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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.
My next guest is a longtime YPOer and dear friend, Jeff Brothers. He spent his life at the intersection of ecology, leadership and spiritual awakening. After building one of California's largest cut flower enterprises and later developing utility scale solar projects across the West, Jeff realized that true regeneration begins not on the land but in the heart. A deeply transformative encounter with San Pedro Cactus shifted his life's trajectory, calling him towards service, ceremony and conscious leadership. Today is the founder of Shine Ministries and steward of Circle of San Pedro, two intertwined efforts dedicated to reconnecting humanity with nature through sacred practice, community gardens and regenerative agriculture.
Smoke:Jeff, welcome to Smoke Trail.
Jeff:Smoke, great to be here. Thanks for
Smoke:inviting me. And we did it properly. We did a nice hike up on the ridge about behind us before. Yeah. Which is a great way to ease into the
Jeff:To bond and to connect with nature and yeah, really, really, really grateful for that and grateful for starting out the new year with you.
Smoke:Yeah, likewise. It's super, super great to have you. We were at the YPO Global Business Summit and I was like, you you have to come onto the show. And you're like, great. And then I found out you were here.
Smoke:So, like, no better place to do
Jeff:it than together in Sedona. Yeah. My beloved parents have been coming here for twenty five years. They spent half the year here. We've been here a few times, and it's magical.
Smoke:Yeah. Agreed. Well, let's let's jump right in and I'd love to talk a little bit about your journey, your background and kind of the work you're doing. I know you're doing lots of great stuff with conscious leadership and, but you mentioned on our hike that you started doing meditation when you were like 14. 14 years old.
Smoke:So tell me a little bit about the early Jeff years. Well,
Jeff:sort of was born from a challenge. My mom developed alcoholism, from my age eight onward. It got, more and more pronounced, and and my parents eventually divorced at 12. My older brother introduced cannabis to me at the time and all it did was make me lazy and hungry. So I had a very brief experience with that, encounter with that and found it wanting.
Jeff:But then the Beatles were right in the middle of doing their TM and I was very into the Beatles. And so next thing I know, I'm I'm signed up and absolutely devoted myself to TM for a number of years.
Smoke:Yeah, well that probably helped you on your path. We can take different roads, you could go down the cannabis getting lazy, not wanting to do stuff, that probably Kinda checking out. Reset you a little bit. Yeah, absolutely.
Jeff:Yeah, and introduced me to a wonderful community as well of people that were And where was this? I grew up in a little town, in Central Coast called Watsonville. Okay. So, but I learned to meditate in Santa Cruz and it was kind of fun to be, you know, in that location. Watsonville was right in between Santa Cruz and Monterey.
Jeff:Monterey Carmel were very conservative, Santa Cruz, you know, less so. Yeah. And Watsonville, some, you know, kind of a hybrid of both. Yeah. So yeah, I was really enjoyed transcendental meditation and did it you know throughout college and sadly lost my mom to alcohol at age 18.
Jeff:So meditation practice was pretty important for me Just to continue to ground and get through that And loss,
Smoke:do you continue that practice to today or has changed over time?
Jeff:It got, you know, less frequent, but still would always be there. Never, you know, never not had my mantra, you know, as a resource. But interestingly enough, the book Autobiography of a Yogi, it came into my sphere in the last six months and I've now, I think I'm on my third reading of that book and I've signed up for the lessons at the Self Realization Fellowship and I'm in the midst of studying Kriya Yoga. And so, you know, I've got the team to lean on and it feels really natural. It's going
Smoke:be a big part of my 2026 is to focus on the discipline of Kriya Yoga. That's awesome. I love that garden meditation grounds that he's got there right in your hometown. San Antonio, right there on the beach. So great.
Smoke:Every time I go down there, I go and meditate there.
Jeff:Yeah. It's fantastic resource. Ultimately left the Central Coast and moved down here a little over a year ago. And just being in the influence of Paramahansa Yogananda, you know, is something that you can detect. It's kind of like being in Sedona.
Jeff:There's just an essence here that is a frequency or a resonance that is elevated. But it wasn't until I read the autobiography of POG, and then I'm like, oh, I really should know who is, you know, the, you know, the keeper of the keys of what, you know, what what is long
Smoke:It was so wild when the Palisades fire happened, and it burned down most of that neighborhood. And a couple things were left standing. One was the mall that what's the name? Ran for mayor, who owns it, protected it. He had his own fire trucks.
Smoke:Oh, okay. And the other was the Lake Shrine, but the fire went around it, and it was perfectly preserved.
Jeff:Wow. I did not know that. Yeah.
Smoke:Yeah. It's pretty wild. Well, you went into business. You got into the flower business. Yes.
Smoke:So you had a big operation doing cut flowers, fresh flowers, you were growing them?
Jeff:Yeah, the family moved when I was 14 to a ranch. Actually
Smoke:when
Jeff:I was 12, when the parents got divorced, we moved to the ranch. My mom traveled for a couple years. She came back. I lived with her for three and a half years in Aptos, but then ultimately moved to the ranch. But we had this big ranch and weren't quite sure what to do with it.
Jeff:My dad leased out land to strawberry growers and cattle growers and and and you know I went off to college and living in Laguna Beach when my brother had started this cut flower business on our family ranch and needed some help. And I always equated to, you know, It's a Wonderful Life and Jimmy Stewart in the pack bags. I do not want to move back to Watsonville. There's no way am I moving back to Watsonville. But it was like the savings alone, right?
Jeff:Like, suddenly, you know, I was called to help and, got there and figured, well, you know, year or two, then I'm going to Stanford Business School and be a captain of the industry. I'm a live in Atherton and my bags were packed for a long time. The year or two became ultimately a twenty four year career in the cut flower industry. We were growers initially, then grower shippers. And along the way, I got interested in mass market and my brothers weren't and so we split and I took the bouquet company and developed a mass market company which ultimately developed the Costco cut flower program and then I went public with seven other companies and kind of realized my dream of being you know quote a big shot in the couple hour industry and had a lot of fun doing it and you know where I sit now I kind of look back on it and I was in the emotions business.
Jeff:Yeah. I was really in the emotions business is helping people say I'm sorry or thank you or I love you or forgive me or get better you know and it was really beautiful with the Costco cut flower program because I really connected the grower to the consumer with as little friction as possible. I was my merchandiser in there and so literally I would source the flowers from all the different growers and help them move through peaks when weather, you know, kick something off, we could move it through really quickly. Costco loves, you know, a treasure hunt.
Smoke:Yeah.
Jeff:So we'd create a treasure hunt, you know, kind of experience there and had a great time and did over a $100,000,000 a year with Costco at peak. And it was, you know, like fantastic customer and a lot of fun, but after a while it is a perishable product and you own the inventory until it goes through the cash register. And there's a lot of voices in your head all the time. Was time to ultimately exit
Smoke:the industry, and I did. Yeah. Well, an awesome journey. There's no right or wrong. I mean, I think there's people that come to consciousness and realization of some sort early in life, and some people, they live a life and then they come to it.
Smoke:And I'm in that category. Business guy, entrepreneur, creating companies and came to this part of my journey later in realization. But I don't think there's a right or wrong, but I also think there's something to living this human experience fully, having gained experience, and then turning to higher power and consciousness and appreciating things. I think we can bring a different lens to the spiritual journey than someone who, know, Ramana Maharshi fell down at 16 in his family home and the ego died and he didn't speak for two years and then went to his mountain and he was a very high calibrating conscious person and probably helped humanity in many ways. But I mean he had no experience of living normal life.
Smoke:You know, so it's not a criticism of him, but it's like, okay, I think there's a lens we can bring those of us who have built businesses, you know, succeeded in the material world, and now shifting our focus to this more of a conscious leadership. So I think it's kind of a parallel journey a little bit. How did you, you know, we don't need to get into the whole cannabis story, but I know, you know, we crossed paths in that, in that world and it- We both gathered a lot of scar tissue. Scar tissue and learnings there. But, know, did you kind of have somewhat of an awakening or kind of a gravitational shift in terms of what you're spending your time on?
Jeff:Well, I was drawn to consciousness fairly early on. Like on the Farm Bureau board, was president of Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau when we brought our first organic grower under the board and it was kind of controversial at the time. I'm like, why would that be controversial? They have markets and employees and weeds and pests and they just have different philosophy. I just got to be more and more interested in ecosystems, right?
Jeff:And being in touch with ecosystems and trying to do it in a way that like, I even was a Pete Wilson appointee on the California Coastal Commission, right? So I'm a property rights guy. I'm a hard I worked for Reagan my senior year of college and a couple of years afterwards. I'm a hardcore Republican property rights guy. And I'm one of four Republicans on a 12 member Coastal Commission board.
Jeff:And yet, even though we were in the minority, different advocates would come and talk to us and explain, you know, why they were, you know, opposed or wanted to improve a particular project. And I think about it, I'm like, why wouldn't you want to do the right thing if it really didn't cost anything more or didn't cost markedly more, but it was definitely a better thing for the environment, right? Yeah. And ultimately, that being a property rights guy on the California Coastal Commission turned me into an environmentalist because people were opposed to doing the right thing just on principle of not wanting to be told what to do. Right.
Jeff:It's just BS. We can do we can be more holistic in in in more, you know, in my mind conscious of our footprint. Yeah. And so along the way, I just found that I wanted to do business that way. I joined the conscious leadership group.
Jeff:It was initially called the Conscious Leadership Forum with Diana Chapman and Jim Dethmer and learned an awful lot about the 15 principles and how to conduct myself. But it really wasn't until a very, very, very dear friend of mine, my, my, life coach, said, I think you'd benefit from a psychedelic journey. And she led me on a MDMA journey. This was thirteen years ago. I was able to shed some trauma, that I didn't realize I was dragging around and felt like I took a 10 pound rock out of my backpack and like, once that's out, you're like, why would anybody walk around with that 10 pound rock in their And I also got mad at the government.
Jeff:Was like, how could this be illegal? This was beautiful. I did more work in six hours than I'd done in twenty years of talk therapy. It's not fair that this isn't available and it's not available because of, you know, not scientific or medical reasons for political reasons. Yeah.
Jeff:That made me angry. And that caused me to begin to just really open up to what's possible in terms of, you know, how to conduct oneself and and how to allow trauma to be let go. Because, you know, I'm in YPO, we met, you know, through YPO and there's some extraordinary people in YPO, but many of them are driven because of traumas don't even understand. They're unconscious of the drivers, these tapes that are playing in their head. And so suddenly it became an opportunity to, you know, like become more aware of how I could conduct myself and how I could encourage others to conduct themselves to be more conscious about their activities.
Jeff:I was not present in my family for a number of years. I was always doing the next thing, next thing, next thing. And a lot of that was driven by, you know, a fear of failure or a fear of lack. In the end, it's like, I'm really present
Smoke:nowadays. No, it's a beautiful thing. I think MDMA is an unbelievable tool. My experience was, it's a heart opening thing where you can really get into things that feel unsafe in a safe container. So you can dig deep on things, and if done with the right facilitator, right resource, it's really an incredible tool to uncover those shadows, put them in the light of day of your consciousness, and address them without all the emotion that goes with it.
Jeff:Right, right.
Smoke:What I've learned, is that nothing can withstand conscious awareness. There's no trauma. There's no horrible thing that happened to anyone that can't be resolved if you're willing to put your awareness to it and sit with it. That's not fun, on the other side, it's a lot of fun. Like you said, you get rid of the 10 pound backpack or 50 pound backpack, whatever it is.
Smoke:But once you shed that, you clear your own self, and then you can be a resource to many other people, which I know you've become in many ways. So it's a great, you know, I knew friends that used it, were like more like, you know, concerts and parties and things, and I was just never, never involved in any of that. And then I got to sit with the medicine along with psilocybin, so it was a combination. Cracked open a bunch of stuff, and I spent about a year digging into all those shadows, and sorting them out, and forgiving, and clearing, and clearing.
Jeff:Yeah,
Smoke:and like other side, it's like wow. A whole different world. Right.
Jeff:A likeness and a centeredness that is really remarkable.
Smoke:Yeah, I've said this before, but there for me, I was a heavy drinker for decades. Part of my journey was dropping the alcohol. And what I realized in retrospect was I had this like fan going off in the back of my head, and it was just like anxiety that I didn't know what it was. Was just my way of being. And when I would drink, just a drink or two, like the fan would turn off.
Smoke:Mhmm. And I'd feel like normal. So for me, it was getting rid of that anxiety, and it would be like, Okay, great. When I cleared my shadows, my trauma stuff, the fan went off by itself. And then I was like, I don't need to drink.
Smoke:It's fun, but it's not serving me.
Jeff:And then when you stop drinking, then you can actually feel what it feels like to feel happy and healthy in your body. Yeah. You don't want to do it anymore.
Smoke:Yeah, no, it's true. Alright, so MDMA was your first, and that opened you up and started surfacing things, and then you migrated toward San Pedro. I know that's your plant of that has called you. Tell me a little bit about that.
Jeff:Yeah, was quite a journey in between, but I joined a men's group in more or less quarterly. We would get together with an MDMA derivative of some sort and gather and it was really to me beautiful that men could be there and kind of hold each other and talk to each other and process things and did that for three years And then kind of got curious as to what's beyond and ultimately developed a relationship psilocybin and did several psilocybin journeys, mostly on my own, but with other other folks, primarily men, and found that to be quite valuable. Got more and more interested in working with veterans. And so one thing led to another and next thing I know, trying Ayahuasca because it's like, oh, you know, this is something that is potentially really valuable for veterans. And I ultimately joined when I church and had an extraordinary experience for about four years with them.
Jeff:Really, really admire their approach and their respect and their reverence for that medicine and the container they create. Somewhere along the way, you know, I heard the call for the San Pedro and had a couple of initial experiences that didn't feel like they were as reverent as what I would have hoped. Finally found a young shaman from Mexico who was coming to Ojai to lead a group. And I couldn't sit with him on the Saturday. He was leading this group, but he was available to me to spend the day with him on Friday and making the medicine.
Jeff:I spent the whole day with him on Friday. And then Friday night when I was getting ready to leave, he handed me a sack of medicines and you know what to do. So I went home a couple weeks later, cooked up that medicine actually on July 4, by myself had a ceremony in my backyard and had a pretty profound awakening. And it was very clearly told to grow me. Yeah, grow the plant, grow me.
Jeff:And I'm like, okay, I kind of hung up my gloves, if you will, my horticulture gloves. But I was like, know how to do that. And so talked to a few folks, got some seeds and got some more seeds and some more seeds and then bought out a guy's amateur collection of plants and then got some mature plants and began to grow. And then ultimately had a pretty profound experience, guess it's worth telling. It's not a short story, but it's not long either.
Jeff:These mature plants had arrived in pile, two fifty mature plants. The day I got the news that a lady that had come in and worked with my partner at the time and myself for twelve days, we arrived kind of a train wreck. We'd been booted off Puerto Rico Island by her son's wife and told never to come back. And she had raised this granddaughter, this woman's daughter, and it was very close to this young lady. And there was some rupture.
Jeff:Her daughter-in-law said, never come back to the island. And, you know, as a grandmother who's been raising the sons back, her daughter had spent more time with his daughter her mom had. It was devastating. And after twelve days of being with us, she was like this singing angel and really kind of gotten grounded. She said, well, I've got to go to Mexico because my other son's a meth addict and he's at a clinic down there.
Jeff:I heard, you know, like, to download as to what happened to him and I want to go tell him, I'll be down there for a week. I really don't want to go be around those addicts. I'm going be down there for a week. I'm coming back to spend a couple months with you guys. She kind of reminded me of my mom, you know, this short little lady that had an alcohol problem.
Jeff:And I'm like, I was able to help her over twelve days. Like, I can't wait to work with her for a couple of months, right? This is fine. I get a duo. Week later, get a phone call expecting it's her at the airport.
Jeff:She's calling me to ask her to come pick her up. And it's her son who's at the clinic and said they gave her Ibogaine. She had a heart attack and died. She's not coming back. Wow.
Jeff:And it just gutted me. Yeah. Like I don't get a do over. Like I didn't get to say goodbye to my mom the first time, and it's like I get don't get a do over. And these two fifty San Pedro's were large plants were in a pile.
Jeff:And so the next ten days, two weeks, I just dug a hole and planted a cactus, and dug a hole, planted a cactus, and that's what grounded me and helped me get through what ended to be a pretty dark period. And then I was really bonded with those plants, and I couldn't wait to make medicine from those plants, and ultimately led a YPO group of 19 people in a ceremony with medicine from those plants. And that kind of created this relationship that I have today with the San Pedro, just really, really strong bond. And I see people able to get in their hearts and connect with each other and connect with nature in a profound way. That's really neat.
Smoke:And you do it in a ceremonial way, safe container. Very important. I think it's very important because I think we've got a lot of amateur hour people dabbling, which I'm not against experiment, figure out your own thing, but I think when you get a group together that's not properly I don't know, supervised is the right word, but guided with the safe container with people that know what they're doing. Because you're you're at you're gaining access to all kinds of different things. Mhmm.
Smoke:You can get access to the astral realm. There's all kinds of Mhmm. Not so nice entities in that realm Mhmm. That, you know, are stuck there.
Jeff:Mhmm.
Smoke:And, it's really important to have people that know what they're doing. Yeah. Now I think you said you ran 36 retreats last year?
Jeff:Thirty thirty retreats.
Smoke:30 retreats. In 2025. Yeah. That's that's a lot of lot of people going through a
Jeff:lot of people. I started off the year, with leading a group, mostly white PRs in February and it was it was fantastic. And this is, you know, at our home And one of the participants said, you know, you need to get this into the world. And she forced me to sit down and map out, you know, a dozen ceremonies for the rest of the year. And then people couldn't quite make that work.
Jeff:And so another one can happen and another one happened and it ultimately ended up being 30. I sort of over indexed in 2025. Only plan to do 16 in 2026, but they were fantastic. And it was a fabulous education to to hold that. Always co facilitate with someone else at least.
Jeff:And it's always live music. And if it's a larger group, at least one, if not two additional guardians. And I do think, you know, having a very safe container, very sacred containers is really, really, really important. Yeah. And it's also, as you know, it's a long experience.
Smoke:Yeah.
Jeff:We started at 09:30 in the morning, and, you know, I let people know that it's like, hey. Don't plan to leave before 8PM at
Smoke:night. Yeah.
Jeff:It's a big day.
Smoke:It's a long day. I got to sit and be an angel Mhmm. In a ceremony last May up in British Columbia with Yvonne Redos who's one of my teachers and very connected mystical guy and it was a really interesting experience to be there to hold space for I think was seven men who were all going through a journey and to be there for them helping them as they went through it.
Jeff:It's pretty cool. It's it's special. You know, from an economic standpoint, it's not how you want to make a living but from a purpose and fulfillment standpoint, it's exceptional.
Smoke:Yeah. So what what I mean, you've you've now you've now had a lot of people go through it where you've been hosting these things. What are the some of the things that you see unfold for people or uncover or whatever? Like, what like, before and after? Are there some some, like, things you've learned a
Jeff:lot? Yeah. Sure. Well, most importantly, you know, structurally, you have to create a lot of space for a day to be there, right? And we really encourage people to not have, you know, a lot scheduled the next day.
Jeff:So preparing for being there and then recovering afterwards, They have to create some space and then we ask them to work on their intentions when they show up. Right. So they've been thinking about it and they get there. And it's just this collective sigh of relief of, okay, I'm here fully present. I'm nervous, you know, what's going to unfold?
Jeff:And then they find that there can be calmness in their bodies, in their physical systems, right? That they can actually feel their feelings. They can feel their heart. They can feel connected. They can feel connected to the folks in the room, and they can feel connected to source.
Jeff:And they don't have to have to do it. And they're not checking their devices and they're just really there. And it's almost like a shock that they can be that present and that calm when typically they're not. Yeah. And then they can have conversations and talk about things and share things that wouldn't have felt comfortable to share before being in that container.
Jeff:But suddenly there is an allowance, you know, safety and vulnerability that's mutual. So the real work is really done by themselves and with each other. And in co creation, we create a safe container and sort of set the ground rules, but the medicine in their own subconscious ends up doing all the work.
Smoke:It's really beautiful. Yeah, and then what do you tell them after? Because I know people who have gone, done a weekend retreat, done a journey, they had all this profound learning, and then they go back to their normal life, and it like it reverts.
Jeff:Yeah. You've got to integrate what you've learned. Right. And we, you know, put a little more emphasis on integration than most can. Yet, you know, the the pull of regular life, you know, is there.
Jeff:Yeah. And I encourage them to develop a little practice of like, you know, a small breath work practice so that when they begin to feel, you know, some anxiety, whatever, it's just do, you just get back to that breath work and put yourself back in that situation where you're in this circle. And it can happen in like thirty seconds from Yeah. Like boom.
Smoke:A few deep breaths, a little bit of just and then you can reset. Yep, and reset.
Jeff:Many of them, I mean, you know, they've they've dropped drinking or the you know, there there's some profound things that have happened. They they they've shifted in terms of they parent, how they show up in a relationship. And, know, it it's rarely a one and done. Mhmm. But the the what I'm happy about is you're not blasting the cosmos and you come back thirty minutes later and like what
Smoke:happened? It's a pretty mild experience.
Jeff:Very gentle, very subtle. My beloved Caitlin likes to say it's the most subtle, unsettled thing, right? It's subtle and gentle, but it's profound. And because you're so present through the whole thing, that presence, that embodied experience is not something that's easily forgotten.
Smoke:No, and it's almost like, I think all these plant medicines of different sorts, it's almost like they pull the veil, like our brains are basically like filters. Right. Right, so we're only getting certain things that there's a lot more happening everywhere. It's energy world, all this stuff. And those medicines kind of drop the veil and you have access to a lot more.
Smoke:And it's like, woah, once you see that, it's like, okay. Know, that it is profound.
Jeff:We had one gentleman who'd been raised in like South Central Chicago and, you know, very urban environment he had raised himself tough, exceptional athlete, and now he coaches professional athletes. And he's tough for his game, extraordinary human. And this was his first experience of any time. And he did it out of respect and trust of the person who encouraged me to hold this ceremony. And in the middle of the ceremony, he goes outside, which, you know, St.
Jeff:Peter really likes the outdoors. He wants you to be outside. He you to be in the sun. And he's looking around and kind of seeing the trees and the grass and the sky in a different way. And he
Smoke:looks on his arm. He sees the sunlight on the hair on his arm.
Jeff:I've never seen that in my life. Like, this is all around me. Yeah, it's all available to me. I live in Encinitas now, right? Like, I'm not I'm not in Chicago anymore.
Jeff:Yeah. And I'm missing it.
Smoke:Yeah.
Jeff:Now I'm not right now. I can raise my kids to enjoy this. I can actually, you know, like, take advantage of where I am and what's here by just being present and what a gift. Right.
Smoke:And it was so, it was so neat. Yeah. No, I love it. And you know, you talk about conscious leadership. For me, that's about reconciling your own issues first, because no one can help anyone else unless they fix their own shit.
Smoke:Once you've cleared your shadows and you've gotten whole again, my friend Liv says, and now I use this all the time, you know, humans are the medicine for each other. But you're only the medicine if you've cleared your shit, right? So if you can hold space and you're present and you've dealt with your things, then you can hold space for anyone. Like I, you know, if in the past someone came to me and started telling me about some problem they're having, I'd be like, I'm really sorry for you, let's go get a drink. And now I find people coming to me and I'm like, okay, can hold space.
Smoke:I can listen to them and it doesn't mean I'm going to solve their problem for them, but being able to hold that space is extremely valuable
Jeff:for each other. Yeah. And to not be there to give advice or to solve, but to be there to inquire. Right? And let their conscious and mostly their subconscious, you know, have a way to express itself.
Jeff:Yeah. Usually the answers are there. Yeah.
Smoke:The answers are lie within, but we have to be quiet enough to hear them.
Jeff:Right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm so proud of you for the path you've chosen and how you're using your intelligence and heart and connections and network, etcetera, to help people on this path. It doesn't take a huge nudge, but it does take, you know, some guiding.
Jeff:Right?
Smoke:Yeah. Well, way I look at it is when I started, I just was oblivious to all this. I didn't know any of it. And I jumped in, I was like, Woah. I asked for help.
Smoke:I was in Nepal and went to Buddha's birthplace, and something came over me, and I prayed there, and I asked for peace and love. And that set me on my journey. But you you have to ask for help.
Jeff:Gonna ask.
Smoke:But if you ask, you have it. Like, the universe will provide
Jeff:it. Mhmm.
Smoke:And so some of what I've been called to do with the podcast and other things I'm working on is to give a tangible roadmap of some sort that can be useful for high achieving people who are like, maybe they've knocked it out of the park, they've been very successful economically, they've made a lot of money. On the surface, they're like perfect life. We all know, we have a lot of friends who are in that situation and they're like, Woah, is there something more? Making another $10,000,000 doesn't matter really. What is there more?
Smoke:As I've discovered that path, I'm like, okay, well let's see if we can just distill that learning that could be helpful to some people. It's not like pushing on anyone, but it's like if you're watching this podcast, you're called to it for some reason. So it's more of an invite. It's like, okay, here's what I'm learning, here's what I've worked for me. Pick what you want, pick what's useful, drop the rest.
Smoke:But it's kind of a because there's I think the challenge of our time is you know if we were you
Jeff:know
Smoke:growing up hundreds of years ago in some village if we were lucky it might have been a village with a ashram or something and you know some people that could recognize things and if you had some kind of propensity to that, they would pull you in and you know, there was a tradition of it. But most villages didn't have that. And so it was like people figured out on their own or not. Today, in the modern era, certainly in the Western world, have access to everything. We can read the Bhagavad Gita and the Panchayas, we can read the Buddha, we can, there's all kinds of, you know, people throughout time in modern teachings.
Smoke:It's almost like it's the challenges, discernment and figuring out what makes sense for you in your own path. But we have access to everything like you know which is great, but it's like drinking out of a fire hose. It's kind of like curating and trying to figure out like alright these are useful for this, this is useful for that. Because it's kind of overwhelming in the beginning. When you just open your eyes to it and you're like, woah, where do I even start?
Smoke:Right. If you start with the Bhagavad Gita, which calibrates in the nine hundreds on Hawkins scale, it's a very, you know, spiritually true text, you know, because it's at that level, it's not going to make a lot of sense if you're if you're, you know, at 300 and you're you're just kind of starting your journey. It's still useful. But when you reread it a year later, you're like, Oh, oh all these things start to open up. So it's like there's a progression of learning I think that helps unfold people to it.
Jeff:Yeah I completely agree that there is so much available. It's hard. It can be confusing how to even start. And the world we live in is bombarding us, you know, constantly with things to distract ourselves. Yeah.
Jeff:And there's so little embodiment. That's, you know, I guess ultimately why I feel so called the San Pedro is such a great entry point in terms of any psychedelic to just be here, feel safe to be in here and to feel hard and feel feelings that, you know, that sometimes we're nervous to feel. Just feel them in a safe container with others that might be strangers when they walked into the room. But twelve hours later, you know, you're like besties with. Yeah.
Jeff:And, and you can have this embodied feeling of being in your in your body, feeling your feelings safely with others and feeling connection to source in a way that, you know, becomes supernatural but isn't natural otherwise, right? And just to have that space to feel that way. And then once you go back to your normal world, you can't unring the bell. Right. You've had that embodied experience, right?
Jeff:And then you crave more of that calmness, right? You want more meditation, you want more people that are that community, if you will, that want to connect on that level.
Smoke:It's a really important point. I mean, when you go back after having experience like that, building a practice, building something into your routine that keeps you grounded and connected to what you experienced. But the people we spend time with, there's an energetic level of what they are and it's really important to curate that over time. So you know if your friend said at one stage may not make sense to be your friend set later. Mhmm.
Smoke:And it's it's kind of naturally occurring. It just kind of like you, oh, like, yeah, that I don't hang out with those people anymore because Mhmm. They're not where I am, and I'm hanging out with people who are working on, you know, or Really being here.
Jeff:Yeah, being here. Being present.
Smoke:Yeah. That's beautiful. If people want to connect with you, what's the best way to do that? Is there a website or is there a
Jeff:Yeah, I ultimately formed Shine Ministries in 2025, towards the end of 2025, and we're just wiring up our website, etcetera. So shineministries.org.
Smoke:Okay. Put it in the show notes. Yeah.
Jeff:Yeah. Which is well, actually, you know, I say that shineministries.org, we couldn't afford. We will at some point. So it's shineshine.org. Okay.
Jeff:Shineshine.org. Alright.
Smoke:Awesome. Well, I appreciate the work you're doing and I know you're helping a lot of people. It's really important in this time. There's lots of people messing around with medicine that don't know what they're doing. I think it's really important to find trusted sources who know and appreciate the plant, and appreciate the tradition, and will create that safe container, and don't just go to like a rando event, because there's a lot of, you're accessing other realms, you're accessing energies that aren't necessarily friendly to humans, And so it's really important to be in that kind of a place
Jeff:in this. Well, thank you. Yeah, it was a delight to spend time with you. The hike was great. Your your studio is spectacular, by the
Smoke:Well, it's God's studio. I just happen to be using it at the moment. Yeah.
Jeff:Extraordinary. And and it's really, really great to be, sort of reconnected with you. Yeah. And I look forward to, you know, like our parallel paths crossing again.
Smoke:For sure. Thank you.
Jeff:All right. Thanks, brother.