162 Anabolic Psyche: Building Strength Of Soul

A lot heavy things are coming my way, and it's been requiring extra inner strength.
So I'm forced to practice what I preach...
This episode is on the Anabolic Psyche— Building strength in your soul.
I cover two kinds of traps that kill soul strength (spiritual and material) along with 3 principles for metaphorically "bulking up".

Please note: This track may include some explicit language.

Transcript

So,

Very often on this podcast,

I share stories from my life,

From my past,

That I think have a useful takeaway to people.

Maybe something I recently overcame that I think applies to others has some practical principle for life.

This time,

I'm actually in the middle of some shit.

So if there's ever a time for me to practice what I preach,

I actually don't have a choice but to practice what I preach because some shit's going down in my life.

I'm in a documentary that airs on Netflix in a couple days.

It's scheduled to,

At least.

And it's about my time in a cult.

If you listen to this podcast,

You've heard me mention this before.

I did a three or four hour series telling my whole story and the general story is,

If you haven't caught those,

At least the way I interpret it,

Is I entered this strange reality.

My first half of the time there,

It was incredibly enlightening.

It was kind of a utopia that I had always theorized of being in,

Where people were connected and it wasn't a society of intra-competition,

All that nerdy stuff,

Sociological stuff.

And I learned a lot from them,

From the group OneTaste.

The latter half,

I began to see more of the dark stuff,

The negative things,

The harm they caused,

Et cetera.

And I also learned a lot of things,

Maybe in spite of them or maybe not.

They were self-described as a left-handed path,

Which is a spiritual term for a path into darkness,

Whereas right-handed paths are like the calm-controlled meditation stillness paths.

This one is kind of like Vajrayana,

That kind of dark tantra,

Red tantra,

Going deep into chaotic emotions,

Sexuality,

Lust,

Anger,

Selfishness,

Manipulation as its own means of growth.

And when I speak about my time in the cult,

Ever since I've ever publicly spoken about it and it's been many years now,

I tend to get hate,

Or I should say heat,

Heat's maybe a better word,

I tend to get attacked from both sides.

I get attacked.

Obviously,

OneTaste is not happy that I say things that I know to be true about some of the dark stuff.

And there's also a bunch of people,

Some of whom I'm very close with and whose feelings I care a lot about with,

Who've left OneTaste but have a different view on their experience.

Maybe they abstract things differently where they also like to hold,

They like to emphasize that they gain so much from the experience and therefore they like to downplay some of the dark things that I see.

Obviously these are opinions and mine is mine,

But such people get upset at me.

I'll put them in the crowd of spiritualists,

I'll explain that later.

But I also get hate from the other side,

The people who,

You know,

Those of outrage culture that we see on a larger scale who see a man speaking about a cult focused on women's sexuality where I do admit negative things happen,

I do call it a cult,

But I also have many positive things to say.

That really pisses some people off.

You know,

In both cases in my opinion there's a bit of improper abstraction where both parties,

Those defending them and those attacking,

Want to put events and people into black and white categories of good versus evil.

I've done other episodes on the us versus them paradigm so I'm not going to re-flush that out.

But basically I get attacked from both ends.

Sometimes the attacks get under my skin,

But for the most part they kind of cancel each other out and I'm a bit used to it.

This Netflix thing is bringing up a whole new set of that.

Well I'll share the details in a moment,

But for like six months I've had this idea,

This concept of making an episode titled The Anabolic Psyche.

I just thought it was a cool phrase,

I didn't know what to do with it.

Some of these episodes I have the principle,

The foundation,

And then I build the house and add the details later.

Other times I have a doorknob and I try to build a house around it,

This is maybe one of those times.

But it's basically the idea,

It's the metaphor,

That one's psyche,

One's soul,

Has properties just like one's body.

And you can strengthen certain things so that you can deal with certain things,

That you can do certain things on a non-physical level let's say.

And if you're weak in certain areas,

You're not going to do as well as you go through life.

And this idea came back because I feel a great amount of weight on me right now because of this Netflix thing.

There's been a couple things coming my way and it's kind of exposed to me where I'm strong and where I'm weak on a psyche level,

On a soul level if you will.

I get something that's come down simply because this is maybe the highest profile telling of the one taste story is differing opinions from people.

The kind of thing that I'm used to.

And that's a certain amount of weight that it can be stressful,

Especially when it's people I care about who are arguing with me about interpretations.

But that's a weight I can lift.

It's uncomfortable,

But I can do it.

I have noticed that I am a little bit weak when it comes to when I think someone I like is mad at me.

Admittedly this is like maybe I might overreact at times.

Not to even say that's wrong,

I do care,

But I do notice that that kind of makes me feel like I doubt myself at times.

Whereas the other kind of thing that's been down the pipeline that I've heard,

Where I'm very strong actually,

Is I have heard that since I'm one of the people that speaks openly about the negatives or the dark parts of one taste,

I've heard through the pipeline that there's a committee that has formed that have conference calls and strategize of ways to attack me.

I don't know how the attack is going to come,

But that kind of thing actually for whatever reason because I know I've been talking to a lot of friends and that specific thing I think would make a lot of people feel small and scared and run away,

Which is why a lot of people don't speak up.

But for some reason,

I don't know why,

In fact I might even have to attribute this to one taste of strengthening that muscle in me.

When I feel like I'm being unjustly attacked or someone I care about is being attacked,

I feel really big.

I just feel like bring it,

I'm happy to go all the way.

Which may or may not be a good thing,

But that is a metaphoric muscle group I have very strong.

I've been thinking about this and the concept of anabolic psyche of like,

Okay,

These are these uncomfortable things coming my way.

There is kind of a basic,

There are some basic principles here that apply to everyone that uncomfortable things happen in life and you have to lift the weight.

Sometimes you get attacked,

Sometimes negative things happen.

But there's something in me,

Especially with the idea of being attacked,

That make me feel strong.

And this is like going for a deadlift max that I can do where it might be challenging,

But when it's done I'm going to have this huge rush of endorphins and feel amazing.

But then something else happened,

Right?

Because I've,

Not that I've ever wanted to be enemies of my ex-cult,

Even though they certainly demonize me now for what I feel is telling the truth.

On the other end of things is Netflix,

Which is airing this.

And I'm going to generally say Netflix,

But it's actually a production team that I've been in communication with for years prior to the show being sold to Netflix.

But I've been going through contracts recently.

I'm going to collectively refer to them as Netflix.

They lied to me about certain things.

They lied to me about the use of certain footage I gave them.

And some people's privacy is being violated.

And it legitimately is my fault.

I did trust the word of people in the production team that was a judgment call.

I just trusted that consent would be found and if not,

I was told verbally that faces would be blurred,

But that's not the case.

And I have no idea what the footage they're using and people who I care about are very understandably upset.

And that feels like,

I won't go into the details beyond that,

But that's a heavy weight.

That is a very heavy weight that doesn't feel good to lift.

Having debates with people,

Being attacked,

Even being attacked legally,

I feel like I can handle that.

It's like,

Bring it on.

I can wrap that out.

But this thing specifically with guilt,

And especially I think those upset with me are fully justified and I'm trying to take as much responsibility as I can,

That is legit.

And I feel really bad and I feel in that moment,

That is a weak muscle group for me.

I feel myself a little bit tempted to fold under pressure.

But the great thing about one's psyche versus one's body is that a lot of our strength comes down to the actions we take and the thoughts we think and how we direct our attention.

So in this episode,

I am of course going to be sharing some tidbits of what I'm going through,

Some relevant details,

But this is an episode,

The anabolic psyche,

About building strength of your soul.

Building,

You could call it mental health if you want.

I'm going to use the word soul because I've been feeling spiritual lately.

Building a resilient soul that can handle shit,

That can deal with the heavy weights.

And this is directly things that I am counting on.

These are principles.

I'm going to share three types of principles that I am heavily leaning on to get through this difficult time.

And yeah,

And we're going to be talking about these dual forces and it's kind of perfect that I get attacked by these two separate groups because I also feel like they represent two kinds of temptations that can really make your soul weak.

And I've almost succumbed to certain temptations and I am going to admit to some things I'm not proud of here.

But the dual forces are the spiritualists,

I'm going to call them.

These are people,

In this case,

Represented by one taste and one taste defenders,

Some of whom I do care about,

Who I feel are applying a false negative to reality.

They're looking at events and be like,

Oh yeah,

Nothing bad happened there.

No one was harmed,

Which I think is untrue.

And we can call that spiritual bypassing,

Right?

They're basically re-abstracting events in a way that they feel more comfortable.

I think that is one temptation towards weakness.

The other side is the materialists,

The outrage culture people who don't care about nuance,

Apparently the Netflix team that is,

It does seem like they're not going for telling a full story that I thought they were and they're just going to go for the easy sensationalized hit of like,

Oh look at this weird sex cult thing,

Who seek to destroy people based on us versus them.

It's very reptilian,

At best,

Dog brain behavior of like,

Okay,

Those are the other weird people,

Let's fuck with them.

Lack of nuance,

Who in terms of uncomfortable truths,

They apply the false positive,

Where they're like,

Oh,

We're going to label these people as a cult,

Everything is bad,

We don't care about nuance,

We don't even care about this guy who's offered us a lot of content and a lot of information,

Me,

Because basically they've shut me out,

Which is the materialist move.

You know,

Because both of these routes have temptations.

So actually in this episode,

I'm going to speak about three principles that I'm living by right now,

Moment to moment,

That ascend from material to spiritual.

And as I've done in many episodes,

I feel like this is the way you have to look at things,

Because if you just look at things materially,

You might be practical when it comes to dollars and cents,

But it often leads to nihilism.

And of course,

If you just focus on the spiritual and skip the material stuff,

There is a grave danger of greatly disconnecting from reality,

Which is something that I think one taste and one taste people have done a lot,

Which has also caused harm.

Announcement time.

I decided to move my podcast to substack.

I just really like the substack platform.

I also have the History of Man substack,

So I'll probably share the rewards.

If you subscribe to one,

You get both or something.

But this is just to say I'm moving to substack because I might want to sometimes share articles,

But otherwise if you're subscribed to the podcast,

Everything else will look the same or should look the same.

But if you don't want to hear from me and if you don't want to get content updates or see what's going on or get my upcoming written content where I will be sharing parts of my book,

My memoir from my one taste time,

You can check that out on my new Ruando substack.

Link will be in the show notes.

Starting with the most material of all,

The body.

I'm going to recall some things from the very sciencey nerdy episode that I did a while ago on physiological toughness.

I'm going to have to repeat some principles that are kind of basic,

But they're very important because as discussed in that episode where I went through all the nitty gritty science,

A lot of our ability to handle stress,

Even things that we perceive to be purely mental stress,

Like the example I gave was hearing that the stock market is about to crash.

A physiologically tough person will have their adrenaline spike and come back to calmness.

They'll be able to deal with the stress well.

A physiologically weak person will have a long,

Prolonged stress response and that news will crush them.

And we all know what this looks like anecdotally.

It is supported by the chemicals in our body.

And this has to be said again because it is the most basic thing.

I have been noticing,

Like I've been dealing with different bits of news that has been difficult around this documentary the last week or so.

And very simply,

When I'm tired,

I take it way worse.

I've been avoiding substances for a while for other reasons.

I had been kind of using cannabis as a crutch with the stress of moving with the baby.

And then I kind of got bored with it or I just felt like it wasn't serving me.

But on Sunday,

I went out for a father's,

It was kind of like a father's hike with young dads in this area,

Someone passed the joint,

Whatever.

Just seemed like the right time.

But I noticed that the same exact thoughts that I'd been thinking earlier,

Nothing had changed in my reality.

No information had changed in my mind.

I just started taking it so much worse.

It was very obvious,

To use our physical analogy,

It's almost like someone injected some chemical in me that made my muscles weak.

I felt myself crumbling under the pressure over the same exact news as opposed to dealing with it well.

So I don't know if cannabis has that effect on everyone.

It does on me.

Some other things that are kind of obvious like sugar,

Being on screens,

These are all things that weaken my psyche at least.

I don't know if that's true for everyone else.

And as said in Hamlet,

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

So on the basic level,

And I try to remember this anytime I'm feeling blue,

A lot of our emotions and a lot of our thoughts be positive or negative or no thought,

But especially when we're scrambling in our head and our thoughts are abstract demons or making us feel bad.

A lot of times there is a physiological root and if you get a good night's sleep,

Which sometimes requires some abstract processes to settle us down.

And I had an episode recently on slaying our demons.

Sometimes you have to do some things that are not physical to help your physical body rejuvenate.

But that is so important.

I mean,

It's again why anytime I coach someone who's feeling morally weak,

The lowest hanging fruit is to go to the gym,

Adopt some basic strength program because when you're pushing iron and seeing yourself grow,

And it could be anything,

Right?

It could be any kind of physical resistance training,

But where you see your physical body gets stronger,

It does support your ability to deal with non-physical stresses.

I mean,

Everything in our ability to perceive the abstract is there to serve our genes passing on,

Which means our survival.

So everything is connected in that way.

So just the basic things that I've been reminding myself to do,

I love the idea of the four elements,

Jitterbug,

Perfume,

How to live forever kind of stuff,

Air practice of simply focusing on your breath,

Being aware of sensation.

And ultimately,

They speak about thinking right thought.

For me,

The most simple right thought is to not think in words.

Thinking in words is tempting,

Especially for me,

Who's obviously very verbal and I,

You know,

Stringing sentences together is part of what I do for a living.

It's very tempting to fall in love with words and explain things even to myself at times.

You know,

Anyway,

Just to end this thought here,

The best thing you can do with your mind ever is to not think in words.

A friend just recommended,

My buddy Orpheus just recommended the Surrender Experiment to me,

Which is a book that,

Yeah,

You know,

Those kind of spiritual books I only feel called to when I'm dealing with something where I feel like I don't have control.

This was months ago about something else,

But it's just a reminder.

Simply think without words.

The best wisdom will come out of you and the calmest perceptions and the clearest perceptions really taking in real reality are only possible when you're not putting abstract symbols in between you and reality,

Right?

Like you don't say to yourself,

This is a cup because then you're not directly interacting with the cup as opposed to taking in the sensory experience.

Obviously the cup thing is completely,

You know,

It doesn't matter,

But there are many situations where you think too much in words,

You know,

Fall behind these,

You know,

These reactions,

Toxic masculinity,

Violator,

Perpetrator,

Victim,

You know,

Dangerous,

Like these abstract words are used to weaponize people and make people feel bad.

I just posted a thread on the history of Man's Substack on mob mentality where I kind of run through how mob mentality forms and how peaceful people can get co-opted emotionally and also in their thoughts to do things that they would never do,

Violent things.

Yeah,

Anyway,

Same idea,

But you could,

You could,

You could protect yourself from those kinds of things,

Either from the outside or even your internal demons by focusing on the state of gnosis with a G where you do your best to not think in words.

That's the only way to perceive reality directly.

Water practice is simply drinking water.

I'm always low on water,

Stretching,

Bathing,

That kind of thing,

But I,

You know,

I fill that in.

Another thing that I don't always keep up with,

But it definitely makes me feel virile and strong is arousal control.

This is the fire practice of making love with semen retention,

Not releasing.

You know,

I've spoken about arousal control on many episodes.

There are a lot of claims about,

You know,

Cycling sexual energy that I can't prove,

But one thing I stand by is when I make love to my wife and I don't come and I let that extend for long periods of time,

I feel like the man.

And I feel very empowered and energetic,

But also calm.

And yeah,

I just believe that that's true.

Too much ejaculation,

As Mickey from Rocky says,

Women weaken the legs.

And finally,

The earth stuff is taking care of the body,

Eating right,

Avoiding sugar,

Avoiding things that make you feel weak.

And a specific kind of exercise,

We can bring this back to resistance training,

But something I've been also paying attention to that very greatly affects my mental state,

My soul,

If you will,

Is the state of my spine,

Right?

If I make sure to flex my spine and work my spine so there's no cracks and kinks,

I think better.

I don't know exactly the science behind it.

Is it tension in the neck leads to headaches,

Leads to poor blood flow?

Is it simply,

I don't know,

Some primal thing?

Is there so many nerves obviously in our spine?

I don't know how to explain it.

I'm speaking completely anecdotally.

When I make sure my spine is in a good state,

Everything else seems to be better.

Joseph Pilates said,

You are as old as your spine.

So yeah,

That's all I have to say on that.

Actually,

I will say the one lifestyle change that I've done recently,

And it's been great,

I've been sleeping directly on the hard floor with like a very thin like egg crate.

It's been great for my back,

Man.

Like sleeping on comfy,

I don't know why I said men.

I don't know who I'm talking to.

Obviously,

Many of you are women listening.

But yeah,

It's been great for my back.

When you sleep on a hard floor,

It forces your body to relax,

Especially if you're in a position like sleeping on your side.

Whereas when you sleep on a soft mattress,

You can maintain tension in your body,

And then people wake up stiff paradoxically when they sleep on soft things.

You sleep on a hard mattress,

You sleep on a hard floor,

It forces you to relax in any position and then you wake up feeling better.

Those are the most material basic stuff.

The body stuff.

We'll move over to the next level of abstraction,

Let's say.

The movement towards spirituality and moral principles,

Which is we can call the heart.

Very simply,

It's being with the uncomfortable sensations.

There's actually a one taste phrase,

Which I find useful,

Which is the truth carries the most sensation.

In the one taste world,

Sensation was seen as this thing kind of like chi in Chinese medicine,

Where the more you feel the better.

I don't know if I totally agree with that,

But there is something to be said about actually feeling your feelings rather than contracting against them.

The thing that's come to me in these moments that I've been challenged and uncomfortable with what's coming down the pipeline in my direction is actually a quote by,

If you've seen the HBO series Band of Brothers,

Great series.

One of the best war tellings ever.

I recently read the memoir of Major Dick Winters,

Who was the company commander,

One of the main characters,

But he's also a real person.

He wrote a real memoir.

I love war memoirs because I feel like as far as principles of masculinity,

This is where it's real.

He has a book on his time in World War II where he's not trying to teach anything.

He's not trying to give leadership principles.

He's just saying the real shit he dealt with,

The real bullets flying,

Leading real men in real battles.

Once in a while,

Like that's 98% of the book is him just telling events,

There's 2% of just a realization,

Like a simple thing that is supported by all of these events,

Which is a line that has stuck with me,

Very simple.

A man must first conquer fear within himself.

I believe he said that line in one of his first battles,

Retelling one of his first battles,

And it's like whatever happens on the outside,

You get hit by a bullet,

You make the right move the wrong move,

You win,

You lose.

The first battle is always the battle within yourself,

Whether you succumb to fear or not.

I've been using this as kind of like my guiding principle with what to do ethically,

Like am I acting out of fear or am I being a little bitch?

Am I going to respect myself later for how I proceed?

I'm going to speak about temptations in a moment when we get into the mind section,

But that's simple.

That's one of the reasons why I've become so obsessed with military history because having a lot of real story to get across a simple principle,

I think is,

At least in my stage of life,

Is a lot more useful to me than having everything explained and filled out,

Even though.

.

.

Well,

Anyway.

I've mentioned this before on the podcast,

But I think it's an interesting idea that I was speaking to a therapist some time ago who mostly works with younger men,

And he was saying how in the first couple months of working with him,

Working with the therapist,

They almost always become obsessed with Jordan Peterson,

And they also want to talk about Jordan Peterson and Jordan Peterson's last thing he said on a video and blah,

Blah,

Blah,

But at a certain point in their developments,

They lose interest in Jordan Peterson,

And they become obsessed with Joe Rogan.

The interpretation of that is Jordan Peterson represents a secondary father figure for a lot of us that have wounds to our masculine side.

He says what to do.

He explains problems.

He really empathizes with anything that maybe feels victim within you,

But then also gives you an outlet or a direction,

And that's very useful.

When we're really in shit and out of control,

We want someone to explain problems to us and give us a clear solution,

But when you're no longer feeling incomplete,

That kind of gets boring,

And it becomes more interesting just to hear people shoot the shit and share whatever they know in a casual setting,

Which is why then things like history or Joe Rogan maybe becomes more interesting.

Actually,

On that note,

I've been very troubled by this thing that I need to face the consequences of.

It's really fun because I definitely made a big judgment error on sharing footage of people without their consent.

I assumed they would be contacted,

But I didn't ensure that happened first.

I was telling one of my buddies,

My buddy Chris,

About it.

He's like,

Yeah,

It sucks.

You did something wrong.

You have to suffer the consequences,

But there is a healthy versus not healthy way to respond.

You have to respond as far as guilt goes.

He actually referred to me,

I guess a controversial clip in Indiana Jones,

Raiders of the Lost Ark,

Where Indiana Jones,

It's implied that he has relations with a 16-year-old girl and then abandons her and then runs into her 10 years later.

She's obviously very upset.

I believe this movie is from the 90s and it was okay to at least imply that a grown man had relations with a 16-year-old girl and abandoned her.

Obviously,

She's livid and she's extremely angry and she's justified to be angry.

That is fucked up of him.

He does say sorry,

But he also says,

I did what I did and you don't have to like it.

I don't know if that's the exact quote.

That's why I scribbled.

I am very sorry for the big mistake that I made and I should,

Not that I'm trying to whip myself,

But whatever happens,

Negative things that come my way,

Uncomfortable things,

It's on me to deal with it.

I'm going to talk about temptations that almost detracted me from that kind of direction,

But yeah,

That is.

Ultimately,

That is the master morality way to look at things.

It's tempting to adopt slave morality and paint myself as a victim.

It's like,

Oh,

These bad Netflix people,

They tricked me,

They lied to me,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

Yeah,

That is true,

But I'm not going to use that as a defense morally.

I might use it as a defense legally if I have to,

But I made a mistake.

I made a judgment call,

A judgment error.

I didn't have bad intentions,

But I didn't do my due diligence to protect people I care about and I did what I did and I myself have to deal with whatever comes down the pipeline.

I feel feelings when I say that,

Which I think is a good thing,

Which brings us to the last part of this,

Right?

The mind,

Truth and consequences,

How one chooses to abstract reality because while I think it's a great practice to attempt to think without words and directly experience immediate reality,

We are human beings and we do need to use our higher order thinking functions at times and deal with things that are not immediately in front of us as I am right now.

And it is important to frame reality.

This is the most dangerous part and why we're leaving it for last because this is where all our demons lie.

This is where my demons lie.

I'm not going to analyze myself beyond what I've done in this moment,

But yeah,

I have something with guilt and mass criticism that might be an overreaction.

It does seem like a weak muscle if I compare myself to other people that I respect as opposed to for some reason I have a very strong muscle,

Maybe a stupidly strong muscle when it comes to dealing with confrontation.

I'm totally willing for that.

Anyway,

I've already explained this idea.

One does need though to frame reality,

Right?

If you don't frame reality in some way,

You're going to float off in space.

One of the things that gets people to buy into a cult reality as one taste has done or political party reality or even the way Netflix sweet talked to me and got me to believe a certain thing that maybe isn't true,

It does come and maybe I have this as a weak muscle as well,

But I think it is a human need to know what frame are we in.

This goes back to relationship principles.

The masculine sets the frame.

It's actually a gift he gives hopefully benevolently to the woman who chooses to surrender or not within his frame.

We all want a frame.

We all want to be in something.

In fact,

I'm going to share this on the history of man sub stack later.

Just the idea that I did this in the super perimeter episode a few months ago.

Alpha males especially seem to need spirituality because we need to be contained by something,

Right?

The lower in the mammalian dominance hierarchy can lean inside the perimeter or lean on the person ahead of them,

Right?

Who sets their perimeter and protects them from the outside world mentally or physically.

Whereas if you're at the top of your social group,

If you don't have something that also contains you,

Whether it's a belief in a higher power or strong moral principles or whatever,

You can feel crazy.

It's actually for this very simple reason that as social mammals,

We evolved to have something above and below us.

So anyway,

There are two temptations that I think tempt anyone in a situation where they're dealing with uncomfortable situations.

And they are represented by the two,

I'm not going to call them enemies,

But the opposing forces against me.

The spiritualists on the one taste side,

The outragers on the Netflix or public side,

They do represent two,

I think their temptations as far as abstraction goes.

The material temptation wasn't so hard for me,

I think just because of the type of person I am,

But it is to just deny,

Right?

To just look at basic things,

To not draw meaning from anything,

To just look at the hard facts and ignore.

Right now,

I've been complaining to Netflix and proceeding towards legal actions,

And they just ignored me.

The same people who are super friendly with me suddenly won't return my emails.

And that is a strategy that anyone can deal with when confronted with something difficult.

This particular thought didn't cross my mind,

But I could have ignored all the people complaining towards me.

It was an option,

And they wouldn't have a lot they can do,

At least not immediately.

That of course would go so strongly against my conscience that I couldn't do that,

But it is tempting.

And maybe in some other situation where the material payoffs were much greater,

The material risks were much greater,

Maybe I would be more tempted by that route.

I think a lot of people go that way,

And I think the people who choose outrage without understanding nuance are going by that.

They're drawing a line in the sand and being like,

Okay,

Anything that's not coddling me is an enemy.

Maybe that's not exactly the way to put it,

But basically,

Right?

Someone that's not on my team,

Not serving my survival,

Must be the enemy,

Must be the other.

We can make them look stupid,

We can treat them inhumanely,

We don't owe them communication or any sort of dialogue.

We don't care.

The other temptation which has been a little bit more tempting based on my personality,

I guess,

Is the spiritual bypass.

To try to reframe situations where I feel like what I did isn't so bad and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

And this is something that I think OneTaste is,

In quotes,

Guilty of.

I'm the first person to say,

In fact,

Of all the people who publicly speak about them,

I probably have the most positive things to say.

I don't know what's going to make it into the next Flix video,

But I was interviewed for seven hours and I spent many of those hours talking about the enlightening things for me there.

The things I learned,

The beautiful things about the community,

How I've grown as a person.

I attribute so much of my growth there.

I don't feel like I need to protect them or shield them from the world because they've done things too.

But yeah,

They tend to,

Those who defend them or ignore the harm they caused are spiritually bypassing in my opinion.

They are re-abstracting things and falling behind statements of like,

Oh yeah,

Well everyone was acting on choice and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

And I'm like,

Yeah,

I don't see it that way.

I think that is ignoring some parts of reality.

And I was tempted to do that with this.

With this,

I hate feeling guilty.

It's funny,

With the fact that now I'm getting wind that there's like a one taste community like digging up dirt and maybe going through my content or my history for dirt on me.

It's very possible that some of you guys who maybe I'll be across from one day are going through this.

So maybe you'll use this against me,

But guilt is my weakness of mine.

Guilt for people that I care about is definitely,

You poke me there,

I'm going to move as opposed to with other things.

And there's a strong temptation to try to reframe things to absolve myself of guilt internally.

But I was like,

You know what?

I could do that,

But I know right now in this sober moment,

I know I would be detaching from reality,

Real reality,

As objective reality as I can possibly see as a subjective person.

And that would be something I would not respect myself for.

If I did it successfully,

As people do with self-deception,

Maybe I wouldn't remember it.

But the results that I would live with for sure,

Even if I could somehow trick myself into not feeling guilt,

As I think a lot of people in one taste do,

The fidelity of my reality would be worse.

In order to not see the bad things,

The results of my actions,

I would have to make my reality a little bit more fuzzy.

I would have to ignore a lot of details.

My ability to perceive things would become less sharp.

That is the non-moralistic reason why truth is so fucking important,

Which is why I say what I say online in media publications.

I hope I wasn't edited incorrectly,

But at least in the real live interviews that I've done,

I let everything out,

The good,

The bad,

The ugly.

Maybe with too much idealism and naivete,

And maybe I'm going to suffer for that as well.

It is what it is.

I did something.

Whatever comes,

I'm going to deal with it.

Deal with it,

Maybe not suffer.

But it comes down to what would have me respect myself,

But also what would allow my reality to remain sharp.

I know that I would not.

.

.

It's like I'd be closing my aperture to reality a little bit if I wanted to block out this thing I didn't want to see.

Truth is,

I made a judgment error.

I didn't think as much as I should have in a moment.

I trusted people that I should not have.

I went off of verbal confirmation as opposed to written confirmation,

And I was a little bit loose with.

.

.

I shared a folder of footage assuming that anything that was used be run by me and done in a way where consent was followed,

And that was my bad.

I'm not apologizing to you who was listening.

I have apologies.

I've been making apologies,

And I have more apologies to make to people.

It makes you feel shitty,

But that's just what happens.

I did something.

That's what comes down to it.

I've actually been thinking in different contexts the phrase that was popular post-2016 election.

You fuck around,

You fight out.

I think that applies to everybody.

That applies to one taste.

They were negligent.

I don't necessarily think malicious,

But I do think sometimes they were.

They were negligent with people's psyches.

They harmed a lot of people.

They didn't listen to the feedback to try to reduce that harm at times,

And they have some shit going on.

It applies to me too.

I spoke to media.

I should have known that I can be edited in any way.

I was trusting when I should have been a little bit more wary,

And I'm going to deal with the consequences that come from that as best I can.

It's been interesting.

I have.

.

.

This whole thing.

.

.

The last couple months in my life have been very difficult.

Not for this reason.

This is kind of like the cherry on top,

But simply moving countries with a family,

Trouble integrating,

Difficulties.

Wife and baby have been stressed.

It's been difficult in the Mipagala household the last couple months.

In these moments,

Of course,

This is just the thing,

When it feels like you have less control over your life than usual,

It is more interesting to look at spiritual lenses on reality.

People have recommended the books of the surrender experiment to me many times.

It's like,

Ah,

You know,

I've read Eckhart Tolle about whatever.

But yeah,

When you're dealing with shit and it seems like out of your control,

It's like,

Yeah,

Okay.

Back to surrender.

Back to thinking without words.

Back to focusing on grounding and meditative practices and returning to our commitments.

It has felt like in these moments of difficulty,

It is tempting to look at yourself as a victim.

Actually,

Admittedly,

Over the last couple months,

There have been moments where I'm just like,

Fuck it,

This day was so hard and I get a couple beers.

Not that I think drinking beer is bad,

But I don't think it's best for the anabolics of one's psyche to use psychoactive substances from a victim place of like,

Oh,

This sucked and therefore I deserve.

Name your vice.

That's not because you don't really enjoy it.

You're kind of trying to reduce the fidelity of your reality in those situations as opposed to just enjoying it.

There's plenty of healthy ways to enjoy such things.

These moments of decision have felt like spiritual tests.

I've been kind of joking with my buddy Chris about as these things hit me,

We've had a lot of random kind of inexplicable misfortunes,

Misadventures.

We shipped a bunch of our stuff from Thailand to Mexico and customs or someone went through our stuff and stole half of our stuff,

All our baby clothes.

It's such a random thing that I would not have expected that does suck.

It's a spiritual test.

You can choose to be a victim or you could just be like,

All right,

I'm going to take this one on the chin because I'm not a bitch and this is the action that will have me respect myself.

Anyway,

With things like guilt and stuff,

This is what's going to keep the fidelity of my reality true even though it's unpleasant.

I'm doing this for that.

I'm dealing with guilt.

I'm dealing with discomfort.

I'm taking every phone call that a part of me doesn't want to take because I have to deal with this thing that I did.

It makes me think this is our last thought today.

I'm actually surprised this episode is under an hour because,

Yeah,

Anyway,

These kinds of things I'm actually feeling feelings.

I go off on long tangents.

There's the quote from Joe Rogan often says this on his podcast,

Hard times make hard men,

Hard men make easy times,

Easy times make soft men.

That whole thing,

I have to go through the whole cycle.

It's a different kind of hard.

When I look at it and the reason why I love this metaphor of an anabolic psyche of how do you build up and strengthen your psyche so you can lift more,

You can be more resilient,

You can do more reps,

It's like these are my opportunities to lift weights.

In my day-to-day challenges,

Yeah,

There's some hard things.

I take on challenges.

I do hard things intentionally as a lifestyle thing.

Obviously I like combat sports and lifting weights.

I enjoy it,

But they're not that hard.

They're certainly not that hard on my psyche.

They make me feel good,

But once in a while it is of one's benefit.

It's an opportunity for growth to deal with uncomfortable sensations.

This kind of hard time for me,

It's a different type of hard man,

Hard in the sense of yeah,

It's been connecting me to my spirituality,

Connecting me to my core,

What I really think is right and wrong,

What is really the right course of action.

Whether or not someone says this or agrees or not.

Honestly,

The fact that the range of opinions about this situation,

About one taste in general in the documentary is so wide.

There's people who I know and like and respect who are intelligent in my eyes who want everyone to go to jail,

Who want the worst things to happen to the people at one taste.

Maybe they've been victimized themselves or they are friends with people who have been harmed and they just want shit to happen.

Then there's the other side of people who I also love and respect who I think are intelligent who want to absolve one taste of all wrongdoings and in a sense sometimes blame the people harmed.

Anyway,

It's a very wide spectrum.

There's so many ways to abstract the same events.

Not to say that I'm actually correct.

I look at this and I see this end,

I see this end and I think I'm the moderate,

But I might be an extreme to someone else and that's just how it is too.

I'm open to having life show me where I'm in line or not in line with reality.

It's a funny thing.

Some last thoughts.

Since leaving one taste,

There definitely have been moments where I have missed it to be honest.

It was a very fun time.

It was a chaotic time in my life,

A time of rapid.

It just felt like a light acid trip at all times.

So much life was happening condensed in such a short space.

I was just speaking to a friend,

Another uncomfortable conversation,

But she has what I think is a very healthy view on things of like it was a weird social experiment that a bunch of us got wrapped up in and some things happened that weren't so great,

But a lot of things happened that were great and we have our ways of dealing with it or not.

But I also miss the community and I miss kind of like this level of realness to be honest,

Like where you're like really going into the shit with people.

It's funny,

Here I am kind of feeling like I'm in one taste again where I'm having a lot of difficult conversations with people.

We're really going deep into things where there's plenty of uncomfortable feelings.

There's also some gamesmanship.

I don't know exactly who's on whose team or who's trying to elicit reactions.

If you caught my episodes on my one taste time,

My time in the matriarchal cult,

One of the things I loved as someone who loves the intricacies of human dynamics and how people perceive reality and play off of each other,

Man,

One taste was like the most fun when it comes to gamesmanship and the most learning of like everything had a subcommunication where you had to unpack it and see is like is this,

You know,

This person has good intentions and this is true,

But they're also like kind of embedding this thing to get me to do for their own purposes and which one,

You know,

You're balancing things and you're trying to piece together who's talking to whom and who's scheming on whom and who's colluding to kind of form a certain reality so that you get to do something.

It can be exhausting and it does consume your life if you play that game,

Kind of what made it a cult,

But it was also so fun,

Right?

And here I am kind of involuntarily thrown into this shit again where like I'm between one taste and Netflix between,

You know,

X1 tasters and out the outrage public.

I'm sure will come out.

I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of hate mail from random people about that because of my positive defenses.

I mean not defenses,

But my positive things.

Yeah,

And you know,

And all of this shit,

All of the storm outside again,

It just forces you to get real with Russia.

I would say it is a strong opportunity to get real with yourself.

We could call it your spirituality of what is actually true.

Where is your backbone?

And I will say while the temptations have been strong to avoid to turn off my phone to maybe hide that that one hasn't been that strong,

But that's also the temptation to bypass and any of these things,

You know,

In this situation,

Maybe the material bypass,

If you will wasn't so tempting.

But as I said,

You know,

I'm a human being.

I can be tempted by things like money and whatever security and blah blah blah.

Anyways,

Now I am rambling last thing just to put a cherry on top just a piece of news for anyone not involved in one taste or knows nothing of this just for your own enjoyment of the story.

It seems like over the last couple years one taste their legal teams.

Their media teams have been working on a counter offensive has been called by a few people to relaunch.

I guess last,

You know,

This week they did a live orgasm demonstration in New York City,

Which they haven't done in many years.

They have a new manifesto.

It seems like they're taking like a social justice bent.

Perhaps,

You know,

Maybe it's organic from the founder,

Nicole.

Maybe it's maybe it's just like a rebranding of the cult looking at the outrage market trying to get them on their side of like we're,

You know,

We're defending women against toxic masculinity something like that.

I don't know exactly but the story continues.

I thought you know the events of my book were over in 2015 and I've been in pieces,

You know,

It's taken me a long time to really get my head around how to correctly or best interpret the events.

But yeah,

The story continues.

Maybe my book is going to have another hundred pages now because who knows what's going to happen and with that I will leave you with principles of the anabolic psyche building strength of soul.

I hope my story of right now is useful to those who maybe have nothing to do with it as well principles of physiological toughness the basics the material the hard stuff of being with sensation and choosing courage over a little bitches and the hardest part which is correct abstraction truth and consequences choosing Fidelity over spiritual or material bypasses and with that I say goodbye but also check out my sub stack.

It'll be in the show notes the link.

All right.

Bye.