E088 - Here's PROOF Humans Will Be Replaced By 2030 | Gregg Braden

0:00A place to begin, a good place to begin. And number one, we are absolutely not what we have been told. Number two, we are so much more than we have ever been led to believe. The bottom line for all of us. Greg Brayden is a brilliant scientist and author. A spiritual leader. And an all-around remarkable human being. Jobs, careers, finance, healing, health. All of them are powerful triggers, but emotion is one of the most powerful epigenetic triggers. Men have been conditioned to deny their emotions, but to repress is a detriment. Certain things which I would eat, how I would train, would change the way that I look.

0:36And then when I was changing the way that I looked, I became more confident and happier with myself. What you're doing is you're sending a different chemical signal to the genes, and the genes will then rearrange themselves. What do you think is currently ignored by the media, but will be studied by historians in the future? I think that... Now, before we jump into today's episode, I just want to mention that this podcast is brought to you by me and everything that I have built to help you guys level up. If you want to transform your physique, build muscle, lose body fat, build strength, then you have the Thirst app.

1:07This has everything inside that you could possibly need to get yourself in shape to hold yourself accountable as well. I also have the digital playbook, which is a step by step guide to help you guys build a following, monetize the following and also build a strong personal brand. And this is everything which I have done over the past nearly 10 years to allow myself to live a life of financial freedom and also geographical freedom. I can basically do whatever I want. Life is good. And I also have my newsletter, which has been revamped, where I'll share exclusive podcast insights, my raw thoughts on business, fitness, and much, much more.

1:43So if you're interested about any of those, check out the description. You'll find the links to all of them. Let's get cracking with the episode. What's up, guys? Welcome back to First Things Thirst. We have Greg Braden in the building. Unfortunately, he can't be there with him in person, but a remote conversation is better than no conversation. How are you doing today? Hey, brother. I am doing really well. I'm sort of in the building because once you get to Earth, everything's closed, right? Yeah. So, yeah, this first time you and I have worked together, I'm honored to be with you and your community.

2:19I think it'd be a little bit different kind of a program typically than maybe a little bit different audience than who I'd typically speak with. But, you know, we're all in this world, we're all in this life together, and we're all looking for pretty much the same things. And I'm happy to be able to contribute, Mike, in whatever way I can. But before we do that, I just want to take a minute. I have followed you. I'm a fan of Mike Thurston, and I want to thank you for the work you do. No, I want to thank you for the work you do in the community. You've created um and the way that you've gone about creating that community and i'm honored to contribute whatever way i can today thank you i appreciate that and conversations like today uh the ones i get most excited about and it seems to be what the audience like to hear about when i've had dr greer on and matt lacroix he he seems to pull in both of them pulled in a very big audience both those performed very well.

3:12So it seems to be the case that people are interested in things like this spirituality, ancient civilizations, basically information out there, which is for some reason or another restricted or hidden from us. Well, you know, my experience, this is the, this is a 45th year I've offered this work. I'm in my seventies now and I started young. And what I have found is one of the mistakes that we have all been led to make is trying to separate spirituality from our everyday lives, trying to separate the past from the present. There's a continuity that is unfolding in our lives. Is ancient history ancient?

4:03Absolutely. Is it obsolete? Absolutely not. Because our ancestors were trying to solve the same problems that we're trying to solve today. Different environment, certainly, different technology, same problems. And I think to the degree that we can recognize that continuity, we honor those who've come before us, and we don't have to reinvent so many wheels. We can learn a lot from our past. I think the place to begin, a good place to begin, number one, we are absolutely not what we have been told. Number two, we are so much more than we have ever been led to believe. There is a massive body of peer-reviewed scientific evidence from today, current, that supports those statements.

4:53There is a history, a cultural history from around the world and across cultures that also support that history. It's not science, but it is the anecdotal evidence of how they went about being the best version of themselves. The bottom line for all of us, there's an unspoken... Any Star Trek fans will know what this term means. It's the prime directive. The prime directive means the ultimate goal in our lives. We all have a prime directive. We all have an ultimate goal. We may not be conscious of it. And our society really doesn't do much to support it. But that goal is we want to be whole. We want to be complete.

5:40We want to be the best version of ourselves. and I'll tell you, Mike, we will stop at nothing. We will stop at nothing to find that wholeness, even to the degree we will deceive ourselves into following paths in life that we may not understand in an attempt to find that wholeness. And that goes with intimate relationships. That goes with jobs, careers, finance, healing, health. Everything is all about us. becoming that best version of ourselves, finding that wholeness. Now, there's a spiritual component to that because when we are the best version of ourselves, we defeat and triumph over forces in this world that have existed long before we ever got here that we call evil.

6:35And evil plays a powerful role in our world today. It wears many faces. Evil is mass. There is technological evil. The algorithms that lead us to believe things about ourselves that are not true, that is an expression of evil, psychological evil, the movement to break the social bonds that hold families together and communities and societies together. Because when those bonds are broken, we're more vulnerable to the ideas and the agendas of other people that serve them. They may not serve us. So there's a deeply spiritual component to seeking our wholeness as well. And I'm going going to say that our conversation is a dance, my brother, it's a dance.

7:28I'm happy for you to lead and I'm going to follow you again. We'll go wherever you want to go. Nothing is off the table and I'm going to leave it to you to take us there. I'm curious to know, first of all, why is it that some people have this hunger or this thirst where they're trying to, they want to find out more. They want to ask more questions. For example, I've heard you speak about your brother you speak very highly of him but you're even though you're brought up in the same environment you both turn out to be very different people you went on one path he went on another path and I I see this with myself and with my brother and some of my friends that I went to school with they all seem to you know feel as though okay this is my life this is how it's going to be I'm going to listen to what I'm told to do and I'll just do what everybody around me does.

8:20Then there's other people. And I feel like I am one of those people where I'm like, actually, no, like I don't agree with a lot of this. I don't agree with what I'm being told I should do. I want to take a different path. I want to live life on my own terms. And I want to question everything, everything that I'm told, all the information that is kind of thrown down my throat, whether it be on news outlets, on social media, I want to question everything. So why is it that some people are one way and other people are another way. You know, it all comes down to the filters through which we, the lens through which we perceive and interpret the world around us.

9:02And those filters, scientists called them epigenetics. So the environment that our mother was in when we were in her womb, that environment built the chemical signals that coursed through her body as well as ours when we're in the womb. If our mother is in a safe environment, we're going to have one kind of chemical signals. Nature assumes that we will be in the same environment that our mother is in, so nature will program us at least initially, and this is important, at least initially to have the same perceptions of the environment when we're born that our mother has so that we can have a good start in life.

9:56If our mother is living on the streets of L.A. or in a refugee camp in Syria, where every moment of every day is fight or flight, that cues up a chemical component, high levels of stress, high levels of cortisol, high levels of adrenaline, and our bodies will be epigenetically programmed for that, at least initially. And those provide the filters, we'll see the world is not safe, and we'll see the world is threatening, and we'll always be on the defense, and we'll always be suspicious of people around us. We'll be maybe more cautious in making friends. And those filters are very real. But here's what I want to say.

10:48We are only defined by our past if we choose to be defined by our past because of epigenetics. Epi means above. What that means is that we have the ability to reprogram those chemical signals. We have the ability to reprogram those chemical codes. This is one of the mysteries of life, why some people have the initiative to do that while others may not. So the example you're giving, for those viewers may not be familiar. I don't talk about this a lot. It's not a secret. If it's relevant, I'm happy to talk about it. I'm the product of a very dysfunctional, abusive, alcoholic family. My father was the abuser.

11:34Mother was the protector. Any of our alcoholic family friends out there know exactly what I'm talking about. And it was early in my life, it was not safe to be in our home. Now, for reasons that I can't completely explain, I was born with what I call a very strong soul compass. From an early age, I had a good sense of who I am. I was never swayed by peer pressure, never succumbed to peer pressure back in, you know, know i'm a child of the 50s and 60s there was a lot going on in the 50s and 60s and and it was fascinating it was a great time to to be in the world as an observer you were living in a rock band weren't you well i was yeah i i left home when i was 14 i was a good i became a guitar player at eight left home at 14 moved in with my rock band and they were all in their 20s and 30s and i was 14 years old and this was in the 60s you know so there was a lot of excess happening in the house, and I never participated in that excess.

12:48I always knew, I didn't have the language, the vocabulary that I have now, but I knew that my body was a gift to me, and that I knew that I would need my body in this world to do good things, and that the healthier that I could make myself, the better I could keep the promise to myself to bring good into the world. So, you know, that is what I attribute to a soul compass. My younger brother, we came from the same environment, and we both early on were in a fearful, dangerous environment. And for reasons that I cannot say with absolute certainty, because I'm not in his body, he chose to cling to that environment because it appears safer to stay with what you know, even if it's not healthy, because it's what he knows.

13:51And he is. He's a good man. He's a little rough on the outside. For those listening in the United States, he identifies himself as what's called a redneck, proudly a redneck. So he's a little rough around the edges, but he's a good man inside and he's had a tough life. He's had tough relationships, tough jobs, surrounded by supervisors that don't recognize his skills and talents, don't honor and respect him. And the same with, in his case, the women that he has has attracted into his life. And he believes that he is locked into that because of his past and because of his environment. So I think one of the most powerful things we can do, it all begins with the way we think.

14:40Mike, and I know you know that. If we don't know that we are not what we've been told, if we don't know that we're more than we've ever even allowed ourselves to imagine, if we don't know that, if we don't feel that we're worthy of a healthy, intimate relationship with another human, and if we don't feel that we have value in this world, and everyone at some point has to come to terms, why am I here? It doesn't have to be a big, grandiose kind of thing. It could be as simple as we're here to experience beauty on a planet that has tremendous beauty. And maybe we don't have that in a spiritual world, not in a physical body.

15:32It doesn't have to be any big grand thing, but I think everyone needs to have a sense of purpose. Can I give you a quick story about that, a quick example? I was leading, I've led groups into ancient indigenous sites since I was able to travel out of the country. Egypt, Bolivia, Peru, Tibet, India, Nepal, you know, Australia, all through the desert southwest. To be with indigenous people, to learn with them. And what is it they know that we've forgotten? Or what is it they know that we're only now beginning to understand? So I was in Tibet in the early 2000s. And I was walking with a Tibetan nun to a chanting hall with a translator.

16:26My Tibetan is terrible. And she was telling me about the history of this particular part of Tibet. that. And we went into the Channing Hall and the guide, he said, did you learn a lot? And I said, well, yeah. Excuse me. I said, she told me about the history. I don't know how she remembers all this. I said, but she told me about the history I've never read in the history books. And he says, well, yeah. He said, she should know that because she lived that history. And I said, no. I said, this was over a hundred years ago. And he says, yeah. How old do you think she is? And I said, I don't know, 80?

17:05And he said, she's 130, 132 at that time. And this isn't uncommon in the Tibetan, you know, they don't have it in the Guinness Book of World Records, but they routinely live 120s, 130s. And so I asked her, the translator, I said, what do you attribute your longevity to? And she said, what would my sisters do if I wasn't here? Who would make the meals for them, who would help them with their studies, who would teach them the prayers and the practices. The bottom line, every morning she woke up, she was driven by the sense that she was needed in the world. And the science shows us that that feeling of purpose has a chemical component in our bodies as well.

17:57we have a stronger immune response, hormonal responses, longevity enzymes. We all have longevity enzymes. Yeah. I've noticed this when older couples are together for a very long time and then they pass away. The moment that one of them has passed away, the other one passes away very quickly after that because it's almost like they're both like living is my grandparents were like this they'd been married for over 75 years they've been together for such a long period of time and then you know they were both getting quite old fragile uh feeble and when one of them passed away the other one passed very quickly yeah not long after they they knew they knew Well, their lives were so entwined.

18:48So that was a long story to a short point. And the point is that having a sense of purpose plays a powerful role in our lives as well. Now, the discovery of what we call epigenetics goes a long way in helping us to understand this. Again, epi is above, so it means we may have a predisposition to a certain genetic makeup. So my younger brother, he's four years younger than I, we came into the world with a genetic predisposition for stress, fear, uncertainty, high levels of adrenaline, cortisol, things like that. But epigenetics says that you can change that and you can change it through epigenetic triggers.

19:40And this is where the spirituality comes in, because I think many of your viewers may know or may not know. Excuse me, I've got allergies here in New Mexico today. I apologize for that. that those epigenetic triggers, when I was working in the high-tech industry, I was the senior computer systems designer during the Cold War years, the defense industry, I was first tech ops manager at Cisco Systems. And I say that because I've had the opportunity to be around very advanced technology. And what I've seen is the more advanced the technology is behind the scenes, the simpler the user interface. And we know that from a mobile phone.

20:35You press a picture on the phone. You touch an icon with your finger. And you set into motion a whole series of events to pay your bills and talk to your friends. And all you did was touch a picture. Well, our bodies work very much the same way. We are very complex behind the scenes, but the user interface is very simple. And that user interface was identified in our most ancient and cherished spiritual traditions. The user interface is thought, feeling, emotion, breath, focus, movement, and nutrition. So any combination of those, they're called epigenetic triggers. when we take responsibility for our lives and the circumstances of our lives and the condition of our bodies.

21:28And if we accept it the way it is, fine. If we want to change it, these are the epigenetic triggers. When you change your thought, feeling, emotion, belief, breath, focus, nutrition, and movement, it sends powerful signals throughout the genome. and our genes will actually reprogram themselves in response to what it is we're feeding them. I wish somebody had told me that. When I was in school, it probably would have saved me a lot of difficulty in my life. But this is why we are never defined by our past unless we choose to be defined by our past. And for some people, the first step is recognizing that very principle that they don't have to be defined by the difficult circumstances of their past.

22:22They may, and many people choose that because it's an easy path, but you don't have to be. So the first step is to know that, to know that you're not what you've been told, to know that you're more than you've even probably imagined in your mind. And now these are very rock solid, they're called triggers, epigenetic triggers. These are the keys to put into motion what you now know to be true. If you're not what you've been defined as in the past, how do you change that? Well, those are the triggers. Now, what's so interesting, all of them are powerful triggers, but emotion is one of the most powerful epigenetic triggers.

23:07And for men, and especially men in the modern world and men in the Western world, even in, I've spent a lot of time in the Middle East, even in the Middle East, men have been conditioned to deny their emotions. So it doesn't mean that you have to go crying all the time in front of all your friends. That's not what I'm saying. But to repress what it is that you're feeling is a detriment. And it can actually produce chemicals in the body that work directly in opposition for what we choose. In other words, if we want to be the best version of ourselves, but we're fighting a belief system of hurt or betrayal.

23:59Betrayal is a big one for men. Most men at some point in their lives feel betrayed by their father. At some point, not everyone, but even good relationships, a father will betray on some level. And that's a very deep betrayal. and that has epigenetic consequences about trust and trust. All those have chemical components in the body. So to the degree that we can acknowledge and resolve, there's nothing wrong with fear and there's nothing wrong with hurt. There's nothing wrong with betrayal because we're all going to have it. Where we run the problem is unresolved hurt, unresolved betrayal, unresolved anger, unresolved jealousy, unresolved rage.

24:48These are very typical for male emotions. Yeah. And then you'll have to deal with that in relationships if those people or even yourself hasn't resolved it. How are you going to have a relationship if you're bringing a load of baggage from a previous one. Sure. Well, you'll probably have a very difficult relationship. And the irony is we tend to reel in relationships with other people that mirror those very qualities so that they can be healed. If we don't know that, we just go from partner to partner to partner or job to job to job. We reel in supervisors that betray us, supervisors that are angry, Pre-supervisors that don't honor our skills and say, well, I'm going to quit this job.

25:35I'm going to quit this relationship, go to another city, new job, new relationship. And, you know, same thing happens again. We all know that story because it's about us. So the beauty is that we can change all of that. The difficulty is that it begins with accepting responsibility for what's happening in our lives. And we're not taught to do that. That's not the conditioning. We're taught to blame the world and to blame the world for our own suffering and our own circumstances. So these are some of the deeply spiritual principles when we begin to understand. I'm going to make a distinction. Spirituality does not imply religion.

26:19There is a vast difference between spirituality and religion. So let me just define that real quick because we're using these terms. spirituality in its truest sense is about relationships it's about our relationship to our own bodies our relationship to the earth our relationship to other people our relationship to the past to the future ultimately our relationship to god or a higher power So spirituality is about those relationships. Religion and spirituality has been with us for a very, very, very long time. Religions came along much later and wrapped the rules and the dogma around the power of spiritual principles so they could be controlled.

27:10So religion is created by people, mostly by men, as a way to repress and in many cases deny the deep truth of our relationship, our direct relationship to the earth, to our bodies, to God. Religion says you need to go through another power or another force to have those relationships. So I'm not talking about religion. I'm talking about spirituality. Spirituality is the hotline. It's the direct link that we have with these fundamental forces in our lives. we'll get back to the podcast in a second but first of all i want to say a massive shout out to bionic i have been using their supplements for the past four years i never knew what supplements i needed to take i'd always go into the pharmacy and buy a load of random bottles and end up popping pills all day every day not having a clue if i was consuming the vitamins which i should be consuming at all but bionic came to save the day they are a tailor-made supplement company that will put together your own specific formula based on your activity, your gender.

28:24I have Bionic Pro, where I get the blood test done every three to four months, and based on that blood test, I get my own personalized formula. For those people who don't want to do a blood test or don't have access to that, then you can go with Bionic Go, where you just have to fill in a short questionnaire, and based on that questionnaire, you will get your tailored supplements with a surprisingly high degree of accuracy. So stop the guesswork, sign up to Bionic, and ensure that you remove those deficiencies and build up your immune system. What do you see humans being capable of and looking like if we really, truly, fully understood how everything works and what we're capable of?

29:10Well, we don't know the answer to that because we have yet to fully explore what that means. So a new book came out in January, and this doesn't have to be about that book. The title of the book was called Pure Human. And the whole theme of the book is that we happen to be living in an age and a time right now where we are being taught and our young people are being taught that we are a flawed form of life. F-L-A-W-E-D, flawed form of life. And because we are flawed, we need something outside of ourselves to be the best version of ourselves. and that something is being touted as technology. We're being told that we need technology inside of our bodies to compete in the world and to be the best version of ourselves.

30:11And so now you're seeing a movement called the trans-human movement. Trans means beyond. So beyond human, that is encouraging young people and people my age as well to embrace computer chips in the brain, chemicals in the blood, RFID chips under the skin, nanosensors, nanotransmitters in the respiratory system, in the circulatory system, all in the name of progress. And what some scientists are saying is the next step in human evolution. I was at a conference recently and there was a scientist that challenged me and said, isn't this the next natural step in human evolution? The answer is no, no, no, no.

30:57It is not the next step in natural human evolution. And here's the reason. We're only beginning to understand what it means to be human. And when we replace our biology with technology, what happens is our natural systems begin to atrophy. And pretty soon they just, they fail altogether because the body, our body is an on-demand system. You know this from bodybuilding. There's an adage in biology that is called use it or lose it. Let me just give an example of this. When I was a kid back in 1950s, 1960s, we were told that when we come into this world, we have X number of brain cells, fixed number at birth.

31:47And every beer that you drink and every glass of wine that you drink kills brain cells. And that was the leverage to get kids to stop drinking. Well, we now know that that's not true. That's not a reason to drink. I'm not saying alcohol is good for anyone. But here's what the science is showing us. We are producing new brain cells until the last breath we take on this planet. That Tibetan nun at 130, she's producing new brain cells, but there's a catch. If those new brain cells are not engaged and used in a meaningful way within about a week, five to seven days, they will atrophy and they will die because they believe they're not needed because the body hasn't used them.

32:38That principle applies to the entire human body, not just brain cells. That principle applies to muscles. It applies to the reproductive system. It applies to the immune system. And we have very good evidence to back all of this up, peer-reviewed scientific evidence. If you replace those systems with synthetics, with artificial technology, those systems feel, sense that they're no longer needed. And because they're not being used, they will begin to atrophy in one generation. Next generation, the body says, oh, we used to do those things, but we don't because we've got a computer chip doing it for us or AI in the body doing it or chemicals in the blood mimicking our immune response.