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The Smoke Trail, hosted by Smoke Wallin, is a journey into awakening consciousness, weaving authentic stories and deep discussions with inspiring guests to unlock high performance and perfect health. Each episode delves into spirituality, leadership, and transformation, offering tools to transcend trauma and find your bliss along the way. It’s a reflective space for achieving peak potential and inner peace in a distraction-filled world.
Morning prayer. Let me awaken every morning and be thankful for what god has brought me. Let me awaken every morning knowing things are as they are meant to be. Let me awaken every morning knowing life is a journey and I am just a part. Let me awaken every morning knowing the day will bring challenges, opportunities, and learning experiences.
Smoke:Let me awaken every morning with self love and self acceptance so I'm be more I may be more tolerant of myself and others. Let me awaken every morning with an open heart so love may rush in and out like the tide of the mighty ocean. Welcome to The Smoke Trail season two. I took about three months off to finish my manuscript, A Smoke Trail to the Fire Within, to be published hopefully later this year. I'll talk more about that later.
Smoke:But I really love that morning prayer. It's something that I've used over the years that a a great coach once shared with me and one of my groups and thought I would bring it to this conversation even though it's not morning anymore here. I wanna start with reading a short passage from someone who I've really, really grown to respect and have gotten a lot out of, Siri Arbindo. Siri Arbindo wrote a number of things. Probably his most famous is The Life Divine.
Smoke:This is volume two. This passage is from this this this particular book. But Siri was a Arbindo was a fighting for Indian independence back at the turn of the nineteenth century or '19 around 1910 or so, and he got put in jail by the British. And I think they put him in solitary confinement. And while he was in solitary confinement, he became enlightened.
Smoke:He woke up. So when he when he was let out of prison, he dropped the the battle for independence, and he focused entirely on bringing the life divine to life and to teaching many what he had learned. And so this passage, I think, is is pretty powerful. It's a little bit long, but I'm gonna read it, and then I'm gonna talk a little bit about it, and then I'm gonna give you a little preview of what's coming. All spiritual life is in its principle a growth into divine living.
Smoke:It is difficult to fix the frontier where the mental ceases and the divine life begins. For the two project into each other, and there is a long space of their intermingled existence. A great part of this interspace, when the spiritual urge does not turn away from from earth or world altogether, can be seen as the process of a higher life in the making. As the mind and life become illuminated with the light of the spirit, they put on or reflect something of the the divinity, the secret greater reality, and this must increase until the inner space has been crossed and the whole existence is unified in the full light and power of the spiritual principle. But for for the full and perfect fulfillment of the evolutionary urge, the illumination and change must take up and recreate the whole being, mind, life, and body.
Smoke:It must not only an inner experience of the divinity, but a remolding of both the inner and outer existence by its power. It must take form not only in the life of the individual, but as the collective life of the gnostic beings established as the highest power and form of the coming of the spirit in the earth nature. That's a mouthful. Sure. But what Siri Arbindo taught and what his I think he masterfully put into words and his life was, what is our purpose here?
Smoke:Our purpose here is to come in we come in as a spiritual being. We go splat when we're born. We have separation from source, so we forget who we are. So we are we're all spiritual beings with amnesia. And then the process of spiritual awakening is remembering.
Smoke:It's remembering. It's coming back to source. And his big platform or thesis or teaching was it's not just to come back to spirit. It's to bring spirit into the living human form. He calls it the superhuman, and it's really about the awakened, enlightened, awakened human being living in the world.
Smoke:And a lot of his teaching was around just that, not going to an ashram or a cave or a mountain and, you know, meditating all the time and just being one with spirit, which is very laudable, and there's great great beings who have done that. But it's really about bringing the divine into life, hence, the divine life. And I think that's the theme of the Smoke Trail. So this season, it's all about bringing the divine into life. What is that?
Smoke:What am I talking about? What are the tools and methods and different modalities for doing that and how you can embody it? So season one was my first season, and I just kinda started. And I started with a lot of interviews of of friends, and I think we got some amazing content. And I would have to say that in both doing the podcast and writing the book, I learned a lot.
Smoke:So it's one thing reading things. It's one thing experiencing things. And then when you try to articulate the things, you have to learn it. You learn it at a whole different level. And so both in in doing season one and in writing the manuscript, I evolved quite a bit from the first season.
Smoke:So this season is hopefully gonna be a little bit elevated level, and I'm gonna talk a little bit about where we've been and where we're going. And one was 40 episodes. Many many of which were with my friends and people I met along the way talking about these topics. Before I get into what we covered, I wanna cover one tool that I used extensively in the book that I think is a helpful tool for anyone on a spiritual journey trying to figure out what are we talking about and how do we think about it. And it's a tool that comes out of, I learned it in YPO, but it it's a, I think, a widely used tool called the Johari Window that is used extensively, I think, in coaching.
Smoke:But I expanded its use extensively in my book to really use it as a as a lens or framing to understand what we're talking about when we talk about consciousness. So the Jahari window has four quadrants. There's an open quadrant which is things that are known to you, to self, and known to others. So those are like the things we all know about each other. And then there's the hidden quadrant.
Smoke:That's things I know about me, but you don't know about me. There's the things that I don't talk about that they're just kind of buried in it. A lot of coaching, you know, gets into how do you share things that, you know, you you normally wouldn't share. And so that's that hidden window. It's hidden to others, but you know it.
Smoke:So when you share it, it helps them share things and it's, you know, creates bonding. Then there's the blind. So it's the things I don't know that other people know about me. So I don't know what those are because I don't know them, but there are things that people know. They can see in how I behave around certain things, around certain things I pursue, the way I react to different things that people can recognize that I don't might not recognize.
Smoke:So those are things that are, like, in my subconscious, in my unaware quadrant that can be brought forth with reflection, with discussions, with talking to other people, with in a safe container where people can share and be feel comfortable telling me things that I maybe not be aware of. Right? That's really useful in a lot of work and a lot of coaching. And then there's the unknown unknown. That's things I don't know and things that you don't know about me.
Smoke:That's really a big part of what shadow work is. It's a combination of kind of both blind spots, but it's the things that no one knows about you or about me. And in doing deep shadow work, in uncovering trauma, in in going deep on things that formed you as a child and and as as we go along and as we grow, the things that created separation that created our ego minds, that's in that fourth quadrant typically. It's the unknown unknown. It's early trauma, never accessed, and it's it's the thing we're all potentially afraid of or things that you you think you build up in your mind that you don't want to get to.
Smoke:But it's really important. Right? It's really important. So both blind spots, the hidden from self, seen by others, and hidden from self, hidden from from your from others too are what we would call things in our subconscious or things that are we are unaware of. When we bring them into the light, we bring them into our awareness, we expand our consciousness.
Smoke:So, Johari Window is a really simple way of thinking about this and I think it's a tool that we can all use. And I use it extensively in the book, and I'll use it throughout the season. So I'll post a picture of this, but it's quite a useful tool. You can read about it. So last season, we had 40 episodes, and they they roughly grouped into five buckets.
Smoke:Consciousness frameworks and healing science. I did some episodes on that myself. I had doctor Michael Brabant, Danny Brooks, Yvonne Redos, Susan Hassan, Quantum Healer, doctor Jerry, and Liv Fish that we all talked about those topics. We talked about awakening stories and all these kinda crossovers. So these are kind of my categorization, but some of the some of the discussions crossed over into multiple categories.
Smoke:We had awakening stories with business leaders, Sarah Frailing, Jack Maxwell, the great actor, Justin Breen, whose new book is now out, Zaneeb Elouzani, a great tennis player, YPOR. Rob Falo is my partner. We did a great episode in Nepal. Rob Herzov, my good friend from South Africa. Andrew Lobo, my business school classmate and and dear friend.
Smoke:Seth Streeter, YPO forum or chapter member of mine, and who's on his own journey. Jeremiah Boucher, who I think did we had a great episode talking about his journey, really successful real estate guy, and Jeff Brothers, who's doing a ton of work with San Pedro, Huachuma. I think he's gonna be the largest grower of Huachuma in The US with his latest work, so really doing cool stuff. We did a bunch of work around purpose, service, and kinda what we're calling the second mountain, like, what's the next big thing beyond success? Shereen Haviz with her deaf kids code.
Smoke:I I really love what she's doing. Elizabeth Funk, who I have the utmost respect for, who is our fearless leader at Dignity Moves, helping thousands of unsheltered homeless get off the streets, and that's growing like crazy. We'll talk more about that this season. Robert Vera, who is doing so does great work with young entrepreneurs at Grand Canyon University, and now he's over at in Silicon Valley doing doing it on a larger platform. John Diatoma, my good friend who started Sacred helping families and children in sexually abused situations.
Smoke:I'm on that board, and we we're helping kids and families every week. And Kamal Ravakant, who wrote love yourself book, great VC, and he's got a great message that is super powerful. Then we also talked about spiritual discernment and navigation. I have my dad, Luke Wallin, on. I had Steve Hershberger, Chris Clemens.
Smoke:We had a great episode talking about his journey. Mark Walker, Sarah Alcady, who's the who's the alchemist on YouTube and has a show on Gaia. We had a a great conversation. She's awesome. She helped me a lot.
Smoke:I did a number of solo episodes, one on denial of evil. It's a good one if you wanna understand what's going on and have discernment. Janet Crowley, who wrote the eagle and the condor, and she's got her own spiritual lane, which is awesome. And then I did another episode on the false light. And then practical tools and solo teaching.
Smoke:I had a number of q and a sessions where I answered audience questions. I had Dave Garrison on who's got his book out, and we had a great conversation. I did a episode on trajectory, how you start your day, kind of practical tools about that. I did a solo episode on empathy versus compassion, and I did a solo episode on health. Again, these all crossover.
Smoke:We talk about a lot of these topics. But, anyway, we we actually covered a lot of ground. And I would say that it wasn't all planned. Like, I just kind of asked people who I thought would be have a great conversation. I respect their journey, and I had them on.
Smoke:And so it came in whatever order it came, and I think we we covered a lot of ground. My story, The Smoke Trail, even though it's called The Smoke Trail and I'm Smoke, is really a a human journey. It's not about me. It's about people, and it's about how the journey that we all go through from being born in this realm and forgetting, having amnesia of our spiritual who we are and remembering and how we get back there and the things we can do there. So I'm called to you know, I'm pursuing my own journey, so I'm actively doing work all the time.
Smoke:Anitra did not think I should smoke a cigar on this podcast, but I said, it's my podcast. So that's what we're doing. And it's the journey it's the human journey. It's the human dilemma. And so I'm called to share the learnings I've gained through the work I've done and also help give a platform for others who have other learnings so that we're can learn together.
Smoke:And so everything I do is about helping you wake up and figure out how you can get back to divinity in one shape, one way, or another. We're all gonna get back there, but the mission is to do it while we're living. We're all it it's the idea is how do we embody it, how do we do it while we're still here, while we're humans, while we can still act on the planet. And the more of us that do, the better it is for everyone else. It brings love into the realm, and that's why it's so important.
Smoke:The arc I got for this season is I'm gonna basically go through every section of my book. So we're gonna talk a little bit about awakening. What is that? I do get into quite a bit of the scientific lens of, like, what because it as I went through this, like, what am I even talking about? Which brings psychology and quantum physics, but also just learnings, you know, kind of of it gives a framework for understanding what consciousness is from a more of a logical scientific brain.
Smoke:It was important for me, so it may help you. I went deep on wisdom, the wisdom teachings. So both east and west, I spent a lot of time over the last number of years absorbing deeply the Christian mystics, Meister Eckhart, John of the Cross, Theresa of Avila, The Cloud of Unknowing, a bunch of others that I I feel like are were really helpful in in in understanding. And, also, the Buddha, much of the Buddhist teachings from Hinduism, the Gita, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and other mystics along the way. And then I also got I went down a rabbit hole and went deep into new thought, which was a a big movement mostly in The US, but a big move in in the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds.
Smoke:It's kind of the precursor to the manifest your destiny, the prosperity doctrine, and probably, you know, the the whole, manifestation, you know, the secret kind of stuff. But it's the it's the original thinkers of that. And when I got out of all that wisdom was an understanding of what they were all saying that's in common. There's nuances. There's differences.
Smoke:There's differences in culture. There's differences in translations. There's a lot of a lot of things that you know, it's the phone game when you tell whisper a secret in someone's ear, and it goes around the room. And by the time it gets back to you, it's a different thing. Well, that's what a lot of our ancient teachings turned into because of because of the the the the era, the timing, who wrote it.
Smoke:I mean, a lot of the avatars, the great leaders of the founders of the big religion, which they really weren't the founders. Jesus didn't found Christianity, and Buddha didn't found Buddhism, and and Krishna didn't find found Hinduism, but they were they were founded around their teachings. Right? And humans wrote down stories, wrote down things that they learned from them, and that turned into what were the backbone of these religions. So I got into what is that what what were they all saying?
Smoke:And I found a lot of commonality. I found, like, the same teachings at the core level. So we're gonna talk. We're gonna go into some of that in some depth, and hopefully, that will help you get an understanding of just kind of the landscape, which is something for me, it was it was quite important. And then there's the work, which is what is the work.
Smoke:Right? It's called it the great work, but it's it's it's the shadow work. It's the clearing your subconscious. It's the bringing the things in the Johari window into the known quadrants from the unknown quadrants and not to get rid of them, but to alchemize them. What does that mean?
Smoke:Alchemizing is is kind of a chemistry term that, you know, you change a substance into something else. Well, we do with our trauma and our deep issues of that that created separation for us is as we put our conscious awareness to it, you alchemize it. So, it's no longer painful. It's no longer something that is in your subconscious. It's now you're aware of it and it changes it.
Smoke:It changes the perception of it. And so your context window expands when you do your shadow work. And you have to do the shadow work in order to reach higher levels of consciousness and vibration because you can't hold those levels of consciousness in your human body if you've got these, what I call, emotional energy hairballs stuck inside. So you've got things that are unresolved traumas. They're just energy that couldn't be processed at the time, and so they got stuck inside.
Smoke:So they're like, we would get these hairballs that are stuck inside, and shadow work is about clearing those. And when you clear them, what fills that gap? Well, what clears that gap is god's divine light. It's it's divinity. So it's love, and it fills in the holes where all of those emotional energy hairballs used to stay.
Smoke:And that energy that was stuck and was unavailable to your higher self now becomes part of you, part of your whole ecosystem of energy, and that power goes back to you. You gain your power back when you process this stuff. Some people, I was included, fear greatly looking in their shadows, looking back in their in their past. But I can assure you without a with beyond the shadow of a doubt that it's the greatest thing in the world to do, and it's never as bad as you think it is. It's never as bad as you think it will be to process it.
Smoke:And once you do, you have access to such great joy and peace. And so I'm here to tell you firsthand that, it's the number one thing you you need everyone needs to do is clear your shadows, do your shadow work, and it's so worth it. And the longer you delay it, the longer you're stuck where you are. And then the last section of the book is called living awake, and it's really about purpose, discernment, talk a little bit about sacred geometry, and just what is the fire within. So that's the thing you discover when you've cleared and done your purification and done all the work.
Smoke:So that's kind of the arc. And right now, I've got about 22 episodes that are solo episodes that I'll I'll cover those topics. And then I'll probably have about the same number of episodes with guests along the way. Sometimes on that theme, sometimes on other themes, but it'll be kinda similar to to last season, but just in-depth conversations, people sharing their stories, and how it's helped them. So conversations of leadership and spirituality, that's the lane.
Smoke:Business leaders from across the globe who have realized the higher purpose. We uncover their journeys, what we've learned, how they've overcome trauma, how they reconnected with higher power, source, cosmic heart, universal consciousness, god. So that's the that's the idea. Season one was kind of, like, I would call it discovery. It was me getting my footing as I was going through this, and part of getting my footing was having these conversations with other people in in a public setting, and and it was really helpful.
Smoke:Season two is the map. It's a structured arc. It's got my book now that because I've been able to articulate my journey in a way that I think could be helpful. And each guest brings a lived version of the terrain, the my solo arc is mapping. So we'll we'll try to we'll try to make connect the dots along the way, and I I think it'll be cool.
Smoke:It's very unscripted, deeply vulnerable conversations with CEOs, innovators, spiritual leaders, cultural icons who share their raw journeys of transformation, shadow work, and integrating higher wellness awareness into real world success. Because, again, as Siri Aravinda said in my opening thing was, it's about living the life divine. How do we bring God's love and light into our life and therefore into the world that we live in? And that's the mission here. So just to, I mean, recap.
Smoke:I mean, the first season, you know, we have over 10,000 subscribers. We've had some episodes that have gotten, you know, 50,000 or more views. Haven't done much in the way of promoting. I'll probably do more this year because I'm going to launch the book, and I'm gonna get out and do more speaking. I'm already a YPO resource for speaking, and I've done a number of chapters in the GLC global events.
Smoke:You can see those on my website. And I'm I'm gonna get out and share more of my story and more of what I've learned and how I can be helpful to people out on the public circuit a bit more. So look for that. Share. If you enjoy this, if you get something out of it, I appreciate you, subscribing and liking it.
Smoke:We're on, you know, all the normal podcast stations and, of course, YouTube. So season two is for three people, the analytical skeptic. So the intellectual rigor of predictive processing, Hawkins, three thousand years of wisdom tradition that I'd gone through is designed for you, and the science has to come first. Like, so how do we understand how we experience the world? I'm gonna try to dig into that a bit, my understanding of it.
Smoke:And just a bit of humility here. I keep learning, so I know more than I've ever known before. And I have a, actually, kind of a high grasp of a lot of this stuff, and I know how much I don't know. So the I'm so different than when I started this podcast, and I realized that that's happening all the time. So I'm evolving, and I'm always open to learning new things and learning from other people.
Smoke:So, I'm giving you my understanding as I understand it at the current time, and that will continue to evolve. And I I'm more than happy to make adjustments and make corrections as I go, but I'm giving you my understanding today. Hopefully, that's helpful for the analytical skeptic. The biggest problem we have in today's society is when you have success and you're successful in the material world, whether in the entrepreneurial lane like I have been or in other professions, you have come to rely on your ego mind to be successful. Nothing wrong with that.
Smoke:It's great. It's awesome. But some of this stuff goes beyond the mind. Actually, lot of it. And we it becomes the biggest barrier is your intellect and your mind because you've been successful.
Smoke:It becomes the largest block to getting to the higher realms. And that's certainly my in my case, that's why understanding the mechanics, understanding the science, understanding the traditional teachings gave me gave my mind the permission to relax a bit as I get began to experience higher levels of understanding. And as I did that, I was able to kind of transcend the mind a bit. Right? So it's a lot harder to do that if your mind is putting up arguments against it.
Smoke:So we'll we'll work on that. We'll try to give that that category of person tools and information that their mind wants that will help them get to a point where their mind can relax a little bit so you can transcend that. This is also for the experienced teacher. You know, we're all teaching each other. We're all learning from each other.
Smoke:And, you know, maybe you've done the reading, but you still feel stuck. And, you know, potentially, you there's been some bypassing. You've skipped some of the shadow work. Maybe you have the framework, but you haven't felt the experience. We we'll we'll name that gap exactly and how to how to close it.
Smoke:And then the last is for the leader, I say the leader ready to live. Yeah. I'm done performing, ready for real. I had this vision in one of my meditation plant journeys where I realized that I was Pinocchio. Like, Pinocchio is a real story.
Smoke:That Pinocchio, we're all like this puppet, fake, not pretend boy person until we wake up. And remember Pinocchio when he lies, his nose grows, and he had you know, till he sorts out his his shadows, his shit, he can't experience becoming real, and then he becomes real. And I had this experience literally of going from being Pinocchio to being real. And that's weird maybe, but it's actually what I experienced. And I and I I see now I see that story totally differently.
Smoke:I'm like, oh, that was a lesson. That was teaching us something. So, you know, if you're a leader and you're very successful, but you feel like there's something missing, it may be that you feel a little bit of impostor syndrome or, you know, you're just not you're like, oh, yeah. I do all this stuff. I make a lot of money, but I'm like, something's not sitting right.
Smoke:I sit with some anxiety. I call it the fan that that was going off all the time in the back of my head. It was turned out it was my shadows. It was the things that I had not resolved, and I had to resolve them. You know, we're we're we'll cover a lot of material that can be helpful to that.
Smoke:And it's not your you may not be looking for another framework, but you're looking for the map to actually walk. Like, season two is a complete guide. For my the book is a complete guide. So it's really from first recognition to the fire within. So, hopefully, there's something in there for each of you, and I will do my best to deliver on that.
Smoke:You don't have to believe anything to begin. So if you're here, it's because something struck your interest, and there's a reason for that. And you don't have to believe, and you don't have to accept everything I say. But I would what I would say is, like, put it out there, put it on a put it out there on the table and say, you know, is what Smoke saying makes sense to me? I may you may have resistance upfront.
Smoke:I have some good friends who have expressed resistance to some of the things I've shared with them. But just sit with it. You know, one of the most advanced teachings is to be able to understand and live with paradox. The paradox. So it's you can hold more than one thing in mind.
Smoke:And so, yes, we're in this physical realm. We're we're people. We have plants. I have this beautiful setting here in Sedona. I'm smoking a cigar.
Smoke:I'm gonna go listen to music with Anitra, and my dad is visiting, and we're gonna go have a nice time. That's the physical realm. But there's another realm that we're living in too, and you can hold the two thoughts in mind. It's not one or the other. Yes.
Smoke:We live here, and we have a there's a a much higher realm that we're in that is actually the cause of everything. So our energetic footprint is causing our world to exist, and the things we're experiencing are are manifested by ourselves, whether consciously or unconsciously. And our goal here is to do that more consciously so that you can have a lot more control over things in terms of in manifesting what you really want, what your higher self really wants, and less of the things that are just noise that are being generated because you haven't you haven't done the work. And so having a paradox in holding a paradox in mind is important. It's that both things can be true, and they don't necessarily make sense.
Smoke:You know? It's and they're not mutual they're not mutually exclusive. It's like, you know, it's not one or the other. It's both. And that's a really important teaching.
Smoke:So five things to walk away with. Season one revealed a consistent pattern, the hollow mountain, the trail, the change. This is a human story, not a personal one. I've already said that. Johari Window is our lens.
Smoke:We'll go through that, and use it quite a bit. The Jahari Window is our, you know, kind of our framework that we'll use to do teachings. Every episode moves from something unknown to or blind to something more open that, you know, there'll be a teaching in each one. We'll address the three listeners I I I spoke about, the skeptical, analytical skeptic who needs mechanism first, the experienced seeker by bypassing shadow work, and the leader ready to live differently. And I'll I'll I'll leave you with this.
Smoke:The trail leads to something real. This is not like a Smoke's made up journey. This is the journey of humanity. This is what we're all here for, and I'm on it. I'm not above it.
Smoke:I'm on it with you, and this is about helping you with your journey be as successful as you can be to bring the life divine into real life. That's all I have for the opening episode. I I hope you're interested and excited to journey with me on the trail. I'll get back into now a regular schedule of at least one episode a week. And when I have it, when I have an interview, I may do more than one episode.
Smoke:So that's it. Let me know comments. Send me a note. Let me know if you have questions. I'm always happy to connect.
Smoke:Thank you.