you're listening to the PACE radio network here at paac radio.net the views expressed by the individuals during this broadcast are their own opinions and they may not be the same as those of their group or other organizations they may be involved with all medical advice during our broadcast is not a medical opinion and should be checked with your medical physician [Music] good day and welcome to the mushy moment for Tuesday September 3rd 2024 welcome to the mushy moment with myself and my awesome podcast Cindy for here in September already yeah September 3D September already is right the last eight months have gone by like that yes they it seems to be speeding up it it just ah if we could just slow it down so I could have a few more months at the beach it would be incredibly awesome I need a few more months to study studying the beach is an awesome idea it's a great idea I'm down for that so you're coming up on the end of your uh your little bit of uh studying and and cramming and doing and getting all ready and uh I more podcast before you're in Mexico well I've got this one and then we're going we've got a another wonderful guest lined up for next Tuesday and then I leave wow wow so then after you finish your Mexico Journey there and then you come back you will uh uh you will be a 5 Meo facilitating kind of person yeah on on a on a larger like a you know a incredibly trained way I mean and I feel leaving this uh leaving this training I'm not just leaving uh with 5o knowledge there's there's a lot of that um but we're just talking general knowledge on how to work with people with psychedelics uh there's a lot of information there that's psychedelic specific not necessarily 5 Meo specific inside that um but yeah I I mean I yeah there was a lot of information and I don't think nine months was enough I need more time wow yeah well that's pretty exciting that is like really exciting you're going for tell everybody how long you're going to Mexico for well I'm going to actually end up down there for three weeks in one day um I'm going down with a couple of a couple days ahead of time hanging out with my dad meeting up with a couple of the other students from the course I'm taking um and uh then we are spending a few days afterwards uh together doing some integration because uh we go down for the practicum it isn't just the final exam we go down for the practicum we have to do it's all about doing the medicine and they truly believe you shouldn't serve the medicine in certain Fashions unless you've done the medicine in certain Fashions so seven of the 10 days of in-class studies is actually ceremony we're actually doing the medicine for seven of the 10 days and um that's that's a lot of psychedelic work that is so we're spending three days after there's a lot of the cohort that we're spending three days afterwards um you know just to take three days off and do some integrating and have some integration circles and uh and relax and uh then on my way home I am actually stopping um in we do hi Lee um and then uh I'm stopping in Toronto on my way back uh to write my final exam with CA facilitation to finally get that over and done with um because of course Judy has offered to do it virtually any number of times but I'm I'm not a I'm not a virtual person when it comes to that kind of stuff I'm a hey how you doing I want to be able to give you a hug and say hi so we're gonna we're going to do that when I stop in Toronto on my way home awesome yeah and you know there was a great little segue thing there when you were saying you're going to take a few days for integration integration that's a great place to segue into our NE next guest that we have on so I'm just going to give you a little rundown his name is Dr Gordon Reed he has been helping people struggling with relationships depression anxiety and basically the meaning of life issues for quite a while he uh I found him because he was offering to help with somebody that was struggling with some integration in the group that I was in and I went ah this gentleman in the way he reached out I went this is a gentleman I would like to speak to and I would like to learn his story so uh we reached out and we brought him on and uh we'd like to introduce to you Dr Gordon good day sir hello Hi how are you I'm good thank you very much nice to be here oh thanks for coming on yeah well I I did give you a warning of the first question so we'll just jump right into it um Dr Reed what what started you down the the road of of helping people uh specifically with PS adelic well uh syy maybe I could back up a long long way into my own history um because I think it's important understanding uh when I was uh 17 years old I had what I would call an Awakening now there's a difference between an Awakening and being awakened I'm not suggesting I'm an awakened being but I had an Awakening meaning I had a quality of an experience that was so profound for me that uh I I didn't know what to make of it I couldn't make heads or tails of it but it was fascinating to me and it sort of it was like a light bulb went on in that moment of wanting to know something wanting to understand something um that light bulb never turned off after that point and that means that literally and I mean this I do mean this in all honesty every day um from the moment I wake up uh until I fall asleep my mind is asking the question what is this um and I have traveled uh through many many caves some of which were very very dark and some of which were very very light and amazing and I've done an awful lot of exploring so how did I get into doing the sort of the Psychedelic integration work well it began back there where I realized that something was going on I hadn't seen before and that I didn't know about before um it began to um make me wonder and puzzle about the nature of my own Consciousness uh the nature of my own reality and I began to sort of talk to people about it I should say more accurately try to talk to people about it because what I discovered much to my shagrin was that actually most people weren't particularly interested in knowing about what struck me as the most fundamentally important and fascinating aspect of being uh our own Consciousness or at least Consciousness itself I'm not quite sure that that it's mine uh that that's a whole other topic of what Consciousness is um but I realized I could maybe I would phrase it this way I could interface with Consciousness I learned I began to learn how to inquire I began to learn how to ask questions about this what is this and I developed um uh familiarity uh with with doing that and um it continued on where eventually I was able to have certain kinds of experiences when I was quite young well uh you know 18 19 where I did you know I did some psychedelic experiences some some Journeys various types of other uh uh experiences all of which open me up to the fact that psychedelics uh other things can do this also but psychedelics uh create a a quality of Consciousness that is on its own terms it's a quality of Consciousness that in my book if you haven't kind of learned how to navigate the and it's hard to know how to phrase this properly when I say lesser States Of Consciousness because this state of consciousness this current present State of Consciousness is as amazing and is as magnificent and miraculous as a psychedelic space but psychedelic space is a different quality of of experience um so you know if I tried to give an example it's like if you don't know how to listen to music properly and if you don't know what musicians are are are playing and you don't really appreciate what the music is that you're listening to but when you begin to learn how to navigate psychedelic space uh you realize that there are things that work and things that don't work and things to do and things not to do and so it became for me a one of those Avenues of exploration that I couldn't actually get through my own um sort of natural method meaning that even if I'm meditating uh I don't enter into that quality of Consciousness so it's a form of knowing I will call it it's a it's a something that you can learn to listen to to to to attend to in such a way that if you if you um are prepared for it and and have the right uh sort of support and training uh you can learn to navigate that space and importantly to try to sort of go back into the segue notion if you know how to integrate it um then it becomes a very very you know can become a very worthwhile meaningful life-enhancing uh experience or set of experiences and so the journey began back when I was 177 uh I've continued traveling in one way or another uh through Consciousness and uh and remain absolutely fascinated now by the you know this burgeoning industry the Psychedelic industry uh and the types of experiences people have when they're on it and that includes the kind of challenges they have after it's because in our social system we're not good at helping people unpack uh experiences or odd or atypical experiences in fact we're horrible at it um so there's a kind of a quick answer send you to your question um yeah so of the of the medicines that you've done the different experiences can you name a few uh uh okay I've never inject I've never injected anything into my system so that means just about anything else you can imagine I've done it um uh I have had ketamine injected into my system but I've never done anything like I've never done heroin uh or uh so I've tried you know what haven't I tried well I'm sure there's some things that I haven't tried but uh M my my greatest familiarity was with psilocybin uh and MDMA and acid uh LSD Journeys now those were um some of you know I worked at a retreat in Jamaica a high do psilocybin Retreat where the dro it's legal to do uh to do psilocybin uh and I'm kind of putting I guess a cautionary note in here maybe for myself is that I you know I I'm a licensed professional I don't like to uh float uh you know laws or and I don't want to you know to come across uh in any way as though I'm doing that but uh uh I think I've had uh yeah quite a a r name a few well what about things like the iasa that's a real popular one you know I so so so iasa is a very interesting one actually it's the one that I haven't done having said that I there's you know nmmt which is the which is the root of iasa along with the the MAO inhibitor which extends the trip but certainly uh NM DMT I've had experience with 5mt uh and then all of the you know the siloc the MDMA the uh the masculine um I don't know uh I had a chance to try opium in the jungles of uh Thailand uh I don't mean to say that therefore I have traveled through all the of the spaces and I know everything I I don't I can just tell you though kind of what the differences are I know the differences between different types of uh medicines yes and that's that's valuable experience right there yeah as you're talking I'm like oh well they you uh one thing Cindy and I talk about is the different languages that the medicine speak you know they tend to all speak healing from a place of love but they do speak different languages and the more of them that you've encountered the more you can help other people that have encountered yeah and then to that point Steve the uh understanding of what might work for someone based on well whatever parameters you want you know what is the situation that they're dealing with what kind of previous experiences have they had what is their openness to experiences because something like 5mo just blows you open so fast that if you're not if you don't have some experience uh it's like getting shot out of a cannon and others a lot more gentler you know MDMA is a much more gentler uh drug to go on um as long as the conditions are right as long as the people around you know what they're doing um so yeah so there are definitely different sort of uh signatures that these medicines have and good to know what what um we know what those signatures are like including the time frames on them how long they last what kind of effects they have over the next you know evening next couple of days that that yeah that kind of stuff yeah wow yeah being being able to handle somebody that's in a reactivation is a pretty important part of helping them integrate yes and and to your point me knowing that in advance what the particular I mean you never know what someone is going to encounter so you know one of the big big things that people uh uh say and I think it's very I think it's a very important thing is like you you know what is your intention one of the reasons why I think setting up intention is very useful is because it creates a focus point and it gets people into a place of which they have some clarity about what they're doing and what they're going to do say that prepares them you know so kind of like we're going to do a parachute jump let's check your parachute let's you know know that the wind bay door is going to open all of this stuff is going to happen so you can prepare them but uh you never know what it is that's going to happen you never know what they're going to encounter and it's absolutely true that there can be Cindy to your point what you call you know let's call it reactivation of experiences that you've had when you were younger some of which you may not even know you had some of which you may uh have known that you had but had no idea it was like this until you enter into certain kind of space then you realize oh my God I for I didn't know that this happened and I didn't know this was the response and all kinds of things that can surround that so the reactivation very important for yeah the standpoint of the possibility being expressed to the person who's going to doing the journey but also for the facilitators or guides or whatever term you want to put in there in terms of knowing what might happen um and you know being prepared for that yeah you know if I can comment because I find I think this other piece is really fascinating at least it is for me uh there is um there is a term and I think it's called a a noetic experience and I don't know if you've ever heard of this before there's there are sort of two terms that kind of go together that I've been really fascinated by and puzzling about one is called ontological Shock and I'll and the other is called noetic noetic knowing or noetic experience so um let me go with uh noetic experience first and then if we and then I'll tell you about anthological shock noetic experience is that kind of an experience that you have and it you don't have to be um having a psychedelic experience for this to happen but when it happens under psychedelics it's when it is most pronounced and most powerful and that noetic experience is what is commonly known as aha aha now I know now I see now I understand and sometimes what comes together is a form of knowing and understanding and Clarity that helps you make sense of things and understand things in a way that you never knew before and when you finally come out of the Psychedelic experience and you are processing that space it is remarkably valuable and remarkably important uh uh experience to have had but sometimes and this is where we get into these sort of memory issues these distorted memory issues and we false memory syndromes and stuff like that you can have a noetic experience that is so real and so true and so defining that it that again when you come out of that experience you say aha now I know what happened now I know who did what to me now I know what I need to do and it's when I say false information this is really really tricky because who's to decide what's real and not real what's false and not false but there are absolutely experiences that people can have which after it is can be it can be seen that no actually you know maybe weeks or years later that was wrong that was completely wrong but at the time it felt like uh a a deep truth an earned uh truth that came from from the Psychedelic experience uh that gets really tricky when sexual abuse issues come up for people on psychedelic Journeys where they now believe that something happened um maybe that they didn't know about before and now they think it's their mother father whatever massive disruption in relationship afterwards when they go back home and they're intersecting with whoever the person is that they think might have been the perpetrator or they're intersecting with people who might have known the perpetrator who they think didn't do anything about it if this not didn't happen uh it creates a massive massive disruption so that's really tricky space to navigate the other space the anthological shock is you well well maybe not maybe not not you two but most people think they know who they are most people think they understand uh you know their history they think they understand um their behaviors uh and then you can have have a introduction to uh a self yourself in psychedelic space that is so foreign uh uh so uh mindblowing that it it it creates a rupture in your ordinary sense of self and that's why it's called a shock H and again the notion of how to repair how to help someone who has suffered through or been blown open by that kind of kind of an experience uh so those are kind of not maybe not necessarily the two extreme experiences on psychedelic Journeys but they kind of do Mark somewhere out on the boundary issues and then there's a whole bunch of other experiences of course that people can have on you know in the Psychedelic Journeys that can take a lot of processing of what on Earth was that uh uh what does it all mean what what am I supposed to do with that and then if they don't have help uh in making sense of that uh and figuring out how to not only make sense to themselves which is a form of integration but how to get it back into their life and make it work in their life so that hopefully it's a productive value that they're having um yeah that's the that's the that's to me is is a very important part of the whole journey and the reason I say that's a very important part is because you don't get good integration and the best way to get good integration is to have good preparation and preparation starts with with the first phone call or the first contact with the person that you or the organization that you're going to be working with so it's actually a Continuum it's an arc where uh properly done psychedelic Journeys uh of course start at the beginning in a particular way with a particular um you know particular questions being asked particular uh understandings being acquired in terms of like history uh and and then Arc all the way through to the after the Psychedelic experience or experiences because there's something to be said for having a staged series of psychedelic experiences rather than just one and done um yeah and then uh then integration and how to do that and hopefully do it with the person my my opinion do it with the person that you developed a longer term relationship with uh from because they were involved right at the preparation uh side of things wow nice nice yeah I'm just processing a bit of that I I I like that because something that Cindy and I have been talking about noticing as we interview people is that prep work can uh can mitigate the need for a whole bunch of integration right at the end like right after the experience because in you know some of the some of the places I've been I've watched people that had no experience and afterwards they're just they're just so going going going that uh you know these were in groups so you know there was a lot of people to influence and and help sort data yeah but you know had had there been a little more uh prepping and them being more ready it would have been less surprise after the journey yeah um you know it's my my experience that you know in my clinical practice most people I see um suffer from uh what I call low-level anxi xiety whether they know it or not whether they I mean clearly there are some people that suffer from high level anxiety but most people suffer from lowlevel anxiety and what do I mean by that is that um they don't appreciate that if anything suddenly changes in the world around them sudden surprises sudden things that they weren't predicting it creates a disturbance it creates a distress in our being um what we have actually done for the most part is everything in our power to try to create familiarity and a common predictive world that we can live in the reason that that's important is because you must I think it's really important to establish a trust with your uh facilitator your the person that's going to be guiding you on that Journey because it it helps calm that anxiety system down the example I would give you is if you were if we were walking along at midnight and we came across a cemetery and I said hey uh Cindy how about you walk through that uh those graveyards and I'll and I'll uh you know I'll be here when when you get back now maybe you'd say Yahoo but I mean most people wouldn't they'd say I'm not going into places I don't know what's there there could be I don't know what's there but if I said to them look uh I'll go with you you and I will travel together and if you can trust me we will walk through these unknown areas together if you trust me and that's where the bond the the preparation works that's where you know cre that relationship is so important if you trust me then people will walk through areas will explore things that they would and ordinarily do and that's why that that's why I think people often Rush the preparation work and rush into the journey and then and uh don't spend enough time sort of trying to make sense of the integration experience having said that there's Logistics behind that because often these are costly they're timec consuming some people can afford to do this some can't um etc etc so yeah oh that's a sign that we're at a good time to go to commercial break so uh we'll be right back after this commercial break you're here on the musy moment live with us on paac radio.net we'll be right back with Dr Reed you're listening to the PACE radio network here at Pac radio.net Legacy 420 have an awesome array of cannabis infused beverages from pop to Nature's nectar's teas all in amazing flavors what a selection we even have a delicious mango infused juice and let me tell you it's delicious everything is infused inhouse so we buy our syrup for for you know the same place where everybody else buys their syrup for their pop and uh in the infusion is done in the lab it's all canned here labeled here produced 100% on TIA we have two lines of drinks one is called our Nature's nectar that was our original line that we came out with and then we also have a line under the red e brand we have them in 10 mg 30 mg and 60 mg cans what a great collection for a get 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the integration side so you you tend to do a lot of work with people after they've gone for a [Music] journey uh c i you know I think it's really I want to I I was thinking as on the break of something that I wanted to uh to express before I answer your question although it's partly answering your question you know I uh I would like to think I'm uh very well trained in this area there's a company an organization called theril I don't know if you've ever heard of theil um I've uh you know I've gone train under undergone training with them both from uh the silus iin and the MDMA in fact I'm a listed supervisor uh for them I've worked um at a retreat down in Jamaica Michael meditations Retreat where I um had an opportunity work with probably over 150 people but importantly there was a St there were staff down there there were people who who were really good at knowing how to have a uh you know like group psychedelic experiences um the reason I'm putting this out there is uh I think it's certainly for me uh and maybe it's something to do with the way I you know like to accumulate information I like to I like to know I like to have certain kinds of knowledge like so so some of is research knowledge um some of it is knowledge that is handed down from other people who know what they're doing uh I I do see psychedelics as as kind of like fire this and I've tried to come up with a good analogy on it's but fire like if you know what you're doing with it uh you can heat your house if you don't know what you're doing with it you can bring your house down and so uh I most of my practice is as a psychologist it's a clinical practice with people with depression and anxiety and relationship issues it is not um psychedelic work that I'm doing with those people for the most part um but I do have opportunities through special access programs here in Canada with health Canada who legalizes that opportunity for us to use MDMA and to use psilocybin so whether from the Retreats that I have been on down in uh Jamaica whether through the special access programs uh whether through my own Journeys uh asking the question what is it what does good integration look like uh what does it look like for person a versus person B because they may need a different type of integration process [Music] um uh you know when is integration useful uh I I I think that by the way that from a integration perspective having a community uh afterwards if you can of people who have you know familiarity with their own experiences either having come from a group that you have been in in which there have been shared uh sort of experiences or from a community who simply uh or who well not just simply but who have you know who they work in this area or they know this area and been able to talk to people and be able to express what is going on because it Remains the TR Remains the fact that that the general population out there is not familiar with psychedelics they're not familiar at all with these experiences and we can from this kind of bubble that we're inside of think that it's something that a lot of people have familiarity with that they know about and that's not true at all which means that people need to be very thoughtful about who they're talking to about what kind of experiences they've either been on on uh or even talking to about what they're thinking of doing because if they're getting really negative feedback that is going to have somewhat of an impact on their own Journey that they're going to have and then the integration afterwards right what are the conditions that are really conducive to someone being able to make sense of what they have just been through um so yeah so um Cindy can I get you to bring up the uh The Psychology today one and can you just give us a little because you did this interview with Psychology today correct uh I'm not sure Steve which interview uh it up it's yeah it's Psychology today um and it's just your information on psychology today yeah yeah oh okay I thought I thought I sorry I thought I actually had an interview on there attached to that but it must have been no no that's just uh yeah that's okay that's okay because I want to what I want to bring up is just we started bringing you in and said you're this but we haven't shown any of your accredidation or anything at all yeah so that our viewers in that can understand that you know you you literally are a doctor oh you've got yeah sorry I didn't yeah yeah I didn't give any background on myself here I uh you know I didn't did an honors degree in uh psychology at Carlton University and then I did a master's degree now both of those were very sort of like behaviorally oriented that's what Carlton University was all about and I did a PhD at the University of Windsor um where a completely different vibe a completely different uh uh at least with some of the professors that I was working with who were very very much into Consciousness which is really exciting for me uh then I did a postto I did um I I worked uh for uh two years at Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital up in Thunder Bay where I had an opportunity I was the unit psychologist for the acute treatment unit we in order to get on this unit uh it was a mixed unit between people who were coming in floridly psychotic um and people who were in for longer stays because it was a forensic unit and who had done horrific things to people and who you can imagine that their let's say perception of reality was um different than most people's including mine but so I spent a couple of years intersecting with people um in that uh in that uh hospital and one of the things that truly amazed me and maybe this had something to do with my interest in inquiring into my own Consciousness was how much I could relate to the people that were talking to me um no matter well I mean some of them were so floridly psychotic they weren't relating to any one or anything but when they came out of that and were trying to describe what was going on for them uh what was very unnerving for me was I knew what they were talking about I knew it I saw it as an aspect of my own being in some way the types of experiences that they were having it's just that it wasn't um it wasn't High highly activated within me those kinds of experiences but I could identify with them and I could identify with uh sort of not only what they were talking about but the type of suffering that that came from that primarily because most people I I think weren't really with willing to listen to them really willing to hear them uh really willing to treat them as as you know human beings rather than patients in a in a psychiatric hospital so that was fascinating uh fascinating experiences for me uh and then I came to out here to Vancouver um and started up a private practice back in 1989 and uh yeah I have been doing that uh as my primary um love for uh for many many years 35 years website up here right now as well the Dr Gordon Reed one sure sure there you go and that is uh this that's it yeah ah yeah mindfulness see that's a big one I do a lot of very lot of mind mindfulness work which is um obviously people have different um interpretations of what mindfulness is and I have my own particular one but um [Music] yeah love that's a big one relationships yes well that's it seems like the uh the in my experiment my experience with all the various psychedelics I've done um Love is a big thing they seem to all speak from a language of Love sometimes we get caught in our trauma and we look at the darkness but when we can bring the language back to a language of love and healing you know what is [Music] that somebody's fire alarm no that's me sorry not me there you go Steve I haven't had that happen that's my battery unit telling me my batteries are getting low in my well I don't want to derail too far from psychedelics because but I do want to talk about love it because it does have a does have a connection uh I mean love big word it can mean an awful lot of things to a lot of people um I see love as a as a creative act I see love is one of the highest creative acts that we humans can can engage in if we know how to do it and what we're doing with that and when I say to create what I mean is the ability to both from a loving perspective with regards to yourself to learn how to pay attention how to relate to yourself how to form a curious compassionate interesting interested inquiry into the nature of One's Own being rather than that critical shaming um you know disappointed attitude that we can have because when you begin to approach yourself from that perspective you begin to open up and when you begin to open up of course this is what the whole experience of growing and development comes from it's a state of experience it's not a cognitive State it's a state of feeling oneself to become different and and and and growing but a creative act with regards to others you know I use the example of um uh even a 5-year-old can destroy a sand castle that a 10-year-old has built on the Beach it doesn't take any uh high level of intelligence whatsoever to destroy uh to create is the much higher uh later developmental capacity and so when you begin to appreciate that when you're relating to another human being you can come at it from a standpoint of um that is effectively destructive in various ways or at least it's non-helpful you know the way we can shut people down or we can uh uh you know we can criticize them or judge them but when you learn how to create by by being a co-creator with another human being meaning you learn how to speak to people how to be with people how to nurture people and and help them begin to open up and begin to experience themselves more widely then I think what you're learning as you know as an act of Love Like Scott peek was a psychiatrist he wrote a book called The Road Less Traveled maybe you read it and he talked about love as an act of will um you know to u to uh basically find out about the nature of who you are to extend that over to another human being hopefully they will receive that and encourage you to open up more and then hopefully they will be willing to open back up again and through this Mutual co-creation we begin to discover more and more of the nature of who we are the deeper and deeper nature of who we are and and and we grow and we develop and that's why I also think psychedelics can be so amazing if done the right way and with the right kind of support is because we're going to have those those kinds of experiences which are as everything is by the way in life as far as I'm concerned we're surrounded by teachers teachers of many many sorts that you just if you know how to listen you know how to pay attention um there is uh knowledge available that you can acquire um in day-to-day living let alone psychedelic space which has its own presentation of a very particular um State of Consciousness that you encounter and again the point I'm trying to get at is if you can learn how to inquire with that State of Consciousness how to develop a relationship of openness and trusting and not be uh you know fighting with it which if it has been in your nature to fight and struggle with your own experiences you may well have a difficult time on in psychedelic space but um so that's the intrinsic value ultimately of a of um you know useful integration experiences as you come out bigger and wiser and um more caring and loving because that's what well that's what love does it it moves you in that direction and it that's just the way it is and uh so I room for compassion to flow for you to harmonize because we've all had experiences and if we can we can allow how we felt in our rough experience to harmonize with the you know if we're giving them the space to let that they feel safe to tell their experience to us allows us to kind of relate and harmonize and know what that vibration is and and have understanding for it yes yes because every every experience is well arguably infinitely complex infinitely deep and your ability to not only say this is what happened but begin to look at the nature of what that experience was what did it mean what what's the significance uh um what else is there what is it telling me uh it's a potential it's a possibility that again if you know how to explore uh then it's there for you and if you don't it's kind of like having a set of Encyclopedia britanicas or whatever the best example is but you don't know how to open the book and you don't know how to read it's uh it's there but it's just not available to you so yeah yeah wow so you you you experienced psychedelics you know 178 what steered you to the letters after your name I was a little younger than 17 when I experienced psyched but what ah well the the same thing that I was describing when I said I had that Awakening something turned on in my Consciousness and I just knew that this was what I wanted to explore now I thought that psychology and I think I was correct that it was probably the best Avenue that I could use uh to help me understand more about the nature of humans and social processes and psychological processes and is very good at that but for the most part psychology um it's it's uh you know to call it mainstream it does it's beginning to uh you know it's beginning to explore these other uh Wilder areas of human consciousness but so for me it was there's the Avenue that's going to get me most closely aligned with what it is that um my mind seems to be wanting to know about and uh H and so I did and uh I you know I was blessed to do all of those years 13 years it took me to get from uh from start to finish till well I could legitimately practice uh I was blessed to be fascinated by what I was doing and St and I'm fascinated to this day every time you know I work with people in my practice and then I listen to their experiences and I use my experiences my experiences of my Consciousness when I'm with another person's Consciousness to help locate in some way their Consciousness to become in some way a translator for them at the start so they begin to put into their own frame of reference experiences which they couldn't make sense of and then if I'm if I'm good at what I'm doing they go oh yeah that's yeah that's right that's right and then we they begin to learn how to do the navigation themselves and then once they start to do that well then we're on a journey of exploration where it's kind of like everything is worthwhile taking a look at and isn't it all fascinating yeah so how hard was it for you to work out the the communicable language in a language that's as limited as English for those type of experiences because you try to explain an experience you sound crazy I yes I to this day I mean I do a lot of reading a a lot I access a lot of different sites a lot of different sources of information all trying to get exactly what you're talking about Steve so how can I articulate um experiences in a certain way what are the examples I can use what are the stories I can tell what are the things that other people have discovered that I can say aha that yeah that's it that that puts a a a frame on on on that experience that I'm having and that I can then hopefully uh you know frame for someone else in such a way that when it's given to them they say yeah yeah that's it because otherwise it's like I don't know I don't know what's going on something doesn't feel right or something feels different I don't know what it is and then they have that anxious experience I was talking about before they go I I just want to back up from this and then they don't learn anything from those from that teacher that happens to come in that form yes because if you can't articulate it in your own mind and you you don't have somebody that can help you articulate it in the in a sense of understanding it can be something you just want to bury absolutely but and I would want to add though that articulating experiences making sense of experiences is is really important but it's just a step along the way because then the next step is learning how to have experiences learning how to be in a place where you can be receptive to experiences rather than trying to figure them out that's really tricky business oh to allow Consciousness to unfold and to be an observer I often use the examples like listening to music if you want to really know what music is you have to be in a place where you are the music and and the music is you and if you can be in that place that experience is radically different than being in a place where you're listening to the music or you're trying to figure out who's that band or what's that instrument or why did they put those words in there that's not that's not the music it's it's listening to it but it's not being in the music and so learning how to be learning how to be open and in the moment in the flow whatever you want to call it uh and learning how to stay there over extended periods of time is h a step along a step further than the articulation of experiences which is important to say okay I think I I can think the experience the territory feels familiar enough to me that I can name it now I feel comfortable in in how to navigate it because I know a bit more about where I can go and where maybe I better not go or at least not go yet yeah yeah that we we call that point that you're talking about letting go where you can just be a part of the experience rather than have the brain analyzing every second of the experience yeah well I heard Dr re use a very important word that we have been told before on many occasions by another uh friend of ours who a psychologist as well and works in um she works in facilitation but as well as integration observe is a word um observe like when you're in ceremony observe what the medicine is showing you you know observe how you're reacting to it observe what it is bringing up you don't necessarily have to figure it all out right in that second like integration can take a year it can take two years you know and you need to observe and soak it in and understand um and something else I do want to I do want to take a moment to comment on you were talking earlier about how you you would you would sit you went into the hospital and you sat with people and you listen to understand and I I have a different word for that empathy you it was very easy to see especially in that moment when you were talking you are somebody who has a lot of empathy you can very easily set yourself down and listen to somebody and put yourself in their shoes and work really hard to understand and empathize with what they're going through and what they're think thinking and that is beautiful coming from somebody who has very serious cptsd that is a beautiful trait in in somebody who works in in talk therapy as yourself yeah yeah um the I mean the way I see it is that your nervous system intersects with my nervous system your Consciousness intersects with my Consciousness what I become when I'm with whether you Cindy or you Steve or the anyone that I'm working with what I become is an amalgamation of my being with their me their being in other words I witness their manifestation of who they are to me in my Consciousness when I'm with them and they're sort of sitting over there so I come to know them through my experiences that I'm having which I've learned how to pay attention to to watch what's forming and then my task is to say how much of this is mine and how much of this is about them and learning how to navigate that face by asking questions of the other like for example when you say this it feels like this is happening does that work for you does that fit for you and if I've got them properly located in my being they'll go yeah that's what's happening and that's where the the analogy of walking through um you know a cemetery with someone if they trust that you're going to be there and they and that you know what's going on with them they'll go a long long long way uh and unfortunately in our social system we we've been grossly inhibited from exploring and expressing and um letting other people know what's going on with us in fact exactly the opposite has happened where I'm sadly believe we're in a massive Retreat away from each other because well for lots of reasons that I don't want to go into right now but I think it's very unfortunate so I think Community uh is crucial finding friends people you love people that you trust uh that's what that's what really matters most yeah we're down to the last couple of minutes Dr Reed is there anything else that you that we haven't asked or you haven't brought up that you would like to to share with everybody um I think the only thing that comes up for me immediately is The Wonder of of being the the the magnificence of of experiencing and you know the the the Plato's CA cave allegory where where where people are are seeing shadows on the wall and they don't realize that there's a whole other world out there and they don't know how to get to that other world anyhow because no one's going to show them how to do that but there is a there is being alive is a miracle it is the one of the most profound Miracles and we for the most part don't know it even though it's with us every day so Consciousness awareness experience whatever you want to call it if you can tune begin to tune yourself so that you're having that no matter where you are no matter who you're with then you've got it got it going on and you know what it is that you've you've you've hit the Pinnacle of learning and and understanding and that so there I put that in there that's amazing thank you so much that was awesome well thank you so much for joining us today um it's been a very interesting conversation I've very much enjoyed it uh we've learned a lot about you and we we went right back to pre 17 um when you had your uh experiences and and caught your interest I am very thankful that you are somebody that is in this space you sound like a very compassionate person and I'm sure that your your clients and patients feel the same way thank you so much for giving us an hour of your time today you are more than welcome thank you it nice to met both of you oh it's been an absolute pleasure and and hopefully we can have you back on at a future date and we can do some more discussion um I know you're in my neighborhood so I'll probably bug it just so you know well I have many things I could talk about wonderful great thank you guys thank you much appreciated okay uh it's that time again so thank you for joining us here on the mushy moment with my co-host rev Cindy myself and our awesome guest Dr Reed we're proud to be coming to you live from Pac radio.net and we'll see you next week with more exciting guests and healing information much love much love you're listening to the PACE radio network here at PACE 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