 This episode of Skeptico, can an NDE be funny? Well, I guess that depends on who's telling the story. I'm going to tell the story the last time I drank piss. Stop me if you've heard this one. That's comedian Jessa Reed. She's our guest today. You know, when I got addicted to math, it was kind of an accident. And then I was actually relieved. Like when my family was like, don't go down this path, you know. I felt so disillusioned with the reality where I'm just like, everyone's, when I got old enough to find out that magic wasn't real. I'm like, so life is just working a job that you hate so that you can afford a house you don't give a shit about. So you can stay in a relationship that's already kind of forced, like let me off of this train. Math addiction, cool. This was a fantastic conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Skeptico, where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm your host, Alex Icarus. And today we welcome comedian, podcaster, Jessa Reed to Skeptico. Jessa, welcome. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. You know, I love when listeners help me book guests or, you know, recommend guests. And then particularly I always put people in the spot. I go, hey, you reach out, you know, if it works, then get them involved. So Rob did that. But I kind of feel like the more I got into this, I kind of felt like two people were getting forced into a blind date. You know, it's like, okay, you know, it might be exciting and good, but it might not work. So cool, cool. Tell folks about yourself. Probably most of my listeners, you know, a few of them have been familiar with you and the scene. And, you know, I'm all about spirituality, deep into the whole alien, I hate the term alien, but you know, what are we going to do? E.T., contact experience, especially from an extended consciousness standpoint, super into NDE. We've probably done 100 shows on NDE science and all that stuff. So we have a lot of points of intersection. Tell people, jump us into this, what you do, what you're all about. I primarily focus on the elevation of consciousness. I hate the words for all of this stuff. I imagine you probably feel the same. I don't resonate with the New Age movement, but I feel like a lot of the things I'm talking about sound like they are from the New Age movement. Just, I'll try to give the shortest version of this because it's all over the internet in longer versions. I had a near-death experience in 2000. I was on a meth bender, so I am as open to the idea that the experience I had as a result of this was some sort of psychosis, but I had a near-death experience and I went back to a blue ball of light. That explained that reality is some sort of game, I guess for lack of a way to explain it. And that the consciousness that had been playing the game on this planet had been playing all the way back to the dinosaurs and that we were about to switch to a different game. And after I came back from this near-death experience, I was given the option to come back or stay there. It was better there. It wasn't like, it was more like, are you willing to go back to the physical reality? I chose to come back. I did have to deal with about a year of really regretting that decision afterwards. I did try to go back to the blue ball of light a couple of times. It did not work. I kind of rushed and told back on to what I would now call a different timeline. I didn't have any of the language for that. I still saw reality as something very clear. And for the next five years, while on drugs, I communicated with... I call them aliens just because I think it's funny, but they are definitely not... I don't know. I can see how they are interpreted, how they are interpreted, but my experience with them is that they were non-physical and more or less a future version of us or an extension of us rather than like Martians. And the ones I had contact with were very benevolent and seemed very invested in the process of consciousness on Earth. And the things that I were taught, I was taught were intended to assist in any way I could in this kind of process that I now believe we are in. Great. So terrific. And there's a million jumping off points there, many of which we've kind of explored on this show. But I guess where I always come... My orientation from this was first and foremost from a spiritual perspective. I kind of had this yoga thing for the longest time. And I don't know why, but it awoke in me in this kind of non-dual sensibility. But I also had this very practical kind of business, success-driven kind of thing. So I wanted to accomplish one. And then as soon as I did, I wanted to answer big picture questions. Who are we? Why are we here? But because of my background, I felt the way to do that was through science, that science would at least give us a leg up. And I had an inkling that they were messing with the recipe there and they weren't playing the game right, but I still went there. And I'm glad I did. So I kind of interviewed a ton of people in the parapsychology area to try and understand what consciousness is the best we can understand it and why science is lying about consciousness, why they're ignoring all these experiments that kind of established this whole idea that there is this extended consciousness. And of course in every culture throughout time has recognized it. Why are we in particular kind of denying that? And that was kind of conspiracy number one is just kind of the fake science around consciousness. And then that led me to the near-death experience stuff. And then the ET stuff just kind of popped up right there, not from an experiential standpoint, from a standpoint of if you just follow the fricking data, it's kind of undeniable. I mean, they're turning off nukes, you know, and then the wall comes down and the Soviet Union and we get their secret files, they go, yeah, they turned them on over here too and they're kind of giving you the message like, don't play with those toys you're playing with. So there's all this kind of like real stuff associated with near-death experience, extended consciousness. I have no problem with the, you know, math I don't normally associate with hallucinogenic kind of experience, but whatever gets you there, you know, it's this extended consciousness thing bringing back reality. What I've always been about, and I guess so like my thing, my big lightning rod just throw at you, is, you know, I get kind of irks sometimes that comedians are taking the truth out of truth or movement, you know? We're supposed to be about trying to figure out as best we can what is real. And I'll put the error quotes on that because obviously the fundamental understanding that you get from this, no matter what direction you come, is that there's a definite non-reality to this whole thing. Do you mean using these movements or these kind of ideas as material to make fun of? No, no, because I don't think you're making fun of it. You definitely aren't making fun of it. So look, look, I could play this two ways. I could say, and I even, I drew these up and I was going to send them to you and then I was like, it's being a little too cheeky. But like on one hand you could say, I could say, hey, you know, comedians are ruining, they're taking the truth out of the truth or movement. And then you could turn around and go, no, you idiot. Comedians are expanding the truth or movement by whatever you want to call truth or movement, by awakening more people, challenging this kind of very rigid paradigm that we kind of, you know, our parents were in and everyone we can think of were in and we're breaking through that in a way that brings more people in, you know? So there's kind of, but there is attention there, like in terms of all the things that you just said about your near-death experience. Well, there's a lot of scientists that have studied the near-death experience and studied, like I just interviewed a guy, his name is Dr. Gregory Shushant and what he's done, he's probably the world's leading authority on near-death experience across culture, across time. So he has these 500 year old near-death experiences from China and then these near-death experiences from Polynesia and he shows how they change the whole culture. So to me, that's like a truth that I want to move towards and kind of process into this whole thing and process into your near-death experience but also other people's near-death experience to try and play this game that we can figure this stuff out to some degree, even if we kind of can't. Yeah. I'm not sure that I'm clear how comedians are not doing that, but unless you're talking about specific schools of thought within comedy, but my understanding of truth, and this is just my perspective, is that like it's a giant circle and that we are all individuals within one giant consciousness and let's say that's inside of the circle like a disco ball and each one of us is one of those tiny squares and that most of what we do in our search for truth is debate with people who are looking at the opposite side of this circle that encompasses truth and just arguing ad nauseum about what is real. When I'm looking at the ceiling, you're looking at the floor. For me, the ceiling is real. For you, the floor is real and that we are never going to figure out what truth is until we come at it with some sort of open-minded curiosity about one another's perspective rather than this kind of argumentative debate. And I say this is someone who gets sucked into debates or entrenching into my own beliefs usually out of some sort of insecurity in them, but throughout my life, what I have come to find is that whenever I have a very rigid idea of how things need to play out for the awakening or what people need to see the truth or whatever, I zoom out over time and experience, find out that my rigid idea of how this needs to play out wasn't actually correct, wasn't actually honoring this kind of trickster element in consciousness. And so now I'm just at this point, I woke up in 2000 and I was very attached to how this kind of collective awakening, and you go through the thing, I went through the hardcore wild conspiracy theory phase because you wake up and you feel, oh my God, I've been lied to and now you're looking for it everywhere and you're also filtering it through, I think the trauma healing has to be a huge part of this because otherwise you're projecting your darkness onto everything and everything looks like a hand-wringing conspiracy rather than what I call a million tiny agendas where this kind of trickster element plays out in reality because everyone's focused on their one little tiny thing. And it, I don't know. I'm starting to get to the point where I'm like, there are no external enemies, we're all just playing in this game together. But so no, I don't, I think if you're talking about opposition in comedy, I think that some of us are meant to be what I think you resonate with, which is more kind of data-driven, quantifiable or challenging what is quantifiable, kind of pushing in that more kind of masculine energy and others of us are supposed to be in the more fluid artistic philosopher and those things coming up against each other is how we get to truth. Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot there to really kind of work through. So, like again, fundamentally, I come at this from a kind of non-dual perspective, the disco ball perspective, the bubble in the ocean, you know, it's just a bubble in the ocean and it just dissolves back into the ocean and don't get too worked up about it. But then I guess when I take that, I go part of the reason why I believe that is because the reincarnation research done at University of Virginia that was carefully done for years and years by all these and published in peer-reviewed papers and I go, I point to that and I go, that makes me kind of confident in that reality that I understand is a reality. And I'd say the same thing about the near-death experience with Gregory Shushan or other people. So one of the things, I guess I was pointing to when I was talking about the Truth or Movement is I didn't awaken to the conspiracy stuff for kind of a long time. I was just kind of, I was oblivious and I was kind of going down this other path. But then I did have that process of when you wake up to the conspiracy thing, you're like, oh my God, you know, everything is kind of a conspiracy. So I'm going off on a long thing, but the point is you have to dig to get to that truth. That truth isn't just revealed to you. As a matter of fact, it's hidden in all these different ways that you have to figure out. So that is very non-disco ballish kind of thing. That is like here now, you know, Bitcoin. I heard you talking about, you know, one of my favorite movies too, the big short thing you just did, that's very third dimension as Jessa likes to say this world. And I just think that has to be preserved in this process because if we just kind of jump past that, then we're all just kind of making stuff up. I agree with that. I think that one of my, one of the things that frustrates me about spirituality, well, I do think a lot of focus needs to be placed on raising your awareness in this moment. If that's coming naturally to you, a lot of people are going through an awakening right now and it's a process and it takes up a lot of bandwidth. But I think there is this fantasy that spirituality is about escaping reality. And so they're looking for this. It becomes a new postponed happiness. It becomes a way to dissociate from the reality that you're currently living in. I don't know that I would agree that everybody needs to get to the bottom of everything. Some people, you know, that's not their department. Some people are just raising kids. Other people are revolutionizing medicine. Other people are, you know, the way that my mind works, you can put data in front of me and my brain will be in outer space five seconds later. I can't listen to podcasts. I don't have a great capacity for taking in information and processing it. My partner on the other hand, 10 podcasts a day, you can read a book in a day and a half and then he gives me the cliffs. And then I immediately forget it and then I process it and then I think I came up with it a week later. So I do think there are in the disco ball, some people who are bringing into our collective awareness, this truce and looking at things from a different perspective, because that comes naturally to you. And because that is not to be like, follow your bliss, but that is where your energy is kind of naturally taken. And there is a slightly evangelical, I think for a lot of people looking at conspiracy, and I mean the full range from flatter to just the government. Yeah, of course the government. But is this kind of evangelical kind of proselytizing kind of, and I've been there, sky is falling, I need everyone else to know this. And what I came to see is that people can't hear what they're not supposed to hear. And they're either not supposed to hear it because they're not, they haven't opened their, they don't have enough space for it yet, or they're not supposed to hear it because it's not their thing, or because they're programmed. You know, conspiracy theory is now a dirty word, right? You put these, it's the same thing with the New Age movement. I have to change the language I use all the time, because after a while a word or a phrase comes to mean something that shuts down the critical factor in people's minds. So they're not, it immediately closes their mind. So trying to have conversations about some of these subjects, I've learned, like I drop words and switch to a different language, but I've also just really released the need to have anyone else believe anything that they are not ready to believe because I don't believe. We're never going to homogenize consciousness. We just have to master the unity. So I agree, I think it's both. I think it's, when it comes to changing other people, it's the mirror ball. When it comes to my own personal life and existence, focused here in the third dimension. So that's cool. Let me tie it down to an example, because like so many of the things that you're saying, I've found to be incredibly, not just true, but powerful, you know. So I'm drawn to a lot of things you're saying, but then I want to like show you why I think, how I got there and how I back that up. Because at the same time, then I want to call out these other things and say, wait, you haven't convinced me over this edge. So like, I think your process of reintegration after your NDE is really interesting. And you know, the first researcher to ever really draw that out was a woman named Dr. PMH Atwater. She's older now, but she is really brilliant. She's a real firecracker. She kind of riles people up. She's a very solid researcher, PhD, but she started when the near-death experience thing first hit. It was all love and light. And the other thing was it was prone to be co-opted by Christians. You know, like, hey, we told you, we told you, and there's Jesus, you know. And I've been told you like the one guy you interviewed, he's like, this guy was really dead. He was in the morgue for 20 minutes. And he saw Jesus and then he was convinced afterwards that if you didn't see Jesus, then Satan was running the show on your near-death experience. So the guy's name is Ian McCormick. In my interview with him, I go, Ian, you know, your spiritual experience, your journey, great buddy, but I got to tell you that data is not in your favor. If you go look at a thousand people that have had near-death experience, here are the things that are similar, here are the things that are different, but that Jesus-centric, Jesus-only kind of thing is very, very rare. So I'm not telling you that isn't your experience. I'm just telling you that, you know. So the other thing that PMH Atwater did, though, is she got passed the kind of just light and love of the near-death experience and said, this is fucking people up. People are coming back. They're having a super high divorce rate or having depression or having this period where they go through where they're evangelizing. Like I said, they just have to grab everyone and go, you don't know the light is out there, you know, kind of thing. And then, like, that's a real thing. And then if you go talk to, you know, some of the people who've been in the wisdom traditions, like in India or something like that, they go, oh, man, that's what happens. You know, you have this, people have this Kalani experience and we have to just kind of put them over there and just kind of take care of them and just quietly leave them alone for six months and they kind of come back around kind of thing. Well, to me, that is incredibly important to understanding this whole thing, but it takes a level of wanting to get there. Not everyone's truth is equal. Not everyone's opinion is equally valid. And then if you add to that, the fucking deception, where they are intentionally trying to mislead, intentionally trying to misinform, I'm just passionate about trying to understand that battlefield that we're on because I think it is necessary to kind of navigate these truths. Yeah, I think that that stuff about NDEs is interesting. I've never really looked into it. I definitely was, yeah, the integration was difficult. I am so grateful that I, the A, the internet didn't exist. There was no social media and that I was just kind of underground with other drug addicts. But I think that discernment is really the only way that those things will be seen and that no amount of information or data or explanation will change the minds, if that's what we're looking for, of people who cannot yet see it. And that's just been my experience as someone who, when I woke up, raised on movies in the 90s where all you had to do when you got the piece of truth was get to the newspaper and if they could get it printed, it was gonna come out. And you have this moment where you go, oh, that's bullshit. The newspaper is actually owned by the corporations that own the rest of us. Cool, okay. But also people can't hear what they haven't been initiated to. And I'm not, I don't mean that in a hierarchical, better than anyone else type way. But it's a version of reality that until you have come to that, you have eyes to see, ears to hear, I think it's what that meant. It's Charlie Brown's teacher. And then you just, and then you get like, not you, but like we get like trying to explain it. And then we sound nuts, you know. And so there, it is this, I do believe there is subjective and objective truth. And then also we are having an individual experience where in this realm, so yes, in the 12th dimension, we're all one, in the third dimension, you and I are two totally different people. And to a certain degree, do these things need to be known? Like do I need to let people know about what the government's doing? I don't know. Can I do much about it? If they aren't at a place to see that for themselves, they're probably not going to believe me. And I am going to blow out my own nervous system, trying to bring someone to a place of awareness that I personally just believe is an expansion of your own consciousness. The ability to hold paradox, you know, the ability to see your own, how your own prejudices and attachments and desires, you know, a lot of people want to go back to normal because they want to go back to normal. And they're like, shush, I don't want to hear that we are living through the collapse of the civilization or the apocalypse because I just want to go back. I've just got to raise right before all this shit started, you know? So, um, sorry, I just go on fucking rants. You just have to- No, no, no, no, no, not at all. Because that's all, because in a way, what you just articulated was kind of from the beginning, my option B, which is like, shut up, asshole. You know, we are doing more. Anyone who's doing the work of expanding, awakening, tearing down paradigms is doing the good work. So don't get caught up in process. And even if people are going off track and kind of saying things that are weird, it's like I always get in this thing with Flat Earth, you know, and it just bugs the shit out of me because it's like, it's so stupid, you know, from a scientific, it's just so stupid. And then the coddling of people, you know, well, I'm just going to be spherically neutral. Please don't unsubscribe, you know? Like how are you going to be able to make the decision as to whether or not you should let them jab your kids with the bioweapon gene therapy? Because that's a decision you're going to have to make. And it's like a real life decision that could be like life or death for your kids. So how are you going to make that decision if you can't even fucking figure out that the satellites aren't kept afloat by helium balloons? I mean, you know, I mean, I understand that these people can still walk and chew gum at the same time. They carry on a good conversation. But it's like, I want to, like, you're not being hard enough on yourself if that's where you're at. I love that you're just saying all this. I am very disconnected from the group consciousness on Earth and have been for most of my life. So I'm like, whoa, whoa, that's stuff. Those conversations are happening. That's very interesting. I don't think that. I mean, hold on. Those are within our circle, our tiny little circle. Those topics are mainstream. Sam Tripoli, who I love Sam Tripoli, because I love his spiritual show, Zero. Eddie Bravo, you know, he's a, I mean, Joe Rogan will allow this kind of conversation. I can go down less. These are like conversations that they have. There's no, there's no injecting any kind of reality to any of that. And I'm just saying that doesn't serve us, I think, because, you know, the bioweapon gene therapy thing is fucking serious attempt to, you know, further that agenda. And I'm all for jumping out of the dimension and saying, to me, from a spiritual perspective, I don't get too worked up about it because it doesn't matter. But from a, you know, I think we got to try and do better than that. I don't touch that topic with a 10 foot full because I just, it's everybody's decision of how they want to perceive the entirety of what's going on is none of my business. And also as someone who has, I don't see, I don't see, I have really mixed feelings about, about changing anyone's mind or affecting anyone's worldview. And this is a difficult part about talking in a microphones for a living and something that I have. I was brazenly talking in microphones before I started to see reflected back to me like, Oh, there are certain people who are making decisions about their own life based on stuff that I say. And I got kind of overwhelmed by that responsibility. And I have to check in with myself all the time and say, like, why am I doing this? What, what makes me, what makes my heart sing, what resonates with me? I don't love the attention. I really, I get uneasy with the, um, pedestalization because it's just terrifying and false. And it's hard for me to have a bunch of different versions of me based on other people's projections, but more than anything, I'm terrified of somebody going against their own personal truths because I'm charismatic, which is, um, to pay double. I, so anything that involves people's, that's why I just really, for me personally, stay very zoomed out from, because I'm wrong. I'm wrong all the time. So I stay very zoomed out from hard, and that's not to say anyone else is doing the wrong thing, but all, all I think I'm interested in is providing to people validation for the process of awakening because the, the mainstream reality, the old constructs will tell you that you're losing your mind and providing a kind of levity. To the process because we all kind of get up our own ass about spirituality. We take it way too fucking seriously. And everything that I've ever encountered in the higher dimensions is very funny. It's very funny. It's fuck your dumb problems. You know, um, and then that kind of stuff, that's for no matter what my opinions are, that's for other people to figure out. And I think flat earth is, I've looked into none of this, by the way, I, but, but flat earth is at least people challenging known reality. So who cares? I mean, does it change anything? You know, well, yeah. Well, you know, so there's a couple of things. I mean, one, you, you are charismatic, you know, and the sage on the stage thing, well, you are, you can't help it, but the sage on the stage thing is, Bravo, you know, for you to kind of acknowledge that and try and wrestle that to the ground, because I do get a sense of that, a genuine sense of that, like in listening to you, like you're kind of pulling back like, you know, wink, don't really believe all the bullshit I'm saying. I mean, believe as much as you can make useful for yourself. But, so I think that's, you know, a very, a very positive thing. But I do think there's, I do think like, with the flatter thing. I mean, for one, Jesse, you're not afraid to kind of share your opinion and share your opinion about certain individuals who you think are not, you know, toe on the line or, you know, trust fund kids who are too focused on their Robin Hood account and porn, you know what I mean? And it's like, screw that, you know, wake up to come some kind of spiritual reality. So we're all kind of multi-dimensional in that way too, is that we are kind of in each other's face all the time. So I don't want you to step back from that because you're in the game. Yeah. And I am, I'm going to this like annoying transformation where I'm learning about CPTSD and trauma responses. And it's really put a damper on my hilarious shitting on other people. The, the references you're making are, I, I, it was very difficult for me to even start talking about this stuff publicly. I did not want to talk about the stuff publicly is I had been awake in the dream for 20 years, kind of living under whatever I didn't resonate with anyone else who was saying anything close to it. So, and I was just a comedian on podcasts. And then I just kind of went to this transformation where I came out and started talking about this. And then I had my own fumbling through it. And I spent a lot of time early on making fun of people who do this for a living. And, you know, was I doing that because it needs to be made fun of kind of, I think one of the things I made fun of was somebody saying, I do have an issue with trust fund babies teaching me how to position, but was somebody saying that they're, they went up to the fifth dimension and their guides told them to run a black Friday sale. And I was like, are you in the retail department? But what has happened in the last year is I had multiple experiences where I played the villain in someone else's life. And I thought I was right when I was doing it. I thought I was the victim. And when you have an experience like that, hopefully you will take that wisdom of that paradox where the movie that was playing in my head, I was the victim, the movie that was playing in their head, I was the villain. Then in defense of what I thought was in defense of myself, I became the villain. I played that role for them to be able to hold those at the same time and go, okay, well, is, is this person the villain that I have projected onto them, or are they a traumatized person doing the best they can? And in learning about CPTSD, I learned that narcissism, not the personality disorder, but that like entitlement and demanding and controlling is a mechanism of white trauma response. And that ghosting is a mechanism of the, the thought, the flight trauma response. I'm butchering it. And that people in the font trauma response, they tell you yes to whatever you want because they want that thing to be over. And all of a sudden I go, oh, that guy who ghosted me, maybe not a huge hand wringing asshole. Oh, this person over here who acted very entitled was traumatized. Okay. It's taken the fun out of the external enemy experience. And like I said, I do, I don't have a, I don't think I resonate with flat earth. But I am so open to challenging all constructs. I love it, including the ones I hold dear. And not just switching from old constructs to a new homogenized, this is the set of rules and we're sticking to it. So, you know, I know the other subject is, is very charged. And I just don't, for many reasons, I don't want to have anything to do with that conversation, but I'm not sure that it's not like, do I need to control what other people do with their, I didn't. Yeah. I mean, well, like one of the things, do you say, that I think is like fundamentally true. And here's the way I would put it. Like, so flat earth is, is stupid. Okay. So scientifically it's just a stupid idea. And you hear it and you go, oh my God. Now the counter to that in my opinion is statistically, I would be willing to bet that people who are flat earthers are dramatically, statistically, I would be willing to bet that people who are flat earthers are dramatically, statistically significantly less likely to be injected by the bioweapon gene therapy thing, right? So it's like, oh, is that really a bad thing? I mean, you're a flat earther, but you saw through this other bullshit because you had this Uber empiricism thing like, hey, I don't believe anything unless somebody shows it to me. And that turns out to be from a kind of practical strategy standpoint in the world we live in, probably a better overall strategy. So I'm kind of with you in that respect, but it's still stupid. And I think you, I just think we have to kind of find, find that terrain that we're going to flower and then plant and water. And that is that we can find discernment this way and we can call stupid shit stupid and that's okay. And it's part of the process of really figuring out what's true. And so with that, that's enough flat earth nonsense. You know what you said also that kind of resident made me a quick story. Have you ever heard of Rich Martini, the guy, he did a movie, he's a Hollywood guy and he did a movie called Flipside. He really got into past life regression and between life regression. So anyways, anyone who wants to go watch this movie, there's this kind of seminal point in it where he's at this weekend retreat and they're doing these past life regressions. This one woman has this past life regression and she's in a concentration camp and she's walking to the gas chambers and suddenly she realizes that that's what's happening, you know, and she's like frantic and she's like, at least I'm going to attack a guard, you know, I'll take somebody with me or this and that. And then she goes, no, I'm just going to be with my people and I'm just going to settle into this. And then she gets to the spiritual realm immediately right above it and she realizes she has this empathy for the guards because she realizes that the burden that they are going to carry from this experience is so much greater that she has died and she will be reborn and all that. They will, they have this like, I hate the term, but karmic kind of thing that they're going to have to unravel and their kids are going to have to unravel and all the rest of that. So like that connects directly to me with kind of what you're saying on this more important level than kind of the flat earth level. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's a, you know, it's a small zoomed in thing dealing with right now. I am obsessed with autonomy and allowing people to be in their own process. So I believe that if you want to be a Mormon, be a Mormon as long as your version, your way of expressing reality doesn't involve infringing on the rights of other people. And I think sometimes proselytization is infringing on the rights of other people, but when, and I don't, I got, I get like downloads of things that are coming and in 2019, I got downloads about the phase of the awakening that we were coming into would be a level of consciousness where you would realize, I used, I think I used rape as an example because it needed to carry the weight of this. Imagine coming out of a drunken stupor and realizing that you've been raped. That's horrible. That's horrible. Right. I've done it multiple times. Now imagine coming out of a drunken stupor and realizing that you had raped someone. Arguably, if you are not a just shitbag, which I think very few people actually are, worse. I mean, I personally would rather be the victim than the villain nine times out of 10 because the weight of being consciously aware of what you're talking about. So we don't remember our past lives yet. But what has been happening for the last couple of years is we're suddenly, we are able to look at our past in this country with real eyes, without this dissociated propaganda version of the things we've all been complicit in. We're able to look at this and there is a grief and there is a heaviness with that. And it takes bravery and vulnerability to say, I'm not going to just pick a side and say that I'm going to do the work of saying like, I did this, I hurt people. I benefit from a system that hurts people. I've contributed to this thing. And karmically this goes way back. I think this is a massive, massive part of the work. And I think there's a potential. People talk about this closure. I don't believe that's going to come from the government saying aliens are real. I believe disclosure is an internal thing that's happening for us. And that a big part of disclosure is the memory of our past lives coming back, which people are waiting for some big ball to drop where it suddenly shifts the world overnight. What would do that more than remembering your time as the thing that you think you are in opposition of? Yeah, I think definitely. And we see that from people. That's what they report, you know, of having like, that's the rich martini story is you have that experience and it changes you. And you just said that, you know, earlier about yourself of having that, that download or that experience of being actually you had like, did you do like a formal past life regression or was kind of a spontaneous past life kind of thing experience? I really don't know any of my past lives other than I have some memories of Atlantis. But I mean, the victim, just when you're saying, you know, the victim perpetrator kind of thing, did you kind of... Yeah, that was in this lifetime. And then I could take that information and retroactively look at like personal relationships in which I thought I was the victim. But no, that was just something that happened in 2020. Okay. Yeah. No, that's cool. And I think, you know, Moi, you know, this first state is really going well. I just have to say. So we could go on for a long time, but we ought to try and move towards wrapping it up. And like, you know, you said the Mormon thing. And I'm like, I want to nod my head and say, yeah, but I want to say in the same way that like, if we're going to pin down the historical ills of the United States of America, where I point to is always like slavery, right? You know, it's like, wow. And there's still so many apologists today. And I have them on the phone and goes, oh, no, you know, only a fraction of the people in the south. And I married into the south. I'm married in, you know, but it's only a fraction of people, small percentage of people, you know, on slaves. It's like, well, that's just not true. I mean, go look it up. It's just not true. It's fudging the numbers. In South Carolina, 50% of the people were connected directly to slavery, which means like, you had a slave in your family or you owned a slave. The way they fudge the numbers is they go, well, you're a family of six, but only one person, the man, the lead guy owned the slaves. Now, is that real? That's not real. You have 10 slaves, the whole family, you're all connected to it, right? So that's just changing the numbers. So like, to me, that's like step one, like fuck Black Lives Matter, what a fake fucking bullshit thing. Let's just own our history. Can't we like agree on like that fact that I said, before we even get into BLM, can we just agree that that really happened? And then after slavery ended, the Klu Klux Klan came in and just terrorized those people, the white people down there into being just the way that they were before. That's our freaking history, man. I mean, so I switch over to the Mormon thing and I say the same thing. It's like, no, it ain't cool being a Mormon. The history there sucks. And the relationship to women, the relationship to African Americans, the relationship to everyone, it sucks. You gotta own that. And if you own that, I think the whole institution just kind of collapses on its own weight to a certain extent. The only way it survives is if we kind of continue to prop it up. And, you know, I think Tom Cruise is an awesome actor and I love Maverick, but he's a freaking Scientologist and that's just stupid, man. I mean, that's just craziness. Yeah, you're right. You're right. It's hard to pick a religion that's not steeped in the oppression of other people. So I guess what I mean is if you want to have some kooky beliefs and you have found a way to keep that shit in your own aura and your own personal life and not obviously try to legislate other people's lives according to your kooky beliefs. And yeah, the entire thing isn't built on the oppression of other people. Yeah, so that was a terrible example. No, let me rush to your defense because it's not terrible. It's exactly what you just said. It's like, because that's the flip side. You know what you said earlier that I really wanted to draw out? Because you say so many brilliant things and I'm just kind of combative by nature, but many of the things you've said really resonate with me. So one of the things you said is paradox, you know? Our biggest challenge is to be able to deal with paradox because everywhere you turn is paradox. And I think you just laid out a beautiful paradox about, you know, the Mormonism thing. Like you did in your sphere, you know what? Would you or I say that you can't be Mormon and live a rich, positive, spiritual life that uplifts all your community and your family? Of course you can, you know what I mean? So it's like, that's the paradox. In some ways, you could even say it works better because a lot of the values that are built into that are kind of give you a leg up on doing that rather than some of the crazy values we have. So what do you think about that? Yeah, I do think it is, this is that victim-villain thing too because I did a five-year stint in born-again Christianity. And in that, you know, very oppressive against women, you know, I suffered a lot of trauma because I didn't look or act like a woman enough or whatever. While simultaneously believing that, and to this day there's this like Christian martyrdom thing where Christians believe themselves to be being persecuted by not being allowed to force other people to do so. They're taking prayer out of schools and it's like, no, dog, they're just not forcing people from other cultures to pray to your God. You fucking weirdo. Nobody's telling you you can't pray, but that when you are used to being the dominant force, which I think is so much of what is happening and what I truly think the work is right now is looking at the ways in which we are complicit in oppression, not getting hung up in the, is this movement good or bad? Because that's to me just to cop out to not do the work of the semantics of whatever. We benefit from a system that has oppressed black people since this country started. It's the best one, which I'm not great with history, but to this day, we benefit from the system. Can you sit in that discomfort? Can you open your heart? Can you make amends? Can you rather than expecting the person who's been hurt to do the work and get over it, can we go, man, I want to make this right? And take that into your personal relationships as well. We're so conditioned to not know how to open our hearts and just apologize and make amends for things. You'll be in love with someone, you're married for five years, you spend the whole time fighting, trying to be right. Trying to be right. So I don't remember how I got onto that thing, but I think, yeah, I think can you be a Christian and not need to let, like, that should not be, you're cool, you can do that. Just like you can believe on flat earth. Now, if you start trying to make laws that affect my life with your flat earthiness, I don't, but I just want everyone to believe whatever they believe, I believe I'm an alien. I mean, I want the freedom for everyone to have that, but we have to learn, we have to mature to the place where we let people be their perspective without imposing our perspective onto them, or in the case of some of these things that we're talking about, are we imposing our perspective or have we shaped our perspective to morally justify ways in which we hurt other people? Yeah. Obviously, people can see that there's a lot of different ways to take that. I think where we're heading in this conversation, though, is like the starting point, and in a lot of ways, the common ground. And I think one of the things that's, that's what I think is cool about, in general, the work that you're doing is that, like both of us are grounded in this spiritual and non-dual perspective, whether you want to call it non-dual or not, that's what it is, you know? And that grounding makes all this stuff look totally different because it makes this life look totally, it makes this life look, like you said, not like a joke in a bad way, but like a friendly joke, you know? A good family joke you could tell around the table. And it also makes race look like that. It makes race look like, come on, are you kidding me? Like race? Really? Like, okay, yeah. Well, we did it. I mean, we owned all that stuff we've done, all that stuff that's still being done here, that's being done around the world. We have to own it. We can't turn our head away from it. But it's kind of part of the cosmic joke. So don't get too caught up in that either and look at this process of what you're talking about, of awakening. And then I think the other thing that I really do vibe with you so well is that don't forget ET. I mean, because now, like you were saying about disclosure, the thing that always gets me about disclosure is disclosure is over. I mean, you can't have more disclosure than New York Times front page. And I interviewed Leslie Cain. I consider her a friend, you know, interviewed her multiple times. And Ralph Blumenthal, the two people who, you know, wrote the article for the New York Times. But so having said that, you know, the government is out. The government's saying, okay, here's ET and look out because now we have to, you know, it's all about the Pentagon. Big surprise. Oh, really? But, and the first guy who comes forward is, you know, counterintelligence, right? Louis Alessandro. Yeah. So, yeah, there's disclosure. There's aliens. Let's bring in our counterintelligence guy. He'd be the one that you want to do that. But there's another reality of that is that you can't deny that that's real. So that they denied it for seven years. So now it's real. And I guess my point, a lot of babbling is to hold those two things and to move forward, which is what you're doing, hats off to you because it's so hard to do that, I think. Is that been your experience and working with other people and talking to other people or how do you find that? I, you know, most of what I understand about the world, I've learned through making giant mistakes of myself. And so, you know, I'm now at a place of, right after waking up, I had information that aliens gave me. So it was like, there'll be no more, this or that, no right or wrong, right or dark, male or female. I didn't know what that meant at the time. Like these boxes, they called them not, we call them constructs. Now they called parameters. These are made up. So everything you've understood into the reality is something that like the collective consciousness wrote out as the map of this game. Those will dissolve and kind of new thing will rise up that is more fluid for a while. I have found that we are just starting to turn the corner as a collective, because this is a process. You don't come from being dead the fuck asleep to just, you get it. It's like the imagery I always get is deep sea divers. You have to come up slow. Otherwise you're going to, and you see certain people shoot up too fast and they end up 5150. And that's why I, part of this process is, is saying not spiritually bypassing to we're all one, you know, but rather saying fuck. Yeah, this was a construct, but you got really hurt. And I benefited from you getting really hurt in this construct. So I'm going to sit here in this moment, because we do have a need to be seen by one another in order to come back into unity consciousness. We're not going to jump cut to that. So we're in this process. I believe we're about halfway through it. And paradox is in there. And we are used to having a team. I'm on the red team. I'm on the blue team. You know, I'm, I am opposed to this. And I think the next two years are really going to be focused about what in the external reality, do you believe is your identity? Like what do you identify as? And is that real? And is that true? And is that programming? And are you refusing to see humidity and someone you believe has the wrong identity or believes in the wrong thing? We are not our beliefs. You know, those are constructs. And so we're going to be getting challenged. There's going to be a lot of really obvious. Pendulum swings in that department. And in our personal lives, it's just my understanding of what's coming. If you are refusing to see your own hypocrisy or, you know, you are entrenched in what you think is right, you're going to have the opposite. So if you visit discomfort on somebody else, because you think you're morally correct, that's immediately going to be visited back on you as an attempt to kind of shake us out of that and get us into a more being able to hold, because it's all just paradox, which will can drive you nuts. I have a hard time sometimes having an opinion on anything because I can see how all of it is true. I wanted to ask you, do you believe that we haven't, that we share an energetic grid here? What specifically do you mean, Jesse? The way that I see it, I heard other people talk about the grid and didn't know what they were talking about. And then I saw it one day that we are connected, you know, we have like the aura, the energy field around us, and that those energy fields are connected by kind of an internet, an energetic internet that is, it does look like a grid. And we, the information that we bring into the grid affects the grid. We also pick up information from the grid. So when you are seeking truth, this is just my understanding of it. You are injecting that truth into the grid where it is available for other people to pick up. It is available for us to collectively decide to pick up as our new paradigm or new constructs. Also, when you heal your shit, when you heal your own racism, when you heal your own, you know, what I'm calling internalized capitalism, this like, I'm not calling someone else called that, but I resonate with this idea that you're all driven as some sort of like worker bees that we're not doing enough. And it's, it's kind of a rogue program that we're applying to things that doesn't go with codependency. When you heal these things, you do affect the grid in a way that we start to say, like maybe these codependent ideas of love are not serving us. And then we are hurting each other. And you don't have to get on the microphone and talk about that to affect that change. You don't have to make sure that people understand that this is real, right? You can just download that, absorb that, research that, whatever your flavor, whatever you're bringing to the collective, and you bring it into the grid, which is our collective space while we are experiencing individual reality. So, you know, I'm okay with the grid as a metaphor. I'm just struggling with a little bit when people try and add a level of technical reality to it. Because again, I'm kind of schooled in that I was a PhD in artificial intelligence before I left and started my own AI company. I'm deep into the technology or at least an understanding back in the day. I don't, that's way past me now. But there's always been this tendency to want to take what is a really good metaphor, which is the computer, and kind of apply it to this reality. And it also always ties into this special place in time that we're at. And it's like, God, that just doesn't, just quickly just scan history. There's so many people that thought they were in a special place in time, you know? A hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, more than that, you know? So I'm resistant to that. And I'm also resistant to it just because, again, I've been super interested in yoga for a long time, and you look at that tradition of that seeking tradition and you just see the same shit coming up, you know? And people who are just saying, I just need to get out of it. I need to get out of the whole thing. I need to, and not that there's, not that that's perfect or messed up. But when you see, you know, Neem Karoli Baba walking around with nothing but a broken bowl on his head and a wrap around his thing and living like that for years, just walking from town to town, you're going, why would he do that? Well, why he's doing that is just to say, all this is fake. But unless I experience it on a minute by minute basis, I will be sucked back into this reality. So if there was a grid, he was saying, I'm stepping out of the grid. And I, you know, I'm not going to kill myself. I'm not going to jump in the lake to step out of the grid, but I'm going to step out of the grid in this way and see what that brings me. I just think that to me resonates with me from a spiritual practice standpoint. That's what I need to do every day. That's what I need to do when I get into the ice bath. That's what I need to do when I do yoga. I need to step out of the grid. What do you think about that? I like that. Yeah, I wanted to hit on that because I use the matrix and video games and movies a lot as analogies because I think we created those to try to articulate what reality is. But I think sometimes people think I think we actually live in a computer simulation and I don't actually believe that. And as far as the grid is a physical thing, I don't know. It is definitely a metaphor. I don't think I've come to a place yet where I understand the way in which we are connected. I would say, yeah, we are sharing a consciousness somehow and that I don't resonate with the mainstream consciousness. When I got addicted to math, it was kind of an accident. And then I was actually relieved when my family was like, don't go down this path. I felt so disillusioned with the reality where I was just like everyone's, when I got old enough to find out that magic wasn't real. I'm like, so life is just working a job that you hate so that you can afford a house you don't give a shit about. So you can say in a relationship that's already crossed course, like let me off of this train. Math addiction, cool. It'll only cost me my teeth in it because this sucks. Like whatever this hamster reel sucks. So yeah, I think to a certain extent, what I'm trying to articulate is that there is a way for us to enact a reality that doesn't necessarily have to be so externally controlling. I think we are coming out of an externalized reality going into an internalized reality. And I like this idea of us sharing a grid for that we can share information, which is like to the best of my knowledge, how it plays out in higher like less dense realities is there is a collective consciousness that is not so grabby and demanding. I think that's like shielding, programming the grid without being played by the grid. Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. And yeah, I'm, I just discovered cold water or it's been helping me a lot with anxiety. I haven't gotten to ice baths, but I've gotten to bowls of water, bowls of ice water in my face and cold showers. And yeah, it's, and learning about the nervous system and breathing. I knew it was going to be something stupid. I knew we were going to level up and it was going to be so dumb, like, hey, you've just been shallow breathing, breathe deep and you're going to be able to access these parts of yourself. But then when it was literally breathing and like water, it's been, it's been pretty funny to find out like, oh, there you are. That's awesome. So do you do the formal breathing like Wim Hof? Not yet. I just encourage you to look into it. I mean, I've done it for years. And you just immediately feel better. And it's a physiological thing, you know, endorphin release, DMT release, whatever. But what I always thought was so interesting and still do about Wim Hof is a lot of people don't know this. Wim Hof is just a fucking yogi. I mean, he is when he was 16 years old, he was cutting out yoga books, you know, and pasting to begin. I mean, it's all yoga. Even the breathing is directly yoga, but the ice and cold is a city, you know, they call them a yoga kind of thing. And so it has all these physiological benefits. But what it really is just about is you got this chattering going up there that I've heard you talk about it, you know, that little guy up there. And it's like deciding, making a decision that today I'm going to enter into that ice bath, you know. And then you just, you're forced to listen to that chatter. And it's like, oh no, you know, oh, you know, you've done it every day. You don't take a day off. And it's an easy way to kind of confront something that is physically demanding, but not really, you know, you're not skydiving or anything. You're going to get over it. And the cold shower does just as good because no one wants to get in a cold shower. So you want to, I would encourage anyone who wants to, it doesn't hear what you're saying about the voice when you talk about the voice. Going to cold shower. You'll hear that freaking voice right away, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's been, it's been, I almost died again in January of this year. And I came out of that one infinitely more traumatized. And I, yeah, just kind of had really intense anxiety and panic attacks to where I thought there was something wrong with my heart. And I went to the doctor and she was like, this is grief dog. And so like many things in my life, I discovered this through necessity and it's crazy. It's crazy. I get knocked into that kind of trauma response and I just go get in the cold shower and then I'm, I'm focused on raising my tolerance to the cold. You know, I'm screaming like a whole baby. And then I come out and I'm like, oh my God, this is amazing. I can't imagine what an ice bath would do. But yeah. You know, one other, one other kind of hack that I throw your way and you're already there. But with the breathing, if you do practice the breathing, oh man, you're in for a real treat in terms of anxiety because you're directly creating that experience, flight or fight. You're like intentionally putting yourself in that with a breath hold and you say, okay, I'm going to hold my breath for two minutes. When you first started to do that, you're panicky, you know, and then the logic says, but I can breathe at any time, right? So it's like, well, where is the, I'm panicky, but I'm totally in control of it. And then you're confronted with, oh shit, I've always been in control of the whole damn thing anyway. I just kind of kidded myself. You know what I mean? And it's not that easy. I'm not at all because I've been there with all that stuff and you know, but you get what I'm saying, right? Yeah. No, I, that makes me want to try it more. Something I noticed when the heart palpitations was started is I would realize I was holding my breath, which my doctor said is something she sees kids do a lot, but not adults necessarily. And then I breathe this deep ordinarily. So just like, you know, I have a lot of like some sensitivities and I just get forced to release certain things. I also don't meditate. I mean, I is something I just kind of letting come naturally but I think we are collectively realizing that this coming into our bodies is the answer to a lot of this stuff. So, Jesse, where are you going to take this, this work? I mean, there's a lot of potential areas. You look like you're kind of exploring a lot of things at the same time. Where do you see your public work going? I am coming out of a numerologically year seven and I'm coming out of, you know, I got hit pretty hard in 2020. I got Lyme disease. I was kind of bedridden for a year, just as these things were taking off. And then I had another medical event. I won't bum your listeners out with in January. I also just start things and then stop. I think I might be taking this party to TikTok. I'm finding myself, I had neurological Lyme. So it did affect my, like I lost my vocabulary, my memories, a lot of my references and stuff haven't fully come back. So this could inform this, but I'm finding the droning on of my, everything's feeling like opinion for me. And I'm just coming to a place where I don't know, I'm losing the gas to do it. And like I said, there are so many things I don't want to talk about. I just like, I go, is this, am I bringing something to this? If not, I don't, you don't need my opinions on whether or not you do this. I don't, I don't want to be in that conversation. I don't want the responsibility of if I'm wrong. You get hurt. I don't want to talk about current events. I don't want to talk about pop culture. I just want to speak to that bridge of early awakening. It's really all I care about privately. I can go all kinds of places, but all, all that really like makes my heart sing. I guess is that bridge that I didn't have. I didn't have any. There was a book called ET-101 was the only thing I ever found that described what was happening to me. And it was, I do believe there's a benefit to the isolation and early awakening, but giving people practical validation, but also like how to keep a foot in each of the world. Cause if you just blast off into the 12th dimension for the entirety, you're not serving this process that we're in. So I have a lot of kind of visual ideas that are kind of funny and stupid with the, with the metaphor that I use. So I think I might be moving towards that. I do hang out on Patreon. I get a little more serious over there. Also I do tarot would be an overstatement, but I do readings for personal growth. I guess I'm thinking about maybe doing those a little more publicly. I tend to hide because I do have issues with, you know, publicly being, yeah, whatever this is. No, no, I didn't mean to stop your flow there. I just wanted to pull up for people, your website, and maybe you want to speak to any of these that are still relevant and that people might want to check out. You're still doing Awakening OD occasionally. Soberish was your previous podcast that's still out there, personal sessions, hacking abundance course, any of those still relevant for you going forward? I'm kind of slowly moving away from total sessions in, I'm doing them much, much less. They are helpful. There's one where you can just, you want someone to talk to about this stuff and we're just going to bounce ideas back and forth. It's much cheaper because that's not really work for me. It's fun. The other one is, I don't want to call this life coaching, but it's kind of life coaching. If you're tied up in knots, you know, that's kind of more my forte, terrible assault promotion. Soberish is, you know, I change rapidly. So my, it's cringy to me that my old podcasts are still out because I don't necessarily hold those same perspectives, but I have left them up because they seem to resonate with people who are on a similar spot. AOD is an eight dimensional being, it's a bit, an eight dimensional being reluctantly giving you tips for life in the matrix. Those are fun. It's just work for your standard character. And the hacking abundance course is, I talk a lot about it is available if you don't have money to pay for it because it's not lost to me that a hacking abundance course is an option where you just take it for free and then send me the money if it works for you. I would love people to have access to this information more than I need to gatekeep it. So it's pretty intensive, but also ridiculous. Like the video portions are, like most things I do, some sort of weird variety show. So yeah, all that stuff that's up there is, that's the closest I've ever come to. Well, it's awesome. And I'm so glad that you, that you came out. And I think we had a lot to really talk about it. And it was a unique conversation and you're awesome. I hope you, I hope you keep doing it because I know you're serving a lot of people. Awesome. I hope we can do it again. All right, Jesse, we will anytime. Thanks again to Jesse Reed for joining me today on Skeptico. The one question I tee up from this interview is, can we be seeking the truth and still be entertaining? Does conspiratainment do good work and that it makes for a bigger tent or is it poisoning the well? To mix metaphors there? Let me know your thoughts. Love to hear from you. Lots more to come. Until next time. Take care and bye for now.