 So I want to talk today about culture, belief systems, and how that has been robbing you of your true identity. One of my all-time favorite people to listen to is Terence McKenna. I could listen to him for hours and hours and hours. So yeah, when we're looking at, say, belief systems in culture, belief systems in religion, belief systems in society, those belief systems are there for a reason. And they're there to control your bottom line. If you look at any religion, why does it exist? It exists to dictate rules to you. Like, think about that. You know, it's like who to marry, who to have sex with, who to love, who to hate. Well, God forbid, you know, your students are going to go to hell, yadda, yadda, yadda, all that mumbo fucking drum. Okay? Same thing when it comes to culture. Culture dictates how you're going to look, how you're going to dress, how you're going to behave as well. There's no difference between culture and religion. And they're interlaced, intertwined. It's kind of hard to separate them. And same thing when you look at, for example, political systems, right? You have to, if you're conservative, you must think conservatively. If you're liberal, you must think liberally. So all these mental shackles and spiritual shackles I like to call them, they're actually stopping you from progressing to become the best version of yourself. And this is something that Joseph Campbell talks about. He talks about not being transparent to transcendence. So a lot of people, they talk about being enlightened. They talk about like being more open-minded. But yeah, as soon as somebody has an opposing view of whatever they're standing for, they reject that opposing view. In fact, they become defensive and they attack that individual. So they're not quite transparent to transcendence. Or as Nietzsche said one time, I don't know. Yeah, it was Nietzsche, he said that religion is a defense against a religious experience. So religion itself stops you from having a religious experience. So when we're looking at culture today, regardless of what culture you're in, regardless of what your political belief system is, regardless of what your religious belief system is, I truly believe that these systems, key systems, are actually stopping you from evolving your mind. And that's on my firm believer in kind of thinking outside the box, figuring out what you want to be, figuring out what your own system is as opposed to somebody else's system, as opposed to what your parents told you. Like think about this for a moment. When you're born, you're given a name that you never chose. When you're born, you're given a religion that you never chose. When you're born, you're given a culture that you never chose. When you're born, you're given a nation nationalism that you never chose. So already you're at a disadvantage. You're giving your force upon to live this artificial matrix type of lifestyle. And do we ever pause and second guess, hey, is this what I want to do? Do I want to be worshipping this? Do I want to be living like this? Are these my mental belief systems? I mentioned the book the other day, the Four Agreements Amendment by Miguel. And he talks about the power of words. And power of words are quite powerful because, you know, when someone tells you that you're X, Y, and Z in a young age, that sticks in your psyche. And say, if someone tells you that, hey, you know, this is the only type of person you should like from a young age, you're going to carry that belief system until you're all older. You know, same thing you people say, you know, that race or this race or that political party or this political party or rich people are evil, whatever it may be, that sticks with you. Okay. So, you know, when we're looking at all these systems, I highly recommend that regardless of where you are and regardless of your belief system, if you have the inclination, if you have that natural, say, internal itch, I would recommend that you start exploring more, start exploring yourself. You know, I'm a firm believer in being exposed to different belief systems, being exposed to different religions, being exposed to different people, absorbing it, but not being defensive of it. Don't view as you're the correct one and they're the wrong one. Kind of intake it into yourself. That's I'm a firm believer in kind of using everything as tools. You know, study people like Terence McKinnon, study people like Ram Hancock, go look into Joe Rogan podcast with Joe Rogan Experience, Joseph Campbell, one of my all-time favorites. I like to study him on a month-a-month basis and study, you know, the hero with a thousand faces, study all his work and I really dive in deep to understand that for you to truly be happy, for you to evolve your psyche, your spirituality, you got to start with yourself. You're going to create your own dictum. You got to create your own belief system, your own mythology, as Joseph Campbell talks about, and forget about being controlled by culture. Cultures is like the addictive sociopathic entity that controls how you think and behave on a day-to-day basis and it is scary to break out of the bubble because everybody else views you as different, right? We come from a tribal species, so therefore we don't want to feel different from anybody else and as soon as, you know, as soon as people start pointing fingers at us like, oh no, if I get left out of the tribe, I may not be able to survive, but that's our old primitive monkey brain thinking that way as opposed to like, no, I want to be different, you know, you guys become the sheep or you go this way, I'm going to carve my own path. And when Joseph Campbell talks about this, the hero with a thousand faces, the hero, here's a calling, he hears a call, something he or she knows instinctively is wrong with, not wrong, instinctively is off tilt in their, in the beam of their spirituality, but they accept the call. The call is I'm going to transform, I'm going to go fight this and once they accept the call, they go fight the dragon. And once they defeat the dragon, you know, they've done the hero's journey and through this journey, through this evolution, through this hibernation, going to the cuckoo and coming out, we evolve as a human being individually speaking. So I want to, I want you to challenge yourself. I want you to look at what you're doing in life and figure out patterns that you've seen in the past. And I want to really start exploring yourself because at the end of the day, listen, don't, don't be settling for rules made by man, man makes these rules. Man makes society rules, man makes religious rules, man makes all these rules. So why are you going to be following all these rules? Are these the rules that you want to follow? Is this your own spiritual belief system? Is this how you want to live your life? Like the idea of right now, for example, I know I'm rambling, but the idea right now that you have to get a nine to five job, that you have to get a mortgage, that you have to get a car, you have to have kids, that's like the most fucked up dream I've ever heard of. And that's not to say it's not good, you know, but you have to make that own choice. Not somebody else. You have to choose that. Not like the fucking like some kind of supreme being saying you must do that. No, you have to choose that. And so this whole notion of like there must, you must do certain things because, oh, society's told you to do it because their grandparents told you to do that. This is why we see depression. This is why we see suicide. This is why we see, I would say schizophrenia because people, when they go off tilt and when they're not following their true Dharma, they crack completely. So yeah, start pushing yourself. I would even state, you know, depending on your age group and depending on proper mentorship and guidance, look into psychedelics as well or ethi-agents or I call them spiritual tools or plant medicines. Look at, you know, for example, psilocybin, then you have ayahuasca, then you have DMT and et cetera, et cetera. And these are powerful plant medicines that can help you on that journey towards finding your internal self. And remember, this is not, there's no end to this journey. When you're in a journey long enough and you realize that the end is never coming, then you realize the journey itself is the end. So get used to the fact that this is one big experiment that we're in. In fact, if you look at, for example, some quantum physicists, they state that the probability of us being in a simulation is very high. So we might be in a simulation already. So if you look at certain books such as Gertel Escher Bach, crazy fucking book, blow your mind this thick combines quantum physics, combines music, combines mathematics is one of my top 10 favorite books are blowing your mind big read, hard read. You got to read a bunch of times to understand about Gertel Escher Bach. You know, they talked about the evolutionary principles of certain mathematics and how the universe goes into fractals as well as in patterns and self-replicating patterns from inner and outer, et cetera. But they come to a point with AI. So everyone's talking about AI. The question is right now is like, listen, are we discovering AI or are we already in AI and we're in the simulation of repeating the pattern again to discover AI within the simulation? Kind of like a matrix within the matrix. It's an interesting dialogue. Who knows who's right? For me, I don't know. I actually believe that we are in a simulation mathematically speaking and we do have the power to manipulate the simulation and manipulate how we want to live our lives and that's why you see people doing amazing things because they understand that life is play-doh. You can manipulate how you want to live your own life and that's going back to full circle is not following this norm of culture. You know, marriage and kids and school and let's get a job and whatever it may be. You know, I'm not saying it's good or bad, but it's up to you to figure out what you want to do and how you want to live your own life. And I just wish more people start waking up and understanding like, listen, like if you're sure you're going to blink and you're going to be 80 years old and like, what the fuck did I do? I didn't do nothing. And I don't want that to happen to anybody because, oh my God, that's the worst thing in life. You just fucking go through life. Those people head down like an ostrich in a fucking hole. So I implore you to start waking up. I implore you to start exploring, having fun. You know, they had this, they asked this, they asked the Buddha a question one time. Wasn't all, it wasn't Buddha. They asked the Dalai Lama a question about the meaning of life and the Dalai Lama put up a flower and there's only one person in the whole audience that understood the meaning of the flower because there is no meaning. Flower does not have a meaning. What the story dictates is a potential, a flower has a potential to grow and to bloom and to have different colors. So what people, when people are saying, I'm searching for meaning of life, no, what people really mean is I'm searching for the experience of life. The potential to have an amazing experience of life. So when you have more experiences in life, when you try more things, when you experiment with more things, when you fail with more things, you're getting feedback from the environment, getting feedback from everything that you're doing. And with this feedback, create a Oodaloop, this whole different story, they create something called the Oodaloop system where with this feedback, you can figure out, okay, this works, that doesn't work, that works, this doesn't work and create your own blueprint to figure out what you want to do. And that's why I always recommend people when you're telling me what should I do, what can do, experiments in life, try this, try that, I've done a million things, I've done a million businesses, I've done a million different things and I've never had to high school. So I've been all over the place and who knows, I'm gonna end up in 10 years. But the thing is, I love life because I'm experiencing different things. I wear different hats, I shed my skin like a snake, as Jung talks about, you know, shedding dye skin and entering a new and being a new character and finding your own dharma, figuring out what kind of, kind of what lights you up inside internally. So leave you with that, you know, some resources, Terrence McKinnon, Joe Rogan, Graham Hancock, read the book for agreements, it's really interesting as well, Gerter Escher Bach and just start thinking more differently rationally and don't be controlled by these systems that dangle over your head, okay? If you have a question for me, leave a comment below this video and I'll be trying to make a little bit more of these videos on a day-to-day basis, but I'm kind of busy with some startups and doing the Bitcoin blockchain space, but till then, peace!