if I was if it was something I was going to continue to do and I recognize now the impact of them and how far they've gone and I think some of the ones I've made I don't think I could ever like recreate even different versions of those mixes because the way they came about was just so natural and so organic and some of the ones I have are probably the best ones I'll ever do in my opinion but I do find myself thinking about them more recently of like how can I give outside of my other Artistry like through my pictures and perspectives I share online and I find that the chillstep mixes were and still are um a gift of mine that I can still give and so when I inally feel drawn to do a mix um there will be times where I'll sit down and try and create one and recently I've tried to do a new one and I've just been finding myself sitting down and it's just not coming through the way it used to and so I kind of just give myself space for that and to just maybe come back to it in the future um I don't take it as like I can't do this anymore you know maybe now it's just not the right time for it but I definitely still think about it and still want to um produce more I think there's other teachers I haven't even touched and I could use their lectures as well and I've had great suggestions from people on mixes to do next I think really what I'm tuning into now is sharing my own perspectives online and I really feel drawn to that path um for some reason I just feel like it's something I need to explore um how to share myself and move kind of through my own insecurities about myself and public speaking and sort of understand the stories and the identification I have around that and how that's um anchoring me into my own limiting beliefs still so I would say I'm kind of just following my heart right now and kind of just experimenting with the things that are really enticing me to move forward with so yeah I love that I think that's a fantastic answer you know because it's h it's got to it can't be forced you know it has to be along the lines of when you sit down to create some art or share something it has to kind of has to flow out of you rather than like trying to you know like squeeze a lemon as hard as you can and try to get all the juice out of it you know so yeah I hope you do the same and I'll say just as a you know a fellow artist friend over here I very much in the same boat you know there's so many times that I put a lot of pressure on myself um or try to like I get momentum or I get like I notice that you know I'm getting a big uptick in listener to the podcast or like checking out my art or whatever I'm like oh should I like I really like attack this should I like try to continue so I can get more people to listen and help more people and blah you know it becomes about myself so quickly but um I think that the best way for me has been to just not put so much pressure on myself remember that nobody's grading it that I don't have a boss breathing down my neck you know my art is my art and I get to share it you know um from my perspective of how I'm actually feeling at that time in my life so you know it's it took me I just got a reminder this I've been doing this podcast for four years actually it seems crazy but um and I just now got past 100 episodes you know so that's it's a lot of episodes but four years is quite a long time you know so I try not to I try not to get too obsessed about timelines or deadlines or any of that sort of stuff um and I just kind of Express how I'm feeling and if I have nothing to say and I can't squeeze anything out then I try to give myself Grace and just cool then I guess I got nothing to say right now you know so yeah man I resonate with that a lot yeah I think that's when the best content comes I think there's so much Energetics that go into to forcing it and choosing to show up when you don't really want to be there I mean sometimes you know depending on your commitments you have to show up but I think people really recognize the energy behind it and if it feels like something that comes from your own pure joy and Bliss people really um pick up on that they might not be conscious of it but it might just be in the energy in the way it's being received that you know your content when you show up and you're really excited about it people can really feel that in some way yeah absolutely I agree man I agree um well so what I would love to do um as we wrap up here is uh you know I'll tell people to check down in the description below um to find out find out more about Mr dirty Zen over here um and I would love to ask you and you could send me the link afterwards of maybe like if you had to choose your favorite chillstep mix and I would love to include that as the link below so if this is your first time hearing about Landon and you want to check out his mixes um click on that one I had him send me his favorite um otherwise um it's dirty Zen on Instagram is there anywhere else that you're posting is there anywhere else we can find you in any other resources to throw in before we wrap up here um mostly just Instagram and my YouTube channel which I show up to um pretty infrequently but I'm trying to be a little bit more committed with that um something that I really want to do so um those are like my two major platforms Instagram and YouTube yeah I love the work you do and again uh like YouTube is definitely a cool place to go too cuz you visually you have such an eye for videography and photography and uh it's not only aesthetically pleasing but it's you know it's good spiritual knowledge for us too so man thank you so much for your time again

[01:34:27] Jacob: Man I really appreciate this thank you for being so like open and willing and sharing your personal stories and you know even right off the bat when I first messaged you were like you know you address like hey you know maybe I have some sort of anxieties and a little reluctance but yeah I would like to do that and so I appreciate your bravery as well man thank you so much this isn't this isn't an easy thing to do you know it's a we get in our heads a lot with it you know speaking for myself for sure so uh I'm really grateful for your time man thank you so much

[01:34:27] Landon: Yeah it's a it's a pleasure to be here thank you for having me I really enjoyed it

[01:34:27] Outro: Cool all right well listeners love yourselves take care of yourselves if you drank no water today you're crazy drink some water stretch check out