828. The Future of Healing: Dr. Zach Bush on Reconnecting with Nature and Yourself (Bonus)

27:42And so we should be very wary of governments or government agencies or pseudo government agencies that come running at us saying you know that you know there's only one narrative and everything else needs to be removed and that that's on the wrong side that's on the wrong side of truth science is not a system of truth it's not there's no body of knowledge that we call science science is a process for investigating truth for exploring the reality we live in but it's never done you know it's never like some finished narrative we always find out every couple hundred years holy crap we weren't even in the right playing field like and that's what's just happened with this microbiome story like for the first time in 200 ,000 years of homo sapiens we're suddenly realizing we're wrong human human health doesn't center on a human cell we thought we were the most intelligent life form on the planet it's just so happens that we're the most fine-tuned orchestra on the planet we're a fine-tuned orchestra of life and that makes us appear intelligent but when we separate ourselves from that greater symphony of life around us then we look really stupid because there's not actually intelligence within the human there's an intelligence within nature there's intelligence within the life within us and so that's what our lab has been focused on for the last 10 years is what is that intelligence of nature where does that come from and the answer is through biodiversity and it got to biodiversity through adaptation and so the one rule of biology is adapt adapt adapt take in new information change what to what purpose for biodiversity and so we are certainly despite all of the revolution of the microbiome we're still not realizing its its implications so what does the science say about our lifestyle and would simply say we need to stop trying to be alone.

29:31We need to welcome ourselves back into this greater nature. We need to start to design houses that breathe. We need to start to design school systems that are more based in nature than they are in square buildings. You know, we got to get the kids out of the box and we need to let them start to be creative beings again. And so I get inspired by that potential. Like, okay, we've actually never done that in modern education. We've always put kids in boxes and tell them to stare at the square chalkboard two-dimensional drawing on the front of the class and memorize that. And now we've got two-dimensional screens that they stare into as an artificial reality.

30:08And we've got this real loss of connection to the world around us. And therefore we behave as we do. Yeah. The censorship piece is interesting because my guides are always just like, you're on the right side of history. Whatever I'm feeling, I'm on the right side of history. And that could be egoic, but I feel like that in my heart. And I remember when our episode got taken off YouTube, YouTube took our episode off. And in that episode, we talked nothing about vaccines, nothing about coronavirus, except that fear has an effect on the immune system. And I was just like, if this is censored, I am completely on doing the right thing.

30:50Like I just was like, what in what world where we're telling people to go outside, we're telling people to connect more in nature. We're telling people to love themselves just as they are. We're telling people that there is an effect of fear on the immune system and that is censored. I was like, wow, there is so there's something here, you know, and have you felt that? have you felt that personally where you're like things that you've said or things that you've done or the way that you've moved have you felt that censorship within what you do yeah i think it happens all the time around us and you know a lot of the stuff that we talk about as scientists are being censored all the time now there's scientists all over the world trying to speak up right now and there's you know tens of thousands of you know incredible peer-reviewed science you know to prove that we've got the wrong narrative going here.

31:44Um, but it's, you know, it's just not being that narrative is not being allowed to be put together, you know? So, um, you know, on a personal level, you know, I think it's very important that we don't believe that censorship means truth either. You know, it means that I'm thinking something that doesn't fit a common narrative, but that doesn't, you know, I should be very careful not to let that be my ego, you know, Like, oh, everything I'm saying is truthful because, well, no, I'm an explorative scientist. I'm an explorative, inquisitive human that's exploring consciousness, exploring the current moment.

32:19And so I need to make sure that I'm keeping an open hand on what is truth and make sure I'm resonating with everything that's and checking it again and again against everything else. Like there's just so many mirrors we can look in to double check our truth, you know. And ultimately, you know, I've found a very unique time in my life here where I'm finding that the most important time for me is to be alone, which I've never allowed myself much of that time. I've always been in service to, you know, family and friends and kids and job and everything else. And I'm finding out that I underserved my full potential because I was so busy, you know, being distracted from who I am.

32:59and there's just such a deep beauty right now in these silent moments that i'm getting and starting to pay attention to i think they're more abundant than we think we just were trained to immediately fill them with another distraction you know and so we jump on our instagram or we jump on you know our text messages or we call a friend or every blank space in the day we fill and now i'm finding out man i just freaking love this drive in here today i'm not a huge fan of Los Angeles overall, but my God, that beauty of, you know, some of these old neighborhoods with the sun shining, you know, slanting through those trees and the way in which that flashing light, you know, engages the eyes and the neural system with the leaves kind of just barely trembling in that little sea breeze.

33:43And there's a beauty there that is easy to drive by and it's easy to stare at your phone for another moment instead of recognizing that. So I think that I'm realizing that I don't, the common narrative and its censorship can limit my own truth if I let them define it for me. And so whether they censor me or don't censor me, that doesn't, that shouldn't be an input into who am I? What am I here to do? My sense of self should be bigger than that, you know? And so I should have a real sense of peace waking up on the pillow in the morning that has nothing to do with the common narratives of belief systems around what I'm doing or who I am or whatnot.

34:25And that just, you know, I'm at a deeper level of peace within myself right now than I ever have before. And I just am trying to savor that because I know there's part of me that would like to just rush on and be like, okay, so now what am I going to do? Instead of just like, wait, hold on, this is precious. and at the tipping point of all things, maybe the most important thing we do is be silent. At the tipping point of all history of humankind and perhaps the planet is most important that we hold still. And that might be something that we should think about in human relationship as well, is where's the stillness, where's the space between.

35:10in our families, you know, and how do we tend to clutter up that intimate space of family with opinions and, you know, discussions around the table and forget to just be silent together.

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38:53And when you're in that silence and you feel something bubble up, what's normally your process?

39:04I don't think I have a scientific process on that one. I think it's experiential. That's your heart process. Yeah, it's experiential, right? And depending on the sensation that's cruising through your body, I think it's important to give it time. You know, we have a tendency to rush past our emotions and we end up burying them in our tissue for that. Our fascial plane holds an enormous amount of emotional stress. And so whether it be work with a myofascial therapist or deep tissue massage or, you know, some sort of, you know, traditional healing art. And I'm a huge fan of Lomi Lomi, which is a Hawaiian traditional deep body work.

39:41And these are mechanisms that have been developed over thousands of years to clear the stuck emotions. And while I really thoroughly love that work, I also realize there's a higher calling is that we could stop sticking shit in there. Let's just keep it clear. And so how do we stop storing toxic emotions or even perhaps untoxic emotions? How do we allow that to clear through our system? and I think it's just that extra couple breaths of all right I'm feeling it I'm still feeling it it's okay seven seconds is all it takes for the amygdala to fire off a neurochemical event that we call an emotion seven seconds isn't very long but we don't wait the seven seconds wow and so we instead try to analyze it justify it suppress it seven seconds so next time you feel something bubbling up just count to seven slow breathe through it and realize okay yeah that is dissipating that sensation is dissipating okay yeah it was it happened it was a reflection of my environment's impact on me but i'm gonna let it flow through me and the clearer i get in these recent you know months as a human being the more i'm enjoying the sensation of flow in my body and i love not holding on to belief systems around roles, duty, perceived public good or perceived public purpose.

41:20It's not possible that we signed up with these ancient souls to serve outside of ourselves. We had to serve within ourselves. And to get there we need to start to flow. and we've been taught how to do absolutely the opposite. We've created a log jam out of every emotion that comes through. We create analytical and emotional adaptation process to fear, guilt, insecurity, you know, belief of scarcity. So to flow, you need to start letting go of everything. And it's not for the faint of heart, as they say. You know, it takes a lot of courage to let go of everything. And the better we do that right now at the tipping point of all things, the more beautiful a future will create.

42:10But we're going to have to let everything adapt. We're going to have to let everything become a state, a surrender experiment. We need to start, stop trying to micromanage our realities, our physical experiences, our emotional experiences and start to just be experiential. and this goes back almost 2000 over 2000 years now um to an incredible greek philosopher that was epicurus and he had the philosophy that the highest purpose and calling of humans was to sense pleasure in every possible way he did this brilliantly it's amazing that he came over this a couple thousand years ago, but he already had the perception that turns out to be very right in our modern understanding of neurochemistry and the whole neural system of the body is that the vast majority of our neural network is there to be sensory experience.

43:07And so the amount of brain that's taken up with our auditory experience, our visual experience, our sense of touch, our sense of spiritual connection, our neurologic system is wired for it. And so why would this neural system exist if not to bring ourselves closer to a state of sensory experience? And every time we celebrate, we go out and drink alcohol to dull that sense. Every time we get depressed, we go and drink more alcohol to suppress that feeling. So whether it be alcohol or non-streatal anti-inflammatories or antidepressants or all the chemicals we pour on to these sensory experiences are there to dull the experience.

43:48And, you know, very, very long, you know, in Chinese medicine and very long in, you know, the shamanic work done down in South America and everything else is the understanding that the antidote is always within the wound. We need to stop running from the wound. We need to stop suppressing the pain. We need to walk right into the pain and ask why and what's there to learn. And where's the, where's the antidote to our suffering because it's there. So as we look at these deep social wounds that we have from a nation, an empire that was built on slavery, one of the many empires built on slavery, what does it mean to be benefiting from a society that to this day continues to exploit near-slave labor conditions in our migrant farm workers for our food system, our extreme abuse of farmers in South America and like under NAFTA as our national free trade, international free trade agreements and everything else.

44:44Like it's just devastating human life all around us. And so we have this deep wound. And when we look at the racial abuses, abuse of women, abuse of children, these are deep wounds. And the resurgence of these issues this year have been poignant. and unfortunately I think used as divisive mechanisms instead of opportunities to dive deep. And it tends to create a recoiling away from the wound. When we stir up the pain in derisive and kind of judgmental fashion, it increases the degree of the wound without perhaps giving it respect. And if we really have reverence for women and children and the minorities that have been so enslaved in this empire and others, we need to start to be willing to walk into the pain.

45:37And certainly anybody who is enjoying your current level of comfort and wealth that you enjoy every day in the United States right now, it's important to acknowledge that's the result of slave labor. That's the result of extractive, abusive consumerism. And we need to come closer to that. And I think we'll stop buying stuff. And we'll start living a little more. We'll start coming closer to each other then we'll start making our own gifts. What it would look like if we gifted each other poetry instead of another thing off of Amazon. So we need to start writing. We need to start creating art again.

46:15We need to create a deep sense of our personal connection to creativity because that's the spiritual path towards self-awareness. Ultimately, there's an energy in you called creativity, and it is your highest expression. So what are you here to create? and take responsibility for the fact that you have that within you and hold space for it, create healthy boundaries around that creative space and enjoy the heck out of it. It's just such a lovely experience to feel creativity bubbling up through your veins. It is. It's intriguing. It's mysterious. It's got this kind of sticky gooey kind of in love feeling to it because it's got this lovely depth and kind of mystic quality to it that I love being in.

47:01And so I just realized a couple months ago that I want to paint. I've never painted before, so I went to Marshall's and walked up to the woman and said, I want to start painting. Just, can you show me what I need? And she's like, what do you, what kind of, she asked me 10, 15 questions. What's your thing? I had no idea what she saw. I was like, oh, I'll paint? Yeah, you're like, this is too much. You're like, paint by numbers? Yeah, exactly. I could start there. But now I have these canvases at home and these acrylic paints. and I started sketching just with a simple pencil. I didn't realize that that was kind of in me and something in there.

47:36And it's this new discovery of art is not, you know, the creative process is not about accomplishment. It's about expression. And it's too bad we've forgotten that about life. It's about expression. It's not about winning the game. And we need to shift from these finite games that we play to an infinite game. finite games are designed to have a winner and a loser infinite games are designed so that we continue to play and we are seeing in this extinction event the result of finite thinking for millennia and there's an opportunity for us to shift into an infinite mindset of how do we not just persist but how do we become co-creators in a future that nature is going to create when we go extinct nature will come back brighter more beautiful just as it did after the last extinction after that last extinction some 55 million years ago mother earth did not struggle back in her creative efforts to create the dinosaurs and said she's she saw a blank slate she said wow 97 percent of life gone i wonder what we should create this time and the genetic record left behind in the viral the viral you know database from that extinction event when you put an animal or creature or plant under stress, it immediately starts making genetic variants to find loopholes in the thing that's killing it.

48:56And so it's looking for new variability. So stress actually has a beautiful effect in biology that it is the mechanism of adaptation. And I think if we look at that in our lives, when we go back to the emotions, think about that. Like, okay, I'm experiencing emotions bubbling up. It feels like fear, feels like guilt, feels like stress, feels like, you know, a state of scarcity, acknowledge that and then let your body transmute that because it will. The biology will immediately respond with a new genetic sequence that says, well, here's something else we could try genetically to see if that gets us out of the stress.

49:31So instead of dinosaurs, we ended up with mammals. We ended up instead of ferns, we ended up with wildflowers and deciduous trees, such a higher expression of beauty on this planet because she started over with a blank canvas. and so maybe there's a deep service within what we do in killing the planet this time maybe we're just blanking the canvas again but i perhaps in my ego ego human mind is really curious to be like what what would that look like to be able to paint on that canvas with mother nature can't we be for the first time co-creators with her is that maybe why she designed us you know Were we in fact designed to be so sentient that we'd ultimately be able to hyper jump our ego and our sense of conflict and our sense of disconnection to realize connection and co-creative possibility.

50:27So I get excited about that. I think we have the opportunity in these next couple of decades to say, no, no, we know how to do all of this. We simply need to look at the mycelial network and the intelligence of nature within her design to understand what education systems look like, what macroeconomics looks like, what society looks like when it's not extractive, when it's not destructive, when in fact with every transaction there's more worth and value on the planet rather than less. and so that's largely what my company is you know focused on is all these subsidiaries looking at what is the natural design of all these systems energy systems transportation what's the natural design that's sitting there right in front of us that we've now had the scientific rigor and capacity to understand what is that telling us about our potential to be co-creators and it gives me great hope to see just the genius flowing through you know so many people working these companies now it's dumbfounding what goes on in a week because I'm watching these incredibly brilliant minds start to crack the code on what our future might look like and it gets me excited for everybody to start engage we only have you know 100 people engaged right now what if that was 100 million people engaged in a co-creative process what if it was 1 billion you know what It was all of us.

51:42What if 7.8 billion people were suddenly given permission to be creators rather than employees or extractive human capital? We have an enormous opportunity to paint something new on this canvas of Mother Earth. We could certainly create soil systems more abundant than we've seen since the last extinction 55 million years ago. We could reach that kind of intelligence in the soil systems just within a few short centuries. we were doing the right thing we could create the most abundant planet that's ever existed and what life would come out of that what light density would we hold as human beings if we got to eat that food from that kind of intelligent soil system what kind of hugs would we give each other if we were glowing that bright would we sit and rest in the hug instead of push on would we give back in that hug instead of extract revolve is honestly my go-to for everything i'm wearing all Revolve today.

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55:48and their soul and their creativity, but then also be in service in a way that helps us make change for the rebirth. I think we would find that those are not mutually exclusive of each other, right? And so my deepest joy is to be engaged in really intense living. I love the intensity of, you know, academics. I love the intensity of intellectual pursuit. I love the intensity of playing a djembe by a fireside with friends. I love the intensity of, you know, creating music. I love the feeling of guitar strings under my fingers. And so what blesses me deeply and what serves me spiritually, whether it be music by the fireside or, you know, creative process in my work, ultimately it needs to be for me first, and then it will be the highest expression of myself in service to others you know but if i get those out of order and i lead with a sense of duty that puts me in an endocrine state of deficiency scarcity there's not enough time for me so because i serve everybody else so that puts the whole body in a sense of fight or flight state immediately put an awakening if you're trying to serve everybody else before yourself and this is incredibly challenging in parenting right we have created nuclear families which was you know the most devastating thing perhaps to our sense of self because it used to be that the kids would wake up in community and they'd run around together and now the kid runs straight to mom at five o 'clock in the morning and wakes her up from much needed sleep and expects everything to flow through that one woman or whatnot and that is so exhausting as a parent when you've the entire tribe has been replaced by you you know and and so i think we can find out that we've kind of done that across the board.

57:36We've done that over and over again in isolation, creating this extreme sense of duty and service to others before self. And so it's important to think about how we start to redesign the family unit. You know, how do we start to reimagine, you know, the whole construct of these special relationships, you know, like exclusivity is not the answer. Nature has never worked through exclusivity. And so how do we start to imagine past that? How do we start acting in community as community? How do we start to serve ourselves before community? It's going to be a process because it's really never been done successfully.

58:14I believe maybe there's a few spots, but I can see it already having its stress marks on it. When I went down to a tribe in South America in those recent months, and I was deep in the Amazon with an incredible group, Pachamama Network, and the Pachamama Alliance with Lynn Twist and her incredible group there. They've been with this indigenous group for 26 years, and it was the last indigenous group on the planet to have touch with the colonial powers. And so they actually actively reached out to the West through DreamWork. They were the first in anthropologic history to reach out to a colonial power instead of just being invaded by.

58:57And so they did that because they saw in their dreams that they would be destroyed, their forest would be destroyed by this power that was out there. And so they started reaching out through dreams and inviting people into their world through dream work. And when they showed up, they've been, you know, the call has been, we need, you know, our purposes, the ACHWAR is to help the West redream itself, you know, redream its reality. and it's really humbling to be around a peoples that sees its own termination and reaches out with kindness and a sense of you know community a new sense of like we all need to be connected this is one thing this is one planet this is one peoples and they've been carrying that you know awareness for 40 000 years living in the same location of the jungle for 40 000 years and it's The abundance quality is obvious when you're in that group.

59:50Their kitchens are kind of amazing. There's no refrigerators. There's no storage. They basically cook and prepare what they need that day, and then they go out in the rainforest and they collect again what they're going to need the next day because the forest is always provided for them for 40 ,000 years. And so when you walk into our kitchens and see all of the frenetic storage, and then you walk into our grocery stores and see the more vast amount of frenetic storage, we've forgotten that connection to a provision of nature and we've outsourced that to monopolies and massive corporations and so we need to start to regain that connection so then the question is well are these indigenous people are they the answer do we just template after them and i think the answer ends up being no i think there's still a higher you know transmutation that we're gonna have to create for humanity because you see a lot of the same vulnerabilities in their psyche as soon as they touch the west you know their kids are now going to schools and cities and they're starting to get obesity and diabetes and diseases they've never had by just a decade or two of touch with the west they're getting sick and they're also you can see them immediately you know adopting the consumer behavior they suddenly all want engines for their boats they want you know they've literally got cell phones in the jungle and they're scrolling facebook it's just like whoa that is so fast to take away the sense of freedom the sense of autonomy that's been in there for 40 ,000 years we we managed to turn that off in two short decades you know so so consumerism was a powerful drug to the human brain and so we're gonna have to really collectively work to find the opposite which is ultimately creativity I hope is consumerism like a dopamine serotonin conversation or what, what is that?

1:01:32Yeah. Yeah. It's all the reward pathways there. So you'll get an orpinephrine, epinephrine, uh, kind of modulation as well as the dopamine and serotonin. Uh, but it's basically a reward system. Just like, you know, you show the mouse how to push the button and a bean drops out. They'll keep pushing that thing and an item, you know, cause there's this immediate neural connection of, if I do this, I get this. And so it's, it's a dangerous, you know, pattern in our neurology that I think we have the opportunity to grow out of. and instead of saying we push the button something comes out we ask the deeper question of what are we really looking for and maybe that's what the mouse hasn't been given ability to ask what are we actually looking for in life what are we actually chasing is it really more stuff or is it actually space is it actually self-awareness is it actually a sense of peace is it actually a sense of community is it actually a sense of deep purpose within that's being expressed through creative capacity and obviously i think those are it but how are we going to stop the addiction process and so it's that's a quite a journey we have ahead and we have to do it really really quick but uh i think it's possible i think that i see for every you know darkness of our moment i see an opposite equal light within our moment and people are popping off right now and people are waking up to realizing that they had put themselves in a box the world had put them in a box spiritually into their religion boxes relationally into their exclusive special situations into the family box, the work box, you know, I'm an employee.

1:03:03Yeah. Very good example. So we've keep, we've been reductionist in that opportunity and there's an opportunity to kind of just blow all of that up. And I see it happening all over. There's a great scripture in Ecclesiastes. It says, I've seen two evil evils. One is a foolish man living long in his foolishness and one is a wise man dying young in his wisdom and it is better to grasp the one while not letting go of the other the foolishness and the wisdom and so it's better to grasp them both and the next line always gives me goosebumps for god is in heaven you are on earth so let your words be few for a guy who talks his brain out all the time i have to remind myself all the time that my words should be few.

1:03:46I need to be generous with the space between my words. So I hope that everybody listening here is feeling me more than listening to me because I showed up here today to be present with all of you and to show you the hurt, the hope, the frustration, the sense of loss, the sense of gain, the sense of freedom, the sense of fear, all of that within me and I'm just gonna stand here for a moment and reflect all that back at you because it's it's the same as you're going through and it's not something we need to hold on to we can just acknowledge that's all flowing through let go of it surrender it be in the space between our words

1:04:38and I feel like that's what's so powerful about what you do is that heart-centered intention and that ability to be and that's why our audience connects with you so much

1:04:54when we're talking about mother nature and mother earth I've felt almost like shame because I feel like oh my god I just feel so sorry that it's hard to approach it with a feeling of yeah so if I'm coming to something and I'm feeling shame and the reason why I'm coming to it is because of shame or fear the intention sort of muddies the actual act how can we be reminded of the support and love that mother nature has for us and this like un undeniable ability to receive us as we are it's a great question i think that you know walking through a forest or my favorite thing is to go to these edible forests that are now starting to be planted all over the world these incredible five, six level growing systems that have got plant life root vegetables all the way to your cruciferous vegetables growing on the ground but then you have bushes of berries and you've got nut trees and fruit trees and you've got these canopies around you that are blossoming with life and beauty and I'm always struck by the design of nature that you would do everything so beautifully.

1:06:26And so your purpose was designed so that you would put color to it all. A rose is not red. That's weird. You know, the yellow of a lemon growing on a tree that I was just looking at this morning, not yellow. It's just got a vibrational result from the sunlight hitting it. And my human eye is what is able to perceive it as yellow and ascribe, you know, a title to it. And so look around and understand that you were given the opportunity to be that bride of Christ. It's often said there in scripture, but you were there to be married to that nature. You know, you were there to be the sensory worship.

1:07:16and why would she create such exquisite flowers before creating the berry if you weren't supposed to be here i think that's just a miraculous thing that you know you've been given the ability to observe her and she's titillating in her capacity to explode your neurologic input you know if you pick a piece of fruit and eat it off the tree that experience with sunlight on your skin the odor that happens when you break open a piece of fruit, an orange off a tree, that citrusy smell. And the closest you've maybe come to that is your vitamin C supplement recently. But go out and pick an orange off a tree and smell that aroma.

1:08:01And then put your face in that fruit and feel the textures. And before the taste comes, experience what it really feels like to dive deep into creation and the warmth and the synergy between soil and sun and what it's done in such unique fashion for your body to not only be blessed by in a state of joy but also nourished and so she's put her nourishment in beautiful packages which is not what we do as humans if you walk through a grocery store no matter how good the branding is it's crap compared to what nature does it's just crap compared to what nature does she prepares it in such beauty because she would nurture everything around her she would want the butterflies to see the beauty of the flower she would want the bat to be able to sense that ripe fruit that it's going to go after in the dark the sensory experience of the bat radically different obviously than the human no sight but knows with pleasure what lies on the other side of that sensory sonar you know bouncing off of a ripe fruit it knows its ripeness not only that it's the fruit it prefers it knows exactly at what moment to eat it and so the beauty in that the beauty in which nature observes her own self is exquisite and we should be more careful observers of her to fall back in love with her

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1:11:21yeah it's crazy to think when you think about technology and the advancements it's like still doesn't hold a candle to nature yeah when you figure out what octopuses can do when you hear about sonars and echolocation with bats you're like none of it compares to what nature has managed to do with animals, with plants. I mean, it's so fascinating and it's like, that's, it reminds me how little we actually know. And our attention is always kind of in the wrong place with it all, which is always fascinating to me. When you were talking a little bit about, um, silence and just the importance of silence, I just want to kind of talk about the importance of silence, but then also, So what's your relationship to community?

1:12:12So when silence has become even more important for you, but I think it's also been very clear that community is also very important in that connection. So how do you balance the two within your life so that you are finding yourself feeling nourished by both? Yeah, I think it's practicing that same silence in community, right? Instead of feeling the need to fill every moment with conversation or the latest bit of news or the latest piece of fashion or whatever we're going to discuss. Instead, develop the discipline to be silent together. Very few of us are blessing food anymore. I'm not exactly sure why scripture is coming up so often in this podcast.

1:12:54You're always Jesus. Your Jesus vibe is always popping with almost 30. but the you know the state of giving grace you know that silence before a meal before we're going to experience nature's abundance before we're going to nature you know experience it can we take the time for silence for a moment take a couple deep breaths before we even start saying the prayer that's going to inevitably fall short of the the real truth of the beauty that we're about to receive and it will be an incomplete gratitude and so let the let the sound in the community resonate in the silence there. I just had an incredible dinner the other night with four friends in the desert.

1:13:35And there's five of us around this whole Italian restaurant outside of Sedona. And it was the most exquisite meal. It was ran for almost four hours because we found silence over and over again together. And we were in tears almost the whole time for the beauty that we were seeing in each other. And, you know, five friends, some of us new, some of us old. that we're seeing new levels of beauty within each other because we were experiencing the opportunity to be in reverence together in silence. And there was a reverence for each person there. And as the dinner started, I went around the table just expressing my gratitude for each of the people there.

1:14:18That's not a norm for me, but it just kind of broke out of just like, I want to just say something quick about each of you and what you've done for me in my life and what space you've held in my life. for me to develop and for me to feel unjudged and to do whatever I need to, to become me. And you guys have held enormous space for me to express myself in new ways. And it's a, it's a mysterious beauty to that. And the whole world fell away that night, you know, where you forget you're in a restaurant, you forget, you forget there's waiters moving stuff around you and you're just in the experience of the soul level.

1:14:53That's community. That's that moment that when you drive home that night, There's so much to integrate because you saw four souls instead of four hours of conversation. And you saw them lighting up and you saw them depth in their eyes that you had been seeing their eyes for eight years. And yet in that moment, holy smokes, the depth of their vision, their love, their capacity to communicate through those eyes is next level. And it takes you down. It overwhelms the emotional experience. It overwhelms the entire neurologic cascade when you're being that well seen. and that well loved and that's what dinner time should start to look like

1:15:35yeah I'm that's a beautiful exercise for our community and you know the silence to experience the silence and I could imagine myself in that situation just being to be seen like that is is not something that people do and experience often. And it's, it's, the seeingness is just so different than anything else that you'll ever feel. You know, it's like, it's seeing beyond the form, beyond the conversation, beyond the topic, beyond the label beyond everything. And it's just, I mean, I, even in you explaining that, I'm like, I feel like I'm there and it just feels so special and galactic. And I think when we talk about the space that we are in, um, in history, that tipping point, it's powerful to me that, that veil is so accessible, like your ability to do that with the way that we've sort of reached this level in consciousness, I don't know if it would have been available a while ago or years ago.

1:16:45And it's beautiful that we now have this access to these experiences that are so powerful. And I'm hopeful that that can support us in this rebirth that you were talking about in this step forward to really recognizing one another in that way. Yeah, that's the path. What is just one last thing you want to leave with our audience today? What is one thing that really just on your heart or on your mind or something that you've been really compelled thinking that you've been thinking about lately. I think, you know, just kind of sum up, like, what are we experiencing in this conversation right now?

1:17:24You know, there's, I think we can walk away from a time of sharing like this and be like, wait, what was that experience? I remember it was awesome, but what the hell was it? I was thinking about that. Like, what are we going to call this episode? I'm like, I don't even know, but it's amazing. the amazing podcast so what is happening what are we feeling together because we've actually shared some silence together today and so what did we feel in that you know a lot of the work that one of my colleagues has brought forth is this issue of beauty I've struggled a lot with understanding love my whole life just watching it in the efforts of humans to express that to one another, how dysfunctional it comes off and how we must have a very flawed concept of it perhaps, or I just was struggling with much of my life.

1:18:17And so much so that I was lecturing on it and everything else, just like asking people to reflect back at me, like, what are you experiencing this thing? Because if, if John Lennon and everybody else is right, the love is the fabric of everything, then we must be very far from enlightenment because we suck at this love thing. And so I was struggling with it. And my colleague in deep personal meditative work came back with an incredible message for me. It was Zach. The fabric of everything is not love. It is beauty. And the experience of seeing beauty is love. And that just made it so much easier to understand.

1:18:51And suddenly made me realize we are so close to a different level of enlightenment. because every human being, Ochoir to New York City, knows beauty and no child has ever been had to be instructed that this is a sunset and this is called beauty. There's an inherent neurologic experience. There's a deep knowingness of what is beautiful and it draws us to one another because humans are beautiful. And so if you feel out of love for the people around you, for your immediate family or your coworkers or whatever it is, look for the beauty instead of trying to conjure up love. Look for the beauty and then you'll start to experience the love.

1:19:34And so as all of you sit here, what happened last hour is we started to recognize the beauty around us and the beauty within community, the beauty within the space between the words. And for that, we engendered an experience of love in you that you've been missing for a long time because it's not something you can manufacture on your own. You can't actually manufacture love. and therefore it is a scarce commodity until you find out it comes from beauty. And then it trips everything into this state of ease and it's a state of abundance of, my God, I have love for freaking everybody. I have love literally for every single tree I walk by.

1:20:08I have love for every single sunset because I can see the beauty in all of it. And the beauty does not disappear on a bad day. It's still there. And so developing the exercise of looking for the beauty in our lives is going to take us into a completely different state of awareness of who we are and how we're here to serve in this moment, this tipping point moment. And so that's a hope in me that we can start to bring everybody into this greater community. And so we were working a lot on that with community building and how do we start using technologies like the Internet to start building deep spiritual connection and community through altering lifestyles by looking to the intelligence of nature, by looking to the opportunities within, you know, looking in the mirror of that other human being.

1:20:57And so we have a coaching program that puts that other person across the phone from you every week. And on that eight-week journey into this intrinsic health exploration, you get to see yourself. And we give you some information to digest, but really it's about who are you and what kind of beauty are you expressing. My God, you're so beautiful. And the struggle is beautiful. And the fact that you're struggling with yourself means that there is something that you know there's a deeper level. The fact that you're in pursuit of these things. And so that eight-week journey to intrinsic health is something that we've been ongoing for five years.

1:21:32And we're really excited about the next iteration because commune has come alongside of us to up our game of community connection. And our ability to reach out and connect people of our like purpose, which is how do we become co-creative? How do we become a vibrant piece of the biodiversity within our nature rather than the extractor and consumer of it? Beautiful. I want to do that. I want to be a part of it. Where can people find you and where can they find more about ION? Intelligenceofnature.com is the deep dive on the microbiome and the science around those supplements and how those have come to be the first supplement that actually doesn't hit a receptor.

1:22:13It really is completely agnostic. It's there just to create communication. And so we developed that out of the understanding that trying to micromanage human health doesn't work. And so instead, get back communication and see what is co-created within the complexity of microbiome, talking to that human body. So intelligenceofnature.com can get you that deep dive. ZachBushMD.com can get you into all my educational material. The Global Health Education Summit has been a monthly event that we've been doing for 20 ,000, 30 ,000 people every month, coming together around the broader scientific narrative around what's happening right now on the planet at this extinction point and how can we re-understand the events that are unfolding around us without being judgmental, without being divisive.

1:22:58Let's simply understand the science so that we move forward differently. And so that's where you can find much of that material. Amazing. Thank you so much. This has been so lovely. So glad to have shared space with you today. And I'm so grateful. that you came. Thank you for having me on. You're welcome.