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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.
Welcome to the Smoke Trail hosted by Smoke Wallin. Join Smoke on a unique journey of awakening consciousness, sharing authentic stories and deep discussions with inspiring guests. Explore spirituality, leadership, and transformation, tools to elevate your path.
Smoke:Hi. Smoke here. This is the kickoff of The Smoke Trail. You might ask, what is The Smoke Trail? Well, over the past year, I've been doing little tidbits from the trail, which are little kind of lessons learned and, things, bits of wisdom that I've picked up that I've been sharing and, gotten some good feedback from that.
Smoke:Also been writing a lot of poetry and that to be, the best way for me to communicate, big ideas and and important things. But I felt like it was time to have a more in-depth format where I can explore topics and have guests. So The Smoke Trail is, Smoke's journey, my journey toward awakening consciousness. And along the way, I will talk about a bunch of different topics, and I will have guests on from time to time. So you might ask, like, what made me do this? for many of you that don't know me, some of you that do, you might not know the whole story or the backstory. Great life, four adult children who are now good humans, all living their lives. We've had a lot of fun together and a great life and great wife, even a great ex wife, if you can believe it, and a very varied and colorful entrepreneur career. A lot of success, plenty of challenges. Some of those I'll I'll talk about from time to time.
Smoke:I've been a business leader, a community leader, done a bunch of stuff in not for profits, done a bunch of stuff in government, and really active in a group called YPO, Young Presidents Organization, to the group of CEOs for now. This is my twenty second year. Along the way, you know, everything wasn't perfect and roses as no one's life is. And while I was quite active, I had a lot of physical ailments and things that were coming up. And, I mean, just a a short list.
Smoke:I was in the alcohol industry for many years, and, that was a part of my life. So a lot of drinking. I had, you know, gained a lot of weight, probably had symptoms of metabolic disease. I was suffering from gout, hypoglycemia, high blood pressure, neuropathy in my hands and feet. I had some prediabetic symptoms.
Smoke:I had anxiety and periodic depression, myopia, my vision, erectile dysfunction, insomnia, nightmares, often violent and horrifying, brain fog, claustrophobia, mouth ulcers, inflammation and pain in my joints, you know, kinda chronic inflammation in my, in my ankles, which I had broken both of. Not sick a lot, but periodically getting sick. General fatigue, hemorrhoids, leaky gut. You know? You get the idea.
Smoke:There's more. I keep going. And not to overshare, but just to give insight into little bit of where I was. And I considered myself happy. I considered my life good things, but, who doesn't have issues? generally speaking, I had no complaints, but but I had all those things happening. So I went to Nepal on a business trip, and I got a chance to go visit Buddha's birthplace. And on that day, in this magical place, went into the Japanese temple and nailed down and and went into prayer. And, I was never very spiritual or religious of any in any way, but I follow their lead. And I and I knelt down, and I and I I made a prayer.
Smoke:And what came to me at that moment was I I asked for peace and love. And not love like relationship love, but, like, peace like divine love. And I just had that simple thought, peace and love. And at that moment, I had this unbelievable feeling of electricity that kind of went through the back of my up my spine, into my neck, up through my head, and it was like this rush of electricity. And I was like, woah.
Smoke:What was that? I had no idea what it was, but it was something. And that was it. Just kind of left, and I was like, well, that was really weird. But I had this, you know, strange feeling, but didn't think much of
Smoke:it.
Smoke:And I got back, and a few months later, I got a very close friend invited me to sit with a teacher and and experience, forest or plant medicine. And for the first time. Well, for the first time in this kind of a setting and, asked me if I'd wanna do that, and I said, sure. I said, yeah. And and, my wife, Anitra, was going to be with me, and so we she wanted she was like, yeah.
Smoke:Sure. Let's do it. I'd heard good things about it, and this teacher was extremely well thought of. So went up to Whistler and sat with this teacher, Yvonne. And and he asked me you know, he asked us kind of, like, write down some things that you want out of this, what your intentions are, and I wrote this peace and love.
Smoke:And and then I wrote a whole list of page of, like, you know, all these things for my kids and for my relationships and people and, like, you know, I had a huge list of things. And he looked at the list and he said, that's all nice, but, but you need to focus on you. So it's peace and love is is the the one I want you to focus on. I'm like, okay. Sure.
Smoke:And, at that time, he he looked at me and he said, you know, your your problem is you lack trust. I'm like, what are you talking about? I trust. And he said, no. You don't trust others and you don't trust yourself.
Smoke:I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about, but okay. So that was a momentous moment. We went into this ceremony, and, I had a very in-depth discussion, which at some point I'll talk more about. But the the highlights are that, a whole bunch of things that were in my subconscious and hidden away from me were surf skin surfacing them, it was I kinda had this choice. I had it was during the ceremony that I had this choice of, like, do I wanna keep doing this, or I don't wanna, like, you know, keep this stuff bottled up?
Smoke:And my instinct was go toward it. Like, find out what the heck it is. Like, as soon as things started to come up, like, wait. What is this? Where are these things that I'm not even remembering?
Smoke:And these traumas that that I experienced as a child and, you know, different times during my life and well, I just kept digging, like a like a a a labor, like a birthing. It was probably eight or nine hours of, like, literally writhing writhing in pain and, you know, these things coming up and facing them and kinda clearing them and, I guess, traumatic. It was it was very dark. I I I didn't wanna stop once I knew that there was things I wanted to to dig in and and find out what they were. I didn't really know what any of this meant.
Smoke:The next several months, really, the next year, I went through a tremendous amount of kind of continuing to surface memories, continuing to, you know, kinda come to terms with the things that had come up and profoundly affected me and changed my life for sure. And I knew there was more. So I kept digging, kept digging, kept exploring, kept meditating, kept and and it just opened up a whole world to me of this journey that I'm on today. And I would say if any of you have, experienced, you know, plant medicine experience, you'll know that 95% of the work is not using plant medicine. It's the integration and it's the understanding of what comes up. I'm happy to say that I, absolutely dedicated myself to putting in the work and and digging and and really understandings that I I was experiencing. Then along the way, I also realized I had huge gaps in my knowledge base of what is a spiritual path, what is consciousness. Did not grow up in a religious home environment at the periphery, went to church a bit with grandparents and you know? But I could probably count on my hands and feet the number of times that, you know, we actually did. So didn't have any deep knowledge of a lot of stuff, which it turns out actually in some ways was very beneficial because I was very open to learning, and didn't have a huge preconceived notion of things that were beaten to me, like some some people I know who grew up, you know, very Catholic or, you know, in a in a certain religious setting.
Smoke:It dug deep. So besides the scriptures, got into reading, you know, tremendous amount of spiritual material from Meister Eckhart to, John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila and the Cloud of Unknowing. So kind of, Thomas Merton, a bunch of people, and along those lines in kind of the Christian tradition dug deeply into, you know, the Buddhist tradition and Dhammapada and and other teachings. And really, really gained a lot of insight with the Bhagavad Gita, the and a number of teachings around those great traditions and much, much more. Discovered, a whole realm of other teachers, I would say, you know, besides Yvonne who was, you know, you know, my first teacher and has written a bunch of great books and really helped me a lot.
Smoke:David Hawkins, Power versus Force, and all of his books, which I've read deeply, have really helped me along the way. So really filled in a lot of gaps, with books and historical teachers. And over the course of the last number of years, came to terms with an understanding of the trauma that I experienced and got to a place of forgiveness, complete forgiveness of everyone, forgiveness of myself, and and really went through what I now know is an alchemical process of transcending the pain and and trauma and not not ignoring it, actually go going through it. And it's always a part of me, but it's something that I have great depth of appreciation for because now I, I'm at complete peace and divine love, the things I wish for. Turns out the things you wish for, the opposite or the things that are in the way come up along the way, and that's really what my journey has been about. it's been these opposites and these things that were whatever was in the path in the way has come up. I've had to, you know, face them, bring my awareness to it, my consciousness to it, and then really transcend it. And and this alchemical process of bringing it into who I am and who my essence is puts me in a place where great depth of compassion and understanding and empathy for, really everyone. And it gives me this, incredible ability to hold space for other people and their trauma. And there's literally no nothing that I can't sit for and listen for and and be present for, and that was not the case before.
Smoke:And that was certainly not the case. Almost two years of no alcohol, dropped 50 pounds. All of those ailments I mentioned have been healed lately in perfect health and, in perfect peace. And I'm in such a level of bliss. I literally was like, okay.
Smoke:I feel great. Now what? Right? So I think along the journey, probably many people go through this, which is what what am I supposed to do with this? You know?
Smoke:I started asking myself that. And and at some point, I came to me that a leader of leaders, I've been involved with leadership and global, you know, business and organizations most of my adult life. And it just came to me that I'm, supposed to share my journey and share this to, others who want to or or on their own journey and own path and that there may be things that I've learned that could be helpful. So that's really the backstory. And I'll get into some of these, you know, more in-depth along the way.
Smoke:And I found my voice, and I had the opportunity to speak at the global leadership conference for YPO last year, First in Miami to over a thousand CEO leaders, and then in Istanbul in May to over a thousand CEO leaders of YPO. So these are the, you know, call it twenty twenty to 2,500 leaders of the 35,000 YPOers around the world, who are running their chapters in in leadership positions. And they get together once a year and do training. And and as part of that, they have a thing called lab, which is leaders across borders, and they pick maybe five or six individuals to speak at one or both of the, PLC conferences. And I got I got selected along with several other great speakers and really great stories, which I hope they'll have them on at some point on the show.
Smoke:And I that was where I actually told my story in a TED like talk less than ten minutes. Kind of told my spiritual journey, my story. I would probably tell it differently today. You know, it's now not quite a year since I gave it the first time, but that was really finding my voice. And I had such tremendous feedback and support from everyone at YPO and people afterwards.
Smoke:And, there's just tremendous reaction and so many people linked to me and and telling me their stories of trauma, their stories of suffering, and and things that, you know, I helped them in how I dealt with it. My my journey has been, you know, was helpful to some of them. So that was my intention. My actual intention was to raise the conscious level of that group as much as I could, and, I feel like I I did in both those those, those talks. And you can see the link to those talk in the notes for this.
Smoke:You know, that really led me to kind of thinking about what what's another format or a way I can do this. And so what's my intention? My intention is simply to help others who are on the path to maybe take a more straight shot, maybe avoid some distractions, perhaps, you know, have some insights that, I've gained that can be helpful. This is only for those who opt in, obviously. If you're listening to this and you're this far in, then you're obviously on some kind of spiritual journey.
Smoke:And if this can be helpful to you, that's my intention. And if it helps, two people or if it helps many more, that's okay with me. I'm perfectly happy. This is just part of my journey. I'm gonna share what's helped me, what I've come to understand.
Smoke:My intention is to make others journey more direct with as few distractions as possible. In this modern era, we're nothing but distractions. And so there's so many ways to get off the track and to get away from a a a pathway to awakening and consciousness that, even if you get on it, you can get easily knocked off. So, hopefully, this can be helpful. The path is we have a limited window here in each life that we have, and the straight and narrow path is the recommended path. I fully agree with that. Content, topics, key learnings, experiences, teachers, always Integris material. So no different than probably any of you in terms of, interest and excitement of learning about stuff that's fascinating. There's so much of it that's a distraction, and they'll fit limited value in a path to, some form of enlightenment, uncovering truth, it's helpful to be focused on what is actually Integris. So that's my intention.
Smoke:It's not not the spiritual carnival where we're gonna have everybody who channels and everybody else. I'm not saying there's anything bad about it. I'm just saying that there's a lot of distractions, and that's not my intention here. Things to add, universal truths, tools and techniques have helped me, that have helped them, and just examples, you know, experiential examples. So those are kinda guests, Integris people on their own journey, giving different perspectives than mine.
Smoke:These are not necessarily interviews. These are discussions. So as you'll see, as you as you the the episodes unfold, you'll see discussions around these topics, really me and another guest, I mean, you know, a dialogue. And I've I've been having these dialogues for a long time, but I wasn't recording them. And I was just having them with people and really, you know, really cool stuff.
Smoke:And I'm like, wait a minute. These should be we should be recording this. This could this could help other people. So you'll see, you know, a number of discussions exploring the path with different different folks that I think can be helpful. Interesting stories and also looking for people whose stories are untold or, you know, aren't on the circuit. This is integrus people who have profound insights and capabilities that you may not have seen elsewhere or very limited exposure. So these are normal humans who are have done extraordinary things or have extraordinary stories and things to share. And, hopefully, we're gonna have some fun while we're at it. So that's my initial intro. I will get into more of these topics along the way and ancient history, current history, experiential, just things that can be shared. I'll do some episodes on on different things that I think have been really, really helpful to me. Universal truths, knowingness that have come to me and things that I understand. So really three buckets, you know, definitions, understandings, ways of understanding, universal laws, and things that matter. And this will be from books and from teachings and from other things I picked up along the way and maybe synthesized in my own way. So that that's, you know, whether it's the Hermetic laws, understanding the energy, understanding this world, and what we're really in, which is, I think, really important framework for everyone to to grasp because we are in an energetic world, and, it's not what I thought it was.
Smoke:Along the way, I think it'll be obvious that the case for consciousness and why it matters will be really clear. One, health. When your when your body, mind, and soul are aligned, what typically comes out of that is alignment. And with alignment, most illness, disease is disruption in that alignment and the energy flow. So perfect health, I think we can all get around that is extremely important.
Smoke:True happiness, internal bliss, joy. You know, everybody wants that, but it's not from outside. It's from within. And so understanding that and getting this alignment, it's your health and your bliss. The more I know, the more I know I don't know. For sure, I learned a lot, but I'm also learning as I go. So I have my thoughts on why we're here. And I think, you know, this is the path that why we're here, but I'm remain very open to that. And then finally, kind of techniques and approach. Like, what are the different things that I've found to be effective that have really helped me with my journey of raising my vibration to the highest level of consciousness that I can be.
Smoke:And, you know, that that that will go into everything from purification and cleansing, kind of clean up, but they say grow up, which is kind of lines and levels as Ken Wilbur would say, like, different levels of development of different areas of our lives. And then wake up, which is really the path of enlightenment, which is really not a it's less of a path even though I I call it that a lot. It's more of a uncovering because it's already here. It's already present. It's just obscured by a lot of other stuff. that's what we're gonna do. That's what we're doing here with the smoke trail, and, I hope you enjoy it and love to hear feedback. And if this is useful and if it helps you in any way, and look forward to it. So thank you.