075 Christina Berkley: Pleasure, Money, Potatoes

“Money is like potatoes,” she said. Christina Berkley helps coaches build stunning practices and edge-walkers live stunning lives. I met her that time I was in a matriarchal cult where she was once a lead instructor. Her journey is a synthesis of mysticism and practical life creation that has had a very positive impact on my life.

Transcript

Today's guest is Christina Berkley.

Christina is a coach and was a mentor of mine and she and I actually have a similar educational background in the cult that I was in that she was in known as One Taste.

We learned a lot of cool things and Christina was actually much further along she was actually one of the head instructors for them at one time and she already actually left when I had joined and as I was kind of a rising star in that organization she was someone who was kind of giving me like inside details which I actually realized now kind of gave me a little more sanity because I had someone who actually knew was going on inside someone's advice but Christina went on to go from that to become a very multi six-figure successful coach and in many ways she in different phases of my life she's been an inspiration and I guess I almost like a passive mentor because post-cult I didn't really like work with her directly but she did directly in certain ways that helped me figure out things in life let's leave it at that and in this episode we speak about kind of a wide range of topics from the sexual the dark stuff that we both learned at one point speak about generative trance hypnosis apologies for the sounds of puppies in the background if you hear that and money and one thing was interesting is that Christina's financial life changed a lot in the in the years that I have known her and I was really curious to see how her changes psychologically affected her changes in wealth and she speaks it she says money is like potatoes and you will learn what that means inside of this episode so the real fun one a quick announcement as I mentioned the last episode in case you didn't catch it I did not publish an episode for a while so this is this episode is maybe a month old you know happens because I had made that major shift with the technical side of my online stuff which means for you if you want to get access to my five years of video archives all for free all you got to do is go to ruwando.

Com put in your email join my email list and you will have free login to my members area back end I have interviews going back to 2012 or maybe 2013 and you can listen to me be very awkward on camera with other people but also there's some great content there and some stuff I haven't published in a lot of the the podcast episodes that are available on the podcast right now the video version is actually available only on my back end so check that ruwando.

Com and you know put in your email Christina's stuff is Christina Berkeley calm and she has a new project called edge walkers and the links are in the show notes for this episode the 21 day marks maximum archetype challenge is also available but anyway that's enough announcements I think right now you're listening to episode is 0 7 5 Christina Berkeley orgasm money and potatoes you're listening to the Ruwando podcast part of the Gotham podcast studio network in New York New York if you enjoy the show please subscribe and read it wherever you listen to podcasts hey Christina great great um it's actually the first thing I want to say to you something I meant to say to you in person last time we met which was like a few weeks ago and I just forgot I don't know I was in another place but I actually wanted to tell you that we met a long time ago we'll probably get into that today but you were actually a person I realized this year had a huge impact on my life trajectory and I wanted to start by saying thank you excited actually I've never actually said that to you and I didn't come to me until this year yeah I think you know we could cover a lot of things but like when I was working with you more directly on trance stuff and other things and that was a big part of like shifting the way I thought about work and life and my spirituality you actually introduced me to ayahuasca also and then since then like just watching your change like in business has all just been inspiring from afar because you're someone who actually has 10x her life income-wise but also like in non-material ways it seems so I want to say thank you first so for those who don't know anything about you I mean would you speak a little bit about what you do now what do I do now I'm a coach I live in LA I work with all sorts of people I work with coaches I work with high achievers I work with entrepreneurs I work people at NASA I work with philanthropists all sorts of people who are making an impact in the world and in their way whatever their special way is sometimes for coaches I work something like a consultant to help them figure out how to build their businesses as I've gone first I could help them in that way with people that I work that are not coaches it's much more great coaching and I think really at the end of the day the you know the results that people look for their ROI it's like I make more money or I've got a relationships or whatever that all that happens but the real thing that's happening underneath all of that is having sort of a way to learn people's systems learn how they work and then teach it back to them and help them reorganize their relationship with themselves on the inside so that they can you know do all the stuff that you just said I did right yeah so I assume you don't use the word spiritual in your marketing or anything like that right but it does sound spiritual and there is like some like rude would you say so that's very yeah because with my friends you know when people are like what you know when you when you really get down to it right when you really get honest and down to it and think about what is it that you're doing and what is it that you're putting your energy towards with your life how do you want to use your life when I ask myself that question it always ends up at the real honest truth is get people to God whatever that is bigger than their own egos figure out what drives them that's that that isn't just their own fear of loss or scarcity or death or the void or whatever what's beyond that I call that God and so there's so many ways to get to there and each person does it differently so some people are very connected to that language of spirituality so I could talk about it that way and sort of a lot of people find that to be too woo to California have found you know how to thread the needle to speak it to them in their language yeah um so let's talk about your life because when I met you and we were spending more time together you were very you're very different as a person in your situation is very different you're definitely deeper on the spiritual side outwardly can you take us like from the then till now and maybe go into I mean your life before I met you like how did you become how did you get here it's interesting I'd love to hear how you experienced me then and how you know there's like a ten year channel challenge going on on Facebook it's like yeah that and so it's kind of like who are you ten years ago and I kind of thought oh my god who I was ten years ago I don't even remember really but whoa I'm curious to hear how you see the difference before we met I was a straight-up atheist I have a science training background degree etc microbiology and immunology I thought anything to do with spirituality any of that stuff was nonsense if I couldn't see it if I can touch it if I couldn't understand it you know it's like actual it just wasn't real didn't exist if you couldn't do a double-blind study and then you know then and then I ended up in this community that you I'm where I met you where it was just so off the reservation in terms of taking everything you think is true throwing it out the window and just trying everything out that you currently before I had put you know restrictions on to see what's actually true for you and one of the things they had there was an orgasmic practice it was like a really deep you know feminine empowerment kind of community and one of the things was orgasm and sexuality and through this orgasmic practice I learned by having the experience that oh my god my nervous system can do so much more than I thought it could do and found myself within experiences where it's like I don't know what's going on here but it's bigger than me are you talking about like seemingly paranormal things or could you give us an example like the simplest thing I remember one of the first things I said to one of my friends after I started trying this practice out and doing it for a long enough time that something was really deeply changing within my body was like oh my god and this all orgasm right but like levels of it like oh my god energy that's a real thing energy you know moving through my butt my entire body you know whether that just means like tingling or heat or whatever it there's no language for it you know and it's like whoa and it just started there that the fascination of wait a minute what else is there that we can't explain but is actually real yeah it's interesting so you were in that world for many years before me and I mean when I met you you were like a you're a teacher to me you're and like um so I mean we're talking about one taste I think most of my listeners have heard the term just sort of everyone's clear so I I remember with you also I I've heard so many one taste teachers explain this and then a lot of woowoo language and a lot of my rational mind is trying to translate things to make things make sense whatever you were one of the first people who I guess maybe because we got close that whatever this like orgasm thing was or energy in the body or a feel I remember feeling it in my body when I was around you and was interesting tying to your question my perception of you you introduced me to certain hippie things like you're the first person ever staged me with a feather or whatever I was like I remember being like what the hell is this like I remember it's funny because you you even said something like oh yeah oh those happy hippie people are so silly or whatever and I was like thinking that's what I think of you right now but at the same time there's something like that I could really feel in my body in your presence that I was like I don't understand what that is other than the explanation that I've been given which is there's this life force that people can cultivate and it can be felt by other people even over distance yeah so yeah I mean I'm curious about all of it like what it was yeah what are your takes on that in terms of what that is I think you can you can nurture or harness or work with or whatever your own inner I guess limbic system that it's not the reptilian part of your brain functioning but it's the part that's in the middle that regulates all of the automatic things that you're not doing in purpose like your heart rate and your hormone levels and yeah and also responsible for empathy so so we're regulating each other all the time so you know you sit beside somebody who's it feels agitated you start feeling agitated on the inside you start tapping your foot that just happens all the time so when you're around other people who sort of cultivated kind of energetic inner landscape through whatever practices they do you know or just someone who's like super turned on they just came from partying at the rave and you're at the after party or whatever and they're just lit up you just feel that so I think that's what you're picking up on yeah or you were picking up on it because especially in that period of time I was very devoted to cultivating that inner magnetic state in terms of the sage and stuff yeah might be a thing that's really but what matters to me and the way I experience it is how I feel I've created it as an anchor you know I experienced that in a certain community or in a certain setting or something really profound or important happened so that when I then go do that I just sort of go back to that state I go back to that place on the inside and therefore the things around me also are affected that feel that kind of like setting an intentional okay you know I like this candle it means this and it doesn't really it means that or not but for some reason it's just easier to get quiet yeah have you by chance read the Satanic Bible they're familiar with okay because actually someone who is I'm someone who I'm sure you know who is like way back in the day in one taste I met him more recently and he was like he's painting like this family tree of American mysticism and cults and stuff he's like they all kind of go to the same place like landmark and est and more house and this and the Manson family and everything that kind of goes back to Aleister Crowley and like the transition from Aleister Crowley into America was introduced by the Church of Satan like Satanism is basically feel your feelings over your thoughts like if I could put it very simply it's not like to be evil it's like being angry is more important than trying to be peaceful like for instance but anyway anyway I just brought this up because he has a whole chapter on what magic really is and to him magic is essentially what you just described like hypnotic anchor anchor rings and it's like incense and candles and a gong makes you drop into a subliminal state like that that's and then you can actually do more things or change your workings like that's what magic is so it doesn't really matter what the thing is it's kind of arbitrary yeah and then the unconscious mind so that's another experience you and I've had together right is the chance and the generative field of that and that's kind of hypnosis but different somewhere you know different states right and you can do all sorts of testing on people who meditate and alpha beta Delta whatever brainwaves so in trance states and the unconscious mind that's real I don't know how magic that is it seems like magic it feels like magic I think it all is accessing your ability to connect to those parts of yourself that are normally cut off to you to then build and create and generate in the world from from there and also connect with others that the the unconscious mind is the real magical thing that all these things point at and can get you to and when you're with somebody in your as a coach for me right but also in like romantic relationships and whatever right you're with someone and you're able to open up a space like that where the things that they're saying are more true than anything else they could possibly be saying and they don't know where they're coming from and they feel so seen you feel so connected it's like your soul in their soul and it's almost a visceral feeling yeah everything else gets quiet and the air begins to feel like molasses that's where you generate the best everything yeah work relationships life feelings joy love whatever you know yeah you could go the other way too if you want that right I mean yeah I guess people do that propaganda at times but I remember when I was learning trance from you I remember I really just like the enjoyment of like a spontaneous LSD like experience I remember you weren't scolding me we were kind of reminding me like the purpose of these states is like I don't know if this was your language but like you're going into this realm of infinite possibility to change things that like when you're in a normal state like saying be confident means nothing to you like that's the purpose of it all like that's the you know and I would yeah I mean took me a minute to get it out right which is fun though states to dissociate right it's in the same way that we eat food or drink alcohol or watch TV or whatever it's like I don't want to feel what's here so I'm gonna do some other thing that makes me feel sort of high somehow it's like a little dopamine surge or whatever or like trippy acid or it's entertaining enough that I'm distracted from the void so using the unconscious mind in that way you can go have fun with it but also you can really use it in a powerful magical way yeah so going back could you take us from you were in one taste you're in this own community and you're living in the warehouse just kind of like an experimental like would you call it sexual spiritual research lab yeah and then I keep tickets from there to when I met you because you're kind of out of it but you're kind of you're still within like the community when I met you so I I don't remember exactly when I met you I remember you know there were different centers there's San Francisco is the main one and then I was in New York and for a while I ran the New York Center and after a while I left right and then I met you a little bit after that one just came back to New York and you had like a kind of a competing orgasm yeah yeah well I didn't really I wasn't I couldn't stop doing the thing that I knew helped me so much become the woman that I am today in terms of the practice and the work and being a mentor to people in a in all of the positive ways and I wanted to do it without the crazy sales thing so it was there was no selling courses or running programs or getting money from anyone it was just like teaching the good stuff while I decided to learn you know I'm also you know wait a minute I work well with people I'm a coach so I'm gonna build this coaching practice on the side and divorce the two from each other how to make money versus this beautiful bubble of intense practices that are good for people that has is different than my coaching life different skill sets and I think that kept it feeling it was a good alternative for a while for you know while I was running it I didn't have the crazy community that one taste had but I had something that felt kind of lighter and safer because I didn't like yeah that's right that's how I got introduced to your separate home circle events is like oh it's kind of like one taste but like not so fascist that's what someone said to me it's like okay but yeah and then in this time is when you started studying trance right after Stephen Gilligan right which was wonderful because I needed to have another experience of someone who was masterful at something a modality that made significant change in people's lives so you know I'd have multiple modalities I can work with so that was useful and it was more directly useful to direct coaching with people when it was an sexuality context but also a teacher and mentor and the master at something who was holding it without the control of what a cult would be doing so I learned how to be a teacher without taking my students power away from them was it also useful I mean I don't know what your exit from one taste was I mean I don't know if you can call it a cult but like it's difficult for most people to be like was finding someone else who gave you a similar experience without the negative like part of your healing if you will or allowing you to feel okay with nothing in it I don't remember if I directly went to study with him before after I left I know I had experience of that kind of work for my partner my romantic partner who introduced me to it I think it may be that I'm a simple human where I experienced something inspiring and powerful that got me really high that was different and I just opened my eyes to the fact that there's more in the world than just this one thing that could give me extraordinary awe-inspiring experiences and it's like I've been here studying this for seven years I'm missing out on all sorts of other things I need to go yeah I just remember for me like leaving I one of my fears was like I'm not gonna find something so profound again and I actually got it from like one of maybe the least like most mundane things like I started taking acting classes and I had this really great acting teacher who had the insight that it's at a high level one taste teachers would have like when you develop empathy to read people as you know really well and I was like oh here's an acting guy who's never heard of orgasm who could like read someone off of like one word they say so accurately so okay there's other things in the world that could teach me this skill so that was yeah yeah that's a real fear I think when you're closed communities like that one of the lessons that you learn is or you're given is like we have the secret sauce everyone else means well they're kind of on the path but slowly we have you know right and I got into that for a really long time so leaving I was difficult I think it was six months before I really began to not judge the rest of the world super harshly yeah actually be like wait maybe something here for me oh wait I don't know everything oh wait I don't know anything yeah it's actually now I'm remembering you you were cuz you're already out and like part of this competing thing while I was actually going deeper and deeper into one taste you're kind of like giving me the I remember you said something like that and it took me like it was like a year and a half later before I had that experience so like it didn't really make sense to me when you said it to me but then that was exactly my experience like when I left one taste I was like man everybody is so boring and it took me a while to be able to connect with people yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so I thought it was really fascinating actually I've been well I thought it's really fascinating as you kind of combine this trance thing where you go into altered states with the orgasm practice can you speak a little bit about that because I don't know if you have explored anything since then with that but I found that profound I was wondering yeah I was wondering you know can you speak a little bit about that so everyone knows we're talking about and then have you explored anything since then in that room I haven't um so I created a little research group at the time so of people who knew this orgasmic practice so your practice and it's kind of like the not that extra center around women's orgasms so going to these orgasmic states and then at the same time connecting with your partner in a way that you can open into an extra like it's like being you know limbic resonance on steroids you know really super charging that zone of connection between the two of you while this energy of orgasms kind of happening but then you're locked in and you're so absorbed in your connection with each other and you're in these sort of altered states where the consciousness what I found in my initial studies with that with the group that I was sort of teaching all this to and we were legit doing like testing different ways to do all these things to see the results to see what happened was that they weren't really compatible that the super trance states were very calming to the system so that sort of like heightened turned on energy was sort of dampened and you had to be extra super intentional on wanting to go that way to direct it that way otherwise you just end up like relaxing into a puddle of just but then you're just without that orgasmic thing I don't know that's okay gotcha yeah maybe I left before you reach those conclusions because I remember when I like the last experiences I had was like something about like trance it was very pure based like you're kind of inducing each other together and then when it got to the point where the woman would lie down suddenly there was like a shift of power if you will and like I remember you saying like it's like kind of extreme vulnerability that wasn't expected when you're in trance and now lying down with your bottom half naked you know like but yeah I guess yeah anyway I thought it was interesting I think there's something there with the altered states and the sexuality because that's kind of like the root of erratic hypnosis which was your entry way into this right that came later okay that's sort of like an extra playful thing versus like I was introduced to the sort of the more pure thing that had nothing to do with sexuality in itself and then this whole other thing but then there's a whole world of you know Montag chia teaches you know whole energetic tantric practices these things it's funny these things have existed for thousands and thousands and thousands of years and we keep sort of rediscovering them and thinking that we're getting on like the track of some new thing that's all right yeah that's what I think is cool and like kind of is like proof that it's eternal that in totally different cultures it like pops up in different times like there's some some this is not like some thing some self-help author from 2,

000 years ago just made up it's like something that's real like the sex creativity connection such want to jump ahead to like I I didn't see I mean I went deep into one taste I didn't was in touch with you for a while and then next time I saw you you kind of like rebranded everything about everything like you had gone the route of prosperous coaching and like well I want to ask I want to ask you about like your success trajectory but also I I remember when I saw you like maybe a year later you kind of decided to cut off everything sexual in your life to straighten things out can you speak a little bit that's like what I remember was like you're saying that sex kind of made your mind chaotic or something like that I might be miss remembering what you said you said something like everything you learned in the one taste world didn't trust anymore oh yes that yes that's yes for sure so I left that world and I went into sort of the world of the regular people and realized that the community that we had been in was very focused on sort of female empowerment in a certain kind of way so you had a lot of women who were just not shamed but not in any way around their sexuality and had total freedom to explore all the things that sort of super empowered about that and then the men that were there that was super cool and they weren't scared of that and so they knew how to interact and all that with women like that and I found when I left there I was dating I was like okay so I thought I was this expert now and people would relate to me like that right and relationships and intimacy and sexuality I know all the things right like I'm the teacher I've had communities and all this and I tried to apply that same skill set to my life with people who didn't know anything about any of these things and just found it was totally intimidating to general men you know living their lives you know like when I came on that strong and was totally like yeah I'm alive it was kind of like people say they want that but then really don't really know what to do with that in a certain sense it's kind of like just so out of left field from what we're used to it's like oh wait I have to let myself be chased and I'll do this whole other thing that I'm not used to doing anymore so I realized there's just different rules to the game in different territories and I didn't know the regular world territory in a certain kind of way and so after a while it was like who am I to be teaching this stuff I really don't know the truth you know like I know a way in a context taken out of that context I'm still learning huh it's really interesting saying hearing you say that because like what I was saying before like I could feel your field or something like my first like experience of that and like my interpretation of that till now has been like well I'll just say like I was very new to all of this and when I was relating with you I felt empowered in a way that I hadn't felt before was like the way I've understood is like you were so so secure in your feminine energy that just being around you if we were connecting in any way I could just felt like the man I guess I always felt like the man I felt like the most manly man competent secure guy ever and I just understood that was because you were like so masterful and like feminine energy that anyone relating to you is like flipped like exalted to like the opposite polarity so it's interesting hearing you say that because I was like I have always thought like this you were the example of someone who could be super empowered in a non intimidating way I'm just like surprised that you have that opposite experience it seems like if you pull the lens back you'll see that you're already like because of the container that we the world that you knew me through you've already self-selected yourself as someone who's interested in something okay right like you're already open you've already been in a world you've already been to lectures you're already totally down with this idea of women being empowered sexually to some degree so then the experience you're open to learning the experience of that and then noticing yourself through it but you already self like you're already one in a thousand or whatever who would be even near that kind of community in the first place gotcha okay so my sample is skewed okay yeah cuz like I I've like I've taken that lesson like try to apply it to like other connections I've had like even with someone like a random person I met who knows nothing and be like oh well what if I did the opposite of Christina did and I could like pull I was like thinking magically can I like polarize her and like I maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy or all confirmation bias but every time I'm like oh it works like I've taken my experience with you as like this great lesson so I'm kind of like crashing back to reality right now that's really great because no it's not because you're holding a masculine polarity that should be doing that in a way yeah I guess that's what I'm looking for in my relationships is the person holding that in that way pulling me out even further hmm right when I'm relating for as the powerful sexual being in the real world with regular people who aren't in that steeped in that culture I'm the one that's pulling them out but I don't want that I want to be further growing into things so you know because I'm a super feminine kind of person who likes that that it works for you gotcha okay cool I suppose I have to reponder this though I thought I had like an absolute law of human relating that maybe was just true in like this small context um cool so what was it like going from that then to I mean you end up going like into the prosperous coach I don't know that's the right term I mean the community around that philosophy around coaching so yeah so so I started coaching like developing not knowing what I was doing but I'm like okay I'm gonna have a profession in the regular world as a coach because I love that and I'm great with people and I love helping people and um and I have a lot of understanding humanity at this point so as I was initially starting that off I was sort of a relationship sexuality intimacy coach right for three years or so that's that was my specialty and those were the events that I ran and those were the panels I spoke on and that's what my whole career was about and it was growing and growing and growing slowly but it till the point where it's like okay yes this is my profession and it hit a point two things happen one was I had gone as far as I could take myself and I was still making only like 30k a year or something and I had lots of clients but I didn't know how to charge money I had no idea how to be a person or how to really develop that I was completely overwhelmed work working now but I was just exhausted so I knew something had to change I needed to go learn something properly about running a business and the other was that people would come to me for the relationship stuff but then we'd just be coaching for six months to a year on life everything life right and I realized how much broader what I was doing was it wasn't just sexuality relationship and it also got to the point where I just got bored it was an interesting to me anymore it was like the same rehashing the same kind of stuff again and again and again it's like I needed something new so then I someone gave me the book the prosperous coach and it was like wait half the stuff in here I already know from learning it on my own and you knew him already right rich yeah so I knew him before he was a coach you know and I found him on Facebook and I was like hey rich did you write this book okay cool I want to do that too if you can do that I can do that tell me you know and so we had some conversations and it felt good like it felt very heart centered it didn't feel like the scary salesy stuff that I didn't want to be you know I had such a from the experience at one taste around sales being horrible and harmful to people I didn't want to do anything like that and so I hired him and began my own study on how to build a business truly like a high-end boutique coaching business through service right and how to do sales in a way that is super in integrity and wonderful and my life just changed it went from like being this big to just growing you know who knows where it's going now yeah and then from I understand from last time we spoke I you're kind of in another transition where you're going in a different direction or change or like what's what's going on now so many directions which one are you referring to you must think about the manifesto they shared yeah yeah so yeah so so I've since you know like now I'm one of those people that have multi six-figure businesses and those two blocks from the ocean and I travel all over the place and it's amazing well my parents now think it's a real career the real marker for success and as all of that kind of happened I then plateaued at this new place as a coach we're making you know 250 300 K a year and I could just sort of coast there and I can help coaches learn how to do that and I could help leaders do what they do and get to Mars and whatever it is they're doing which is exciting but there's a part of it that has now started to feel like okay then now what there's always the next what's the next scary challenging thing and I woke up at 3 in the morning like a year ago and asked myself you know that thing that you felt that was like whoo there's this magnetic thing about Christina mm-hmm a lot of people have said things like that over the years communities have sort of come around me kind of because of that feeling I thought well what is that if I'm I'm gonna leave a body of work behind that's kind of it like how do I do what I do and I just started writing and it turned into this manifesto that I called the edge Walker manifesto that you know now I'm running events around it and really beginning to you know beginning stages again you know can you take it right how is this gonna come into the world is it gonna be a book is it gonna be an online course is it gonna be like crazy VIP coaching things with people jumping out of planes is it gonna be what is this gonna be but everyone I share it with pretty much everyone I share it with has a very strong response to it they hear it and they recognize something in there at least my people do which is really amazing yeah so it's kind of just something it's like one of these threads you're just pulling you don't really know what it is still yeah I don't need to so I have my business that's doing its thing and it's fine you know like I don't need it to make me money so I have the leisure to follow the thread on on this right without it going to be financially motivated just you know play with it and see you know where does it get picked up by people who gets turned on by this what can I do with it what's its potential what does it want anyway yeah and it brings to a lot of the things I learned I want taste yeah yeah I how so it's just a synthesis and I learned so much there about living on the edge it was just so out of reality like any sense of safety security certainty was gone on purpose you know for years how do you live a life like that and you can it's difficult and then it's you know the parallel the pendulum also you have to create safety in your world too how do you do that but I find people who are looking to be entrepreneurs be a start-up take a new risk do when you act in life whatever it is that they're doing have to have a quality to them that they're able to not just handle uncertainty and the scary exciting cliffs but thrive in those sorts of circumstances then they can really you know yeah whatever they're doing it's interesting use the word synthesis cuz I wrote that in my notes cuz like even like when you're just speaking about your life as a whole it's like you had this thesis of like being in the rational only and then one taste was like magical thinking antithesis and I kind of weaving them together oh yeah I was like mind my mind and then body body and then oh wait both and then this whole other thing yeah it's interesting because like I remember I got the founder of one taste Nicole would speak at least when I was leaving they were going really it's like actually words tied to magic like initiation and she was like kind of going that direction and she would often say things like oh and they were really big into the world initiation like being brought into this different world or whatever and she would say often that an initiate is someone who doesn't need anything but has access to everything which is a very catchy line but it's also justification to give up all your money and have nothing which I which is a beautiful spiritual idea but also puts you very involved in a vulnerable situation should be taken advantage of so you're kind of taking the root of that it sounds like and trying to put a package on it on it that's not damaging to people yeah I've been around for that I left way before that so I didn't see her move into the magical realm in that way and I think I think all of the stuff right any kind of powerful potent work or ability can be used in many different ways so I think you gotta ideally everyone is super connected to themselves has very strong boundaries and it's able to say no and they mean no and yes when they mean yes right in reality a lot of people do not have that skill set you know they're very reliable yeah I'm curious to on your thoughts on what the sales and immorality like so I can you hear me says our internet's okay it's like what's cool thought that one taste popularized is like you go for a hundred percent of what you want like if you're a salesperson you push as hard as you want because you trust the other person's a sovereign being who will tell you when the other consent the road their consent line is and then there's other school of thought that you have to kind of coddle people it's kind of where a lot of I don't know yeah a lot of modern culture is kind of the air of light on the side of over respecting boundaries and stuff I'm wondering what you think about like ethics when it comes to things and following your desire and as you would maybe I think it's like relating to what a diver is you're selling in a way that a restaurant relates to their fare you know to their food to their chef to their the experience they're providing right so I'm not going to be walking into a three-star Michelin restaurant expecting that I'm going to be paying 20 bucks for dinner if I'm walking into that place I'm expecting to pay a grant mm-hmm right and so when the waiter comes and gives me the menu I mean whatever it tastes and many do know many so you know but whatever give me the menu and you have like three wine pairing options the 245 wine pairing versus the 700 wine pairing versus the whatever wine pairing they're all high level whatever's I'm expecting that already and I get to pick but I don't get mad at the waiter and he's not over over stressing me or convincing me about which of them do I want and there now is a time in my life that I can do that right and I'm glad that people have them so I can go have those experiences that's awesome ten years ago I didn't even know what that was you know like 30 bucks for dinner was I don't know that was the special Christmas dinner you know like birthday dinner like holy shit that's a lot of money right I wouldn't even consider that and so in terms of my own practice I am now so much more expensive to work with than I was back then but I don't have any influence or likes like tactics or ways of convincing people that they want the thing it's not about like how do I get around their defenses around whatever their situation is for them to just then hire me you know it's more like giving people a very honest totally complete full-hearted experience of what the work is really getting them results before we ever ever consider working together and eight out of ten times they asked me okay how do we keep this going it's like well here's the menu you know you don't if you don't want it's fine and then if you do honor coming that's awesome and I don't need 40 clients I need five yeah then max here so I have the freedom to say yeah hold on I'm I'm wondering because like um so a theme of my book that I'm writing about my experience here is enlightenment leaves no scars someone like said that to me but at the same time when I was in it and I think about like the bad things that happened involving me or other people it's like well for most people for myself like those were the biggest moments of growth like there's anything that forced me to learn about myself or learn what abilities I had it was like kind of the shit that happened to me and like even with money I mean like going into debt whether it's predatory or not the sales like I put myself in a very compromised situation but it kind of forced me to learn things which maybe is a backwards justification it could be but like I'm wondering what you think about that because nowadays if I especially if I'm talking to a young person who wants to take out credit cards to work with me a part of me is like no don't do that but then I'm like well that's exactly what I did and I grew from it and I don't really know where I stand on such things I mean there are people who will show up with like that with me and you can tell there's a feeling that you get after a while where you could feel like someone leaning into a stretch whereas versus somebody's really doing something damaging to the financial like they should get a job first and then you know so I'll turn people away in a way that I just it just if it doesn't feel good in my body I'm not gonna take their money there's no ethical thing that's like no let them make their own mistakes like I could tell that's gonna have them freeze around financial stress that's gonna make them not able to create the results they want because they're too busy not being able to sleep at night because of the financial stress yeah in terms of enlightenment leaves no scars I think with enough time you know I think if you're growing you know whatever life and then difficult thing happened and then life continues it could go in many different ways if you're moving towards enlightenment and you ever get managed to get there right so you continue to transform there's gonna be some point in the future that you could pull that lens far back enough and you've been able to heal enough from that that you could you know see what it was incorporated it into the hole and then you're so much bigger than that anyway there are no scarves right that makes sense and a whole journey towards enlightenment yeah healed right there people move towards that at different rates so it could be that somebody who gets hurt dramatically in some scenario is gonna spend the next 40 years healing from that versus somebody else to handle it in three yeah life I don't know how to age somebody else I was you know I was thinking about it's called that we were gonna have right now and then you were probably gonna talk about that experience and being in that kind of community mm-hmm and would I do it again right if I had to do again would I do it again and it was you know a lot of intensely difficult negative things happen there and I would do it again yeah because within you know within I could see my light like I see where my life is right now and I was able to sort of take the learning synthesize feel the feelings you know go to therapy whatever and then bounce back and then I've been able to use the good even though there was bad I don't know the case for other people I just know I was resilient enough that it was worth having that kind of a heavy intensity for the learnings yeah now I'm in a place in my life where it's like what I would I dive into a community like that now like I just I'm too tired man yeah we also so much more to lose yeah wasn't that for myself like there were years where I really regretted it afterwards cuz like I had no money I was unemployable I didn't I couldn't relate to people I was like man did I mess up my life permanently by spending two years in this thing then afterwards like now I'm like as the best thing I really that's like the best investment of time and money and energy ever it's like everything like so many things that I enjoy now are from that that I think are permanent you know as far as life is permanent but yeah I mean I wouldn't do it again I think now I actually have things to lose I hate to interesting yeah yeah this might be my last topic for you I because we mentioned money a couple times and you're someone with a spiritual background that that's yeah I don't know how to put it and there's so many people speaking about relationship to money things like that and again we're talking about magical seeming things and it seems like you of all people probably have something practical to say or like or concrete I don't know I'm curious what your thoughts are like relationship to the money entity money's like potatoes it's totally like nothing it's value not that it's insignificant it kind of it's like money this is money money when I talk about money or think about money I just this is about it you know I don't think about I can't have it someone like me can't have it or there's I'm not doing met the law of attraction well enough you know like I never sit around and be like okay I got to organize my interstate in such a way that I can attract wealth you know or the best thing I learned about money is that it it's like potatoes like so that when I talk about it with my potential clients or when I pick the price that my things are gonna be at my offerings and the packages are at I could say that you know this package is $3,

000 and I can say it's $30,

000 and I can say it's a hundred and fifty thousand dollars with the exact same inflection into nation energy presence it's all just potatoes right yeah and you know I just got really good at what I did and then I just tested it out you know would people actually pay the whole thing up front oh my god most people do I had no idea you know anything I thought I knew about how other people relate to money had turns out to be wrong hmm so just take all of the nonsense out of the way it's potatoes yeah how did that shift come about though is there anything like for someone who doesn't see his potatoes yet I think Steve Chandler so he's the other author of cross-brush he has a book called wealth warrior he speaks a lot on business and sales and he just has this attitude and I was just like okay I'll try and adopt this all the other stuff is let's see what happens I experimented with it it works it's amazing and it just seems so not magical you know it's like I took the magic out of money there way fewer hoops to jump through that and and way fewer ways to make yourself wrong because it's like if you think of it as other if you think it's some kind of like inner way resource of the flow of the wealth abundance and it's not happening for you you make yourself wrong yeah there's something wrong with you right instead of figure out your marketing better you know like we're asked more people to have a conversation with you you know or get better at your crafts and then you'll make more money like to go like that yeah it's interesting cuz um when I was going into one taste and like making all these financially irresponsible decisions I was kept I kept telling myself money isn't real money isn't real and then like when I had no money and I couldn't like I get an apartment anymore I was like oh shit money is kind of real but now that I have it again like I was like not really real like ever you just move things around and like once your needs are met it's kind of just an idea I don't know that that's what I mean but it's not real it's like if I need three potatoes to buy lunch I need three potatoes to get what like I'm gonna barter it that I'm gonna do this I mean more like I can therefore make smart decisions on what you want to do your potatoes but it's not like I'm not worthy of potatoes gotcha okay in terms of or like yeah those people over there you know they were born with the magical thing that has them have an easy getting potatoes like no they were given a trust fund and they put all their money in the lake it's all in stocks and the markets good and they have money you know yeah not because they're better more worthy people gotcha yeah one last thought um cuz I as I have raised my rates a lot since when I started obviously I'm sure like obviously my confidence has increased than anyone who's rate charging more of their confidence in this increase but I don't think at the degree that I have raised my rates like it's like the thing that I've noticed more is like what has really changed the type of people that come by like one other type of people who can afford certain things and they happen to be more fun and more responsible maybe that's why they have the money that they can afford like it's almost like just like throw your line in a different pond and do the same thing and you can get bigger fish like yeah absolutely it's just it ends up being relationship building and and what pond are you fishing in and you could say exact same thing over here and the exact same thing over here and this person would never in a million years be able to afford whatever X is and then this person over here it doesn't think twice and it's just and then I think the last hurdle for people to shift to that way is they feel like they're bad people for leaving these people behind like I should be able to help everybody you know and why raise my rates to whatever why don't I just continue charging $500 a month for the rest of my life and then it's like there are so many other people first of all and then I noticed the same thing that you noticed that as I raised my rates the people that came to me were in a place where they were taking it more seriously like just making any kind of investment therefore was more worthwhile because they showed up for it in a way that they overshot their goals whereas when they were being given a deal you know and it wasn't that much and it was still kind of whatever there was a certain kind of victim me I can't do it this is hard kind of underlying vibe not over generalization not everybody but typically the results that I was seeing weren't the same as the results that I'm seeing charging way higher fees and it's not because my coaching got 20 times better you know yes I feel like yeah no that totally makes sense and I you know maybe I'm sure the numbers for everyone are different but like a certain dollar amount I was like oh these the people who are up to this point have done enough of their own work that they can actually execute this idea it's like it's almost like when someone can't afford it like a part of me is like well maybe there's some stuff you need to do on your own that doesn't cost you anything before you get the benefit of this stage but it's interesting what you just said also is like I actually feel at the rate that I'm at now I thought about raising it again it was like I would kind of miss the people that I coach now it's I know they can't afford double and I guess what's that yeah yeah all together there's that option for people who yeah I mean it's literally one of the options on my whiteboard right here like it's like good that's one like check in that yeah also there are different times in my in my practice where I have more space versus other times where I'll take somebody on pro bono or a few people or certain group like I'll do work there's certain people who kind of like come along every now and then and can't afford X but they are exceptional and you know that your energy invested into them is gonna be well used to buy them that it's pleasure to just offer it for free I remember one of the first coaches I ever had like who helped me for a little while in my transition out of one taste and starting my own thing who like let me hundred fifty dollars once because I can pay my friend he said I coach people for either $3,

000 a month or nothing and he took me under his wing and charged me nothing I was one of those people who he saw just my consistent execution you know an effort and not no apology and no victim II kind of stuff and um you know it was really sweet five years later three four years later whenever it was I was like do you remember me this is what's going on right now that's awesome he was really really happy yeah so that's a good way to do it cool well thank you so much for making the time and I know we've covered a lot of different things this is really fun speaking with you I'm gonna have a lot of fun sharing this with my friends who don't know this side of me cool yeah is there anything you want to share about like we have going on is like is there a way people can find out about the edge Walker's thing edge Walker edge edge hyphen Walker base camp on Facebook there's a Facebook group just walker base camp cool yeah just my website Christina Berkeley calm you could find the manifesto on there you contact me if you want to know more cool all there awesome well thanks so much my pleasure take care hey thanks for listening podcast want to catch the rest of my work with wanda calm tasking on social media had wano and please do not forget to subscribe Oh right