Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So you're doing a lot of different things nowadays.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: What assembled all of what I'm doing now was your work.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: That the mental health that I had experienced, I'm able to reframe much there, there is some pathology in psychiatry. But what I'm understanding, and sort of from an anthropological perspective in Western culture is that you're seeing systems overwhelmed. Sensitive systems overwhelmed with too much stress and stimuli. And so what we see is psychosis and mental health distress. But really, as a Kaya said, this is a spiritual issue.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Fully, totally incomplete.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: I say often, not always.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Well, I mean, Right. It's, it's interesting to dig down into those times where it's not.
I mean, that's an interesting question. But by and large, the majority of what I see and how I'm able to assist people with the framework of mental health as a spiritual issue, it's just activated this whole realm not accessible in Western culture.
That prayer, contemplation, meditation, sensitizing one to one's spiritual element, whatever, it doesn't matter what the framework is.
Jewish, Christian, pagan, it doesn't matter. Buddhist, you know, Shinto, it doesn't matter.
It just doesn't matter. But that, that you tie the distress that you're seeing to a spiritual element or a spiritual, A deprivation and spiritual nourishment or spiritual connection or a crying out within the system that must break through itself into the spiritual realm.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Got it. How do you define spiritual?
[00:01:48] Speaker B: That's a great. You know, I've thought so long and hard about this. I would say, I wouldn't define spiritual. I define spirituality.
And with one word, care.
C A, R E care. If you care, it is spiritual.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I, for some reason, I know everybody has their own definition. I tend to use connection. Being connected.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: I remember that. I mean, should I just roll. You want to roll right into this. I mean, no need to introduce. Right. I mean, sure.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: You introduce me and we can go from there.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: That sounds great. Well, actually, I mean.
So welcome to another installment of Unraveling Religion. I'm your host, Joel Lessees in Buffalo, New York, and it is my great privilege and honor to welcome back to Unraveling Religion for a second time, Phil Borges from Seattle, producer of Crazy Wise. Former dentist.
[00:02:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Orthodontist, but okay.
[00:02:50] Speaker C: All right. Yeah.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: And photographer of many cultures.
And what, what else would you say about yourself, Phil?
[00:03:00] Speaker A: Well, there's a lot I could say.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: What do you want to say? What do you want to say?
[00:03:05] Speaker A: So, yes, I, well, I'll say how it all started for Me, the whole spiritual aspect of my life, which has taken many different forms.
When I was seven years old, my dad died of lung cancer.
And my mom was watching him die in an oxygen tent.
And during his last breaths, he was struggling for air, basically drowning. His lungs were filling with fluid.
And during his last few breaths, he looked up and he was struggling. Before that, he looked up, his face relaxed, he smiled and died.
And my mother considered that he saw someone from the other side who came to get him.
So for me, it was like, what is the other side? The other side of what?
And. And it was just. I mean, it was strange, you know, first of all, losing my dad and then, you know, having it talked about like that. And then a month later of an aunt, my grandfather's sister, who had been institutionalized because she had a severe reaction after her husband and only son died in a car accident. I think it was a car accident. I'm not even sure of that, but that was what I heard.
And so she was institutionalized after she created. They were fairly wealthy.
She created this huge bonfire in her backyard in the Los Angeles hills, in the Hollywood hills. And that's when they took her and institutionalizer. Well, when she got out, for some reason that I don't know, she came to live with us. And that was just a couple of months after my dad passed away.
And she was calling in the spirits at night, pounding on the walls, giving out these whales. And that wall she was pounding on was also my bedroom wall.
So I was hearing all this and totally freaked out about it. And I was freaked out about her because every once in a while she would ask me if I wanted to speak with my dad.
And no, I didn't want any part of dead people or the spirits or.
So anyway, that's kind of how I say I got keyed into this subject.
Long story short, I.
Yeah, I became a dentist. And I.
After a few years doing that, it became very routine.
I did some creative things in the beginning with the practice, and I started getting depressed about my work. I wasn't getting fulfilled with it.
And so I switched to being a photographer.
And I moved from San Francisco to Seattle, set up my.
Started doing commercial work until I was doing book covers and various things. And I, at one point, got a job doing romance novel covers.
And I. I had to stop and ask myself, did I really quit my orthodontic practice to do romance? So basically, I was looking for work with meaning. And I started with a project in Tibet.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Well, you were doing. Generally, you were doing women's issues. Right, weren't you doing a women's issues.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: That came much later. But what happened in Tibet was I met a columnist from the London, the Daily Telegraph in London, Mick Brown, and he was doing a story on a Young, a 30 year old Tibetan monk that was known as a kooten because he could go into trance and channel the protector spirit of the Tibetan people known as the Naichung Oracle.
And so we want, he, Mick invited me to go and watch him go into trance and it was very strange to watch this whole thing, very ornate dress on, on this young monk. They put a huge hat on his head weighed 60 pounds encrusted with emblems and gold.
And as soon as they did that his head went back and his eyes closed and he started talking in a very high pitched voice and I assumed he was in a trance like state. And he went on for four or five minutes. The monks around him were writing down everything he said, then he faded and they had to carry him out of the room.
So it was just a very ornate. In this small monastery right next to the Dalai Lama's residence. Yeah, powerful, very powerful it was, yeah, I, I didn't know what to think of it and we were asked to go in and, or we got in, Mick got the invitation, he invited me along, we went in and interviewed the kooten.
Now there are many kootens in Tibet, he just happens to be one of the main ones.
And when I say kooten it's. You could substitute the word shaman.
That's the way we know these people in our Western culture.
So anyway, we asked him or Mick asked him, you know, how did you become a Kuchin?
And he listed his symptoms. Hearing voices, having wild personality changes, intense dreams at night. He thought he was dying at times.
You know, after we got out of that interview, Mick and I were talking and we said, you know, it sounds like a psychosis or a psychological cri crisis.
And so that was just this sort of interesting thing that happened while I was doing this human rights story on Tibet which changed into a story about compassion as I got to know the Tibetan people better.
Two years after that I was in Kenya doing a work, some work for Amnesty International with a tribe called the Samburu up in northern Kenya when I met a young woman through my guide. My guide knew her as a very famous predictor in her tribe.
She was 37 years old, she had five kids.
And her story, right, Sakulin? Yeah, yeah.
Her story was that she was 14 when she started having these visions Seeing things other people weren't seeing. Hearing things they weren't hearing. And her grandmother took her aside and told her she had a very special sensitivity and brought her through her initiation to become this healer and predictor for the Samburu. So I thought, that's interesting.
So as I did my work over the next 25 years throughout the world in different tribal. And I was mainly going into tribal and indigenous communities in the work I was doing.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: And you were drawn there. You're drawn there because of the meaning of. Of trying to, you know, trying to cultivate meaning in your work.
[00:11:44] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: I would assume that from going from orthodontistry and romance book covers to photographing indigenous cult, that's the shift in meaning there. The learning curve for you as an individual is an entity.
It just skyrockets. You're learning about anthropology and different cultures in ways that just must have been off the charts change for you.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it was.
And I found photography was a key that would allow me to enter different cultures.
And so I based it on human rights work, the empowerment of women. I had several different organizations I worked with.
Some of the work I did on my own. But when I went into these cultures, one of the first things I would ask after those two experiences with the Kuten in Tibet and Sakulin was who are your healers? Who are your visionaries?
[00:12:45] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: And I would interview them, and I found that many of them were identified by having this what we would call a mental emotional crisis.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: Now, may I, may I interject a few things? Because I want to ground the, the, the Kuten in for the, the, the experience of the Kuten for Western cultures. Now, in Western culture, we have no parallel in the ways community makes decisions like they do in Tibet, but as a way of grounding the outcome.
I just want to share that, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but it was actually the Neang Oracle that provided the information to the Dalai Lama that he had to depart from Tibet when. During the Chinese invasion. So you're looking at the continuity of the Tibetan people is based upon what we call an oversoul.
This is an element of cultural preservation, national preservation, community preservation, government preservation, all in a working relationship with a spiritual entity that governs or guides, is charged with the protection of the Tibetan people.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
And, and you're right.
The dalai Lama was 24 years old when there was a rumor that he was going to be killed. And the Kooten went into the Kooten at the time wasn't the kid I.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: Met yeah, no, I know. Yeah.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: Putin at the time said, you have to leave. They dressed him up as a beggar, put him on horseback, and snuck him out of the country that night. And he went down into Nepal, and Nehru gave him this little Himalayan hill village to live in. And that's where he is to this day.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Dharamsala, India.
I've interviewed formally and informally about 45 shaman.
It was almost always a crisis.
It could have been a bad fever or they almost died from something, but it was. It was some sort of crisis. But often what we would call a mental emotional crisis.
And sometimes the shaman tradition is passed down through generations. So an older shaman will have a son or a daughter, and that person will be chosen to be.
But they usually have to display some sort of symptoms to show they have that sensitivity.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: Right. I mean, so it's just interesting for our Western audience that the signs of a gifted healer, leader or teacher in community are actually mental. Mental health symptoms of hearing voices, behaving erratically, personality switches, mood switches. These are the indicators in indigenous cultures of a spiritually sensitive individual who has the potential to lead, heal, and teach their community spiritually. Correct?
[00:16:01] Speaker A: That's correct. And the big advantage they have after they go in that state, I mean, almost again, a huge number of them told me at the time this set in for them. They thought they were dying and. But their advantage is the tribe looks at it as a process, not. It isn't a pathology, it isn't a broken brain.
So they look at it as a process the individual's going through, and that they have to be aided by and. And. And have somebody working with him. And almost always it's an older shaman who's been through this process.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: And they understand what's happening.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: Yeah, and they understand what's happening. It's interesting, though. They call it. Many times in several tribes, they call it the little death.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, I. I did. I was thinking about whether I should bring this up, but, you know, in Torah and Judaism, there's a very powerful Torah verse that says it's actually God speaking. And he says, thou shall not see my face and live.
[00:17:17] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: God says this. You will not see my face and live. But what is he talking about there? He's really talking about the death of the ego, that if you see the face of God, your small self will die, will not live. And yet what happens? Right. I mean, this is the great question.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Right, right, right.
Yeah. That's the way I've come to look at it is.
I mean, as we talk. I can tell you how I got there. But is. Yeah. It's the death of these, what Carl Jung would call the small self.
[00:17:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Which is even according to many neuroscientists. Now the.
An illusion is illusionary. It's. It's a story we've built up that we're. We're separate from each other and, and everything around us.
Baby's born. They're not separate.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: The flip. The flip side of this conversation is the very question, what is reality?
[00:18:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: Well, yeah. And I've spent a lot of time with this, the neuroscientists studying the brain basically on psychedelics. That's to this.
To this information of a network in the brain.
[00:18:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: So I think it was in the early 90s, we found a method of measuring blood flow in the brain with what they call FMRI imaging, functional magnetic imaging.
And so what that allowed is the scientists to look at.
Not only when I went through school, there was the Penfield map.
So Penfield was a neurosurgeon.
And you can actually touch different areas on the brain cortex.
And all of a sudden you realize one is for motor, one is for vision.
So simple things like that that he mapped out the brain.
By the way, when you pierce the brain or touch it, there's no nerve endings there. The patient doesn't feel it. So they could be doing that while the person's totally awake anyway.
Now with FMRI imaging, they measure blood flow. They're able to measure how different parts of the brain work in networks to do very complex things.
And one of those things is develop our sense of self.
And they do that through a process called predictive coding. But that gets into a whole other realm of things.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: Well, that's. That's really interesting. But, you know, when. When we talk about the. The ego or the small self, you know, every religious or spiritual tradition has an iteration lang different language. Dogen says many languages, one tongue. But the one tongue expresses itself in different cultures in different language with different words. But it's.
The template is always identical. If the template is large enough, it is identical and will fit any model of community or culture. And so one of the things that's interesting is that in Zen, there's a wonderful book by Shinra Suzuki, Zen mind, Beginner's mind and Zen Mind, Beginner's mind. Shinra Suzuki was a disciple of the Zen teacher Dogenomics Dogenzenji, 13th century Zen. Zen teacher, Zen practitioner who brought from China to Japan. He introduced the Soto lineage into.
From China, from the Sixth patriarch of Zen. It was latent there and then Dogen infused it into Japan where it still exists with Rinzai Zen. The Rinzai Zen and the Soto Zen are just two ways of sudden awakening or sudden ego death or slow ripening. Like a, like a, an apple falling from a tree in its own time. Like the awakening has no demarcation of significance. It's the gradual awakening of the individual through zazen.
[00:21:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: Versus this sudden, which can be very, very disorienting and frightening very much.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So the Koan study, the Kiyosaku, which strikes, strikes the midpoints in the back of Zen practitioners. The Kiyosaku is an instrument to, to stimulate Rinzai or sudden awakening. The sudden awakening school was, was really the lineage comes from the sixth patriarch of Zen in China who was passing by. What he is, is actually his father died at an early age and he was, he would, he did not go to school. He was illiterate. He sold firewood to support his mother and was carrying a load of firewood and delivered it and heard the fifth Patriarch of Zen, a sutra teaching recited by someone in that area. Instantly his mind became awakened. And just by hearing that, he was so sensitized.
[00:22:50] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't know about that.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: It's in the Platform Sutra, which is his.
He spoke his discourses which had thousands and thousands from China would come listen to him speak. And he spoke on, literally on a chair that was on a platform. So the, the, his spoken dialogues are called the Platform Sutra because he spoke on a platform. That's where the name Platform Sutra comes from. And he's only one of two.
The sutra is only one of two sutras that are canonized in the, in the Buddhist canon, not spoken by the Buddha himself.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that sudden awakening is, can be very, very disorienting.
And you know, since I did the film crazy wise and I took it around Europe in North America and I, and almost always there was somebody in the audience that after, you know, we did a post screening talk, someone in the audience would stand up and say, I, I've never told anyone this, but they go ahead and tell their little story about how they experience that awakening.
[00:24:17] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: Would you? I, I want to ask because I'm just from my heart very curious. We are all endowed with the original mind, so there is no such thing as what we call enlightenment. That's an illusion.
But the process of awaking is a slow and gradual process that you can point to that says, oh, I've I've awakened now. It's a slow awakening.
Is that how you would identify your individual experience, as a slow kind of ripening?
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Oh, boy. I have, I, I'm very far away from that awakening experience. I've gotten it a little bit with psychedelics, mainly magic mushrooms, psilocybin, but I, I, I've only done that a little bit. You know, I done it maybe three or four times. I, then I've tried micro dosing. Because you do a psychedelic experience, you have this experience, and then it's over.
[00:25:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: And it can only change you if. And, and it can if you have some sort of integration to integrate what you've learned during that experience.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: And that takes discipline and work, that integration process.
[00:25:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: I've tried microdosing where you just do a little bit every three days and, and you can hardly tell any difference. But there is a difference.
And if you journal, you could start keeping track of some of the stronger things happening in your life.
People that maybe got you triggered or something that you saw that was out of the ordinary.
And you can see, evidently, a progression. I'm, yeah, I'm doing that right now. Oh, okay.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: And so this is a beautiful, I find this a beautiful segue into. I know that the last time we'd spoke, we've not spoken in some time, but you're compiling your memoirs. You're writing your memoirs. No.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: Yes, I am.
Yeah. It's sort of a memoir. It's really, it's about my life and how, starting with what I told you about what happened to me as a child and going through my. I was very much into the Mormon Church till I was 18 years old. Then I switched and went to Berkeley, from BYU to Berkeley. Then I lived in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco during the huge hippie movement that happened then. Yeah, psychedelics everywhere. I didn't do any at that time.
I've just gotten into it lately because of this whole interest I have in awakening and.
Yeah. So I can write more about it.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: That's fantastic. And what is, what has been sort of, what, what are the nuts and bolts of what you're conveying in the memoir? Like, how would you describe sort of what's the nitty gritty of, of what you're, you're hashing out here with the, the memoir?
[00:27:36] Speaker A: So, you know, it, it's in part about guidance, from internal guidance to, you know, we've all been programmed to do this or do that by our culture, our parents or our friends, or to get attention or become rich and famous or whatever.
[00:28:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: But learning to trust internal guidance.
[00:28:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: Versus the external stuff.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: I mean, that's the fundamental shift of awakening itself, is that there's actually. If I could just interject here for a moment, Phil, There's a very beautiful Zen teaching that says there's a student and master that have an exchange.
And the, the gist, the grizzle of the exchange is that the teacher says to the student, I do not say there is no Zen. I say there are no Zen teachers. The teacher is only a bridge to the student to find himself.
There is no such thing as a Zen teacher in the truest sense of Dharma.
Like what Dharma is. You are Dharma. You are Dharma expressed. And so to look outside initially is fine. Whoever is a true teacher would return you to yourself.
But anyone who claims that they are integral or necessary for your experience for you to do well is a liar.
Because you. What, what a teacher or guide or mentor's job is really is to put themselves out of business by activating that, that inner guidance within you. So 10 on 10 volume, you don't need them anymore. And then you relate. You know, that's, that's when it said when a student reaches the level or surpasses master, that's when the teacher's done his job and said, got it?
[00:29:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you know, I've. As I look back at my life, I can see, you know, when I would get stuck and frustrated, somewhat depressed, I'm lucky about depression. Usually I'll do something. I'll try and change something.
Those symptoms like frustration depression can be your saviors.
They can be your guideposts. And so I pay very close attention to, to the strong things that happen in my life.
And, and, and they can be like guiding guideposts of sorts to tell you, are you on track? I do believe at this point that we all have our individual callings of some sort, that we have these talents.
[00:30:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: And they're to be expressed.
[00:30:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: And we can get drawn away from the. Those talents, for one, many times they're hard to develop.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: And then. So I'm, and I'm. I'm wondering, could you, could we talk a little bit about Phil, about the, the settling. Like the settling of. In communities with crazy wise kind of so in.
Because we premiered, we premiered it in Rochester in August of 2017, right where you came on. It was back that, back in those days felt was Skype you in and you had a question and answer with the audience that was wonderful and exquisite.
And communities like Rochester, where We brought you. Right. We also brought you to Buffalo. Brought Crazy Wise to Buffalo.
[00:31:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:22] Speaker B: But I'm wondering what the. What kind of like the, the waves, kind of like the shockwaves of. Of constructive understanding and health and, and new paradigms. What, what have been the shockwaves in other communities that have returned to you that you've heard about or know about or want to want to share?
[00:31:41] Speaker A: The movie now has been subtitled in 16 different languages.
And we, you know, we didn't have much of a budget to get it all translated. Evidently you can do it with AI nowadays now.
[00:31:57] Speaker B: You can.
[00:31:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: I was gonna say, if you wanted. I think we talked about doing it in Hebrew, trying to get Hebrew subtitles for it.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Well, now I guess it's much easier, but back then, you literally. And there's a lot of texts, a lot of subtitles.
[00:32:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: So the places it was translated, a volunteer from that community or that country would say, I really want to bring it to my country or my town and I will translate it for you. And there was a program called Amara that, that you could do it online.
We had the whole. All the English text on one side, and they would just have to put in the translated text on the other side.
So.
So we got it translated into 16 languages that way.
It's also been seen in 64 countries now. Six more than that actually. Now, you know, one of the things that happened was I gave a TED talk on the subject, on the crazy wise subject is now it's approaching 8 million views.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not surprised. I mean, you're. You've touched. You've touched something so necessary in our Western culture.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: Yeah, it was a lot of work.
You know, we didn't know when it would end because we were following one individual that was going through, you know, the dark night of the soul and coming out of it and going back in and then finally at the end, coming out of it.
So.
But yeah, following two people and. And one of the people was a Kaya, who is African American, born in Los Angeles, I believe. But anyway, she had a break.
She ended up getting some help from a halfway house in Balt in New York City.
And then she met a shaman in.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Baltimore, a South African lineage.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
And known as a sangoma. Yeah, that's what the shamans are called in Southern Africa, South Africa.
And she went to an initiation. So that was one of the.
For us, it was great because we could.
We watched part of it. We only watched a small part of it. That's all we were allowed, I mean, to film. And it was very dark in the room.
But it gave us an idea what this initiation was like.
[00:35:02] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: And basically it was kind of like a 12 step program.
[00:35:09] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:10] Speaker A: Surrender to a higher power.
[00:35:15] Speaker C: You.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: You make amends to people you've hurt.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: We saw Kaya do that with her children.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: She had to do it with her children that she left when she was going through the worst part of her psychosis.
And.
Yeah, so it was an interesting process to watch.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: There were so many takeaways from Crazy Wise. When a. Kaya was first talking about the suicide attempts and she had one friend and then the second friend who said, I was telling her, this isn't a breakdown.
This is a breakthrough. How fundamental to orient yourself to really what's going on there.
The breakdown is a superficial understanding. The breakthrough is a whole understanding. And I share that often with people.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you know, one of the things I'm looking at my life through is what I call those liminal spaces.
And liminal, if you look in the dictionary, comes from Latin, means threshold or doorway.
And this, the place of liminality, is the place where you are undergoing the transformation.
So the main metaphor for that is the. Is the butterfly. And you've got the caterpillar that goes into that cocoon, which is that space of liminality.
[00:36:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: Where everything breaks down of the old and turns into this gooey mess, I guess, and becomes reformed until it exits the liminality and becomes the butterfly.
[00:37:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: So that liminal space is that space of not knowing, of having to surrender, of being comfortable with uns, trying to be comfortable with uncertainty.
[00:37:26] Speaker C: You're.
[00:37:27] Speaker A: You're losing all your anchors that anchored you to that old person and that old reality they were in.
And you're literally undergoing a death.
Little death, as the shamans call it. Yeah, that liminal space.
[00:37:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: Just like being dissolved as a caterpillar.
[00:37:48] Speaker C: Right.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: Then that's when. If you're not.
If you know to relax and. And have some guide with you that's helping you do that, that's when the inspiration comes in for your new self and you rebuild yourself around that. Those inspirational moments.
[00:38:11] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: Boy, that's. That's really powerful.
[00:38:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: So, you know, orienting to like here and now and the. The discussion about the memoirs and sort of the. The reflections on the. The effects of Crazy Wise. I mean, I guess it's. We're talking.
It's eight years. It's eight years since the release of Crazy Wise and about two years ago, 10 years since the release of Crazy Wise.
[00:38:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:47] Speaker B: I'm wondering at this time and space, in addition to the memoirs, what is on your mind and heart for consideration? And I'm not talking about Phil the author or Phil the filmmaker, film the photographer, film the dentist, but really in general, I mean, with all that you've experienced and all that you've offered to communities through consideration, what is on your heart now when you reflect upon this stage in your life?
[00:39:11] Speaker A: Oh, boy, that's. That's a good question. I'm in the middle of figuring it out. So I quit. Crazy Wise came out. I nursed it around the world with screenings and all that for several years. And then Covid hit. In fact, I was coming back from London where I was doing an interview with.
At Imperial College of London with Robin Carhartt. Harris is doing a lot of the research around psychedelics and treatment resistant depression.
[00:39:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: Since that time I've been home, you know, I'm looking at this book. I want to get it done and I wanted to do it in a way that it's kind of an extension of Crazy Wise. Really.
[00:39:58] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: What I've learned since that time.
[00:40:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: And. And going back over my life, that has been a process. Looking at some of the, you know, some of the. Like, it took me from the time I knew that I, like, I mean, orthodontics was great for me and especially financially, but that I knew it wasn't going to fulfill me. It took me 10 years to admit that and leave it for something as insecure as photography and. But look, so I look at that as a liminal space. I was in liminality for 10 years and, and as I say, I left a wife during that time. I moved, trying to solve that inner void going on.
[00:40:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: Until I took a picture. I photographed the birth of my son and our son Dax. And I had to get it developed, the.
The film developed and I. I had to take a class before they would let me use their dark room.
And I just took a class that just totally inspired me. The guy that taught it, he looked a little like you. As a matter of fact, Ron Zach inspired me to the hilt. And I. Within a year and a half of that, I had quit my practice and passed it on to another individual and moved up to Seattle from San Francisco.
That was that liminal experience of 10 years.
And I did all sorts of crazy things during that time.
So taking what I've learned by writing this memoir.
[00:42:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: And seeing it as my life as it has unfolded, I'd recommend it to anybody.
[00:42:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:07] Speaker A: So I'm 82 now and I consider it a very valuable thing to do at this point. So what I'm going to do once I get this thing written, I don't know, I feel blessed to be given all these years.
You know, it's got, it'll come to me when that time comes and I'll probably put in my photos. I'm known for my photos.
[00:42:30] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:42:33] Speaker A: And it'll have that photography aspect to it. You know, there'll be photos of this shaman I met and, and tribal people I've been with. Yeah, that sort of thing.
Anyway, I, I've done all that. And a friend of mine who was funding me from, he worked at Microsoft, he was partially funding us.
He said, phil, what you need is a book.
And I said, a book about what he says about you.
And that's the last thing I wanted to do, is write a book about myself.
But I took a friend with me to Liberia on one of my trips and he came along and, you know, was kind of my assistant, but he was a writer and he wrote this most unbelievable account of our trip in Liberia. And I just thought to myself, I wish this guy had been with me on many of my trips. My friend Kevin.
Anyway, Kevin said to me, you know, I could write that book.
So he sat me down and interviewed me over a two year period when we would get together.
He wrote it, I was done with the film. I was not going to do any more fundraising, so I didn't need a book anymore.
And I felt bad for Kevin because he had written this. It was more like an adventure story because of all the things I did even before I became a photographer. But anyway, I just thought, no, this has to be more and it has to be something.
All the nuts and bolts were there, but I had to form it into something that extended my thoughts about spirituality and crazy wise and that whole subject.
And as I got into it, I could see where my life was leading me on this path. I mean, when I got into photography, if somebody said, hey, you're going to be doing a film on mental health, I would go, what?
[00:44:52] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:44:55] Speaker A: I mean, so it's just been interesting to see the guidance I've had to, to take me to where I am now and kind of, you know, so that's what the book would be. And I think that could be more valuable.
Kevin and I are going to be the authors.
[00:45:17] Speaker B: Beautiful.
[00:45:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Because I would have never sat down and talked about my life.
[00:45:22] Speaker B: Well, you know, I, I think many of the Shamans you' throughout your career would probably share the notion no accidents. You know, that seems like maybe the book is meant to be in a way that you could. It came at you in a way it looked maybe awkward or. But you weren't really looking for it. But it was a mechanism. But those are the ways in which there are no accidents that it's, it's meant to be at this time and place for you with what, what you're going to do with it. I'm sure. So.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:54] Speaker B: And then I, and I also wanted to kind of like there was a lot of care for a Kaya and Adam and I'm just wondering if you give a little follow up with how Akaya is doing and how Adam's doing and, and sort of the trajectories of what happened post. Crazy wise.
[00:46:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
Akaya went through a major transformation. I mean she was suicidal right before we met her and had made a couple of attempts.
She's has her practice, it's somewhere outside of San Diego up in the hills up in the mountains there to the east of San Diego. And she's seen clients that are either in the middle of a, of a transformational process or want to, you know, experience more reduced ego states and the spirituality that way. And so she works with clients doing that now as a sangoma and she's doing very well. She looks totally different. She looks so healthy and alive than when we first met her.
Adam, after the film finished, he had made up with his dad. I mean they had a falling out during the whole film.
[00:47:26] Speaker B: It was well documented in the film what happened.
[00:47:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And his mother died during the making of the film.
He moved in back in with his dad. As the film ended. His dad came to the premieres here in Seattle.
[00:47:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:42] Speaker A: Of Crazy Whites.
And Adam was, he's the most amazing kid. I mean the amount of compassion and empathy he has, he could be a teacher for young kids so easily.
So his dad passed away and he inherited money from that estate and he bought some property up in the Okanagan Valley. Beautiful valley.
And I've gone up there to visit him. Yes. No running water and solar panels for electricity.
But he's been up there for, I don't know, almost eight years now.
[00:48:33] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:48:35] Speaker A: But I've tried to get a hold of him on a couple of occasions and I haven't been able to just recently.
So I haven't contacted him in over a year.
[00:48:46] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:48:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I was in touch with him before that. I mean he.
I'll just Tell a couple of stories real quick.
One night before, when. Just after we met him, and before he had that first break, because when he realized his grandfather had molested him.
[00:49:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:07] Speaker A: And he went to tell his parents, and they didn't believe him, and they accused him of ruining the family. Anyway, before that happened, he was living in a beautiful little cottage up in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains outside of Seattle here.
And he drove home one night and found a guy breaking into his house. And this guy was strung out on heroin.
[00:49:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:33] Speaker A: And Adam ended up bringing him into the house, feeding him, and doing a healing ceremony on him.
[00:49:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:42] Speaker A: Because he was in withdrawals. You know, he was sick.
And.
And so Adam tells me about this, and I. And I say, can I go interview this guy? I want to get his story.
Anyway, I called him up and he's. He said.
I. I said, I'm a friend of Adam. Adam who? The guy up on the lake where he gave you a meal. Oh, that kid. Is that kid a shaman or something? He said, why do you say that?
He said, all right. Well, he gave me a meal, and then he laid me down on the floor and he put a bunch of rocks on my chest. Adam's really into stones and what different minerals can do in terms of emotional, mental. Emotional changes in the body. Anyway, he said. And all of a sudden, I felt a hundred percent better.
He said. He mumbled a few things and put these ones on my chest. And I said, do you mind if I come over and interview you about this? Because I. I would have put him in the film. He says, I'll tell you what.
I've got a court date on Wednesday, so call me Wednesday night. If I answer the phone, that means things went well.
If I don't, that means they didn't. Really powerful one answered the phone.
[00:51:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that's really powerful.
[00:51:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:51:15] Speaker A: So he did that. Then he, you know, in the story, he was beat up.
[00:51:20] Speaker B: They tried to kill him.
[00:51:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. He was almost killed. You know, threw a rock down on his face and broke his jaw in half and knocked out several of his teeth.
[00:51:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:51:31] Speaker A: And he ended up being Facebook friends with that gang that tried to kill him.
So the guy is.
And, you know, he's very charismatic. You know, when we were filming him, when he was hanging out behind the soul food books, he was kind of the guru of the. All these kids.
[00:51:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: He has something. He has something very few people understand.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: Right.
[00:51:57] Speaker B: Especially in Western culture, very, very few people understand what he has and who he is.
[00:52:01] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:52:03] Speaker B: Those two stories are very Indicative of a very large soul. That's a very special soul. Yeah, for sure.
And then I'm just, I just want to feel, I want to thank you for this time and the heart to heart we just had. There are going to people, people listening in, but I kind of feel like it was just you and I having a discussion, which is the best kind of conversation, where it's heart to heart and I appreciate you and all you've done for me.
You know, I, I, I, I'm always wary of sharing this with you because you probably hear it so often that I wonder if the, the, the, the repeat nature of hearing this message. I wish you could, like the Buddha seeing the morning star for the first time. I wish you could hear this for the first time. But like you completely inverted my life in a way that was very powerful because it gives me both personally and professionally a frame, a paradigm to understand.
The immense trauma that I had endured had a place and a reason and a purpose, which with your framework of mental health, is a, as a potential spiritual issue, is an indicator of a potential leader, healer and teacher and community that provided me a template. I ran in my own direction with my own voice and language around that and have come to find my, the fullness of my dharma, my work, my calling in incorporating what you had broken through and assembled in the West. There is no other language in the ways that you had done it. You've been called to bring this forth in a way that were really transformed things for me. And I feel my obligation to, to, you know, I say this very deeply with deep seriousness that my prayer to the universe is to operate at a level, the optimum level of productivity that is long term sustainable, that I don't want to, I don't want to relent, I don't want to rest, I don't want to relax. I've been given something very special with, with your work. And now I'm, I'm in a place now where I can really, I assist many people just in the cafe over conversation, helping them frame their distress in ways that nobody else can because there's not a lot of this narrative in mainstream Western culture. So I just wanted.
[00:54:26] Speaker A: You're a peer. You're a peer.
[00:54:28] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
[00:54:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:54:32] Speaker A: Well, so, well, thank you for that and I'm so glad that you're doing the work you're doing and I'm really happy to support you.
[00:54:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And I, I, it brings my heart, warmth and joy to see you. And so is there anything else in closing that you'd like to offer.
[00:54:50] Speaker A: Not really. Just.
Thank you for having me on.
If anybody wants to see the film, it's on Gaia or they can go to crazy wise film.com on that website, crazy wise film.com there's a whole resource page of anybody or their child or a friend is going through one of these crises.
There's a whole resource page where they can turn to get the help from people who know what's. What's happening. And. And so.
[00:55:34] Speaker B: Maybe for all beings that we. We awaken to the. The inner voice that we have and are, it's drowned out by. By other voices and culture and community programming, but that deep inner voice within may be heard. Each, all for every.
[00:55:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:55:50] Speaker A: Thank you, Joel.
[00:55:51] Speaker B: All right, Phil, Take good care.
[00:55:53] Speaker A: All right, take care. Bye. Bye.
