Geoff Woliner - Author, Comedian, & Heavyweight Champion of WTF

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Geoff Woliner- Author, Comedian, Speaker, & lover of life!

When Geoff Woliner was 10 years old, he was asked to deliver a toast for his grandfather’s 80th birthday. A few years shy of his first Toastmasters meeting, he didn’t have a clue what to say and had to wing it. So he delivered a Dean Martin-style roast that had his grandfather and everyone in the room in stitches. And on that cold, snowy November day, a comedian was born.

Geoff went onto a comedy and speaking career spanning nearly 20 years, being named Stand-up NY’s “Funniest Person from Queens” and leading public speaking workshops for hundreds of organizations throughout North America. He’s currently the Founder and CEO of Winning Wit, a speech writing and presentation coaching service that helps others unleash their inner performers and light up the room.

http://www.geoffwoliner.com/

http://linkedin.com/in/geoffwoliner

https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US

Creators & Guests

Host

George Monty

My name is George Monty. I am the Owner of TrueLife (Podcast/media/ Channel) I’ve spent the last three in years building from the ground up an independent social media brandy that includes communications, content creation, community engagement, online classes in NLP, Graphic Design, Video Editing, and Content creation. I feel so blessed to have reached the following milestones, over 81K hours of watch time, 5 million views, 8K subscribers, & over 60K downloads on the podcast!

What is TrueLife?

Greetings from the enigmatic realm of "The TrueLife Podcast: Unveiling Realities." Embark on an extraordinary journey through the uncharted territories of consciousness with me, the Founder of TrueLife Media. Fusing my background in experimental psychology and a passion for storytelling, I craft engaging content that explores the intricate threads of entrepreneurship, uncertainty, suffering, psychedelics, and evolution in the modern world.

Dive into the depths of human awareness as we unravel the mysteries of therapeutic psychedelics, coping with mental health issues, and the nuances of mindfulness practices. With over 600 captivating episodes and a strong community of over 30k YouTube subscribers, I weave a tapestry that goes beyond conventional boundaries.

In each episode, experience a psychedelic flair that unveils hidden histories, sparking thoughts that linger long after the final words. This thought-provoking podcast is not just a collection of conversations; it's a thrilling exploration of the mind, an invitation to expand your perceptions, and a quest to question the very fabric of reality.

Join me on this exhilarating thrill ride, where we discuss everything from the therapeutic use of psychedelics to the importance of mental health days. With two published books, including an international bestseller on Amazon, I've built a community that values intelligence, strength, and loyalty.

As a Founding Member of The Octopus Movement, a global network committed to positive change, I continually seek new challenges and opportunities to impact the world positively. Together, let's live a life worth living and explore the boundless possibilities that await in the ever-evolving landscape of "The TrueLife Podcast: Unveiling Realities."

Aloha, and welcome to a world where realities are uncovered, and consciousness takes center stage.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope your day is going beautiful. I hope the Friday is treating you like you should be treated, and I hope that the world is singing. I got an incredible show for you today with an incredible author, incredible guest, comedian, author of The Path to Perfection series, the heavyweight champion of the World Tongue Federation, the one and only Jeff Walner. He's also the host of his own podcast and so much more. We're going to get into all of it. Jeff, how's it going today, my friend? George, my man, this is exciting, isn't it? I got goosebumps, man. I don't even know where to start, man. The World Tonguer Heavyweight Champion, the new book coming out, all the writing you're doing, the podcast, like everything's on fire for you, man. I figure if the world's on fire, I might as well be on fire too. So let's have like a flame here and a flame there and a flame everywhere. And let's just burn the whole damn thing to the ground and have some laughs while we're doing it and play with some tongues while we're doing it. I love it, man. There that is. I love it. Look at this. We've already got people coming in here, Jeff. And what are they saying? They're saying the heavyweight champion of the WTA, Jeff rocks. Thank you, Grant. So Jeff, what is the world Tonger Federation? Let's just jump into this thing here, man. What's going on with this? All right, let me give you the backstory of this because this makes no sense to anybody, myself included. So I figured if I talk it out, it might actually start to crystallize and it's something that actually is not complete insanity, but I almost kind of hope that doesn't happen. So, all right, here's how it goes down. Back in January. I'm having one of my weekly chats with a buddy of mine from Michigan, and we're talking about how fun would it be to have this minor league football team in these second tier cities like Albuquerque, El Paso, Omaha, that are big enough to support a team, but not big enough to have like a professional team. And all the coaches for these teams would be these washouts who just disappeared five years ago and resurfaced out of nowhere. And the players, these guys who like ate themselves out of the league or got kicked out of the NFL and like resurfaced again. It's just this league of like washouts that just show up again. We're having a lot of laughs. It's a great time. And... Okay. Well, we got us an eight. The next idea hit me. I live in America. If I use these names, I'm getting sued. I don't need to get sued. So I couldn't get the bug out of my head though, of I want to invent a sport. I want there to be like a new athletic thing out there that we create from the ether. So I'm talking to my dear friend, Jen Russman. We're on the chat here. We're just talking and talking and talking. I'm in my kitchen, I'm flipping a steak and I've got a pair of tongs in my hand as I'm doing it. And I look at these and I say, well, then this could be something. Could we actually create a sport from kitchen tongs? So I thought, okay, well, every great sport involves throwing something. So let me just find something to throw, get a little shake. I'll throw the damn thing and then see where we go. Then I figured, okay, well, I need something to throw it at. So I go on Amazon, figure what can I throw stuff out with a kitchen tong? And then these little boards show up here, these Velcro boards, you know, made in China. God bless the people who are making, I don't know what's going on there. Not my business. Don't want to get into that. That's a different podcast. But you hit buy, shows up in two days. The next thing you know, all these little wonderful balls start showing up over here. getting a little shake and you just keep throwing and you miss and sometimes hit, doesn't matter. But what really crystallized about Tonger was that first and foremost, it needs a governing body. So we're going to call it the World Tonger Federation because the acronym is WTF. because of course. And then I realized this cannot be like any other sport. So we're not going to have rules per se. We're not going to have official structures per se. This is going to be a sport that you yourself are going to create as you go. So all you need is a pair of kitchen tongs, an affirmation of I tong, therefore I am. You pick something up, you throw the damn thing, you create the rules as you go. And the best part about it is you can't lose. I love every second of it. And I, it seems to me like there's already this sort of groundswell of people making videos and like the rules are kind of changing. It's sort of like WWE meets the imagination meets the simulation theory. It's all of it because what Tonger does and I credit the queen Tongarian herself, Haley over South, the queen, this, this term, this reality to us, which is simply this. no matter what's going on around you, it's all an illusion because all you have to do is come back to the present Tonger. Everything comes back to the present Tonger because George, as you well know, my friend, the singularity always comes back to one point, one single point. And in this case, it's the present Tonger. That's it. The entire singularity comes down to the present Tonger. And as long as we remember that, We have just come home to ourselves and our own essence. I love it, man. In some ways, I think it echoes the first book, Path to Perfectia, the idea of coming home, man. It's just manifesting itself in these different bubbles that are popping up a little bit. And I can't wait to start building out my Tonger universe. And I already have, and I got these new ideas. And it's so weird how an idea can be not only infectious, but contagious in a good sort of way. And I see it happening, man. Is it okay to say infectious and contagious after 2020? I thought those words were just for tired. You know what I think? You do you, brother. This is your show, so I'm not going to police your language. It's interesting, though. I think that what COVID might have shown us and the world we live in today and even the Tonger Federation is that we don't have to subscribe to the – definition of the words that were given to us. Like there's no reason why something infectious and contagious can't be good. Like laughter can be infectious and contagious. The path to perfect is infectious and contagious. Haley over says body of millions of books that she's written so far are infectious and contagious. You know, it's, and your work, your writing is infectious and contagious. And I dare to say the way in which you were inspired to write the first book may have also happened again to you. So maybe we could dovetail into that idea of infectious, contagious, and the way in which you were able to write this second book. Man, what's that all about? I'll just push it right over to you. Well, if we're going to keep talking infectious and contagious, can we at least have like a side detour and talk about gonorrhea for a few minutes? I want to show you this rash that I have real fast. You said it, not me. All right. So for those of you who read the first book and those of you who are watching for the first time and don't know the story about how the original Path to Perfectia came about, I'll kind of condense it because it's a bit of a long story. But essentially, I had a near-death experience. And this experience brought me to within an inch of my life. And like in the very best way possible, of course, you know, looking back on it now. But the word Perfectia just came through to me. And these characters of Smooth, Diana, Andy, these names just started appearing to me from this experience, from, I would say, becoming part of this singularity, this source, this present Tonger. in that one moment and it just engulfed me. And then it just started speaking to me and I just started writing. And the next thing you know, a story came together and the story essentially was, how can we talk about the magic of what we really are, not just who we really are, but what we really are, what this whole thing is. It's a game, it's a show, it's a dream, it's a stage. Shakespeare had it right all those hundreds of years ago. This all the world's a stage. It's always been a stage, but we forgot that. So this book really is the first book and the second, it's a remembrance. It's a remembrance of who we fundamentally are, where we come from, why we're here, and that we're here to essentially play a game. And the game you're playing is how fun would it be if I forgot that I am the entire universe and just pretended that I'm George Monty. And I'm playing the game of how fun would it be to forget that I am all of infinity and just pretend that I'm Jeff Waller and just experience everything as this character on this stage. And this book really was a roadmap through five characters in New York at the turn of the century where they helped each other discover that. by supporting each other through the most difficult parts of the play. And now, George, I say this with a lot of empathy and respect, truly, because this is a tough life, man. It's tough. It's tough for everybody. Nobody gets out of here unscathed. Or alive. Or alive. Thankfully for that. You met some of the folks I met, you'd be damn grateful for that. I mean, at the end of the day, we come back to this place of, It's so dense. It's so heavy. It's so difficult. How do I get past this? So the magic of the first book was how do these folks find other people on this journey with them, other people who are playing this game with them to get them through the most difficult spots? Now, book two came around. It starts exactly 18 years after the end of book one to the day. December 6th, which is an important day for somebody who's watching this live stream, happens to be her birthday, which I did not know when I wrote it. I didn't even know her when I wrote the damn book. So universe... Well played, sir. Well played. And book two shifted the narrative a bit from how we show up for each other to really how do we show up for ourselves? And if each of us shows up for ourselves, what ripple effect will that have on the world around us energetically? And we saw it in book two and it's... It's awesome. It is awesome. Yeah, when I... When I read book one, I had a lot of psychedelic thoughts about it. It tripped me out a little bit. On one hand, I was seeing the story as smooth, but then it's almost like he lived a bunch of different lifetimes. With every character he met, it's like he died and was reborn. You know what was strange to me? He had to lose the most important thing to him in order to be reborn. I saw that pattern sort of like, I get goosebumps, man. I saw that pattern in the book and then I was able to apply it to my life. And I think that's why so many people are reading it and they're like, dude, this applies directly to me. It was just written about me. And then that's kind of this fractal idea. It was kind of given to you on a level. I'm always amazed when a book has the ability to transcend the message of the author and gives the reader the opportunity to look at their own life. I think that's really well done, man. And I I I'm hopeful that once I get into book two, I'm going to be seeing some of these same patterns, but how could I not? Right? No, absolutely. And you know, the more I think about it now, kind of looking back on the entire process, it was really, really cool how it just kind of used me as, as a vessel, you know, this, this, the thing, the, it, the force, the power, whatever you want to call it, you know, the universe, God source, Cleveland, you pick your name and run with it. I'm cool with that. I don't care. but it just chose me to tell, to tell the, I would say the truth, you know, as I, as I perceive it anyway, but through this, through this character, like, okay, so use this character and this character's experiences to craft a story. So what is this character fond of? The year 2000, New York city, one of the best times of my life. You know, it was just an awesome time in a place. It was like a milieu. It's one of those, like you had to be there kind of things. And It's like, okay, how can we tell the story of what this entire thing experience is about through five relatable characters? coming through a time and a place which this author, which this character is familiar with and can write about authoritatively. And how do we meld those two together? How do we meld like this character's experience and this universal truth? How do we put them together, cobble it up, put it in the oven, pull it out after 35 minutes and serve it up to an audience that can understand it and say, okay, cool. Now I think, like you said, I'm getting it now. I'm getting it but the difference is this is not some like esoteric guru stuff which I have to reach well beyond my understanding to understand this is something I can read about five regular characters and I can identify with at least one of them and say oh I i see it now I get it okay yeah when I read it, I can see glimpses of you and all those characters. And what's mind-blowing to me, and a question I would love to get your opinion is, Not only is the book funny, but it's heartfelt. And I'm curious, when something happens to you, Jeff, do you feel it through the eyes of five different people? And maybe that's the wrong way to say it, but it seems to me when something happens to you, you're able to pivot into five different dimensions or five different lenses and see the situation. I see that translated in your writing. Is that something you do personally when you find yourself encountering a situation that is like a... WTF situation? Which WTF situation? Dude, that's a totally different WTF situation. It's like, it's like the bad signal. So we're going to get one of these. So, all right. Different WTF situation. So the writing actually with the characters is interesting because each one of them is a different component of me for sure. There are five and I, and I relate to each one of the characters in the book very deeply. For very, very different reasons and very different levels. Like there's, you know, smooth comes from my, my experience. My lived experience is so much wrapped into the main narrator character of smooth, which is why I decided smooth is going to be the narrator. So I can write most authoritatively from his point of view. know I'm around the same age kind of went through the same kind of stuff that he went through blah blah blah I get it right then you have like a character like diana and diana is is a million percent my adhd just like lived out through an actual character where her entire life is just one side quest after another and everything excites her everything lights her up everything gets her like happy and she creates backstories about everything all the time and she just wants to do more and more and more and more and every this world is like a big jungle gym for her and Then, you know, Andy is always this this warrior character that I've had to live in my upbringing where I grew up. And you had to have those warrior instincts where I grew up. Otherwise, you just couldn't survive. It was just bottom line. And then, you know, Bianca is somebody who has this deep empathic sensitivity, which I've been blessed slash cursed with my entire life, too. I can pick up deep emotions from others and I can kind of read them very clearly. And then Angel is my higher self. You know, an angel coming down is the one reminding me that the whole damn thing is just a show. and to stop taking it so seriously, and to lean into the stuff that sucks, because that's part of the experience, kind of why we came here, because we can't get this back home. We can't get crying at a funeral back home. We can't get diverticulitis back home, and we can't get a bad knee back home, and we can't get a heartbreak back home. We can't get any of that back home. We come here to get that, so we can go back home and say, damn, what a ride. Want to do it again? It's so crazy. It's beautiful. I see it not only in the book and the characters, and thank you for the explanations of them, but I see it in so many of the posts that you put out. There is so much heartfelt... goodness that comes out of the comedy that you put. And I see it not only in the posts that you put out with Jimmy, the Mets fan, or just so many incredible characters that you make up almost on a daily basis to bring humor to people. And I can see in the comments of the posts the smiles on the people's face when they write those posts, man. It's so deep, man. I love it. But it does speak to this idea maybe of a therapeutic way to look at pain. And like, I think you've mastered that on some level, but, but how does one master something unless they go through it so much? So on some level, I think it speaks to this other way that you see the world of like, look at how dark this is over here. This is crazy. And then you find this way to twist it up and present it to us in a present man. But, but, Maybe you could speak to that a little bit. Like that's a really impressive skill, man. And thank you for doing it. I know I have been stoked to read those posts and it makes me smile. But was there a main event in your life or is there something, a point when you see the darkness and then something clicks, I guess, is the question there? Ha, where to begin with this one? I know. So George, how familiar are you with human design? I'm pretty familiar with it. I've taken a couple courses and I've spoken to some experts. I guess I would say a little bit better than average, but I'm not by any means someone who knows it in and out. That's cool. I'm not going to do a deep dive into it, but I just say that because this will kind of contextualize this thing. Okay. Thank you. I am a 5'1 splenic projector. And as a 5'1 projector, essentially what that really means, and folks don't Google it back home, actually you could Google it, knock yourself out, but essentially what it really means is that you have a design. It's almost like you're stepping into a football team, right? And you're 6'5 and 330, that's your built. Now you could technically play whatever position you want. You'll do a hell of a lot better though if you decide to play left tackle versus if you decide to play quarterback. Like you're not gonna be really effective at quarterback at that size. You could try, but it's not going to work out. So human design is kind of similar. Like you have all these different attributes that you have that are kind of innate to your astrological charts and so forth. And if you do certain things, you're going to be more successful. And if you do certain other things, you're going to encounter a lot of resistance and a lot more contrast than you need to. For the first 40 years of my life, I was the 330 pound, six foot five dude trying to play quarterback. And that led me to a lot of misery and it led me to a lot of deep bitterness. And what's interesting about human design is that for my particular subset, the quote, not self, which means if you're living in the thing that is most opposed to your natural essence, that will characterize itself and show itself as bitterness above all. And that is the energy I lived in for a long time. And actually, George, that's where most of my comedy came from. Most of my life was just straight bitterness. And that's where most comedy comes from. If you look at a comedy club, just bitterness. It's like, screw the world, screw you, screw everything. And that's where it all gets filtered through. And that took me down this dark, dark, dark hole for a long, long, long time, man. I was on the brink more times than I can count. And each time I was there, there was something that I couldn't tell you what it was. It was just like, you know, in the book during certain spots where things were really dark, it just kind of reached in like, no, no, no, you're not done yet. You might think, and kind of just pulled me out of that. And once I hit age 40, maybe something biblical about it, man, you know, 40 is everywhere, everywhere in the Bible. But once I hit that age 40, that's when I had this kind of near-death experience. That's when this illumination happened. And that's when the truth of everything that was shrouded for me for those 40 years became super clear. You're not supposed to be bitter. You're supposed to step into who you are. You're supposed to step into what you love. You're not supposed to chase a life that's not meant for you. Stop doing things that you hate. Stop trying to impress people you don't even like. Let it all go. And then once I did that, all these, like, you know what it was? Like the hairball finally got removed from the sink. And now the faucet can come down and the water can start reaching where it's supposed to. Because before all I was getting was like a tiny drip once every three years. But now the faucet's running. What I call the faucet is like the divine downloads, that connection to perfectia, that connection to source. Once you release that hairball and you toss it out, then it can flow. Do you think it's necessary? Do you think we all go through and we build up this hairball until we are given the opportunity to release it? I'm sure some people are able to find this sort of rite of passage at an earlier age, but some people 40, some people 50, maybe some people 30. But do you think that all those things that happen to you are necessary for you to begin to understand who you are and what you want to be? You know, the great Lonnie Ray. The greatest Lonnie Ray. Thank you, Lonnie Ray, for everything. Lonnie, you know we love you. Yeah. Rattled awake. And there's something profound and true about that. And I think that the rattling is different depending on how asleep you are. And the more asleep you are, the more you're going to get rattled in bed to wake you up. And if you're kind of asleep, you only get a little gentle nudge. But if you're like in a coma, that house is going to burn down to wake you up. So I think it's all commensurate with where we are in the process. Yeah, it's, it's interesting that you say that, because, you know, I think maybe once once the hair, maybe the maybe the hairball being removed is sort of like an evolutionary sort of block that's being taken away from you so that you can see things in a different way. Because that sounds to me, not only what you're explaining, but I've seen in my life as well, is that once you begin to open up to what is possible, the path, maybe it's the path to perfect you begins to show itself or illuminate or, hey, there's a little ribbon on this tree. Maybe that's a path over there. You know, it's, I don't know. It blows my mind. What's your thoughts on that? Yeah. And that's, you know, as you know, that's very much woven into the theme of the path to perfect you a story. And that's the essence of the path to perfect you. What it really means is the path back home, right? The path back to the singularity, the path back to the essence of who and what we really truly are. beneath all these stories, beneath these characters and these stories and characters accumulate the hairball. Then that's the thing, the hairball, it's not a natural thing. Like it's accumulated through this third density experience. So every time, you know, we do something kind of, you know, if you want to call it negatively polarized, whatever you want to call it, to disrupt the natural flow of things like we accumulate that and some call it karma and some call it whatever you want to call it. But that's like the accumulation of that hairball. And then the more of that you accumulate over time, the bigger the hairball grows and the more it just blocks the damn drain. And then once you're underneath that hairball way down there in like the bowels of the sink, you can't get any water after a while. And then you start saying, why has thou forsaken me, faucet? And then you have that whole situation. And then you feel like Job, you know, underneath this thing, you know, with my sponges and all the rest of them. Let me tell you, it's not a good place to hang out. I've been there. I wouldn't recommend it. Right next to the ant spray for me. Just breathe it in poison, you know? Yeah. We're talking May in Virginia. No joke. Seriously. You know what I think is also fascinating about it is that while there is echoes of the hero's journey in the books, it seems to me we're writing a new mythology because it's more than the hero's journey. The hero's journey seems to be like a – the path of the past. Like I see this new path emerge. What's your thoughts on rising above the hero's journey, which it seems to me is happening in the series you're writing? Well, it's funny you mentioned that because that very much weaves into the second book. And so the second book's subtitle is The Rising. And so we talk about this backdrop of what we're undergoing right now energetically as a species and in a quote, time, time's not real. We all know that it's time. What we're going through right now and that this energetic uplifting that's kind of engulfing us all. And that's very, and the book takes place, the book too takes place now. It takes place at the end of 2023. So it's a contemporary set book, whereas the first one was year 2000 and a couple of years after that. So this is really tapping into what's happening now, which is this rise of energy, this rise of consciousness, and this transcending of this traditional hero's journey. Now, the cool thing about the hero's journey is that it was a great storytelling mechanism to get us through the dense realities that we were facing for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. So if you're going through this thing, And it's the same, you know, it starts with Odysseus and they all have the exact same journey. You know, you leave home. And I think the game of baseball actually is the absolute greatest layout of the hero's journey of any sport that exists. It's really cool when you think about it. You know, you have you're you start out at home and you have all your people with you and they love you and you're warm and it's wonderful in the dugout. You're having a great time. You're eating peanuts and you're telling dirty jokes and you're setting guys shoes on fire. You're having a great time. then you venture out into the world like the hero ventures out to seek adventure and you get to the plate and then you get on base now when you get on base this is like where the adventure really is underway and like everybody every other hero's journey you will encounter friend and foe along the way and the friend will be like the first and third base coaches who are going to give you advice we're going to weigh you in you know and then but you have your foes you have the pitcher and the catcher and they're all colluding to throw you out and this and that so you have all these things that are happening and all these these dynamic, dynamic undertakings. And eventually you round the way back home. And then when you come home and you step on the plate, who's there to greet you? The people who love you the most, they're there to welcome you back home with open arms. So like our entire life can be seen through the lens of baseball. And that served us for a long time. But I think that's changing because That needs a heavy, heavy, dense contrast to kind of go through to get home. I think as time goes on, that contrast is gonna lighten up and lighten up and lighten up, and the density is gonna get lighter and lighter and lighter, and the vibration is gonna go higher and higher and higher. And as that happens, I think we're gonna explore physical reality through a brand new prism, one that we've never experienced consciously, at least in this space-time construct. And it's gonna be, I think, an exploration of bliss. We've explored suffering, hell of a lot. We've been really good at that. But I think we're now gonna start exploring bliss. So buckle up, it's gonna get good. Yeah. First off, I would read your, you should write a book on philosophy and baseball. Like I would totally read that. Like there's so much in there. Like I could see that being, that's really cool to think about it from that angle. And it does set up like the different paradigm and this guy's born on third base and you put so much cool stuff in there. You met some of my old coworkers I see. I think we all have those coworkers. It's interesting to think about. I do see this paradigm shifting in a way that in some ways I can see It seems to me the younger generation have a way of seeing the world that the older generations can't see. It's almost like you can see evolution in real time. These kids are like, this stuff is pretty dumb. Why are we doing that? That's silly. We shouldn't do that anymore. It's fascinating to be in midlife right now and be able to look on one hand and see the people that brought you up and then look down the line and see the people that are coming up. Do you think that there are specific sorts of – responsibilities for people in middle age to be helping people on both sides? I think the best thing that people in middle age can do right now is just come home to themselves. That's it. I think that's the best thing anybody can do. And I really believe that. So if you approach it from the perspective of this is all one big connected singularity, the idea of you as a separate entity and me as a separate entity and Dan Smallman as a separate entity and Haley and Mark Davis, what's up all? These are all illusions, the big house and mirrors. And if we can elevate our own consciousness, we're elevating the consciousness of the whole. And I think so much of where we go wrong today and you see it everywhere are people thinking that thing over there is broken. So I'm gonna like bash them over the head until they fix it. And none of the people screaming like for that thing to be fixed are taking any looks in the mirror and say, what do I got to do to fix this? Behind every frothing, angry person on any side of any issue is somebody with deeply unhealed trauma of their own that they're not addressing. And they're scanning externally to see where can it... It's like the old scapegoats, to bring it back to the biblical stuff, like the old scapegoat. Who can I throw this on? Who can I put this on? And this happens everywhere. And the more we keep doing that, thinking that's going to fix it, fix the world or save the world, the more we just keep doubling down on the crap and getting deeper into the quicksand because unless they fix their stuff, like I, George, there's nothing I can do that can heal you. Nothing you can do that can heal me. I can support you as you heal yourself. You can support me as I heal myself. But I think we have some middle-aged people. That's what we have to do. We have decades and decades worth of crap in the basement. We got to get in there and we got to dig it out. And if we do that, then we set an example for the younger people to say, look at how happy they are. Look how radiantly they're living their life. Look at how well they get along with everybody. How do I do that? Yeah, it's... I think that there is a group of really elite people that have $300 million boats and fly their planes that are trying to help us with climate change, though, right? Aren't those people setting a good example? You know, and that honestly comes down to... How do we see ourselves in relation to them? Yeah. So do they even exist? I mean, that's a good question to ask whenever I find myself in that paradigm of like, you know, good guys, bad guys, this, that. Do they even exist? Or is it just a big fun house of mirrors? And are they just reflecting a consciousness that's in the air right now? And that's always been in the air of human evolution and human development. And that's why people love to pick on isms. They pick on capitalism. They pick on communism. They pick on the isms. The isms are just manifestations of the consciousness. They're not independent things. They're just like, we all have collectively agreed to this thing. So now we're going to put it out there and call it an ism. I say, well, that's bad. Well, what created it? What was the driving force? What was the consciousness behind the creation of the ism? So if each one of us goes inside, like truly goes inside, and becomes the optimal version of ourselves that we were meant to be when we got here before the hairball started accumulating. We get rid of these damn hairballs just one at a time, just literally one at a time. I mean, imagine we've seen it with some examples throughout history of singular individuals who've just removed the hairball and just lived and just exuded it. One man did it and there are 2 billion people who quite literally wear him around their neck right now. or simply removing his own hair until he did remove his own hairball. And by doing that, the divine, everything flew, you know, float in and then it just radiated out. And imagine if each, each one of us has that power. Imagine if each one of us could do that. Wow. Yeah. It's wild. Yeah, I do think it's not only wild, it's wildly beautiful to see what happens to you when you stop paying attention to all the noise. And it's hard to do sometimes because there's so much noise. And like you said, we all have this basement where we have these radio receivers turned on and we're secretly listening for the noise on some level. But when you can take a moment to figure things out for yourself or just tune out the noise and tune into the relationships of your life, you know, you start looking out your window and you're like, I don't see anything out my window that I see through this TV window. I don't see it. How come? It's, it's, it's pretty amazing to think, right? I mean, we, we do create our own reality, right? And the fun part about the fun house of mirrors is that you do create the house of mirrors too, like as you're going. And, you know, I love the, the Bashar channelings, man. And, It's really cool what Daryl Anka does. And one thing I took from it that I really dig is that he talks about how we're sliding and shifting into different realities and dimensions billions of times per day. Billions of times. And if you take the multi-potentiality of the multiverse, there's everything happening all at once. Like, what are you, quote, sliding into? Like the old show Sliders from the 90s. Yeah, I remember. I love that show. Until the show completely went to hell in season two. But it was great until then. It really was great. and it's the same idea like you're constantly sliding and sliding and sliding so what do you choose to slide into we could slide into whatever we want I i was a political animal in my 20s and that's the world that I slid into and I met a lot of my friends in that world and they're still there they haven't slid out of it yeah I love that they're obsessed with it that's their thing god bless them that's their journey it's not mine anymore that's not my noise anymore yeah you know and that's cool that's like that's the world I choose to chose to slid out of Now they can slide in, they can slide out whenever they want. That's the fun part, man. That's the cool part about being infinity in the meat suit. You can still tap into that infinity, which means choice. Always have a choice of what you're gonna slide into and how you're gonna react to what's around you and what fun house and merge you're gonna like redo. So get in there. Do you see events like, for me, psychedelics has been a portal in which I can slide through dimensions on some level. I feel as if it has given me a sense of awareness about situations that I didn't have before. But so too have traumatic events provided me that portal. I'm curious to get your idea on portals and sliding through events. Well, you have the right highlight right now because Queen Lani Ray is going to come right back to it, rattle the wake. This is what it does. This is what traumatic events do. This is what fundamentally psychedelics do. All these different things are these rattling catalysts that just shake you out of the slumber of, I'm a separate being. I'm small. I'm helpless. I'm powerless. I'm a victim. This is a narrative that is fundamentally untrue because That can't be true against the backdrop of what you really are. That's just incompatible. But it's a hell of an illusion and it's a really good show. And I'm not dogging it. And I mean that because think about this. If you're watching a show, let's say you're sitting at a Broadway show, you're row eight, you got great seats, some corporation puts you up, you're having a great time, right? Okay. And you're watching like Les Mis, one of my favorite shows of all time. So you're watching Les Mis and then Javert is the great villain right and so Javert like you know like scene eight he just decides in the middle of the damn show to just stop his line and look at the audience and say hey I know I'm playing Javert isn't this cool like aren't I doing a good job is this fun okay okay back to the show then he gets in there like Jean Valjean he starts singing again like this sucks I want my money back this is awful What makes the show great is Javert thinking he's Javert and playing Javert really convincingly. And the actor getting so into it, he doesn't even know that there's an audience out there. He doesn't know that anything exists beyond the stage. So we have to really dig into these characters and play these characters well for the show to be worth watching. Because we're watching. We are watching us play these characters. So why not give ourselves a hell of a show? I love it. I think I get caught up sometimes and I think other people may get caught up sometimes in the audience's participation in me being the character. You know what I mean by that? Like there's these quotes like fake it till you make it or there's this idea of just, hey, dance like nobody's watching and love like you've never been hurt, you know? But on some level, have you found any tips or tricks to help your relationship with the audience to believe in your character? Well, first of all, if you're going to dance like nobody's watching, you've clearly been to all the weddings on Long Island that I've been to. They all dance like nobody's watching and everybody's watching, which makes it even better, frankly. You know, I would say that the best way to really put on a show for you and everybody else is to really dig into what lights your character up. So I think where we go wrong is that, OK, think about a play. And again, I always come back to this metaphor because I love it and I think it's the most apt. If you're having a play, let's say, you know, you know, let's do Jean Valjean. Let's do Les Mis. We're talking about like a French village, you know, a couple hundred years ago. And everybody in the village has a role to play. Everybody on that stage, like you have your cobbler and your shopkeeper and like the town mayor and the town prostitute, like everyone has like the role to play. And that's awesome. Now, you can't be cast as like the town mayor and say, but I wish, I wish I were the town cobbler. Like this sucks. So I'm just going to cobble stuff and like that'll work out great. But no, you were cast to be the mayor. Now, what does that mean? You're just doomed to be the mayor. So no, no, you can be any mayor you want to be. That's the interesting part. Like you can be the best mayor for the show because the cool thing about it is there's not a pre-written script necessarily. You can create the script as you go. It's why you came in here. And not only the actor, the writer, director, producer, you're everything, everything. So if you are the mayor and you're cast as the mayor, how do you put on a great show? Well, you don't pretend to be the town cobbler or town prostitute. What you do is you say, how can I make such a cool scene and an impact being the best mayor that I can be? So I'm going to pass all these cool decrees and I'm going to give these great speeches in front of the town. And I'm going to create this shelter for children whose parents were lost in the war. And I'm going to do all these great things. I'm going to be known as the greatest mayor this town ever had. And then you leave the stage and you get a standing ovation. You come back out for a third and a fourth and an eighth curtain. You say that was one hell of a mayor performance. I love it. I can't help but think that. Like I use that idea in life when things get tough, it's like how they have to be. Like what good story have you ever seen? What good play have you ever given a standing ovation to where there wasn't the overcoming of situations, right? And maybe that's understanding your position as the mayor. Maybe that is, you know, exceeding a dream that you had about who you are only by conquering different levels of something. But yeah, it's, it's a phenomenal way to, to think about it. And I, it does help relate to the audience because we all have an audience, all our relationships, you know, and in your opinion, does it, does the relationship with the audience to do your relationships with other people mirror the relationship you have with yourself? Always from my experience. And I definitely, the people that you will bring into your ecosystem will be a direct direct reflection because at some point you know when people talk about this and I used to think it was bs I used to think all this stuff was bs frankly so that's kind of what makes this journey fun too I used to be the biggest cynic man I used to do satire like I'm not talking like fun satire I mean like bitter biting satire about new age stuff and it's actually like still on my linkedin profile from many many years back like old articles that I wrote if you want you want to go on a scavenger hunt that stuff was like from a different me I'm looking back at that like that dude hated him some life boy That was some bitter SOB back then. And who did that attract into my ecosystem? People who thought the exact same way. Exact same way. But then once I started changing how I approached the world, funny enough, the world started changing how it approached me. Which just adds credence to that you are the world, right? You're changing the world by changing yourself, by becoming the best version of yourself. So, too, are you creating the best environment for yourself, which is opening it up for other people to play in and have fun in. It's interesting to think about it from that angle. Oh, yeah. Like four years ago, I'd say pre-pandemic, there's no chance. Zero percent. That I would have connected with you or Dan or Haley or any of the folks that are here. Yeah. Within like my current ecosystem that I love to pieces. None of you would have been like, it would not have happened. I was vibrating at a different place and I attracted people who are vibrating at that place too. And it's not a judgment of me or them. That's just where we were. Like everyone has this journey. And this is something too that I find, can I just go on a quick like- Yeah, please. Let it out moment here for a second. This is something that, you know, really grinds my gears, you know, about what I would find, what I would call like loosely the spiritual community is that there's a lot of judgment for community that really shouldn't have it. And a lot of the judgment is, well, look at how evolved and advanced I am and look how backwards they are and how low consciousness and low vibe they are. Like, well, so are you. So were you. Every fractal of creation goes on this boomerang. They go all the way out into the burbs of like first density being a rock. and then come all the way back home. And you make every stop along the way. So this idea of like, I'm better than you. If like, if two people decide to take a road trip from New York to LA and I'm in Nebraska and you're still in Pennsylvania, am I going to look back and point a finger and laugh at you? Like you're some kind of a loser. It's insane when you think about it, but that's how it is. Like you're all just on your own journey. So that's where I was then. This is where I'm now. Still a lot of growth to go. Still a long way to go still. You're never really home yet, but- It's fun, man, once you lean into the fact that you're on the journey instead of resenting it. It's fun. It is. And it's interesting that you bring up different communities like this LinkedIn community. I don't think I would have met anybody on this whole community that I speak to on almost a daily basis. it's almost like the soul family that you talk about in your book. And it's strange that all of us on some level, like I can look at so many people and identify with them. Like, yeah, I totally get that. Or, Oh my God, I've been through that. Like that can't be a coincidence. It's like, you're finding pieces of yourself to help you remember beautiful things about yourself. We're all each other's roadmap home. That should be a bumper sticker. That should. You know, I thought about that. Man, that's good. I channel that. I dig it. I'd say I just want to give a couple shout-outs, some of the comments over here, which I love. Yeah, please. Dan is absolutely right. I did learn to dance like no one's watching at Leonard's of Great Neck Catering Hall. I've been to many, many a wedding at Leonard's of Great Neck, and you've not experienced it. It is absolutely baked into the cake of New York existence to go to an event at Leonard's at some point, and it's – I, let me tell you that the food there, oh my God, dog food. Don't eat it. Eat somewhere else. Don't sue me. I'm just, can we not be honest here? It's actually, it's very, very good stuff around there. And any Burbs reference, be still my clopecky in heart. Probably gonna get me right there. Burbs Tonger. They are. Yeah, that's it. That's it. Do you see in the future? I think Haley was talking about coming out with her own designer tongs. Have you heard about this? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're going to have we're going to be. We're going to have a Tongarian merch empire at the end of the day. Yeah. And, you know, the fun part about it is this is what Tonga really is. And, you know, the cool thing about it is that Tonga is very much like the singularity itself. Like once you give it a name, it ceases to be. You can't you can't name the thing. So Tonga doesn't even actually exist. That's the fun part about it. And the minute you try to define what Tonga is, you've already defined it wrong. So Tonga is whatever you want it to be. Like you have the tongue and then it is literally whatever you want it to be. Now we're going to have fun with it. We're going to do Tonga verse merge and we're going to have a lot of Tongarian tournaments and celebrations and events and all kinds of really cool stuff with it. And we've had, we have Clopac Tonga and every other kind of Tonga in the world, but so can you, because it is anything you want it to be. And what Tonga simply is, it is a catalyst to remind you that you are the deity of your own Tonga verse. And if you can create a Tongaverse, you can create anything. Yeah. My daughter, I was showing her the videos of the Tongaverse, and she's like, Dad, they're tongs. I'm like, I know. It was just this moment of like, I'm like, I know. And she was like, yeah. And then shortly after that, she beat me in chess. So got that going for me. As daughters tend to do. Obi-Wan has taught her well. So is the new book out, Jeff? Is it written? Is it out? Can people buy it or is it coming out or okay? It is. Oh man, that was cool stuff. As you said that on the live ticker, 4444. Imagine that. I don't know what those angel numbers mean. Somebody in the comments, hook a brother up. What do those angel numbers mean exactly? But that's pretty damn cool. So yes, the book is out. It is available on both Kindle and paperback. And next year, once the trilogy is done, because book three is already underway in terms of the writing. It's going to be released as a trilogy because I'm a Back to the Future guy and I love trilogies. Just love them. It's going to be converted into an audio series too. Have you thought about having characters read for the characters for the audio series? I thought about that. So I actually know who's going to be doing the reading for it. It's most likely going to be my cousin. And he is an absolute brilliant voiceover actor who can do it. And this is the kind of book, you know, a lot of accents. yeah a lot of accents a lot of characters there's a lot going on there man there's a lot happening so I could easily narrate from the point of view of smooth I can't do bianca I can try I can't I cannot do justice to bianca I can't do I can't do trouble I can't do a lot of these these characters that would be really fun to do but I can't but I know someone who can and it's going to be awesome when he does it what about potentially having like a like a playwright, you know, having people act it out a little bit. That would be pretty sweet too. You know, I had a download that it's going to become a movie and that's exciting for me. So I don't know who's going to make it. One thing about this, this human design madness is apparently my, my archetype, if you will. I will. What the hell not? Why not? I will. The archetype doesn't chase. It attracts and it doesn't impose. It waits to be invited. So and I used to think that was like, yes. But then I started looking back on my life and I realized, man, that is so profoundly true. Like I have never chased after anything or anyone successfully in my life. Every good thing that has ever come my way has like invited me to be a part of it. So with this too, like I'm not chasing down movie studios and I'm not chasing down directors and producers and like, oh, please make this into a movie. Like it will, the book will get into the hands that it needs to get into. And then people will reach out to me and then it will happen. And I don't know how, but that's cool because we're in an infinite universe. It'll surprise me. It'll dazzle me. And it'll be super fun when it happens. And I'll refer back to this podcast when it does like George, remember the time it freaking happened, man. Let's talk about it. It's so philosophical in some ways because I feel like sometimes the only reason I can't have something I want is because I want it. And it's almost like this. It's like if you've ever been single and you try to find a date, it's like people can smell the desperateness on you. They're like, get away from me. I took a shower, man. Come on. But the same thing with our thoughts or the things we want in our life, when we want them so bad, we can't even touch them because we want them so bad. What do you think that is? Have you experienced that? Oh, well, I'll say this, man. I'm not the first man in history to have this story of how the world reacts to you when you walk into a bar without a wedding ring versus how they do when you walk in with a wedding ring. And if there is a greater illustration than that, I have yet to see it. But actually, there is another one that I would say is right up there. It's the same principle. And LinkedIn people, you're watching this and you know this. Job hunting. If you are unemployed and looking for a job, you are a leper. But if you are happy in your job and good to go, every recruiter on planet Earth is knocking down your door. And it is the exact same principle. That's it. And people rail against it. And I satirize it all the time because I don't think it's right. But who cares what I think? It just is not what I think is right or wrong. It just is. And that's the reality of the isness is that if you are set and you don't want, then you attract. But if you want, then you repel. This is just simple magnetic energy. That's it. It's not, it's, it's morally neutral. It's philosophically neutral. Yeah. You know, it, and, but we, we, we label it as like a bad thing or a good thing. It just, it just is. So do you play by the rules or do you rail against the rules? But the rules are the rules. It just, it just is. Yeah, I think this speaks to the idea of letting go or surrendering because it's real easy to get in your own way when that happens. You know, if I say to you, okay, Jeff, I want you to meditate on not wanting anything. And then you're like, okay, George, but now I'm wanting to not want anything. Like you just get in your own way. Like you just have to like think about it, hold it. Okay, why do I want it so bad? Well, I would like to have it. Okay, deep breath. Let me live today. But once you get out of your own way, you clear that magnetic blockage and then you can open it back up to the attractiveness again, I think. What do you think? 100%. It's why I don't meditate. That surprises a lot of people when I say that I don't meditate at all. I tried it. It's not for me. And I know why. Because whenever I meditate, it's coming from the energy of now I need to relax and I need to slow down. And I need, I need, I want, I need. It's like pushing away everything that I actually really do need by proclaiming that I need it. Because for me, it's not natural to meditate. For some people, it is. So I'm not knocking it as a thing. For some people, meditation is great. Love them for that. You do. Not for me. For me, what I call meditating is just getting into the flow state. And to me, flow is where I am in my most natural state. So I think, okay, what do I want to do right now? Like, what do I most want to do? And if it just means being, just like sitting around and doing absolutely nothing, then cool, then I'm meditating. But if it means going for a walk, then I'm meditating. If it means listening to a ridiculous playlist I put together, it's meditating. If it means just doing a taekwondo set in the middle of my living room, then I'm meditating. If it means writing something, then I'm meditating. If it means doing the thing I'm most naturally inclined to do at that exact moment, then I step into flow, I step into being. And I'm riding the river of the Tao, and I'm good. But for me... It ain't meditating, pal. Can't do it. Cannot listen to the final thing. Can't do it. That's where the Joey the Mets fans meditation satire came from was that idea. Like I tried to meditate. No, no. What I want to do now more than anything is a pine on this sounding like a Mets fan from Staten Island. So like, oh, let me do that. That'll be fun. And that's how I meditate. I make a Joey the Mets fan meditation videos. Those are phenomenal videos too. It's awesome. Dan has an incredible quote right here that I think sums up the idea we were talking about. Passive candidates are the crack cocaine of executive recruitment. That's so hilarious. I love it. Again, another t-shirt right here. There it is. Brilliant. It is brilliant. I have a question about inner dialogue and being in the flow state. It sounds to me, from what we talked about, the way you write is in a flow state. And it sounds to me when you speak about meditation that you have found ways to just be. How does that come about? If you were to describe getting into a flow state, is there something you do before you start writing? Or is it like a feeling that's like, okay, I'm ready to write now? Or is it a process of like, I'm going to write like 10 pages before anything good comes out and then you start writing stuff? Is there like a process or some sort of pattern that you find yourself able to use to be in an altered state or a flow state? So two things I would say, so it's a two-step process. The first is remove the hairball. They got to remove the hairball because everything that is good that came into these books was from flow and was from source and just came through me. So the character can't take credit for it. It just came through me and the character like merged with it to create it. But, you know, I had to be, um, impregnated with it and in order to do that like I had to remove the diaphragm so in that case we're going to use this imagery now so it's super clear remove the diaphragm that's the only way this happens so whatever is like energetically holding you back and the things that hold us back the most are feelings of should I should be doing this I should be calling that person today I should be texting them I should be doing that I should give it all the shoulds Stop shitting all over yourself. My dear friend Aoife says, she's absolutely right. Stop shitting all over yourself. Just get rid of the shoulds. Get rid of the shoulds and then come back to B. And then from the place of B, you'll find like your excitement start ramping up again. And then whatever you're like excited about, follow it, follow it, follow it. And that will take you into it. Now, alternately, there's another way to do this. This is something that is effective as well, but it has some pitfalls. So I'll give you a caveat around it, like an asterisk. Find the thing in your life that is giving you the absolute most stress, the most heartburn, the most fear, whatever it is, and just start writing about that. Lean into it. Don't run away from it. So two things will happen. Number one, you'll transmute it by just simply writing about it. Because the longer we keep that stored up, the more it starts to turn like sour milk inside of us. And that can create a lot of health problems and psychological problems and other kinds of stuff. Write about it. Maybe make a character about it. Maybe make a story, a vignette, whatever you want to do. Create a character, create a story, create something, start writing about it. Or if you're doing a bigger creative project like a book or a series, find a way to work that in. So in the original Path to Perfection book, there was one hairball that I couldn't get out. And I worked it into the book. And the main villain of the first book was a manifestation of that hairball in my life at that time. And that was a very, very powerful and effective way for me to transmute it. The risk, though, is that if you use that as your dry tinder, as your source, then you're playing with fire. And you can use a fire for a lot of really cool things. You can heat a house, smoke a brisket, could also burn down the damn house in the whole neighborhood. So be careful when you're doing it that you don't indulge in it too much. Like you see it, you step aside from the hairball, you see what's happening and you acknowledge like, oh, there's that thing. Okay, that thing is happening to this character. Interesting when you write about that. I'm feeling that. But if you get into the character, like, oh my God, this thing is happening to me. What am I gonna do? And you feel that. the more you write about it, the more like, it's like you're breathing oxygen into the fire and you're expanding the fire and the fire becomes bigger and bigger. And then until it's just like, all there is is the fire. So if you're going to use that, be mindful about it. It's a lot to say. Man, that's deep. It's, yeah. Do you ever feel like, I'm trying to get this out. I think there's a lot of levels there. When you're writing a story, are you writing about your past in the future? You know what I mean? There's a lot of levels when you're starting to put that model into play. You're the main character in the story that's living it, and now you're going to write this other story that may or may not come true, or maybe it's already come true. How do you... How do you play with that concept of, I know you spoke, there is no time, but how do you make sense of being the main character in the story while simultaneously writing about his past and present? You really, you know, it's wild, dude. But once you get into the process of it, you realize some really unbelievable things start happening. And that like you're creating not only the reality that you're writing about, you're creating the reality that you're living and that they will very often overlap in ways you can't even wrap your head around. So, okay, here's a crazy story for you. Okay. So from the first Path to Perfection book, and I'm not gonna give any spoilers away, but there was a scene in a TV studio. And there were characters in this TV studio. And the show existed because of an article that was written about these characters in a major New York Daily newspaper. And it was that article written about them that led to this appearance on this TV show. That was the scene. I won't tell you what characters, how it happened, but that was the scene of Path to Perfection. Okay. I wrote that in December of 22. And then it went out of mind, out of sight. Fast forward a couple of months later. I created this thing called the not working experience. And it was this idea that came to me because, by the way, writing the book at the end of 22 removed the hairball for me, removed the hairball. And when the hairball was removed, the flow started coming in. And when the flow came in, not only did the book come in, but this idea for this thing called the not working experience, which was what would it be like if we had a networking event where you couldn't talk about work? What would that be like? That'd be interesting. Let's try it. So I get to my hotel room that night and I just furiously create this new meetup group. And then I put this thing together and we have our first event in Arlington, Virginia, February 1st, 2023. I thought, well, this could be cool. Maybe like maybe half a dozen people will show up. We'll get a cool little group together. We had over 90 people come out for it. And then I did a follow-up event in Albany, New York. We had a big turnout. We had another follow-up event in New York city, 130 came out and we, Unbeknownst to me, there was a reporter from the New York Post that came out to cover the event. And because, again, I can't go out and reach. It has to come to me. It's just how it is, like the universe, I guess. So this reporter shows up. I'm not expecting anybody. And she writes this full-page feature in the New York Post lifestyle section, which, by the way, was also the section in the book. She writes a full-page feature in the New York Post lifestyle section about the networking experience. And it comes out a week later and I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. More interesting than that. What happens right afterwards? I get an email, which I think is somebody trolling me or pranking me from the Drew Barrymore show about how we want to feature the not working experience on it. All right. All right. Seriously, who's trolling me? And I start looking at the email I send from like, some of my friends are screwing with me. Well played. I appreciate a good troll. It was really from the Drew Barrymore show. And they ended up having a segment showing an alive Drew Barrymore taping about the not working experience. And this doesn't even occur to me until like a month later. And I realized, oh, my God, I literally wrote this into reality. In my book, I quite literally created this in the quantum field and it appeared in my own life. So needless to say, I've been very intentional about what I was writing in the second book. What an incredible moment to realize how powerful your thoughts are and that your thoughts are things and they can become your reality. It's one thing to read a book and hear someone talk about it, but it's another thing to speak to someone who actually can show you the receipts of the evidence of it. Is that something that changes you forever? Forever, because... You know, there's so many moments and I'm sure you probably tell me if I won't speak for you. Tell me if you still experience this. OK, where no matter how much evidence you've seen of this thing, if you want to call it, there are still some moments when you'll have these doubts of. am I really just hallucinating all this crap? Like, is this any of this even, is this all actually just the materialistic reality that, you know, science of the past hundred years has told us that it is. And that is this all just one giant dose of copium to deal with the fact that on this insignificant speck in the universe, and I'm going to disappear and I'm trying to create all these stories to make it make sense. And you'll occasionally keep, no matter how deep of a believer you are, or even a knower that you are, you'll have these moments, you'll slip back into it. But once you cross the Rubicon of an experience like that, like there's no way in hell. There's no way. This is all just some big cosmic accident. There's just I mean, that is like a trillion to one odds kind of a situation unfolding. There's just no way. And then you start looking at other synchronicities and you realize there's just no way. There's just no way that I'm not living in the simulation that I myself happen to create. It's just there's no way. Yeah. What do you think is, is there a relationship between spirituality and simulation? Another theme explored in book two. Yes. And we'll be even deeper explored in book three, but yes, very much so. I mean, I think, I think fundamentally, I think spirituality is just the word we use to describe the science we don't yet understand. I mean, if you look at all the things that we're doing right now, right. They would have been considered woo-woo, spiritual, hocus-pocus. They would have been considered, I mean, anything, anything. I mean, even this board back there that's lighting up right now. If I get into Doc Brown's time machine and go 1,000 years ago, they'd burn me as a witch just for having that thing that's lighting up. Just lighting up like that, I'd be burned as a witch. Like, that'd be inconceivable to a person 1,000 years ago. Utterly inconceivable. Inconceivable 300 years ago, much less 1,000 years ago. Inconceivable. So waiting for the inconceivable comments. Let's go. Chop, chop, Princess Bride people. You're on it. Let's go. Let's do it. That's exactly what would have happened. So I think some point down the road, other things are going to come in that are going to just unveil more truths of our quantum reality that today would seem spiritual, like, you know, communing with the dead, for instance. Like we look at that mediumship and we say, ah, it's hocus pocus, blah, blah, blah. It's all garbage. You know, you have to have faith to believe in that. Well, it's just we're just communicating with a different frequency. That's all it is. And one day we're frequencies will be more merged and we'll have more an opportunity to communicate and understand and connect and it won't be that hocus pocus if you tell somebody again you know a hundred years ago you know 50 years ago that you can have a conversation like this with somebody in virginia and somebody in hawaii speaking to each other looking at each other in real time this is something you would have said well that's on star trek it's not real It's not real. That's like, that's like, that's mysticism. That's crap. You see like in a TV show, it's not real. So I think that's all it is. It's just, it's an evolution toward understanding. Yeah. I love that concept. There's evolution towards understanding. It seems like so much of our language is so limited. You know, we only can conjugate verbs in the past and the present tense. Like what happens if we could conjugate verbs in different dimensions? You know, if, what if we added like a, you know, a, um, What is a prefix or a suffix that denoted meaningfulness? You know, like you could change contract law just by changing, put an IX in front of a word. And like that changes the way you see the world. Hey, pretty soon we have all kinds of room to move. If we just change the language, then we can change our ideas. I was talking to Sebastian Marincolo a while back who wrote a really incredible paper on on what he called folk science. And he goes, in 100 years, George, we're going to look back at love and and, and, um, anger and all these, these folk science words as like, that was so funny. We thought that that thing was love. We just called it love and moved on. Like, we don't even know what that is, but like in a few years, maybe less than a hundred, maybe in 10 with how fast things are going, we're going to realize what attraction is. We're going to realize what love is. We're going to real realize what meaningful conversation is, what dialogue is and how to really conversate with people. It's pretty exciting to think about, right? A hundred percent. I think we're going to, we're going to actually look back at religion the same way in that And I actually think we're going to look back at religion with a lot more reverence than we have for it today. Because I think we're going to see it as this, and I absolutely love this description in this parable, essentially that they're all different parts of the same elephant. And it's like when one person will look at the tail, another will look at the foot and say, well, the elephant is a foot. Clearly. Well, no, the elephant is a tail. And they'll argue and they'll kill each other and they'll have wars that last hundreds of years over. What's the real elephant? And it's all the elephant. And You know, and I think of all these different faiths and I think of and I think each one of them has like a deeply, deeply profound truth. And I think they're all expressed in different ways. And I think we will have like once the understanding becomes universal, I think we'll look back at it and say, OK, well, OK, I get it now. So so you look at you look at Christianity and you look at the message of Jesus. And this was this message of there's an interconnected field of love. And that to live in your highest alignment, you have to live in that alignment of the interconnected field of love, love thy neighbor, all the golden rule, all these precepts of Christianity. Then you look at Judaism that brought the idea of the singularity, the one God, the singularity that is of all. And then you look at Islam, this idea of submission. It is surrender, like we were talking about. It's like stop trying to force the flow to surrender to the will, which is very similar to Taoism. That's riding the river of the Tao instead of trying to. Alter it. And then you look at Hinduism, all these different representations and manifestations, these forms and these illusions that we've created from the one source that all show up as these different gods of different things. It's all true. It's all true. And I think one day we'll realize that in retrospect, instead of dogging them all the way we do now, that's not cool. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. They're doing the best they can. We're all doing the best we can. We're just people in the meat suits. Yeah. Yeah, we have like this, you know, Atari 2600 and people, I don't know, we're living in this five-dimensional universe, but we have this, some of us are, myself included, I feel like I'm running on this older software, but I'm being upgraded as we speak. And maybe upgrade looks like tolerance. And just because I can't see it from their point of view doesn't mean it's not true because I'm not standing where they're standing. Of course, it's going to look different from where they're standing. Yeah. It's fascinating. Here's a, here's a great question from our friend, Clint Kyle. He says, do the characters in your stories have free will or are they subject to your predetermined path for them? That's a great question. Isn't it? Good to see you by the way, man. He's got a great podcast. Yeah, absolutely. Clint, I'm going to check out your pod, man. And thanks for stopping by in a minute. I love what you're doing over there. It's super, super cool. So, okay. Here's what's interesting about this. Every time I, I have tried to take a character in the direction like I wanted to go. I could not write the words. I physically could not write the words. So there was a there were actually a number of alternate timelines in the first book. We could talk about it offline, but there were but essentially they had different things happening to different major characters. And some major plot twists in book one did not actually happen in these alternate timelines. So I'm like, all right, I want to do that instead. Wouldn't let me do it. I said, yeah, of course there's a multiverse in which that did exist, but that's not the story we want you to tell. And they just kept steering me back to where they wanted me to tell the story, which could talk about Captain Woo, all that stuff, man. I'm convinced more than ever. that this, and I'm literally tapping into an alternate timeline where the story really did happen word for word, exactly the way it was told here. And that they essentially just came through to me to say, tell the story of what we experienced to the people in your reality, in your timeline, in your time-space construct. And they can relate to one of our characters, if not multiple characters, and they can find truth for themselves about their own struggles, their own journeys, their own experiences through our story. like use our story as an illustration. So whenever I try to say, well, let me tell the story of the time you did that instead in a different time, like no doofus, you're not supposed to do that. That's not going to help them. Don't you get it? This has to happen. They have to see this happen because of what happens after that. And then what happens after that? Like, that's the point. Like, okay, got it. I just have this image in my mind of these people the other time. I'm like, the guy doesn't get it. I'm telling him the story verbatim, and he wants to put this. No, you can't put that twist on him. It's like this interdimensional speaking going on. Exactly what's going down. It's like I'm in a writer's room with other people, but it's just me. But it's not just me. It's weird. Yeah. What do you hear them talk to you? Is it, is it like a knowing or are there voices or is it a strictly a sort of an automatic writing thing? Like how, when you're in the writer's room, how are they communicating to you? Through emotion. Hmm. Through emotion and through song. You know, songs are a very big part of the books. And each book has its own soundtrack. And I just actually created a brand new soundtrack today. Thank you, Haley, for that prompt. It's called Smooth and Diana's Road Trip. And it's a literal compendium of Smooth and Diana's music they were listening to on their road trip from New York to Florida in book one. And it's like the emotion takes you to the time and the place and the feeling of the scene. And whenever I found myself struggling for it, I would just surrender to them and I'd say, OK, what happens next? And then the song would come on that would invoke a deep emotion in me and the song would write the scene. And from the song, I would just know, oh my God, okay, that's exactly what happened. And that's, so it's through emotion that would speak to me. It wasn't voices in my head, thankfully, because I don't need to be committed anytime soon. I mean, I say anytime soon, maybe like in a year or two, that could be fun, take a little vacation. But for now, I kind of like my freedom. So I don't have the voices in my head just yet, but it's the emotion. Deeply speak to me through the emotion. That's a fascinating concept. If someone reads book one, can they go on your website and then watch the soundtrack or listen to the soundtrack or download the soundtrack? Yeah, so you can actually just go to Spotify and you can just literally look up The Path to Perfectia and it will have the soundtrack of book one. And then for book two, The Path to Perfectia, The Rising. And so you can just literally, the other playlists are exactly what they are in the book title. So you can just go right on Spotify and they're right there for you. Anybody can pull it up and play anytime. I heard there's an Easter egg in there too, the same way that you can put on White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane and watch Alice in Wonderland. I heard there's a secret song you could play while reading the first chapter of Path to Perfection. Do you care to share that song with people? Is there? That's what I heard. That's the word on the street. I'd love to know who's spreading that word, man. It's not me, but I don't hate it. I'm here for it. So let's talk, man. It's out there. I'll just leave it for the people. I mean, people that have read the book, I think they can put it in the comments or they can go and they can reach out to you and see what it is, but I'm pretty sure it's in there. Yeah, it is. So it's a song. It's the most wonderful time of the year. It's how the book starts. The Christmas classic. And it's an important song in the book. I'll say that. It's so cool to get to see the way in which the creative process can branch out in so many ways. It's almost like you take an ink bottle. throw it against the wall and smash and all these things come out. But having a soundtrack to a book, having a song that you can play to the movie, you know, like there's so many different dimensions that go into the idea of creating something that allows for other people to play a part in that creation. Like it's so beautiful to me. Oh, it's wild. I mean, you think about so many iconic movies and how there's like a song associated with them. You think about a movie like Ghost. There's just so many, you know, dirty dancing. I mean, you think about all these movies that are like iconic movies and so many that are like a signature song. And you hear that song, you're taken back into the movie. You're taken back into the scene. Soundtracks, Star Wars soundtrack, the Rudy soundtrack. There's so many great soundtracks. Indiana Jones, take you like just in the emotion of what's happening. Like, oh, this is awesome. I want to experience it again. Yeah. So here's an interesting question. As someone who's a writer and a speaker, do you have an affinity for the written word versus the spoken word or vice versa? I much prefer, you know, it's interesting. I love speaking. I really do. But I love speaking in settings like this a lot more than I do on stages. And I've been speaking on stages for my entire life. Right. but at some point you kind of fall out of love with it because there's a deep impersonability to it. And you're just, you're speaking to a blob. You're speaking to a mass. You don't know who the hell you're speaking to. You really don't like, well, thank you. I'm great to be here. You know, the seventh annual, you know, left-handed orthodontist association meeting and great, but every left-handed orthodontist in the crowd is a different person on a different journey. And, and, This is what just burns me about any conversation discussing anybody, any group of people as a monolith for anything. Like this group of people, like the whatever vote, you know, like a lot of people in that group and they have a lot of different thoughts and opinions. They all vote and think different ways. There's no like, quote, whatever vote. There's the same kind of thing with you're speaking to a crowd as well. This is what they want to hear. Is it? There's a whole lot of days in that audience. And that's why I really prefer one-on-one conversations like this in podcasts, live streams. I just love getting the chance to just connect because Jordan, I know I can have a conversation with you. When Clint pops in, I can have a conversation with him. When anybody else here, Ernie Frank or whatever, 10,000 Haley's are going to pop in and do the thing. I can speak to any one of them about any one of different things. And I can definitely say what's up to Sage the Intern. Sage, love you. Cannot wait to hang out with you next week. It's going to be a great time. And Virginia here too. Like everybody, Dan, like everybody here, we can have that individualized dynamic. That's hard to do when you're talking to a big crowd. It just is. When you're writing, that's a different animal entirely because you have no idea who's going to read it. And when you're writing, you're talking to yourself. Yeah. It's sometimes I wonder, like, you know, when you do speak to a mass, you have no idea what message they're taking in, but isn't that's kind of similar to the, the book that someone reads. Like you still don't know what message they're going to take away from it. You don't. And everybody's interpreting differently. Yeah. Yeah. End of book one, I've had people come up to me and had a different theories on what on what happened at the end of book one and all that. And so I've had a lot of people have different theories about where book one would lead into book two and what happened with certain characters and where those storylines would go. And they have all kinds of different things and all kinds of different hypotheses around it, which is fun. Really fun for me. I love it, man. I love when people have different perspectives on the book than I do. And when they have different takeaways from it than I do and different perspectives on it than I do. Some authors get threatened by that. I freaking love it. Bring it on. I love that. Show me what's up. Tell me, tell me what I haven't seen. Show me the blind spots. It enriches my experience with the book too. Yeah. It's almost like you get to read it from their perspective, even though you wrote it. It's pretty mind blowing. It's amazing. It's like, I'm reading a whole different book. Yeah. I see it, you know, just a couple of different tweaks and you realize you're looking at a whole different story. What, what as, as, as an author in this particular, you know, 2024, the idea of marketing has really changed. Are there some techniques that you're using to market it? Like obviously coming on podcast and speaking to your network, but is there newer things that you have seen that, that can help in that field that maybe couldn't have helped five or 10 years ago? Well, I'll be honest with you. I am probably the worst person to ask about that because, again, coming back to the human design thing and I'm not saying this to put myself in a box. Again, this is not this is not saying like the really big guy can't play quarterback. Right. Sure he can. It's not his optimal path. So I'm like my optimal path with these books. And I know this deeply and not just from the human design study, but I know this intuitively. I, I'm not going to, I, here's, I'll say this. Here's what I know. And I don't know how I know this. This is like the same knowing that came to me about like the show and everything else. This, these books are going to sell like hotcakes and there will be movies made after them. I have no idea how or by who or when, or I don't know any of that. I don't care. It'll happen when it happens. I know it will happen. but I can't do anything to make it happen. I can't chase it. So in terms of book marketing, nothing to add on that. I will say though, from what I've seen from other people who have different human design archetypes, they're very successful by chasing stuff and crushing it and killing it and 10Xing it and all the other hustle broke crap. They're really good at that, is that you build a relationship with your readers on a platform you know they're on. So Facebook is really good for that. So is Instagram. So is TikTok. And you just consistently show up with yourself you just talk a little bit a snippet in the book and how that relates to real life something you're going through something they're going through talk to them directly don't try to sell the book just talk about the book and create trust so that I would say with the book it's like you're marketing anything else if you're marketing a service or you're marketing a product or you're marketing a course or whatever you're marketing build a relationship with your audience where they know you and they trust you and they like you And then they're just going to buy. So, so many of my book sales have not come from me talking about the book. They've come from like my satire on LinkedIn and people will read that over time. And they, we develop a relationship in the comments and then they, they see author path to perfect the series. Like, Ooh, okay. And they click on it and then they buy the books. That's how my sales have gotten. It's not by me, like just shoving the book in everyone's face. I honestly will post about the books maybe like two or three times a year at most. And it's only because of something interesting that happened that I think relates back to it. But I never like, this is my book. Here's the link. Get your copy today. That's not my style. It'll never be my style. Yeah, and I think it speaks volumes, too, of the situation you brought up earlier where you'd written a book and then you wrote in that book. And the next thing you know, you find yourself starting this meetup group and then on Drew Barrymore's show. And I also think it speaks to the problem of marketing just to market. When you look at all of these... things that are packaged for us. This is a celebrity. This is this movie. Like a lot of those movies are just so monotonous. Like I don't even want to watch them anymore. And I think people are tired of that. I think people are tired of the old paradigm of a house deciding who's going to be important, why the story is good, influencing all of it, and then packaging it and giving it to people. People are tired of that. And you're seeing real talented people whether it's you, Haley, you know, so many incredible people that are Lonnie, look at Lonnie, just helping people, helping people up all day long. Come share your rattled away. So like that lady started a movement. Like everyone is part of this movement. There's rattled awake movement. And you're seeing this groundswell of creativity and originality that is really becoming infectious and contagious. Yeah. Jeff Wallner, you are amazing. Typhus. Typhus Tonger. By the way, that's another kind of Tonger we had on our episode recently. Typhus Tonger. It's super fun. So we have a pair of Tongs. Declare, I Tong, therefore I am, and go cure Typhus. That's it. And you just did by declaring it. We've created a Tongerverse, an alternate timeline. where tongs have cured typhus. How cool is that? You just cured typhus in an alternate universe. That's so cool. Congratulations. Good on you. Well done. It's so beautiful. Start showing Tongiverse, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah. Hell yeah. Jeff, this is amazing, man. I love our conversation. I'm super stoked on what you're doing. And I think that you're providing a really cool medium for people to explore different universes, not only through your creative work, but also just by putting out so much positivity and being such an amazing person. But before I let you go, where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about? I'm not giving my home address. That's true. I thought it would work. I thought it would work this time. Got you. Um, just connect with me on LinkedIn. Seriously. That's the best way. Connect with me on LinkedIn and, uh, you can see what, see what's going on over there. If you want to learn more about Tonger, just go to just seriously, go to tonger.org. That's it tonger.org. And just check us out. You can, you can look at our leadership. Our board of directors are all AI characters. We don't have any real humans in charge of this thing. It exists, but it doesn't. But the exact same time, like the chairman of our board is a literal dog named Colonel Cuddlesworth, like a military dog. And we have like a walrus on the board of directors too. We have like a lot of all kinds of characters like that. And we're going to be having a lot of in-person Tongarian events. If you happen to be in the vicinity of Sioux Falls, South Dakota on June 29th, look at that lighten up. It knows it's getting excited. Road trip. It's going to be awesome. We are having a Tonger celebration in Sioux Falls on June 29th. And we're having one in Chicago the prior weekend, too. So if you're around Chi-Town, you let us know. We're going to be bringing Tongarian celebrations, delirious days of joy to everywhere you are, including Hawaii. Yes. And, of course, Lieutenant Peanutbuttermus. We cannot forget Lieutenant Peanutbuttermus, without a doubt. Yeah. So connect with me on LinkedIn. Let's talk. Let's chat. Let's do the thing. And learn some more about Tonger at Tonger.org. And honestly, if you just want to follow the goings of it, play Tonger on Instagram. That's it. Just follow us. Play Tonger. You'll see all the ridiculous clips that we put up and all the animations and all the stupid games and all the Tonger ridiculousness. Join the movement. It's fun. Absolutely. It doesn't suck. And I would recommend everybody check out the books. I think that you can... For me, I've only read the first ones overall, but it was therapeutic for me. Like I said, I can see myself, and then I got to see you going through things and all these different characters. I think it's really well done, and I can't recommend it high enough. So people should go and check out both books. Reach out to Jeff. He's an amazing guy. So that's all we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you have a beautiful day. Jeff, hang on briefly afterwards, but to everybody else, thank you so much for being in the comments. Virginia. Actually, it's Virginia. It's Tonger. T-O-N-G-E-R. Yeah. Here she is right here. Lisa Marie, what's up? I feel healed just being in the presence of Lisa Marie. I can't speak for anybody else. The power of Tonger. Tonger Day, Virginia. Everybody, thank you so much for being here today. I hope everyone has a beautiful day, and that's all we got. Hello. Hang on, my friends.