 is Facebook and YouTube. And I'm so grateful to have my friend, Alex Ferrari today, who is going to be sharing beautiful insights from a very interesting perspective on spirituality and storytelling and movie making. So Alex, thank you so much for coming on live today. Oh, thank you so much for coming, my friend. I really appreciate it. When you reached out to me, I'm like, oh, absolutely. Any chance I get to talk about movies and my God, spirituality as well at the same time is I'm in heaven. So let's get into it. This is great. It's beautiful because I know I've had such a love for movies all my life and I'm so grateful and appreciative for all the great movies that have touched my heart. And I used to, I mean, I would go around the world and out to Hollywood and things different times and people would always say, you know, did you meet any directors, producers, movie stars? Occasionally I do run into somebody here and there, but we have a great chance today because of the angle that you come at because you're basically in the business of movie making and you do work with writers, directors, producers. You're in the business of filmmaking and you're also very excited about spirituality. You have such an open mind and an open heart. So to me, that is absolutely fascinating. I even saw an interview with Carrie Ann Moss, you know, years after the making of The Matrix and she was saying, oh my God, it changed my life. She said, I wasn't aware of the depth and how profound the ideas were in the movie until after the movie was made and then it's now her whole life is gone in a much deeper spiritual direction than as well as being a mom and having a family like you have. So she's got a very interesting perspective from inside the business. So tell us a little bit about your perspective on how you see movies and storytelling being used by the spirit. Well, I'll tell you this, that I've been in the business now coming on close to 30 years. I know that's impossible because I look like I'm 25, but I have been in the business about 30 years and I've done everything in the business that you could possibly do from producing, directing, writing, I've done feature films, I've done television, done all that kind of stuff. And then it's about seven and a half years ago I started a new journey podcasting, the insanity. I mean, who does that? And I started podcasting in the filmmaking and screenwriting space. So I would start reaching out to filmmakers and producers and screenwriters and actors and start talking to them. And for years I was in the kind of like the indie world mostly and I still am for a very much part. But then one day Oliver Stone showed up and I was able to get Oliver Stone on my show. And that was a very interesting conversation because Oliver Stone is a legendary, he's up there, he's on top 20, filmmakers of all time. He is one of those amazing creatives. And from that moment on, the door swung open and I started getting these very big time Oscar winners and Emmy winners and all these people showing up. And what I found really interesting about it is because I would ask them questions that they don't normally wouldn't get asked about spirit. I was asking about spiritual questions before I even knew that I was asking about spiritual questions, which was really interesting to me. If you go back and listen, I was going deeper, much, much deeper than any of the superficial kind of like ET style questions they would ask. And it's fascinating that my fascination with their stories is cause I was always wondering at that level what it's like to tell stories, to use stories, to struggle to get to where you wanna be. And it was extremely fascinating. I found out that so many of them were spiritual. I'm gonna drop names throughout this conversation, so please forgive me. But I was talking to Eva Longoria on my next level podcast. And I asked her, I was like, how did you get to like become an actress? And she's like, I was called La Feita in my family, which is the ugly one. Oh my gosh. And she was, and that was the programming in her head. She's like, I'm ugly, what am I gonna do? And it was her sisters, her mother, everybody was just like, ah, La Feita. And one day she gets into a modeling competition because she wanted books for her college. So she'd get free books and she won. And then she's like, oh, I want a modeling contest. Her mom's like, okay, don't go too far with that. I mean, come on, you are La Feita. She's like, yeah, but I gotta go now to like Houston because now I'm part of like the Miss Texas competition because I won this local ones. I have to kind of go to that one too. She's like, all right. And she went to that one and won that one. And the trip and the winner of that was a trip to LA. So she went out to LA when she got there, she was like, oh, I guess I'm gonna be an actress. And that was it. One way ticket didn't come back home and just started her journey. And she was hustling there for a while. And then she got into, and then she got Desperate Housewives, which was a funny story how she got that. And then the rest, as they say, is history. But it was just, I've just found, I always love seeing those stories of how people get to where they are. And I was talking to Stephen Simon, who was the producer of What Dreams May Come, which is one of my favorite, favorite spiritual films. And I don't know if you knew this or not, that film took 20 years to make. No, no. He had the galley of that book in 1980 when he was just finishing up somewhere in time with Christopher Reeve. And it took him years. And it was only when Robin Williams agreed to do it that the door swung open and they gave him, it was like $90 million, which is an absurd amount for a story of that size. And they went off and made that amazing film. And it's one of those films, which takes another, that film takes such a heavier place in my heart because of what happened to Robin afterwards. But Stephen is a perfect example of using story to propel spirituality with something like somewhere in time, What Dreams May Come. And another film, he was a very integral part of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Yeah. Yeah. He took it completely, the spiritual cinema network. Wow. He just did a whole spiritual cinema network just out of that. It's funny, you mentioned What Dreams May Come because I just did a live today. I very seldom do too, but I mentioned What Dreams May Come and I was talking about Robin Williams and Annabelle Scorsi. And here today, and then I'll give you an example you bring up too. Oh, it's one of my favorites. You know, the mind and the vastness. It is such a beautiful representation of the journey of the soul. And, you know, they took some creative license with some parts of it, but the part of his own personal heaven, the colors and that, it is, I mean, from interviewing so many near-death experiencers and people who experience that, that's similar to what they, the stories I've heard. So it's really fast. It was a fascinating, a fast and fascinating story. And the Matrix is on my top three up there with Shawshank Redemption as, which are both very spiritual in their storytelling. I would love to get Frank Darabon, who wrote Shawshank on the show one day just to talk to him about it because that movie is so spiritual, but yet no one really thinks it is. It is, in my opinion, a representation of the soul's journey. And, because I always, I always just kept wondering, why does that movie connect? Horrible title, horrible title. Not a good pitch. It's a prison movie. It's not a good pitch. It's not something like dinosaurs roaming the earth. That's a good pitch. But this is not a good pitch. And yet it's ranked as one of the top movies of all time, most beloved movies of all time. And I always wondered why. And I've spent hours thinking about that film and understanding how that story was. And I've talked to other filmmakers who knew, who know Frank and who were involved with the making of that film. And I was like, my feeling is about that story is that the reason why it connects so much is because he's falsely imprisoned. Many of us think we're falsely imprisoned. We've been wronged in some way in life so that we connect automatically with that. Then the journey of his journey inside when he walks in, he's one way, fairly arrogant when it comes to scared but still a little arrogant, doesn't think, like Red said, he's like walked around like there wasn't a care in the world. It was just one of those things. So as he kept going through his experiences, horrible things happened to him, funny things. It's the story of life. So those 25 years or whatever amount of time he was in there it seemed like a journey of life because there was a lot of ups and downs left and right but more downs than ups. But when he discovered, now this is where I go deep, this is my own personal interpretation of it. When you go, when he discovered that he can break out. By the way, anyone not listening, spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. On Shawshank Redemption. It's 1994, not my fault if you haven't seen it at this point. Especially if you're watching this and David. I mean, come on. I'm sure David's spoken about this movie. But when he starts to figure out that he can scratch and do the wake, it's such a beautiful representation of awakening, the soul to the reality of where we are today. Because it's not easy. It took him how many years? Like 12 years with a little pickaxe. Yeah. Little thing just going little by little. And that is the development. That is the process of enlightenment. That is the process of awakening to the reality of where we're at, which is not that this is a Maya. This is an illusion. This is the matrix. This is not real. But when he found out that the truth was that awakening and the work that he had to go through, because it's not enlightenment is not easy. I don't know if I'm sure you're aware. Jesus was walking the planet for 30 years or 29 years before he showed up and started preaching. So he went through some stuff. We don't know exactly what, but he went through some stuff. So it was a journey to get to the place where you get to enlightenment. And then the representation of him going through, breaking through, then literally having to crawl through two and a half miles of crap to then get reborn. And then literally at the end, he's in heaven. He's literally, isn't it look like heaven? So that is the representation. That's how I analyzed that film. And I think that's one of the reasons why it connects so deeply with people. What's your opinion on it? Yeah. Well, the funny thing is now that's the second movie I talked about this morning. I talked about what to make up. And then the first one I was talking about was a Shawshank Redemption. And then I was also talking about the movie Hurricane within Washington because in both cases, they're accused of something that they didn't do. And then both of them have spent years and years in prison and then keep the faith of their innocence but also go through a character transformation. I noticed in Denzel's The Hurricane, I saw a book of Krishna Murdy in there in the cell. So it's showing those so symbolically. And the funny thing was it was only a couple of months ago. I have another friend named Alex who's into the course and quantum physics. And he went up to the prison where they shot it. And he did a whole YouTube walking through the prison and describing all the details of it because he's into a course in miracles, quantum physics and spiritual awakening. And I think he took a relative of his, a little girl and they both went through it. But I got onto that today because I have a man who's in prison and he's in Ohio where Shawshank Redemption was shot. And he's been corresponding with me for some years and he went in for a murder, he murdered a man. And so the flip side of I'm innocent and there's something deep about going through the darkness and coming into some kind of an escape. And this man Dale has been in prison and he's been corresponding with me and corresponding with lots of my friends. I did a whole retreat and I mentioned him and I went through his letter which was so beautiful of applying my teachings in a course in miracles in prison for, he's been in there for decades for murder and having these huge spiritual awakenings and he typed his letter and read letters. So I was doing a whole retreat on it one time and I was crying and everybody was crying and I said, if you wanna write to this guy, please do. People started sending him letters. He started a prison ministry and the time in the Chillicothe he's in there for many years and now he's even got it. He started a movie ministry and a forgiveness movie ministry inside the prison. That's amazing. Through all of this just from us following our heart. So I totally relate to that because I'm feeling like we're here to discover our innocence but we seem to have to uncover a lot of unconscious darkness to do that. And I think filmmaking and storytelling just is a way, Jesus spoke in parables. So I think we're kind of cued into that many centuries later there's something in us that's kind of doing it through us without us being consciously aware of what this presence is. Yeah, and it's so interesting because I've had the opportunity to speak to so many of the story gurus of Hollywood. I mean, I've spoken to pretty much every one has ever written a big book, even small books of hundreds, probably hundreds of these gurus. So I've got to talk about story a lot in the intricacies of how it's built, the structure, the blueprint of the foundational storytelling and also mythology and all of that. And it was obviously the great Joseph Campbell who put all these stories together to create or to at least point out to us about the hero's journey. And there's a reason why we're drawn to that story so much. It's not the only story, but it is a majority at least the popular movies all fall into this kind of hero's journey, the male hero's journey. There is a female journey which is different, the virgin's journey which I just discovered the other day speaking to a script consultant or script author talking about it. And I was like, oh my God, it's completely different because the female hero's journey is very different than the male's hero's journey. One's more about conquering the outside and the female's is much more conquering the inside. And it was very, very fascinating. But one of the reasons why we are constantly drawn to those films is because we ourselves go through hero's journeys every day. And throughout our lives, there's ups, there's downs, there's obstacles, there's tricksters, all the main people that Joseph Campbell says we have the mentor, we have the trickster, we have the villain or the antagonist who stops us, all of these, that is part of our journey. And we're here to understand that and to grow from those obstacles because I think it was, I forgot who said this, I heard this in maybe one of my interviews. They said, imagine if you were born in France and you were born to one of the greatest chefs in the world and he had a restaurant in the middle of the countryside somewhere and people from around the world would come to taste and eat at that restaurant. For them, it would be the most amazing thing that ever tried. For you, it's dinner because you would have no other reference point. To you would just be that's all I had. So you have to kind of eat McDonald's to understand the taste of that kind of, sorry for all of you that love McDonald's but you have to eat that kind of food to understand the elegance of the food that he was born into. And so we have to have the downs in order to appreciate the ups because if it was just up all the time in the movie sense, if the hero won all the time without any adversity, it's a boring movie. We've seen those movies. The best movies are when the villain is so good or the adversity is so good that they have to overcome it. And there's a balance there because if the villain's too strong and there's no chance, then the story sucks. Yeah, I'm thinking of Endgame too, with the Mar-Vell where the villain wins and all the heroes lose and little boys and girls left crying and like, oh my God, we got psychiatric problems on our hand, do you have to make the villain win and all the- Infinity War, yeah, the end of Infinity War. Yeah, that was the second one right before the Endgame. Right, yeah, because it ended on a down note because the villain was so powerful that just couldn't figure it out. But then that's the beginning. Those two movies are supposed to be seen kind of together. That's like the middle ground. Don't stop after that. This is a counter. Holy crap. That's the opposite of spoiler. We're saying now go one more step to the next movie, please. Right, exactly. And look at the end of the game, at the end of that movie, spoiler Lord on Avengers Endgame for anyone who hasn't seen it, everybody has to, all the superheroes from multiple dimensions have to come to fight Thanos and his powers. And at the end, it's literally just one man who makes a sacrifice that is the thing that stops it all. So again, it was very religious, very messiah-like. It's also again like Neo in Matrix. It's all the one, all that kind of stuff. And I won't say who it is, but it was one of the more arrogant people, heroes. And it was fun, in my opinion, heroes in the Marvel Universe. But what they did in the Marvel Universe specifically, is I always ask about the Marvel Universe to screenwriters and to storytellers at a high level, because I'm like, what are they doing that's so right? Because love them or hate them, there's a lot of people who watch those movies. And it's not just a spectacle. There's something deeper in there. They're attaching to something. Because we've seen spectacle and movies bomb, $200 million movies bomb because it's all spectacle or no story. So they're doing something. And at the end of end game, it really was this culmination of 12 years or a decade, I think 10 or 12 years over, I don't know, 10 or 12 movies that got to that point, that kind of storytelling is such a scale that no one's ever done in Hollywood history. But people are, we all know what's gonna happen. It's like, we know they're gonna win at the end. There's no real danger that they're not, except for that one movie that left us a little hanging. But we still keep coming back to it because we're going through the, we're feeling the adventure of it. And that's very much like the soul's journey. The soul is coming down here to experience this experience. And we all know how it's gonna end. The soul's everlasting. We know the ending, the soul is everlasting. The soul makes it back to God, yeah, everlasting. The soul makes it back to God. We all, it's a happy ending, but we're going through the adventure and we're going through the ups and the downs and the adversities and the things that happen to us and all the negative and the positives and all of that stuff. But so it's really interesting if you start analyzing storytelling with the soul's journey, it's very similar. That's why plays were so popular. That's why people around the campfire telling stories is so popular. Without story, we have no reference point. We need story to identify to us to guide us through what we're doing because when we first get here, it's pretty, we're pretty lost. And people are still lost. We're still trying to figure this out. This is not, you know, like, this is the only way to go. And there's just a lot of nuance to this experience. That's it. I know I've followed these movies like you and I'm just so grateful for them. But there was one year, I think it was 2014 when a bunch of these movies came out. And I went over to a movie theater with a group of people and I said, well, take your pick. There's like seven of the all time great spiritual awakening movies that all happened to be out at the same time for the first time in history and it was like 2014. So I would do a lot of talks and things. One of them was the Lego movie. Did you get a chance to see the Lego movie? Yeah, I saw that movie. The thing was superheroes, Batman, Superman, this and that. And then this simple little Lego character, you know, who in the end has to be used to get them to all collaborate because a lot of our superheroes are very individualistic. And of course, the Marvel movies, you know, started to bring that theme in obviously with bringing everybody together. And I think that's just amazing. The thing that's been interesting to me is that, you know, I work with a course of miracles and I know you're a little bit familiar with that. So it's kind of like with our topic today, what does Jesus Christ have to say and add to that? Well, I read through the course with the 31 chapters. And if you get back and he gets deeper and deeper as you go through these chapters, he has one section in the course that's called the hero of the dream. And he says the serial adventures of the body is what this whole world's about. He calls them serial adventures. Right. Very interesting because we know the body seems to go through many adventures over many, many centuries. And if you use reincarnation, you can get many experiences of the body. But then he moves on and uses a contrast to that whole hero's journey and the hero of the dream. And he shifts it into the dreamer of the dream, which is more when you listen to the great non-dual teachings and they talk about pure awareness or watching the dream, observer, the witness self, the observer self, you know, we've seen it in a lot of the literature over the centuries. He says, you are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No other cause does it have or ever will. And he goes, launches from the hero of the dream to the next level soul of dreamer of the dream. So it's kind of interesting because of that perspective, which is really about transcendence. We're not trying to say, oh, it's just a piece of cake. Just twinkle your nose, like in the witch door, click your heels together like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and just say three times, there's no place like home. And then your home, it seems to be through the darkness to the light, but it's great to have that perspective. I love that title of your podcast next level soul because that's where you start, you start on the level of the practicalities. You start on the level of what everybody's going through. And then the goal, the inspiration of the podcast, I guess, with all these great actors, actresses, filmmakers, writers, directors is, what did you go through? And it sounds like even with Eva, you were talking earlier, like there's kind of a destiny to it. Like, so you're told that when you're growing up and you enter a beauty contest in Texas and then you go to Hollywood and you just, oh, I'm to be an actress. Not even an aspiration, almost like it dropped down into her awareness. Yeah, it is, I've had the pleasure of talking to so many people about their life's journey, closing in on about a thousand of these episodes at this point. And it is fascinating to see, because that's the thing that keeps me fascinated with a lot of these interviews is because every story is different. Every story is different. Everyone's journey is different, Mike. And I always ask, how do you keep going? But when the dream is not happening for you, so many of us want to have a dream. And that dream doesn't happen exactly the way we want it to happen. I found in my interviews that it never happens the way you want it to. We are not that smart. God, the universe, source, whatever you want to call them or her has a much better plan for us. So an example of my story, when I was younger, I got on a show called Project Greenlight. I remember that show from the early 2000s, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, they had a show on HBO where filmmakers would compete to get on the show and make a movie with them as the producers. By the way, years later, I interviewed the producer of that show. And first words, I'm like, why didn't I get on the show? They're your first question. Why didn't I get my dream? Season two, man, why didn't I get in? But I made it all the way to the top 10, I think, or top 15, I didn't make it on the show. I was only on for like five seconds or something like that. But I thought it was devastated at that time. And then a year after that came out, I'm like, oh my God, thank God I didn't get on that show because it would have ruined me. And then a few years later, another show, Steven Spielberg show came up. I made it to the top 10 of that, didn't make it. And I said, oh my God, thank God, I dodged the bullet. But at the moment, I thought my life was over. I was like, oh my God, this is never gonna happen. So I was very angry for a long time following my dream because I was working, by the way. I was a working director, but I wasn't at the level I wanted to because in my mind, success was not what I was doing. So if you change the definition of success for you, which should be the process of doing the work that you're doing, not the outcome of the work, Van Gogh painted because he loved painting, not because he sold it for a hundred million dollars. And that switch in mindset completely changed my life. So when I started the podcast that I met you on, I started from nothing, from nowhere. No one knew me from Adam in the spiritual space. And I was just like, I'm gonna do three of these a week because I'm crazy. And I'm gonna keep pumping them out and I'm just gonna keep going. And I love it and see what happens. And I'm at 130, I think now, 140 episodes of that right now. And the show has really grown to, it's growing so fast, I never thought it would grow this fast. And in a very short amount of time, but I didn't have an outcome attached. I didn't say, oh, I need to be this. And can you imagine like opening up a spiritual podcast and go, I need to be rich and famous? Can you imagine like, I need to be the humblest of all humble? Like it's like, so I didn't have an outcome to it, but it took me years to get to this place to be able to do something like that. You know, five years ago, that Alex would have never been able to even have this conversation with me. So that's part of the journey that I've been able to see. But you're right, Destiny, when you find what you're supposed to do, the feeling that you have inside is undeniable. And it's not happening to do with money. Money is relevant to the scenario. It's about how you feel. So when I started to podcast, I started to feel a little differently. But when I really changed is when I started doing my spiritual podcast, I was like, oh, this is why I'm here. Okay, I need to be doing this. This is what I'm here to be doing. I'm here to spread the word. I'm here to spread this message to the masses. This is what I'm supposed, and this is my mind, and this is what I'm feeling in my meditations, in my own soul. Not in a grandiose way, but just in a way like this is how I could serve. And whatever happens, happens. But I'm trying to get it out to the masses. I'm trying to help people. I'm trying to elevate the vibration of the entire of humanity as we're going through this insane awakening we're going through right now, David, which is pretty intense to say the least. I love the symbology of you just pouring your heart out, sharing all these things you've gone to, and right over your right shoulder is the love sign. And the gold Buddha is every time you lean one way, and you're talking, there comes the gold Buddha coming in because it's like that's not symbolic of the love and the presence behind everything, behind the dream, behind all the serial adventures, and how the spirit seems to be directing it where the humans may think, oh, I wanna be a great director, or I could get on this show, or I could qualify, win, or I'm in the top five, then I'll become a little more known. And then you're being used in a podcast with Eva Longore, with all these people, Oliver Stone, people that have important things to share, which is what's behind, what was emotive, what was going on in their mind, what was going on in their heart when they were making the movie, which is really, I think that that is very uplifting for people because we tend to make icons and idols out of people and think that the icons and idols are living some kind of a high life. And when you interfere, you see, oh my gosh, everybody's going through the trials and tribulations, and we can learn a lot from how they made it through. There's one of my favorite interviews I've done on Next Level Soul, which was with a man, his name I think was David as well. And he, forgive me if it wasn't David, but whoever's listening, but the story about him is really interesting that he went to India on a filmmaking job. And during there, he was a sound guy doing the documentary or something. And while he was there, he broke up with his girlfriend. His girlfriend broke up with him, left him. And he was so devastated. He didn't know what to do. So his friends like, oh, the Maharishi is speaking about meditation. And he's like, what's meditation? And this is in the sixties. And he went to see the Maharishi and he's like, okay, this is my path. I need to learn meditation. I need to heal from this pain. So he went to the Maharishi's ashram. He knocked on the door and said, I'm here to learn how to meditate. And they said, I'm so sorry, we can't let you in. The Beatles are here. And he's like, I'm in pain. I need to help. He's like, look, you can stay in the tent outside. We'll bring you our vegetarian meals when we have a moment we'll let you in. If there's even a possibility of that. He's like, okay. So he stayed there eight days outside eating lentils and rice and all that stuff. And then he's like, okay, come in. So he walks in, this is a fascinating story. He walks in, he's like, let me teach you how to meditate. So they teach him TM, transcendental meditation. And then, you know, five minutes he's there quickly and he meditates for a couple of hours or something. And then he comes out of the meditation and he's all blissed out. And he's just like, you know, and dolphins are running, everything's so beautiful. And he's walking out into the ashram and off in the distance he starts walking towards this table, this picnic table. And he's like, oh, that's the Beatles. All the Beatles are there with their girlfriends or wives. And as he's walking, he's still kind of out of it, but his heart starts beating really fast. Cause I think subconsciously he's like, you're walking towards the Beatles. And for everyone's reference point, the Beatles in 1964 were pretty much the most famous human beings on the planet. Am I, is that a fair statement, David? That's a fair statement. So they're the biggest, you know, humans on the planet essentially, and they're there, you know, meditating with the Maharishi. So as he's walking over, he goes, Alex, this is the only two times this has ever happened to me. A voice came into my head cause I started to panic a little bit as I got closer to them. And a voice came into my head and it's like, they're just like you. They're human beings. They're afraid of the dark and they fart. And that's just to bring them back down because you were saying idols, you know, we make idols that we all are afraid of the dark and we fart. So it's just a beautiful poetic way to say, we're all the same. We all got to do the same things, you know? So he got there and they had a funny interaction and John Lennon was like, you know, busting his balls a little bit and he busted his balls back and then Paul McCartney was like, oh, calm down. And he stayed there for about eight or 10 days and then he took photos. He's not a photographer. He just has like, hey, can I take photos of you guys? And he's taking pictures of them writing Sergeant Pepper's, Sergeant Pepper album. He's writing, they're writing the songs. They wrote like 20 songs there but nobody was allowed in. All the press wasn't allowed in because it's the Beatles. And I think one of the Beach Boys was there and like Mia Farrow was there. And it was like, can you imagine just walking in to this experience? And he became friends with them, you know for the time they were there, he took all these pictures and then years later his daughter goes, hey dad, didn't you take pictures of the Beatles? He goes, yeah. But he put the role away. He never thought about it, 30 years later. And he went hunting for them and found the pictures, the last place he found he almost gave up. Last place he found, he got the pictures he took it to Southern Bees and they said, these are almost priceless no one took pictures inside the Oshawa at this moment in the history of the Beatles. So it was just a wonderful story but I tell that story to kind of humanize idols and the Beatles are arguably of the 20th century the biggest, some of the biggest idols ever created by society, by world society. I mean, there was no place you couldn't go and not know the Beatles. To this day, people, my daughters know who the Beatles are and they're young. So it's, and as I've been able to talk to more and more of these movie stars and big time directors and Oscar winners and things like that, I realized how human they truly are. Like I spoke to Eric Roth, the writer of Forrest Gump and Dune and a million, curious case of Benjamin Button and a million other movies that he's written. And he tells me he still gets nervous. I'm like, you're getting nervous? He goes, yeah, when I get in front of that blank screen, I'm not sure. And I was like, wow, maybe, and I go, but you won Oscars, you're like, you're a legend. He's like, I'm still, I still have my problems with it. And I always love asking writer specifically, I go, when you write, where does it come from? And that wasn't because, do you feel like you're channeling something when you were writing, he's like, oh, absolutely. Sometimes, when you write, you're writing and then you just, when you're done writing, you're like, you read it, you're like, well, that's good. I don't know who wrote that, but that's really good. And most of them acknowledge a higher part, religious or not religious, on a creative muse standpoint, whatever word they understand that they are funneling through. I got to speak to Bruce Dickinson. I don't know if you know who Bruce Dickinson is. He is the lead singer of the world famous band Iron Maiden. If you know who Iron Maiden is, I'm sure, yeah. So, you know, they're heavy metal band and all that kind of stuff. And I had a deep spiritual conversation with him on my show. And I said, Bruce, what is it like singing to a hundred thousand people? Cause most of us will never understand being in front of a hundred. Cause all that love, all that attention is all on you. Like, how do you handle it and how do you prepare for it? And I go, when you're singing at that level, is it coming through you? He goes, oh, absolutely. I'm just there. I just kind of just opened my mouth and something comes through and it's not me. And I was like, wow, that's so amazing that he just like, he acknowledges it. And the one thing I've noticed the bigger the person, the more they understand and acknowledge what's happening. Like Spielberg said that too. He's like, when I have an idea, I either have to act on it cause I know someone else is going to take it. There's a story of, and I'll keep talking, so please forgive me, but there's a story I heard of Prince. What a wonderful story. He was legendary for writing. I think he has, he can release a new album into the year 3000. That's how many songs he left behind when he died. And they are releasing a new album every year. And so he was just record at any odd hour whenever inspiration hit me. And he called up his backup singer at two o'clock in the morning or three o'clock in the morning and goes, hey, Bob, are you ready? Like Prince up sleeping. He's like, come down to the, we need to record this. He's like, can it wait three hours? Can I get there at six? He goes, no. We gotta record it now because if I don't record it, Michael Jackson is going to get it. The idea. Get download. If we don't grab it, it's just going to keep going until it finds a place to get out because that idea needs to get out now. That song needs to get out now. That story needs to get out now. Isn't it interesting that how stories come into our zeitgeist at certain periods of time when they're ready to be birth? And if you don't, that's why you've ever noticed that like there's two or three meteors hitting the planet movies that all of a sudden just show up. At the same year and before nobody was talking about that or it's interesting because that idea came and it got grabbed and it needs to get out into the world for whatever reason. The matrix, the matrix came at literally the turn of the century and is one of the most profound stories that cinema has ever put out in my opinion on a spiritual experience. Yeah, it's kind of fascinating that as we talk more and you talk about these interviews you had that it occurs to me that in some way the world is backwards and upside down like Forrest Gump kind of everybody related to it and he was so simple. And I look at the things that people aspire to like fame and money and possessions or different types of achievements and notoriety and status and it can be physical beauty or it can, there's different aspects of the diamond but I think it seems like the stories about going home or remembering home, E.T. phone home with the finger and the Wizard of Oz and of course there's so many movies, the matrix, you are the one. You know, the prophecy from Morpheus that it seems like our reality has just been covered over and hidden by a very complex matrix of images. And now if we live in a time where Elon Musk and a lot of scientists, I read recently that there's about 80% of scientists now believe that this world is a simulation. Yes. That's amazing because they don't know where the simulation is coming from. They have their own ideas like maybe it's a future guy in a future race who's kind of playing with magnifying glass the burning ants and things. Yeah, but with a course of miracles we get this idea that it's an ego that invented time and space and Maya and we even have great quantum physicists like one of the first ones was Albert Einstein who said, you know, you can live life one of two ways that either nothing is a miracle or everything is a miracle. That's pretty profound coming from a scientist. That sounds like it could come from the Japaniches or something and it's coming from Albert Einstein. So he was receiving the ideas and when they started to find this connectedness, this energy that permeated all time and space, you know, that's when he wrote, he called it spooky action at a distance. When you put that spooky word in, it kind of shows that there's a fear of love, a fear of connectedness. Maybe we've put all these other attributes of fame and fortune and achievement and accomplishment as top goals that people pursue in the dream world. But then it seems like there's these moments of simple joy where you're just sitting there with your child or sitting out looking over a canyon with the lemonade in your hand and suddenly you go overcome with such joy that you can't even speak of it, it's unspeakable. So it's, I think that's why what we're doing is talking, conversing, communicating and sharing, you know, what is it that you've discovered because I think we're all going to discover the same soul that there's one soul and the sameness is what's real and the differences are what seem to be bringing the competition and the pride and, you know, the pursuits. It's like being on a treadmill and just running, running to achieve something and then your life's a demonstration of, you're having so much fun doing next level soul and it was something that just dropped in. It was not one of your pursuits. Oh my God, if you would have told me this years ago, I would have said what? Podcasting. And then what podcasting in the spiritual space? Like, I don't even like, I mean, I went to Catholic school. That's all I remember. I don't know any of that. So just fascinating how the world works and then go back to what you said about simulation. This is called simulation theory. It is an idea that got kind of brought into the zeitgeist by The Matrix. The Matrix was the first big movie that kind of brought that idea into the world. And there's some quantum physicists who did the math and they wrote a paper and they said, it is a possibility that we are in a simulation, which is what the Hindus and the Jains have been saying in the Apana shots for years. This is Maya. This is an illusion. All great spiritual leaders are saying, this is not it. This is not the right thing. You have to look beyond this. This is an illusion. And I think that one of the things I hear so much about is the law of attraction and being able to control your world essentially. And if you take the idea, and this is where I've learned from yogic philosophies and ideas, if you take the idea that this is all an illusion, that we are in a simulation, everything that you do in your life, you kind of have control of based on your own intention, your own mind. And as you get older, you start to realize that and to a certain extent, if not the full extent, that's true. Cause you do manifest things into your life that come in good and bad. And the term good and bad is also relative. I've heard the term positive negative better than good and bad. Cause good and bad is a moral stance as opposed to an actual stance. And anytime anyone asks me, well, what's the difference between like, how can you say good and bad or not? This perspective, I go, let's say you get into a car accident. And it's a bumper, just a quick little scratch or something like that, but it's gonna take some money to fix. Well, the person who got into the accident said, it's bad, but the person who's gonna fix the car is good. So it's all relative to the perspective. The accident is what it is. It has no moral attachment to it. And if you can look at a lot of the things that happen to our, in our lives that way, it changes perspective. These are just small adjustments that I've learned along my path to help me cope with this insanity. This is insane. Yogananda, Paramahansa Yogananda, the great mystic said such, and it goes right back to what we're talking about movies because he was around at the birth of movies. And he went to the movie theater and he saw these beautiful movies. He's like, this is beautiful. This is what we're right. So all of us are focused on what's on the screen and people die and things happen and there's war and there's love and there's this. And that's all on the screen and that's where all of our attention is. He goes, what you need to do is turn around and look where the light is coming from. That's where you need to be focusing your energies. And I thought that was so profound. Yeah, yeah, that's it. Right there at the birthplace of movies. And of course, he had his center out there and he was right there in Hollywood after traveling around, but wow. And it's interesting that even from a scientific perspective, I know I talk to scientists and they'll say, well, you know, after the Big Bang, basically the cosmos, time-space cosmos, they use the word entropy. And when I say, well, what is entropy? They say it's, this is a cosmos of time-space. It's disorder. So they use the word disorder. And then when you think about what Yogananda is saying, turn around the other, go within. I feel like there's a stillness, there's the tranquility, there's the peace that the light is within us like Jesus taught. The kingdom of heaven is within. And we have to turn away from the disorder. Cause if we keep our attention on the disorder, it gets depressing, it's frustrating, it's devastating actually to keep your mind riveted on disorder. But if you think, wow, I can just turn my attention inward into the stillness, that's where meditation, the Maharishi was teaching the Beatles and your friend, David. I was thinking the name David Lynch kept coming to mind cause I think of David Lynch and the amazing life he's led with his self-discovery and all the movies he's made and everything, Allie McBeal and all kinds of things he was involved with, you know, that I've laughed with and cried with and appreciated. But underneath it was this wise opening soul that was just thirsty for meaning, deep meaning, profound meaning. Yeah, without question. I think that, I mean, for me, meditation has been such a powerful part of my spiritual practice because it calms the mind. I mean, and I try to meditate heavily two to four hours a day if I can and the deeper I go, the more calm there is in my life and things become clearer. I've gotten answers to questions in my meditations. You start to just feel things differently, look at life differently, you know? It's just, there's a reason why all the great masters, spiritual masters all talk about meditation and the power of it in one form or another, whatever that form might be. It doesn't all have to be lotus position. There's other forms of meditation, but it is a powerful, powerful aspect. That's why I remember in the matrix, I think it was matrix two. The matrix one is a masterpiece, matrix two and three are fine. And there's some cool parts of it, they're interesting, but I remember that Neal walked into, I think he was gonna go meet, I forgot who, I think he was gonna go meet one of the upper beings and he had to get through this one guy who was the guardian of that bee. I think it was the key master or something like that, the key guy. And when he walks in, he's meditating in the space, but the way Neal sees it, Neal sees the matrix. So it wasn't just seeing the false Maya of it all, the illusion, so everything was green, but around him he was yellow. It's a different color. And I just remember that, it just touched me. It was like a weird thing. I was like, oh, that's interesting. And then if you go deeper and deeper into yogis and what they do and the different chakras and the colors of, there's a reason why Jesus is depicted with a glow around his head and most saints are and most spiritual beings are with a glow around them because they've transcended to another place. Yeah, yeah. How fascinating, how fascinating. And then before I came on with you, I was talking a little bit about Christopher Nolan and Satterberg. The thing I like about storytelling is when you, like with Christopher Nolan, he's done so many movies with a theme of time. And we know from quantum physicists, that humans perceive time as an absolute. They actually believe that one second is one second in any country and any realm and any galaxy. And Einstein was the first one, I think that said, no, it's very relative. This is a very relative construct, time, space. And then you have somebody like Christopher Nolan that explores, you know, it's interstellar and all of the movies that he's done, exploring black holes and gravity and different perceptions of time. And when we think of time, it's just a relative perception and then the question comes, what's beyond that? If it's also relative, if it's not an absolute, then we can't just talk about it constantly like it's an absolute. I love going to movies that tell stories that are showing that what we perceive is not accurate. And that's fascinating to me. You know, time is a complete construct. It does not exist. And if anyone argues that I go, if you take a spaceship and go out of our solar system, there's no time, time is based around the revolutions of the earth around the sun. That's just such a random thing. Like if you lived on Jupiter, time would be different. If you lived on Venus, time would be different. If we're living on Mars, time would be different. And if you just leave the sun, there's no time. Time doesn't exist at all. Yeah, it's very different. There's no time in a black hole. So time is such a relative state. It's something that we created to mark the passing of quote unquote time. But from my understanding from people who have had near-death experiences and have come back, time is, there's no time. Something that they feel like took hours, was mere seconds on the operating table. So that kind of that, you know, when you start hearing things like that, you're like there is no time on the other side in heaven or whatever you wanna call it on the other side when you're in spirit. And I mean, that makes sense because time is just this revolutions of the earth around the sun. And Nolan, oh, he is an absolute master. I was, I had the other day on the show, Guy Pearce who was in Memento. And I was like, how was it like working with a young, those is first big movie, really. He only done a little independent movie prior to that. And when I say big, it was like $10 million, which is big for a first movie back then. And he's like, it was fascinating with him. He was not only understanding the story on a technical standpoint, like the, because that's a, if you remember the Memento, it's not an easy script. Not easy, it's everything's backwards. Everything's like your head hurts. So to keep that all in place, keep the emotional journey, which is what he told me. He's like, he was able to understand the technical story structure, which was insane. Then understand the emotional journey I was going through and understand all the technical stuff going on set. He goes, his mind works at a level that you can't comprehend. And isn't it fascinating that his next movie, for better or worse, is Oppenheimer. And we are on the brink of an Oppenheimer situation with Russia right now in the world. Isn't it fascinating the timing of when that movie is going to be released, which is going to be released next summer? I hope it's just a movie and we don't have to think about anything else, but we are closer to a nuclear war than we have been since the 80s. When I was, I remember growing up and I remember that the Cold War was a very serious thing. And at any moment, you know, this things can go off. So talking about movies and timing when movies release, I was, I was just, I was in LA a few weeks ago and I'm driving around and there's this big billboard on sunset. With Oppenheimer and a countdown clock, giant countdown clock to the movie's release. And I'm like, oh, this is Eerie as all hell, isn't it? You see, you're just like, it's just a fascinating story. So yeah, Nolan's at a whole, he, you want to talk about someone who's connected to much larger stories. And in my opinion is bringing these stories in at a high level that it's like a Spielberg. Like you're, like Lucas, like Spielberg, like these are stories are so grandiose and they have the ability to put it into the world's zeitgeist. Unlike many storytellers that don't have that ability. And do it with a, I mean, there's probably only on one hand I can count how many filmmakers can do what Christopher Nolan can do. At the level, I mean, he's getting, I think a $200 million budget for a movie about Oppenheimer. Yeah, yeah. Not dinosaurs, not transforming robots, not blue people running around and Pandora, Oppenheimer, who else is getting that? Yeah, it's beautiful because I one time asked Jesus, I said, what is it with all these movies? And he said, well, I'm orchestrating these movies as teaching devices like the parables I stole told 2,000 years ago, because I know for many years when I traveled around the country and the world, people would say, hey, listen, I mean, I kind of am sentimentally drawn to the course and to Data Vedanta and to some of these non-dual teachings, but on practical terms in daily living, you know, I'm not there. Can you please summarize a course of miracles? Can you please summarize quantum physics for me because it just, it's too far above my head. I can't do it. And I said, well, if you're ever on a deserted island and you feel like you're dying and you get one request and you could have one movie, as for the movie Solaris, and if that's your last movie you see with the, on the earth plane, you can transcend with that one. Just one movie can do it for you. And I think the reason was when George Clooney playing the psychologist and getting into the mind and karma and giving and receiving are the same and everything that happens up in Solaris, which is mind-blowing. It just, he feels almost when he comes back to earth, he's just like watching something that he can't relate to anymore after he's been up there in Solaris. But I think, or like Mr. Nobody, you know, when I first saw the movie Mr. Nobody, people said, is that even a movie? You know, it doesn't seem to have a theme or a plot or whatever. And I prayed and Jesus said, this is a good way to go into the next level of experience because you need commentary to give it meaning because like three scenarios of three loving relationships going on at the same time, people are like, I can't handle one. I mean, what the hell is going on with this guy and Mr. Nobody? And I said, this is unlocking the secrets of the universe. If you can start to see the patterns, the thought patterns and the beliefs in the mind that send us on looking for love in too many faces, looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in time, space, then you can actually start to feel like you can relax into your given function because whatever you're meant to do, it's part of a pre-arranged plan and all you have to do is see it and say yes to it and you turn happy, whatever it is. Here for you, it's podcasting. If they told you 25 years ago, well, your directoral career will not be what you think it will, you want it to be, but you will have a wonderful podcast. How disappointing? And you're like, pod what? You pod what? Pod what? I'm the director, I'm the director. And that's another thing too, like I identified myself as a director only. So when you identify to your occupation, when the occupation doesn't go the way you are, you get depressed, where now I identify as my soul and who I am, so nothing around me if it doesn't work out, I'm like, oh, I'm good. I'm more connected. And you said something really interesting there, like when George Clooney came back, he couldn't identify with it. After reading so many different stories of Ascended Masters and people who are trying to come back and teach others, the frustration of, I had imagined, I would say they're not frustrated because they're Ascended Masters at this point. They're spiritual masters. But I have to believe it's kind of like us trying to talk to monkeys about something because the monkeys are like, I don't understand what's going on. I just want a banana. And they're like, no, no, life is more than the banana. What? It's all about the banana. What are you talking about? And that's why all these spiritual masters come at it from so many different ways from movies and parables and stories. Even when Jesus was walking the earth 2000 plus years ago, he was telling stories of that time. He was creating concepts of that time for that evolution of humanity to understand where today, hopefully, if Jesus would come back to talk, he could talk a little bit more advanced because we have a reference point now. Even this conversation is much more elaborate than anything that was going around 2000 years ago. Maybe around Jesus' campfire might be a little bit, but having two people having this conversation was just 40 years ago, 50 years ago, in the grand scheme of things, it would be very difficult to have this conversation in public, no less, with people listening and watching. So it's really interesting that a lot of the religions and the concepts that were brought up at the time of their creation were built for that time in human history and they have to evolve a lot of these things. Some of the truths stay the truths. Do unto others as you want to do unto you, perfect. You really can't evolve that anymore, but there might be another angle to it. There might be another parable to it. There might be another story to it to get that message across. And that's what I think movies, when they're done at the highest level can do, especially when you see movies like Avatar or E.T. or these kinds of movies that really hit so big, there's a reason for that and it's not spectacle. E.T. wasn't a little spectacle, but not much, it was 1982. So it wasn't that kind of hit, but something like Avatar is a combination of all of it. And his themes of what he's talked about is, oh my God, James Cameron is one of those guys who just, he's up there on the Mount Rushmore for me. Yeah, I just watched it because it came out in 4K getting ready for the next release. So I was like, come on, let's go see the 4K, had all those feelings coming back, had my 3D glasses on and yeah, that's just a few weeks ago. I had that experience and I thought, wow, wow. It's just in that movie, like I'm curious to see, I've talked to many people who are working on that movie and who worked with him. And he said publicly, Mary telling me I'm gonna die in a Pandora. He goes, because basically he's got four more movies. I think he's gonna do four or five more he wants to do. He's already in his mid-60s, I think. So he's gonna die on Pandora. He's like, this is it. This is my swan song, I'm going out on Pandora. That's how strongly he feels about these stories because I mean, James Cameron could to make movies about anything he wants, but he's like, no, this is my story. This is the one I was put here to put out. It's just like George Lucas is like, well, George Lucas is such a fascinating story. He kind of fell into Star Wars. He didn't want to keep doing Star Wars. He's just like, this is a good story. But he had so many other things he wanted to do, but it just kind of took over. And it's like, and Star Wars is one of those stories that my God, it changed humanity in so many ways. And I would love to talk to him. Oh my God, because it is deep understanding of mythology and story and, you know, working with Joseph Campbell and everything he did in the Star Wars movies. It's, oh God, he'd be a dream to talk to one day. Yeah, the thing about George Lucas and James Cameron is the technology advance is just coming from their inspirations and visions. I mean, the whole level of technology with Star Wars and the Avatar movies is just goes light years ahead when they release a movie. And recently a friend of mine, Frances Zoo, she added together a beautiful kind of a montage of George Lucas and the people that worked around him about how when they were putting their ideas and making the movies, people were saying, we don't have the technology to do it. And they would just all get in a room and just be there together. And then the technology would come. It's nice to think of technology as not as an external thing but just a reflection of the power of the mind and as just something that can serve in the moment instead of something that's this thing that's out there evolving. Because maybe next time when I come on your next level so we can pick a movie or pick something like Matrix or that sort of thing. We could just go through some scenes or some things in the Matrix that were mind blowing to us that when we saw it, we were just, we were not the same. We did not walk out of that theater the same as we walked in. I remember when I saw it at 99, I saw it in the theater like four or five times. I just kept going back. I didn't understand. I'm like, yeah, it was cool but it was just something that was said that such a deep level that just I couldn't grasp it. I couldn't understand what I was feeling. It was touching me at a different level. It's funny that you're saying that technology just showed up. You know, it's so fascinating that you know that when Alexander Graham Bell put in his trademark or patent for the telephone, someone else was already there. Did you know that? No, no. Two people, two different parts of the country, Alexander Graham Bell won in court for whatever reason but there was two people who came up with the phone at the same time. The Wright brothers were not the first to fly and they weren't the first to fly. There was another group doing the same thing in Europe at the same time. So it's fascinating that when the idea comes, the idea almost doesn't care who it gets through. It's only about what's gonna serve the idea the best. Who is going to serve the idea the best? So if a movie comes to this, they're like, all right, let's try Steven first. Steven Spielberg first. He's not feeling it right now. Let's go over to James Cameron, not James, let's go over to Chris Nolan. And that's how, and that's how these ideas come up. So when technology just shows up, I mean, look at what we've been able to do in the last 120 years. I mean, it's so rapid our technology, even from when I was born to now. It is, I mean, when I was born, I was the remote control for the television. And there was three channels, you know? And I had the rotary phone, the rotary phone, it messed up on the last number, do it again, all that kind of stuff to where we are now is so astronomical. We're talking about a few decades and how much we've grown the internet. And it is fascinating. It is truly, truly fascinating. So when the technology shows up, it's because we're ready for the technology. Imagine if someone got the idea for a flying machine like Da Vinci did. Da Vinci had an idea for a flying machine, wasn't ready. The world wasn't ready for it, but he was able to pick that idea up. But the world was not anywhere evolved enough to be able to bring that idea into existence. You know? I mean, when, is it, no, Galileo, excuse me, Galileo, said, no, no, the earth revolves around the sun. He had to wait till he died to release the paper because everybody thought it was crazy. Right. They were in quantum physicists the same thing. They were ashamed to publish their findings. Right. And quantum physicists, it's fascinating because I've had a lot of quantum physicists on the show talking about the reality and simulation theory and all of that. I'm assuming you were familiar with the Akashic records. Yes, yes. Which I just found out recently was talked about in the Upanishads 4,000, 5,000 years ago referring to the Akashic records, which is a record of everything that happens at all times. And I found that this analogy was so beautiful that people say that they can tap into the Akashic records and certain people who have that ability can do that. And they're like, well, that doesn't seem real. They're like, well, right now, as we speak, the internet is around all of us at all times. Right? The information is bouncing around Bluetooth machines and the satellites and all that, but we can't see it. But if we bring out this and we plug in, we have access to every piece of human intelligence and information almost in existence by using this. So is it because we haven't learned how to tap into that field of intelligence? And is that where all of these ideas come from eventually? Which is of course connected to the universe of God and all this kind of stuff. So it's just, it hurts the brain. I know we've come from, when I talk about traveling around and following my inner prompts and guidance, but I said, I had to pull over and put some coins in a phone booth and look at me like, what's that? What's a phone booth? They have no idea what a phone booth is. And I think there's something to this be here now that Ram Dass wrote, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. What if it's not only a simulation, but what if it's simultaneous? What if there's not parallel universes, but what if it's all simultaneous? And no wonder it hurts to try to make sense of something if it's all happening at the same time. And there's not any segments that we call past, present, and future. What if that whole thing is a construct and that's what the simulation is and that the simultaneity of it, because I seem to be getting more honestly into spontaneity, simultaneity. What's my joy in the moment? What's my greatest thought of the moment, whether it's just having a lemonade, a pink lemonade and just being in joy and sometimes just meditating and watching my cat's face, whose name is Unity, she can do the best clueless face, like just nothing's happening. She's got the look in the eyes and the face, like nothing's happening. Looking at me is like saying, will you join me in this cluelessness? You know, that's when it's all coming. You've got the Buddha behind you. I've got the little cat face going. Don't try to figure it out anymore. Just let it go. Isn't it fascinating that, I love when you say that, I've heard of that concept of the everything's happening all at once. That we've already, we were born and we died and it's all in the middle and we're just kind of experiencing it. And it hurts the head to start thinking about that. And then let's not even get into the multiverse, which is, by the way, all of a sudden, am I wrong? All of a sudden the concept of the multiverse is in the zeitgeist all of a sudden, right? It's everywhere all of a sudden. You know, it's like, you know, from Dr. Strange in the multiverse and everything everywhere all at once, another concept of the multiverse and these other, they're all coming out now. Now is the time. Isn't that interesting? Because we've heard about the multiverse. It's been in comic books for a long time, but in books and other things, but I really hadn't seen too much of the multiverse ideas in movies before this period. So, and that's a whole other, then your head will really start hurting if you start thinking about the multiverses and every decision you make splits off into another stream. And now you've got like billions of you running all over the place at the same time. But that's one of the things I always love asking, you know, whether you believe it or not into psychics and people who can tap into that stuff, I always find it fascinating. And I go, how do you know what's gonna happen? They're like, well, and that's another thing with like from even yogic masters and spiritual masters, they go, this is where certain things are leading towards. We all have free will and it can change at any moment, but more unlikely this is where it's gonna go. And there's certain things that are rock solid that's not gonna change, like big events, world events. They're like, nope, this has to happen because it's kind of laid out the way it's gonna lay out. But it's just an interesting way of looking at things and like, yeah, we have free will. Like at any moment, you and I could do something crazy right now. You know, you and I can all of a sudden take off our clothes, start running around the house and we could do that. We have the freedom to do that, right, David? Well, the trees, you guys, it sounds like a Saturday night episode. No, it'd be, it's like old school. It's like old school with Will Ferrell. Like we could just start streaking tomorrow. Like right now, after that, just go on the street and streak. We have the ability to do that if we want to. We have free will. Chances are you and I aren't going to do that right now. But is it possible? Sure. Maybe in one of the multiverses with you and I are streaking somewhere right now. Well, you know what Jesus says in the course of miracles. He said, God created you with free will and you have free will in heaven. But the closest approximation that you have like a reverberation of free will. Because free will is, he says, perfect happiness. And you're only perfectly happy in the environment you were created, which is light and spirit. But he's saying within the illusion there is no free will, but you do have choice. And then every second you're going back and forth at a huge rate of speed between ego and spirit. Your soul's wanting to align with the spirit and knows that that's where it'll be free. It won't be imprisoned anymore. But when you go back and forth between the ego, which is death or limitation and vastness, you're just confused about who you are. And you need to go through a purification process, which all the great masters and mystics and saints have said, yeah, you have to be. Jesus said, blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God. So I feel like if everything is simultaneous, then it must be that to be happy must be free from time, free from the construct of time. Because those choices, when we start to put our attention into do I want this or that? Do I go here or there? Do I be like wild and crazy guys on Saturday Night Live? And what was it, Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd and the way they would wiggle and I would just burst into laughter like who comes up with these skits? Where the Lord and Michael's my God, where do you get these things? But I feel like we're just, it's part of a surrender of more into the cluelessness because we can still be joyful and we can still extend the gift of the lightness, the laughter, the joy using all of our technology. Even though neither you or I thought we would be doing a video podcast in the year 2022, you know, we didn't know what that was. No, there's no technology. And you know what? And who knows, you and I might be doing holographic podcasts in the next 10 years. You don't know. I don't know. Who knows what we're gonna be doing, you know? Yeah, yeah. Maybe we'll be dodging the bullets like Neo. I mean, who knows what's gonna be happening? I always loved using this analogy and I think it's perfect for this conversation. Imagine that you're Heath Ledger all of a sudden and you come onto the set to play the Joker that day or Joaquin Phoenix, the best Joker you like. So you're Joaquin Phoenix and you're coming on the set to play Joker in the movie Joker and you put on the makeup and you go onto the set and you start playing the scene and there's a director there and the lights are on and action. And you are the character. You are playing the Joker. And after 10 hours, you're supposed to get off the set, take the makeup off and go home. The problem is that most of us don't understand that we're on set as the Joker. The insanity that we all have is that we believe that we are the Joker. We are the character and we're not the actor playing the character. And in this analogy, the actor is obviously the soul, the spirit where the character is what we are right now, this illusion because the Joker is an illusion. It is a character that was created to tell a story, to go through experiences in the movie. And there's a hero's journey of that character throughout the movie, but the insanity is to believe that you are the Joker, that you are the character that you play. And that's what we all go through on a daily basis. And that's when the saints, the ascended masters, the prophets, all these people who have been able to transcend finally go, oh, I'm not the Joker. I'm Joaquin Phoenix. I can go home now. And that's where we're all at. I think it's just a great analogy for our conversation. Yeah, it is. It finally, we dropped the roll and feel the essence, feel the essence of the reality. Well, thank you so much. I'm so grateful that people who study a course in miracles and study this pathway can appreciate everything you've shared because you've studied many different spiritualities, had many, many, many conversations and bring the gift of that in the moment, just to show up and let it come through in your flavor, in the flavor of Alex. So thank you so much. And I really look forward when you have an opening or a slot, maybe toward the end of this week or end of this month or next month or something, just let me know. And you come up with some great topics too. It doesn't take much for us to jump into. We need to go off. No, we need to go. Jump in, go off sometimes, yeah. David, it has been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for the invitation and I'm so glad that we had this conversation and hopefully it's helped some people and maybe a couple of people are gonna take off the mask and go home. Yeah, we love it. Thank God. Thank you. Thank you, my friend. God.