Ego, Ayahuasca, and the Quest for Authenticity

What happens when the death of a loved one propels you into a lifelong journey of spiritual awakening? Join us as Michael Peterson, a multifaceted sound healer, Mesa holder, and coach, recounts his path that began at the age of 14 after his father's tragic suicide. This episode of the Lift One Self podcast explores the profound impact of home comforts, starting with the simple yet significant arrival of a new couch, and how grounding ourselves can set the stage for self-discovery. Through meditation and intentional breathing exercises, we navigate the complexities of Michael's evolving identity and the continuous quest for authenticity.

Venture with us through Michael's privileged upbringing, existential dilemmas, and transformative experiences. Learn how his studies in existentialism and experiments with psychedelics led to a life-changing journey in Guatemala, where he found his true calling. From the Peace Corps to ayahuasca ceremonies, Michael shares insights on developing a healthy ego before attempting transcendence, emphasizing the need to integrate our spiritual and human sides. Understand the relentless effort required to dissolve limiting beliefs, while embracing the entire spectrum of the human experience.

Our conversation takes a deeper turn as we discuss radical honesty and the wisdom of the body, focusing on treating it with the respect it deserves. Michael opens up about the emotional intensity of ayahuasca and its role in healing, advocating for play and laughter as vital elements in personal growth. We address the challenge of reparenting oneself to break generational cycles, and the transformative potential of changing our stories. Concluding with a calming reflective exercise, we invite you to embrace a sense of okayness and touch the highest destinies of all involved.

Find out more about Michael Peterson here:
https://alchemyshift.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Grounding and Growth in Self-Care
• 8:21 Journey of Self-Discovery and Integration
• 21:10 Honoring the Body's Wisdom
• 27:05 Embracing Play in Personal Growth
• 35:19 Navigating Healing and Transformation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, Hi Michael.

Speaker 2: 0:03

How's it going?

Speaker 1: 0:04

It's going great and you.

Speaker 2: 0:07

I'm doing well. We finally had a couch delivered after a very long period of waiting, so it's helping us ground into our space and have a little bit more ease in our life.

Speaker 1: 0:20

Yeah, A couch makes a total difference, so that you can really just. You know it's comfort and it's being able to connect in all these different things. We don't realize how convenient a coach is.

Speaker 2: 0:37

It is. It's literally something that facilitates a feeling of being at home, and I don't know about you, but I love that feeling.

Speaker 1: 0:47

Yeah, me too. Anything that will give calm to my body and just feel at ease and have soothing yeah, and excitement. Because that's home too. It's not just always like peace and relaxful. It's like I can be myself and not have to worry about anything. That's home too. It's not just always like peace and relax. Well, it's like I can be myself and not have to worry about anything and just let let all the mass and the garments fall off and just be whatever that is.

Speaker 1: 1:15

Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast where we break mental health stigmas through conversations. I'm your host, nat Nat, and we dive into topics about trauma and how it impacts the nervous system. Yet we don't just leave you there. We share insights and tools of self-care, meditation and growth that help you be curious about your own biology. Your presence matters. Please like and subscribe to our podcast. Help our community grow. Let's get into this. Oh, and please remember to be kind to yourself. Welcome to the Lift when Self podcast. Michael, I'm so thankful you're here with me.

Speaker 2: 1:56

Thank you for having me on. I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:59

Will you join me in a meditation so we can ground ourselves in our breath?

Speaker 2: 2:04

I would absolutely love to.

Speaker 1: 2:07

And for the listeners. As you always hear, most times you're listening to this podcast while driving or needing your visual, so please don't close your eyes. I want you to be safe, as well as everybody else around you. Yeah, you can use the prompts in whatever activity you're doing. The only disclaimer I give is if there's too much relaxation, then you know forward over to the conversation. Yet you can come back when you have time to really feel that deep relaxation and have that mindful moment with yourself.

Speaker 1: 2:39

So, michael, I'll ask you to get comfortable in your seat and you're going to gently close your eyes and you're going to begin breathing in and out through your nose and you're going to bring your awareness to watching your breath go in and out. You're not going to try and control your breath, just going to keep your awareness on watching it go in and out, being aware of its rhythm. There may be some sensations or feelings coming up. Let them come up. You're safe to feel. You're safe to let go. Surrender the need to control, release the need to resist and just be. Be with your breath, drop into your body, continue staying with your breath. If there was any thoughts or memories that brought you into it, it's okay. Just bring your awareness back to your breath. Continue staying with your breath.

Speaker 1: 4:28

Now, michael, I'm going to ask you in your mind to create an intention you want to bring in this conversation for the listeners and for ourselves. And when you've created that intention, I'll ask you to release it in your mind, allowing it to drop down into your nervous system. Allowing it to drop down into your nervous system, down your neck, through your throat, down into your chest, filling your heart, filling your lungs, down into your abdomen, into your stomach, into your life force, while still staying with your breath, and dropping deeper into the body. Still staying with the breath, allowing that intention to surround your energy force, staying with the breath at your own time and at your own pace. You're going to gently open your eyes while still staying with the breath. How is your heart doing?

Speaker 2: 5:56

it's lovely.

Speaker 1: 5:57

It's very steady and grounded and consistent you let the listeners know who Michael is.

Speaker 2: 6:04

Michael is a mystery even to himself and in his exploration of his own mystery. He is all about authenticity, and he is a trained Mesa holder for a mestizo plant medicine lineage. He is a sound healer. He is any number of labels that you want to put or project onto him. He's happy to wear those hats. He's a coach and a guide and, at the end of the day, he is at least right now, a human, and so my experience is just that. It's how do we work skillfully with being human and coming into deeper relationship with ourselves and all of our complexities in a way that is authentic to our being?

Speaker 1: 6:57

Beautifully said, there's the know thyself, yet we're such a complex being that there's no way to know all of you all at one time, because there's so many different things that are going on and places that we hide. So the mystery is always there of oh, what's going to pop up now, or what is going to be experienced now, or also, with life and life's impermanence and experiences, of how are we going to show up with this experience, and you know it takes a journey to come to that space. So I want to bring it back to how did it all begin? How did you start this awakening or this spiritual path that you're embarking on and holding space for others?

Speaker 2: 7:45

So I would say that my journey really began when I was consciously 14 years old and my father committed suicide, and I was at this point in life where you're entering into the teenage years in full force and I was going through confirmation at the church that I was attending and there was this moment after he died where I just had to pause because that blew up everything. I was like what is the purpose of all of this? And I was going to a relatively bougie private school at that point in time as well, and so I'd been immersed in status and society and all of the different masks that people wear. And from 14 onwards, I was trying to play two roles. I was trying to figure out who I was and kind of what the purpose of my life was, and within that I studied existentialism and a few different philosophical rabbit holes and started experimenting in psychedelic substances and altered states of consciousness. And at the other hand, I was also trying to make the ghost of my dad happy and to take all of those stories that I didn't know were true but that I felt the burden of, and try to ironically shed them by solidifying them, and try to ironically shed them by solidifying them. It was like if I can make sure that I check all of these boxes, then I can finally not have to worry about continuing to check these boxes. And so it was a very interesting time and that got me really from 14 through 28 and all the way through graduate school.

Speaker 2: 9:46

And when I was leaving grad school I was looking around and people were getting great jobs that paid decent money, that had status, and I realized that it wasn't going to make me happy and my body was a wreck. I mean, if your listeners don't know, an MBA program is essentially one giant networking event and there's a lot of free alcohol offer, there's a lot of stress in terms of staying up late and studying and then doing all the human portions and building your social network, and I was tired, and so I had this plan to join the Peace Corps and all these other things, and I had the six month gap and I said what am I going to do during that gap? And I wanted to take care of my body, get better at Spanish and delve into some sort of spiritual practice that was a little bit more robust, and so I ended up going down to Guatemala where I could practice Spanish. They speak lovely slow Spanish and it's a great place to learn. I did a yoga teacher training. I studied natural building and permaculture yoga teacher training. I studied natural building and permaculture, and I also had my first ayahuasca ceremony right when I arrived.

Speaker 2: 11:10

And as soon as I got through that first retreat I changed my entire schedule. I attended as many ceremonies as I could and I still ended up joining the Peace Corps after six months of ceremonial work and all these other things. And the Peace Corps was its own journey for the short time that I was there, but for a variety of reasons it wasn't the right fit, and so I had to finally let go of all of these stories and I quit. I came home and my mom asked me what I was going to be doing with my two master's degrees and I said I'm going to move back down to the jungle to study plant medicine full time. And that was the start of the next chapter of my life, which involved lots of ceremony, dieta, working in ceremonial spaces and ended up leading me towards energy work and coaching and all of these other fun things that are coalescing together now. So it started as a personal journey and then somewhere in the middle of that, it became about helping others go through their journeys.

Speaker 1: 12:22

I love the part where you mentioned about the ayahuasca and you still continue with the Peace Corps and then realized wait, this isn't there. So recognizing that there were still some belief systems and core values that were there that needed to dissolve. And unfortunately, sometimes people have the narrative if I take an ayahuasca ceremony, everything will be okay and it'll be blissful and my nervous system will be rewired and all this stuff will be gone and it's like you'll get the epiphany. Yet you have to come back into your body and do the work to dissolve these things and engage with yourself in real time, not in the euphoria of not being, you know, going, because how I define it and how I've experienced it is the Igor is the defense mechanisms of the nervous system not allowing you to go into vulnerability and more profound, and so it keeps coming back up, blocking you. Yet the work is to dissolve these belief systems so it doesn't get activated as a gatekeeper of you. Can't go beyond this. This is your safekeeping.

Speaker 2: 13:36

I like that definition of the ego, if I may modify it a little bit in my own words, because we do have to dissolve these stories. When you're looking at the landscape of all the spiritual teachings, most of them end up saying you must move beyond your ego. So that's 100% true in my experience. I'm still working on that and you also have to. In my experience, it is also imperative to develop a healthy ego before starting to let it go. So it depends on where people are at, because if you are saying, wow, I just want to dissolve all these stories, and if I drink some ayahuasca, I'm going to let go of all these things, sure, maybe Magic happens. It's beautiful, and the homework is embodying those lessons. And sometimes that lesson is self-empowerment, understanding who you are working to, actually develop a sense of self-esteem. That is very different than oh, now I don't have to worry about everything, because that's a great way to fall into a spiritual bypassing trap.

Speaker 1: 14:49

And when I say the ego and the defense mechanism, I am not one about kill the ego and just die and it's like, why would you? It's all about integration, like everybody wants, like the let go is let go of the protection of the defense mechanisms of the ego and be one with the spiritual and the human side. So it's blending the two, not one or the other. Because I think a lot of people go into ayahuasca that I'm just going to be spiritual and I'm not going to feel anything and I'm like well, that's a little bit of disassociation and you're not wanting to feel the curriculum that you were here for. Like the human experience is brutal, it's challenging and it's joyful and it's beautiful and it's ugly and it's a plethora of things. Work is how I've simplified. It is safety for your nervous system is how I've simplified. It is safety for your nervous system. So you have to start learning. You are that safety because we tend to go outwardly to look for that safety and you need that at the beginning to co-regulate, to better understand yourself and have that mirror so that you can look at yourself. You need radical honesty to face yourself because we've splintered into shadows and it's like integrate. Come on, we're all accepted, let's go. So we're whole with a W, no longer wholes with an H. And then it's feeling and feeling our authentic emotions, not the secondary, not the ones that we try to protect. It's what are the authentic and allow them to be released somatically out of your body and hear the messages. And when you feel them, it doesn't mean that they're not going to come back and visit. It's just that you're not closing the door on them and freaking out and trying to run away from them. You've created a toolkit to be able to process and have grace and radical compassion for yourself, because the one thing life is impermanent. It's going to change all the time. So right now, today, in this moment, nat, nat's okay, she's all great. Two minutes from now, one of the twins could do something that just rattles me up and I have to come back to. Could do something that just rattles me up and I have to come back to.

Speaker 1: 17:08

You know, and that's what a healthy nervous system is. So when people don't fear it, well, if you want to come back into your intuition, you're going to feel fear because curiosity is going to bring you into the unknown, the uncertainty. Your nervous system is going to get activated. Do I need to protect you, to keep you back from going into these spaces? And then you recognize like, oh no, I can ride this energy of fear and move forward into this unknown and uncertainty.

Speaker 1: 17:34

Yet it takes, you know, time with yourself to better understand all these belief systems and definitions that you've created. And I love that you've explained that in your story, because a lot of times people are giving this persona of oh yeah, I had it all together and it's like, oh well, I know my journey has been messy and I know it will continue to be messy, because to know all of myself is not possible in a lifetime, yet it's always where am I? What am I feeling and facing? It's facing and no longer numbing and denying, and having radical compassion and acceptance of the messiness of it.

Speaker 2: 18:18

Well said, I have nothing to add. Everybody, your journey is complete. Congratulations. You're a messy human. It is what it is.

Speaker 1: 18:26

And it's just navigating in this worldly world of, because I understand that people are like okay, to be authentic, you know, I'm just going to be me. Yeah, you have to human with other people, that's like.

Speaker 2: 18:41

So being you is I think I cut off your point and I'm sorry, but being you is a complex thing because, as you are peopling with other people we are in community there's going to be two parts of you that are both accurate and they're in conflict with each other. You talk to almost any married person that you meet and there's a part of them that loves being in their marriage. They love being with their best friend and all the challenges and growth. And then there's the other part that's like man. This is hard and sometimes I don't want to be around this person and I wish I could just go off and do all these things. Both of those are absolutely part of what makes that person whole.

Speaker 2: 19:24

And so when you're saying, my framework that I've kind of come up with for me is we all just want to be real and in the same way that the work for you is about the relaxed nervous system and being able to navigate, integration is embodiment. That's my definition of integration. It's coming back to the wholeness, but not just mentally, to embody all of that. And my definition of real is that you're relaxed, you're engaged, you're authentic and you're loving R-E-A-L and you're loving R-E-A-L and when you're navigating that terrain and the paradox of being human. Well, how can I be relaxed and engaged at the same time? How can I be authentic when I'm pissed off or angry or sad and also be loving through that? What does it mean to be loving in the first place?

Speaker 2: 20:28

If we can engage with that process of being real, of being authentic, it's going to take us time to recalibrate to the moment, and sometimes me being real is allowing the projections, allowing everything and holding them. And I am facilitating space and it is okay and I'm being patient and open and we're navigating through things slowly, and sometimes me being real is I'm tired of this BS. Can we get straight to the point? Are you ready for it? And there is one other thing that you said about. You know we have to face ourselves.

Speaker 1: 21:10

Radical honesty.

Speaker 2: 21:12

And part of radical honesty, because I think there can be this weight of like. Well, I always have to be honest with myself and I always have to be perfect. If I'm being radically honest, it's like no, but if you're not looking at something, can you be radically honest with yourself that you are choosing to not look at it? And what are the consequences of that? How is that playing out? Are you willing to own that? Because unless we all are, then it's really hard to say well, I'm doing this behavior, it's having this negative impact, but I'm not wanting to look at that behavior, so I have to be okay with the result.

Speaker 2: 21:53

Most of the time, we don't care about our behaviors. We care about the result of our behaviors and we try to find the shortest way to get there. But it's that tiny little drop that has all these little ripples that come out from it and the water of our consciousness. And so how is that one little thing interconnected? And can you approach that journey of watching, discovering and feeling all of that with a little bit of love to ourselves?

Speaker 2: 22:22

And what I love about ayahuasca and mother ayahuasca or grandmother ayahuasca it's like you know, sometimes your mom is very loving and she can wrap your arms around you and give you a hug and tell you everything's going to be all right and you've never felt more safe and connected in your life. And other times your mom smacks you up the side of your head and says, hey, I love you and you've got to do your homework. So people who are coming into ayahuasca and say I don't want to feel, ayahuasca is one of the most somatic, intense feeling exercises that you can go through. You are, if nothing else happens. I can promise you you are going to feel. I can't promise you visions, I can't promise you that you're going to be an enlightened being afterwards, but I can promise you that you're going to feel some shit and it's going to move through and that through the feeling, through relaxing, allowing ourselves to feel, energy is able to flow through blockages are able to clear and the body is able to do what it does so intelligently, which is heal.

Speaker 1: 23:37

I give a definition of process your shit, Because every garden needs manure and every so often you need to process the shit, because there's shit that you experienced or you went through and we don't give time for a moment to feel our emotions, to feel what the experience was. We just go to the next. Go to the next and shove it in the junk drawer. Shove it in the junk drawer. At a certain point the junk drawer can't hold it anymore, which is your body, and then things start to happen. You get fatigued or depression or illnesses start coming, because the body's like I need to feel and release. You're not allowing this process and so let me just take some more things just to keep going, because I'm annoyed with you. Rather than wait a minute, Let me honor you to find out what is it that possibly that's in my lifestyle that's draining energy also, that I'm not able to face these things, that they're too overwhelming. Yet I don't even realize I can give my permission to no longer engage in these things.

Speaker 2: 24:37

It's layers of the onion right you start where you're at. You peel back a layer, there's another one, there's another one and we have these stories that are deep, they're somatic, they're beyond words and they're not just these mental constructs as we've psychologicalized everything in the Western hemisphere at least. They are mythological, they're energetic, they're part of the unseen animate world and unless we slowly learn how to engage with that, we're not engaging with everything that we are and I don't know, with everything that you said. There's just one thing that I want to invite all of your listeners to do right now, which is, please don't treat your body like a junk drawer. It body like a junk drawer. It can have a junk drawer it generally does. It's very intelligent but your body, it's your home. It's the home for your consciousness here on earth.

Speaker 2: 25:37

And before we started this recording it's funny we were talking about I just got a couch, and how much a couch can make you feel like you're at home. If your relationship with your body isn't well furnished, with different techniques and ways of relating and different pockets that you can sit into. You're going to be constantly pressing the eject button from your body, and your body is smarter than your mind. It's just that it's a different form of intelligence, but one of the things that ayahuasca can help us do as much as the stories are about the light show and going to far off planets and seeing past lives or whatever your visions are happening it helps bring us into our body and allows us to unlock our body's wisdom. And then it takes practice, and my path involved doing a lot of practice with ayahuasca, but also with other dietas and other plants, to help clear out these pathways. And even then there's still things that get stuck, and finding other techniques and things to help clean and then realizing that I'm so addicted to cleaning that I can't just be all of it's part of the process.

Speaker 2: 26:55

That helps get us to the point of figuring out how we want to relate to our body. It's important to clean it out energetically, mentally, emotionally. It's also important. You know, if youvigilant about any dirt or dust ever getting into your house, it sucks to live there. You're like I just came outside, I want to play, I want to feel at home. So how can we relate to our bodies in a way that is tending to our homes? We want to live there. We got to have some fun there. Get some dirt on the carpet or the floor or whatever it may be, and then figure out how to clean it up so that you're not living in a pigsty all the time.

Speaker 1: 27:37

You want a lived home, not a showcase home.

Speaker 2: 27:40

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:41

Not a sterile home, because play is really necessary to navigate this journey. Can you imagine this journey without being playful? Yeah, not a sterile home, because play is really necessary to navigate this journey.

Speaker 2: 27:47

Can you imagine this journey without being playful? No, it's like. That sounds so miserable.

Speaker 1: 27:55

I'm like, no, no, and I think we've been conditioned to take certain aspects seriously and our nervous system gets rigid. So then we get this rigidness and tension where it's like play allows that openness and being palatable and flowing. So it's like, oh, wait, what? And again it comes to feeling, because if there's an emotion that you haven't engaged with, your system will want to push it back down. So, like you explained, that conflict that goes on.

Speaker 1: 28:30

There's two parts into you where people are like that doesn't make sense, that my nervous system is trying to protect me, but the two are like fighting against each other, but it's all one. And I'm like, yeah, that's why it's so complex and it's you are the person to bring that harmony in that so that you can feel your body's, that conduit. Yet if you haven't been given a sacred space to feel your emotions, without judgment, without positivity and changing it a different way or rationalizing with it, it's very difficult to do those somatic releases. And that's why you know I'm thankful for these plant medicines and other modalities that are there to help people in the process. Yet it's messy in this and you need play, you need some laughter in this, because laughter is another way of somatically releasing the things that are going on in your body and your experiences, and towards yourself.

Speaker 2: 29:32

Laugh, to cry, to rejoice, to scream, to dance, to stop. I mean, it's just so funny to me. My mom is a Christian scientist and, without going into the full depth of Christian science as its own thing, they do prayer healing and energy healing and all these things, but they have this goal. They can have this goal which is to translate, which is their term for leaving the body and going on and becoming just pure spirit. And I'm not anti-translation or anti-getting to that enlightenment and just you go, do your thing right. But I'm pretty sure at some point in my life I have taken the Bodhisattva vow of Al, and so I'm just here to keep on coming back and back, because for me there's this dynamic of if we start the journey to get to know ourselves as spirit, so rather, if we get, if we start the journey to get to know God, spirit, the mystery, with the intention of wanting to escape I'd love to have a relationship with you, so that I can not be in a relationship with you. It just doesn't make sense, and so we have to start with I want to be here. We have to choose to engage with life and as soon as we make that choice, which is the fundamental choice of being human in terms of how our lives will go. Are we engaged with life or are we not engaged with life? It's happening one way or the other. As soon as we choose to engage with life, then we get to ask the questions of how do I want to engage? What does it mean to engage? That's when it becomes fun, that's when it becomes this play and this puzzle. And we can do. You know, if you like your human optimization approach, you can do that. And if you like your, I'm just weird and I'm going to play and do contact improv and have less structure. That's great too.

Speaker 2: 31:40

But we have to move past this blockage of being so traumatized by being alive that we would rather not, because it doesn't feel like there's space for us. And I think that's structural and it's societal and it's systematic, because there's this deep void that says you will operate in one of these pre-allocated lines. And then you go and you look in the damn mirror and you say there's nobody. Even if you've got a twin, there's nobody who is you. And so there is your gift. You have already been given a path which is to be you, and you get to choose and play and learn how to operate in all the other chaos. But there is the option to allow yourself to be authentic and figure out what that means and take that journey and it's so beautiful and you can blossom and you can give yourself the nutrients that you need or figure out how to adapt and find new, really cool ways.

Speaker 2: 32:48

It's part of being human to adapt, adapting or you can wither and kind of sit there and feel stagnant, and I've done both. Sometimes I still do both, but you, it's this process and it's a journey, and I'm always intrigued by what kind of scratches or tickles people into action to choose. And sometimes it's just being uncomfortable enough for long enough that eventually something breaks that tickle and it's like I don't even know why, but something wants to change. Maybe that leads you to plant medicine and then it takes the veil off of some things. Maybe it leads you to yoga or to qigong or to some other sort of spiritual practice, but as long as that practice is rooted in kind of this core principle of getting to know the mystery that is you and that brings up, like the Ramana Maharshi question of who am I? Who am I? Who am I? You keep asking yourself that question. Over time, something's going to shift.

Speaker 1: 33:55

The wisdom will come flowing through. It'll be a geyser. I want to be aware because I just really felt your father's presence when you were just speaking just now. Cool, hey, dad. For any listener that may be listening and that has suicidal ideation and that is in that space, that they're just in a dark space and stuck. Do you have any words for them?

Speaker 2: 34:21

Find some sort of hope, a small thing, and maybe that hope comes in the form of it's okay to not know. It's okay to not feel great about being you. It's okay to feel guilt, shame, anger, denial, separation, repression. It's okay. I would say that you are a gift, you are sacred and it is imperative to the world that you blossom. And some of us go very, very deep into the soil before we're able to plant our roots, and that's great, because the journey from that depth allows us to be so much more rooted when we come out that we can go quite high. It just takes time.

Speaker 1: 35:17

Thank you for that. I'm always mindful of the energies and who may be listening and the vibration, because we're here right now but everything is in the moment. So recognizing that they're feeling that same vibration and opening up that space where, recognizing that they are the light, that darkness that they're in, that they just haven't seen that they are that light and their light of awareness is to shine.

Speaker 2: 35:49

Shadows aren't possible without light. It's just part of the deal, and anybody who's picking up on those subtle energies that are out there? My first ayahuasca ceremony nothing happened. My second ayahuasca ceremony nothing happened. I was frustrated. I was like what is going on? I've done other psychedelics before. I know what shifts feel like. Third ceremony was when I popped and there was this moment where I was dancing and playing and, yes, the heavy energy of my dad came in and I was like I can hold this and dance. And then it just kept on getting heavier and heavier, and heavier until I had to say I can't hold this anymore and then it washed away.

Speaker 2: 36:35

Fast forward, you know, however, many months to a year later I was in a different ceremony. It was around the time of my dad's death. I had processed a bunch of things, changed all my relationship. Why is this energy still so damn heavy, like? I was like, hey, dad, why are you so what? And a teacher of mine looked at me and she was like. She said, if that energy wasn't so heavy, would you have recognized it as your dad? And the answer was was no. And so in that moment I got to go and explore what were those happy moments. I was like I remembered the smell of grass before a soccer game, that where my dad was the coach. It was these tiny little things. And so now for me, when those energies show up, that's the signal that I get. I get fresh, cut grass and like, ooh, I want to go play a sport or something along those lines. Where's that coming from?

Speaker 2: 37:42

And so we have the ability to change these stories, change our way of relating. If we were stuck with how our parents raised us, we would be screwed y'all. We have the ability to reparent ourselves, and it only takes one generation, it only takes one person, because whatever you change in yourself, yes, you're healing seven generations, and seven generations back and forwards, but, more importantly, let's stick with just one generation backwards and forwards. But, more importantly, let's stick with just one generation backwards and forwards. If you heal yourself, whoever comes after you gets to see both the journey that you've been on, but, more importantly, they get to receive the lessons. And that is such an immediate, beautiful gift. And so, if you can learn to play and practice what I call magic, things shift over time and if you're sitting there with a bunch of really good reasons about why your life is so heavy.

Speaker 2: 38:44

I'm not going to convince you that it's not. That story is real. What would happen if you shifted it? And if you see how attached you are to maintaining that story? This is kind of the hard mom's love that I've learned some ways. Too Well, that attachment is going to be there until you're ready to let it go. And so then ask yourself, how is this story serving me? How contributing to my comfort? Quite frankly, as uncomfortable as it is, this spark is not comfortable. It is not safe. Nothing about transformation is safe to who you currently are, or rather who you currently believe yourself to be. It is extremely safe to your becoming. Where are you going to plant your consciousness?

Speaker 1: 39:30

I want to bring you into a reflective question. I want to ask you to take your awareness right now and go back to your 18-year-old self, and you're able to tell your 18-year-old self three words to bring you to the journey to right now. What would those words be?

Speaker 2: 39:47

This is going to be so simple. It's all okay. Those are the three words.

Speaker 1: 39:53

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:54

There's so much.

Speaker 2: 39:55

In my experience, there was so much stress and anxiety around that point in time.

Speaker 2: 40:04

I also ended up having a kid who we gave up for adoption when I was in high school, and so there was all this fatherhood dynamic going on and like really strong themes of what does it mean to be a man, what does it mean to provide or to be a father, and welcome to the westernized patriarchal god complex of father god instead of mother god. Um, somewhere in between, uh, I was like if I had had somebody in my life who could have just sat with me in a grounded way and told me it's all okay, just to help calm down my nervous system, it wouldn't have meant that there weren't things to change or there wasn't going to be growth. But nobody in my life knew anything about nervous systems or how energy flows or works. It was all very mental, and so there was that mental anxiety and drive and pressure. So I'm just going to tell myself right now it's all okay and from that place I'm able to navigate a lot more smoothly as soon as I know it's all okay, I can engage and that's cool.

Speaker 1: 41:18

It is. Are you willing to share what your intention was in the meditation?

Speaker 2: 41:23

My intention was that whatever comes up in this call, everybody's highest and greatest destiny mine, yours, the listeners, the people that they've touched in their lives, all sentient things, and so I hope it has.

Speaker 1: 41:39

Oh, it has. It has. I'm one of them, so it's touched me. So I'm very thankful for this conversation. I know the listeners now are like okay enough, nat, nat, can you let us know where we can find this person so that we can engage in the delight and energy that he has to offer? So, michael, can you let them know where they can find you?

Speaker 2: 42:00

They can find me at my website, wwwalchemyshiftcom. I have social media but I don't really use it. So if you go there, you'll see early iterations of my brand ideation and all those things, but it's not up to date. On my website you can set up a free call it's called a purposeful path call to just touch base and see the different ways to work together. And if you want to talk about plant medicine integration or if you want to go on a transformational journey using energy work, both of those avenues are there and we have an ayahuasca retreat coming up in Costa Rica in November. That will also involve a lot of dance and singing and meditation and contemplation and time by the water and with sloths. So if that tickles your fancy, check that out too.

Speaker 1: 43:00

And if at any time you had an inclination of I want to reach out, follow that through. Reach out to Michael because our nervous systems feel the safety and the frequency and vibrations and a lot of times we won't listen to those little nudges when those little nudges would actually bring so much opening. So I really encourage any listener at any time through this conversation if you felt that nudge, reach out to Michael, even if it's a simple email and just finding that connection to find another way and another possibility. It's very encouraged. This was a delight. I am so thankful this has been a total delight. Is there anything that you would want to leave the listeners?

Speaker 2: 43:49

I just want the listeners to remember that they are sacred. I just want the listeners to remember that they are sacred and to explore the mystery of how that would change your life if that was something that you knew with every cell and fiber of your being.

Speaker 1: 44:22

I want to thank you for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 1: 44:25

This has been an honestly a delight and I am without words, as you can see.

Speaker 1: 44:34

I'm just just and I hope you can feel my energy of gratitude and playfulness of the warrior work, because it's warrior work and a lot of people think that there will be an arrival and it's like there's no arrival. It's just always the integration and the embodiment and learning more experiences, so that there's that relatability for those that are further on down the path, so that you can show them that it's safe to be on this path. Whatever that path looks like for you, it's still safe and it's possible. And, as your website says, the alchemy that you've done, you've taken the impurities and you've turned them into gold and not only kept it for yourself. You're actually sharing it with others, which in itself is a beautiful, honoring thing that you're doing. And I want to you know, as your father's been here in this conversation, thank him for the energy that he keeps energizing in you with the lived experience that you're showing different possibilities of facing that pain and honoring it and integrating it. So thank you, michael.

Speaker 2: 45:41

It has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me on. This was fun. I love going into these things. Welcome to the portal, everybody.

Speaker 1: 45:50

Exactly. Please remember to be kind to yourself. Portal everybody. Exactly. Please remember to be kind to yourself. Hey, you made it all the way here. I appreciate you and your time. If you found value in this conversation, please share it out. If there was somebody that popped into your mind, take action and share it out with them. It possibly may not be them that will benefit. It's that they know somebody that will benefit from listening to this conversation. So please take action and share out the podcast. You can find us on social media on Facebook, instagram and TikTok under Lift One Self and if you want to inquire about the work that I do and the services that I provide to people.

Speaker 1: 46:36

Come over on my website, Come into a discovery call LiftOneSelfcom. Until next time, please remember to be kind and gentle with yourself. You matter.