Shawn Ryan: There's A Battle For Your Soul, It's Happening Right Now

29:18Like, you're strong because you never really have to, like, say you are. You don't act like a bully, but we just know you're strong. And then the minute you start acting like a bully, we start going is that strength or is that insecurity you know this the minute you start insulting countries and being rude about their leaders and saying that i don't know canada is the 52nd state or whatever trump's dead that's when it starts to look a little bit more like insecurity and also that's when i think some of these nations go shit like maybe we need to band together ourselves instead of banding together with the united states and i think you're seeing that in europe now with what's going on with iran the european leaders are coming back together and saying, fuck, like, we might not be as safe as we thought we were in the US's, you know, with the US's leadership.

30:05And so we need to form a new type of leadership. It's an interesting, really interesting time. And do you know what? One might say that China are playing it very smart, not making enemies with anybody, that calm strength. They don't need to do anything. We're watching us self-destruct right now, in real time. Do you care about the 2028 election? Are you going to get involved in it? if the politicians will want to come back on your show? I don't know. I mean, it depends. Right now, I think probably not. If there were to be some type of a third party, then I would probably get involved. But right now, with what I see, I just don't really see any strong candidates.

30:50You mentioned you had someone on your podcast called Blair who said something which was slightly suspicious to you blareum squirrel yeah yeah yeah i think that ice got him and they're trying to deport him out of the country or something we got an email about it which if he was uh an asset actually did all that stuff for us which you know i think he did what happened i guess i i don't know the full scope i just know that uh he got wrapped up by ice and it sounds like they're gonna deport him and that he's worried that if they deport him that he's going to be killed. Apparently ICE doesn't care about that.

31:26But yeah, you know, he came on and we were talking about, it was a life story. Basically in a nutshell, he came on and he was a, he got recruited out of prison to infiltrate the Islamic terrorist cells, the Muslim Brotherhood. He's an American. He is from, I can't remember, Eastern Bloc country. He was able to infiltrate all these like huge like terrorist cells that had huge weapons caches and he would go and and he was a cia asset and he would go and and do the deal and then all of that those caches would get shipped to another country where it would and then it would be in cia's hands and so we had this long conversation about this and then all of a sudden he starts talking about russians getting nukes into the U.S.

32:15And it was just so out of left field. It made me think, you know, I just said earlier, you know, you could talk to somebody for two, three, four, five, however many hours, and maybe they just need one thing inserted into the podcast, you know, to start a new narrative or to reinforce a current narrative. You know, there's a big back then, still is today, you know, big narrative. We all need to hate Russia. Maybe we do, maybe we don't. I'm not saying either way. But for us to be talking about the global war on terror and his time is a CIA asset infiltrating terrorist networks and derailing massive weapons caches back to wherever they were going.

33:04And, you know, and then all of a sudden for him to talk about the Russians bringing in nuclear warheads or whatever it was into the U.S., it was like, and I think I challenged him right on the show. And I said, you know, how do I know that you weren't sent here just to put that one sentence into the show that came out of left field? That doesn't fit anywhere with any conversation that we've been talking about. What did he say? He was, you know, taken back. I don't remember exactly what he said. You could probably find the clip somewhere, but that's how it happens. That's how it happens. I'm not saying that he is or isn't one.

33:41I'm saying that's what it looks like when it happens. And your gut sometimes tells you that you're interviewing someone who is probably still working on behalf of an agency. Do you delete a lot of episodes? No. I've had episodes that I didn't delete or that I never aired. I've had, I don't know, Not very many, but I've had a handful. What is the reason typically? Well, one time I had a guy come on. This was about the COVID vaccine. And he comes on and he's talking about how the COVID vaccine was developed in a lab and was patented way before COVID even came out. And it was very compelling. And I didn't really think about it until afterwards.

34:28But afterwards, when I was thinking about the interviews, some of these interviews I'll think about all weekend or, you know, days to weeks sometimes after they happen. I mean, it sounded super compelling and maybe it was real. I don't know. But every time he would, it was COVID-19, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID. But then when he would say, he wouldn't say the COVID vaccine was patented prior to 2020. He would say the SARS vaccine was patented prior to, you know, but the narrative was the COVID-19 vaccine was patented long before COVID-19 ever even came out. But like I said, he would switch it. he would switch.

35:11We would be saying COVID, COVID, COVID, but then he would say the SARS vaccine. And so he left and I was like, I mean, there's gotta be like a million different, there's like thousands of variations of SARS and COVID. And so why did he keep switching it? Why didn't he just say the COVID-19 vaccine? Why did he switch it to SARS? And so that clicked And it just made me think, maybe this isn't factual. And I don't want to, you know, I've done speculative narrative interviews, lots of them. But once again, we were talking earlier, you know, we have audiences of millions and millions and millions of people.

35:53And I don't want to put something out that's not factual and have somebody make an important medical decision based on bullshit. And I just didn't want to gamble that. So I never, I never released the episode and I'd talked to lots of doctors and it was a, it was a charged subject, you know, at the time. And so I didn't like the vax. I took it, but I regret it, but, but, but whatever, you know what I mean? It doesn't matter. I didn't want anybody making that type of a, I know that people trust me. I couldn't live with myself if I found out that guy was totally full of shit feeding feeding a bullshit narrative for whatever.

36:34And then you got people, you know, either taking it or not taking it based off what he said. So I never aired that, you know, I've had another guy. I was interested in a lot of the stuff going on in the World Economic Forum. And I had this guy that I thought was an expert on the World Economic Forum come on. And he couldn't even tell me what it was. I was like, well, what is it? Is it a business? Is it a nonprofit? What is it? He couldn't even tell me. And then he would just start talking about all this conspiracy shit. And I'm like, look, if you can't even tell me what it is, you really have no business being here.

37:10So let's just end the interview right now. And recently I had one where this woman on supposedly she worked for the agency. Then when I started talking about agency stuff, of course, everything's classified. So we hide behind the classification system. And the only thing she wanted to talk about was like the polygraph. And I'm like, the polygraph? You don't say shit about the polygraph. Like everybody in there has to take a polygraph. Why are we talking about the, is this like something that you researched really hard on what a polygraph's like? So to make yourself sound legitimate because you're not talking about anything else.

37:50And, you know, something that may be classified that they don't want out is how to defeat a polygraph. So, and that was within the past couple of months. And, you know, we ended that one pretty quickly. and i think she knew exactly you know you know so we'll never release that one but i don't care you know what i mean i just i don't want to knowingly put things that are bullshit out there i mean it's gonna happen we're gonna make mistakes i've made mistakes but you know knowingly just for views nah i have no interest in that it used to be that working for yourself was a massive massive risk but that world has completely changed and arguably in some situations it can be more risky working for someone else if you've got a business idea that you can't stop thinking about i think you owe it to yourself to at least try and make it happen and that is where our show sponsor shopify comes in their smart platform includes everything you need to start selling and get that idea off the ground they have this drag and drop editor they have this ai sidekick and helps you they have analytics and you don't need to be an expert to get going.

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40:47At 34, you moved to Medellin, Colombia, and spent two years drinking alcohol. Yeah, I started in Cartagena and ultimately just decided I'm going to camp out in Medellin. Did you get involved in the drug dealing networks while you were there? Yes, I did. How do you categorize this season of your life in Colombia? Because before then, you're a SEAL, you're doing contracting work with the CIA, and then it appears that in this season of your life, when I look at it from sort of a bird's eye view, that it represents instability. I think what it represents is, you know, just talked about addiction to adrenaline.

41:32Yeah. And I wasn't getting that adrenaline anywhere. And, you know, I would be in the States and it was boring to me. You know, it was boring going to the bar and that life just it had no appeal to me. It was boring. And then on top of that, I was tired of listening to everyday average Americans talk about the war, give their opinions on what we should be doing when none of them have done anything. It just didn't sit well with me. So that's why, you know, when I said I went down, I didn't want to hear English. I didn't want to hear people asking me for my opinions. I didn't want to hear their opinions.

42:10I don't think their opinions mattered. I didn't think that at the time anyways. And so I went down there and it became like a game to me. It wasn't the dealing. I never really dealt. It was more setting up the network that gave me the rush and infiltrating networks and figuring out who the players are and all that and being able to insert myself into the middle of all of that. But, you know, in retrospect, it was probably the most dangerous thing I had ever done. I didn't care. You know, I didn't really have any value for my own life. I wouldn't say I was suicidal at the time, but I just, I was in it for the thrill.

42:54And to me, there was nothing else that was going to give me a thrill, a bigger thrill than that. And I figured if this gets boring, then I'll probably just die down here. i'll probably just die down here yeah i mean it sounds like you came pretty close to getting in significant trouble at one point your apartment was bugged by the police yeah yeah i uh i had come home and i was probably i did i did a lot of a lot of drugs down there a lot of cocaine and I don't know I was on three four maybe a five-day bender and there was this bridge down there that was called in in this area called barrio antioquio I don't know what it's like now but back then you couldn't you couldn't get in there you couldn't get a taxi to drive you in there you couldn't get in there without going through several police checkpoints um but that's where the cheapest and best Coke was.

43:57And that's where all the players are. It's all, it's all coming out of that specific neighborhood. And I used to go in there for a thrill and, and like, go up the chain, go up the dealer chain, find whose bosses, whose bosses, whose boss. Anyways, I went down there with a bunch of girls and we went to this bridge called the Puente de los Locos. and it was all these, it was like a homeless camp and of just insane people. And I went down there with a huge stack of cash and just threw the money up in the air because I wanted to see what would happen. Of course, they all got up and it was like a mad dash.

44:48And we almost didn't get out of there because they had surrounded me and there was hundreds of people. And so we wound up getting out of there in a car. And we got back to my building where I was staying at my penthouse. And one thing I always did was I always took care of the doorman at the building. You know, all the security guys, the doorman, they control who comes in and out. they can inform you if people are hanging around that you know maybe shouldn't be people are looking for me and so i built that was part of my network you know it's taking care of them and so i anything i got if i got coke they got coke if i got booze they got booze if i went clothes shopping they got clothes if i got groceries they got groceries they always got tipped that you know when i was leaving i would give them a bunch of my clothes like i just always took care of those guys.

45:41And I came back and this guy, his name was Freddie. And he said that the police were after me. One thing, being a foreigner in Columbia, it's almost like a sin for them not to try to take advantage of you. And I had built a lot of trust with Freddie, who's my favorite guy. And I was pissed. And I started yelling at him like, man, I give you like all kinds of stuff. Like, why would you lie to me to try to get more out of me? I always take care of you. And he said, I'm not doing that. He said, they came by and they wanted, uh, they wanted copies of your passport. They wanted to know where you came from, who you are, who you work with, all these things.

46:28And I was, I just thought he was full of shit. And he said, look, he said, they told me that they have pictures of you throwing money up at, bridge in Barrio Antioquio. And that was, we had just come from there. And so I was like, oh shit, he is not lying. And what he was telling me was that they had supposedly planted a bug in the light fixture outside of my door and that they had set up a observation point in a building across from me. And so I went up and scrubbed myself of everything, kind of scanned around to see if I could pick up, you know, who was, who was looking at me, who was watching.

47:16I'm pretty sure I saw it and got rid of everything, got rid of all the Coke, got rid of everything. And then I did a SDR to a couple of different internet cafes. An SDR. An SDR, that's a surveillance detection route. And it's a route that you develop to figure out if you're being followed or not. So I did that. I didn't pick anything up. Bought a couple of different tickets to different places and was out of there within 12 hours, never to go back. And when you got back to the United States, presumably, had you changed? Was that enough of a close call for you to give up the cocaine habits that you had at the time?

48:06No. No. I tried. I had cleaned it up a lot. I had cleaned it up a lot. But I went, I started getting bored, and so I did a couple of trips, a trip or two maybe to Panama. Panama was a lot tamer than Colombia, but it's just as easy to get in the middle of it. And then I did one to Costa Rica. And then I can't remember exactly how many. I got a lot of different places. I went to Honduras. I went to San Pedro Sula because it was literally the most dangerous place on the planet at the time. So I wanted to go there and feed my adrenaline. I had toned it down a lot, but I didn't clean it up 100%. What was the turning point for you in that season of your life?

48:55There were a lot of turning points. One turning point that made me clean it up quite a bit was my best friend was leaving contracting and he had a horrible addiction to opiates. And so he became my purpose. He became my purpose. I wanted to help clean him up. In order to clean him up, I had to clean myself up.

49:21And I think we made a lot of headway. Ultimately, he did succumb to his addiction years later. But that was a turning point. And in the middle of that journey, I had started my therapy myself. What was the catalyst for you to go to therapy?

49:41i just knew i i needed something and i had to set an example for my friend like i'm doing it so you should do it too there was this call on mother's day as well which i've had you talk about that was in columbia that was it while you're in columbia while i was in columbia what was that phone call that was a i always thought i was od 'ing down there my ankles would swell up from lack of blood circulation. And that would freak me out and lots of things. And I remember my friend told me early on, he said, you don't have to worry about ODing on coke until things start to slow down. If you're on speed and then everything seems slow, that's when you're riding the edge.

50:36and so that started happening i realized it was mother's day once and i i called my my mom in the middle of that because i thought it was going to be my last day alive and um so that's yeah that's that that was a realization point and then you found this therapist and then i found this therapist was that a challenge to go to a therapist you know there's there's a lot of stigma associated with going to therapy, especially at that time. Yeah. I mean, it was definitely a blow to my ego, but at the same time, you know, I didn't really have any friends. Most of my friends were still operational at the time and I didn't have any friends where I lived in Florida.

51:18And so nobody really knew me and I didn't have anything else to do. I was like, what the hell, you know, I might as well try this. And it did help. It helped a lot. How did it help? You know, I think it's amazing how many of your own problems you'll work out yourself in your head just by telling somebody who has a, you know, seemingly unbiased opinion, you know, just with a couple of questions. Kind of like how both you and I interview. You don't say much and people just spill it. Yeah. And then you can see them working things out in their head as they go along. For me, that's what therapy was.

51:59and it's also somebody that can hold you accountable, you know, for different things. And around that time, you did, I began treatment, which I'm somewhat familiar with just after that time because I worked in psychedelics for a couple of years, well, a year. You worked with psychedelics? I worked in psychedelics in the industry. Oh, okay. And just when I was between leaving my first company and really starting this podcast, I did a year in working in a psychedelics business. Interesting. That was focused on mental health. So Ibogaine was one of the therapies that I came across and studied and saw the huge efficacy around addiction.

52:37But I've actually never met anybody that did Ibogaine. But I remember at the time when I was working in psychedelics, they told me that there was this thing called Ibogaine you could take. It was quite an intense treatment, quite a long treatment. But there are several cases where people do one dose of Ibogaine in a therapeutic setting and their addiction is cured that's what i was told and i was like this is crazy and you you you did ibogaine right i did ibogaine done twice now oh wow and yeah the first time was amazing i went down there actually that was actually after i'd started the podcast i have a feeling we're very similar you probably wrap your entire life up into what you're doing and we were having, I had a six month old at the time, my son, and I wasn't present with him because my mind was always in business.

53:29It's just all I thought about was business, business, business, the podcast business. I needed something to just, to slow my mind, you know, so that I could be in the moment and actually be present with my, with my wife and with my son. You know, at the time I had kicked, I kicked a lot of things. I wasn't drinking hard alcohol anymore. I was, I mean, I was still on, there was no Coke for a long time before that, but there were still some pharmaceutical meds that I would dabble in, sleeping meds. But I went down there to be in the moment. That was it. Like, help me compartmentalize or manage business stress because so many opportunities are coming.

54:09And if you know the deal, you feel, it's like, do I need to do all these opportunities? Are these opportunities all good for whatever? am I a fool if I turn this down? And I went down there for that. And when I came out of it, had no interest in drinking again. I quit all the sleep medications. I quit the Adderall and it was effortless. It was effortless. And I was able to be present with my wife and son. And where do you find yourself today as it relates to alcohol, the substances we've talked about, and your mental health? Girl, I've never been better. You know, I haven't had a drop in over four years.

54:50I don't take sleeping medications. I don't take Adderall. I don't, I have, I actually have no vices. None. And then I went to do it again. And the next one didn't work out so well for me. The next Ibogaine journey. Yeah. Was this recently? This was about, I guess about three months ago now. And this is the one where I saw on your show, you said you think you visited hell. Yeah. Yes. That would be the one. So for anyone that doesn't know what Ibogaine is and what the journey is like, is it a drink that you take and then it's sort of like a 12-hour? For me, it was a pill. It was a pill. Yeah. Okay.

55:30It's from a group in, I think, Gabon, Africa. Okay. Yeah, they say it's the most powerful psychedelic you can do. And I believe that. And then at this particular place, you do 5-MAO DMT a day after your Ibogaine journey. And it's some extremely powerful stuff. Has it changed you, that second? Yes. It's changed a lot of things. i saw you had uh dr huberman on yeah you know the other day he was talking about his faith and all that stuff and i'm on my faith journey as well and but you know one thing is when it comes to psychedelics is i've done ibis game twice i've done psilocybin a handful of times i've done 5-meo a handful of times and i got so much out of the first one and i had a very healthy respect you You know, I would really prepare for them.

56:28And then I forced myself to kind of get looser with it because I saw all these other people doing it. And I would get these answers to things, you know, really tough business decisions or something that, you know, might seem really beneficial to you, but you don't understand why it's happening or you think there might be something else behind it. But, you know, I would do maybe a psilocybin journey and think on that. And it would be like everything became clear, like all of it. You could see what the motivations are behind the person that wants to do business with you. You could see the thing over here that's going to happen if you take that step and commit.

57:15Or maybe you see what happens if you don't. It would be like problem solved. You know, and this has happened multiple times and not just with business, with family, with relationships, with with friends, you would be able to piece together these super complex problems and and it would make sense. And I believe it was real. But also, at the same time, I believe that, and I always have, I believe that you are potentially opening yourself up to a spiritual realm that maybe we should not have access to. and that's something that I always took very seriously even when I did loosen up I would always pray before it and as my journey through Christianity became stronger and stronger I would take it more and more seriously you know the praying before and during and which led up to this last one which was yeah I thought I think I saw hell I know I did you know you saw hell yeah Give me some context on how one would know that was hell and if you can at all.

58:24I know it's difficult to sort of say these things in human words, but like, what was it? It was total emptiness. When I say I saw, I didn't see fire. I didn't see any of that. And where I really felt it was in the 5-MEO experience. And there was nothing. It was the most amount of fear that I'd ever felt in my life. It was the most amount of anxiety I'd ever felt in my life. There was no God. There was no Christ. There was...

59:06And it felt like eternity. And this went on for an hour and a half-ish. It felt like I was going through the most intense exorcism you could ever imagine. That's what it felt like. and it felt like things were trying to maybe leave, maybe not trying, maybe I was trying to get these things out and they wouldn't leave, but it felt like abandonment. It's the most horrific feeling you could ever even imagine and it was more real than anything I've experienced in real life. What could you see? In this specific experience, I couldn't see anything. Okay. I mean, my body was contorted. It was doing things that the human body shouldn't do.

59:59There was a friend of mine with me. I told him I didn't want him to come down when I did it. And I didn't want to talk to anybody for weeks after this, except my wife, a guy that is a spiritual mentor of mine and some priests. and uh but i i so i called him several weeks he kept checking on me and he said man he goes i know you told me not to go down there but he goes when i heard uh you down there he said i didn't know if you were hurting people i didn't know i didn't he's like i had i just felt Like, I had to check. And he goes, I peered around the stairwell. He just said, I've never seen a human body doing what you were doing.

1:00:51And this is a MARSOC GWAT veteran who has seen it all in the Marine Corps. Has seen horrific shit. It was a really bad experience. What do you think it was? because, you know, people say you had a psychedelic experience, but you think it was something more than just a psychedelic hallucination per se. Yeah, I think it's what I told you. I think that when you dabble in psychedelics, there can be benefits. And I also think that there are, you are opening yourself up to a realm that we were never supposed to have access to spiritually and i think that you are naked in a world that you or i or nobody living today truly understands and with that comes

1:01:55I mean you're just you're at a vulnerable point things can access you and you can access them and from what I saw from watching your videos over the last couple of weeks your life has been different ever since it's been different alright it's been dark really yeah it gets better it's been a lot of supernatural things, things that I just, I mean, I can't even believe I'm saying, I talk about some of this stuff, but it's, it is real. And, uh, I don't really care what anybody thinks about me, but it has been supernatural things that have happened. It has been nightmares. It has been very odd coincidences, uh, synchronicities, um lots of that kind of stuff and you know what it's all done it is it has drawn me much much much closer to christ i heard you describe that some supernatural things that were going on in your physical environment but you know i think you one of the videos i was watching maybe a week ago you said that things were like falling off the walls in your house not in my house not in your house in other places your use of the word dark is really fascinating to me is the darkness because of the nightmares or is it because of your mental state or is it something else darkness is because of all of it together so i'll give you a i don't want to talk too long on this uh to be honest with you but i'll give you the example of the picture frames coming off the wall so i was in maine i did a podcast up there and i was at my in-law's house and I had been put on this.

1:03:45I mean, it's no secret. I had done some exorcisms now with two different priests who've also been spiritual mentors of mine. And I went up there and I kept having these nightmares, these reoccurring nightmares, different scenarios, but it would destroy my family. I'm sure you've had dreams like this. You wake up and it takes you a couple minutes to realize it was just a dream. Well, I kept having these. and what all this has done is drawn me further into Catholicism. I grew up Catholic, fell away from it. Now I'm back in because I think they're some of the only ones that have an understanding of this realm.

1:04:26And I've been thinking about having this bishop on from the Catholic Church. And I had had this dream where he kept uh kind of like we were about to do the podcast and he kept like sending me these like cryptic homosexual messages like he wanted to get with me or something this was in my dream and it was just making me furious and it made me hate the catholic church made me hate it I woke up from it. I was like, I don't want to be a part of this anymore. This is disgusting. Why, you know, it was vivid dream. And, uh, but it was all, yeah, I never met him and I still have never met him. And, and, but I, I just kept getting, you know, it was, it was vivid.

1:05:17It was like, what we're coming here to do the podcast to talk about the, so I wake up, these priests had put me on this, uh, prayer regimen. It's called the Libra Christo method. And so you say it at 6 a.m., 12 p.m., 6 p.m. So I go out, I kind of shake it off, and I'm like, all right, I'm going to go out and I'm going to start my prayer regimen. And so I start the prayer regimen, and in the middle of it, I start the St. Michael's Prayer, and a picture frame flies off the wall. And I'm like, holy shit, all right, I just had this weird dream that makes me hate Catholicism. Now I'm doing this prayer and this picture frame flies off the wall.

1:05:59And then it's Sunday, so then I'm going to Mass. So I go to Mass and I'm with this guy, we'll call him Hendo. And he protects me, he protects my family, and he's turned into a spiritual mentor of mine and a good friend. And we're going to Mass together. And I'm telling him about these things that are happening. and he knows all the prior stuff, whole bunch of stuff that did happen prior to this too. And we get into mass and, and, uh, I go and I take communion and immediately after I took communion, I had an allergic reaction like immediately. And so this is all, I think we went to eight o 'clock mass.

1:06:45So this is all within about two hours from end of the dream to the prayer to now we're at mass, maybe 7 a.m. I don't know. So I go up, I take communion, come back, I'm kneeling down. My face feels like it's on fire. And he looks at me and he's like, well, he's like, what's wrong with you? And I'm like, is my face, is my face red? And he's like, yeah. He's like, your veins are like popping out in your forehead and you look like a tomato i'm like man my face feels like really hot i'm having a i think i'm having a reaction to communion and i mean this is like seconds after it's not even enough time for an allergic reaction to happen it happened seconds afterwards and so you know it's these weird and right before that i had told him we had we had got there a little early and i was like yeah it's so weird because these things seem to happen in like in sequences and i was like it's just like one after the next and then that'll happen for a while and then we went into mass and bam there it is that kind of stuff has been happening to me for three months now ever since that ever since that i guess the outstanding question i have is there's this experience you had three months ago there's these experiences you've had thereafter and like what is i guess the audience will be thinking like what is the conclusion of this it's really interesting because i've done i've been a huge proponent for the psychedelic community and and all the good that it's done but the minute you do something and you say something negative about it pisses everybody off.

1:08:30They don't want you to talk about it. How dare you? There's two sides to it. And people need to know that. You know what I mean? And make their own decisions. It's not all good. I just prove that. And do I know what it is? No. Do I know for certain that it came from psychedelics? I'm not saying that it did come from psychedelics. That seemed to be the trigger point, but it kind of appears to me like I'm the only one that's willing to talk about both sides because people are really upset, you know, that I'm talking about what happened to me, my journey. And like I said, I think that it opens you up to a forbidden realm that we maybe we shouldn't have access to.

1:09:19I mean, a lot of people say, you know, it lifts the veil. Yeah, it lifts the veil. All right. But maybe we have that veil over us for a reason. This is something that I've made for you. I realized that the Diary of a Sea audience are strivers, whether it's in business or health, we all have big goals that we want to accomplish. And one of the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny small steps and we call this in our team the one percent and actually this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here so what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we've made these one percent diaries and we released these last year and they all sold out so I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back but also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary.

1:10:17So now we have a better range for you. So if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again. And you can get yours at thediary.com. And if you want the link, the link is in the description below. Subsequently, you've had several exorcisms, which you've talked about over on your show. What is an exorcism? Because many of us only know a movie called The Exorcist. And that's the only sort of reference point for an exorcism. But from what I understand, it's a priest that does a sort of a process on you with the intent of removing something that is demonic.

1:10:56Is that broadly what happens? Yeah. The movies, you know, are very extreme in comparison to what I've been through. I didn't, you know, do a backwards spider crawl up a wall or anything even close to that. And I don't really want to go too far into it because I'm still in this process. To my knowledge, there are two types. There are possession, which is where you're not really in control of your body and your mind. And then there is oppression, which is things start happening around you. And it could be all the things that we just talked about. It could be financial. It could be health. It could be trying to destroy your family.

1:11:46It could be trying to destroy your faith. It could be all of that, you know, but it's not, but you're still in control of your mind and your body. And so from the priests that I've talked to, they all think that it is oppression, oppression, not possession. What is it? I mean, it's a series of prayers. They try to figure out what it is. I don't know exactly everything that they're doing. Some of them have been done in Latin. Some of them have been done in English. One of the commonalities seemed to be, hey, we're going to do a series of these. and we'll want to see if we get any reactions to certain prayers or certain parts of prayers.

1:12:34And if we do see a reaction to a certain part, then we can eliminate certain things and kind of dial in on what we think exactly is going on. And you are right in the middle of this at the moment. Yeah. How has it been for your family, for Katie? I mean, it's been rough. Brilliant. Yeah. I mean, imagine coming home to your wife and kids and saying, you know, just being honest, I just got done with my fifth exorcism today. And then thinking about the things that are going through their head. Because, you know, you think about, you know, what goes through your head? Exactly what you said, the movies.

1:13:14you know what is he what like is he in control of his own mind what is going to happen and then i have the same questions how bad is this going to get what's going to happen next is this is this is this ever going to go away is this just mine to carry for the rest of my life what does my wife think what does she think when she goes to bed next to me every night does she think i'm i'm a crazy person i was just imagining my fiance's like she actually i think it's probably one of the first time she's ever been here, but she just happens to be here today. She's in one of the other rooms. And I was just thinking, I was imagining coming home and saying that to her.

1:13:48She is very spiritual. She's very religious as well. So I imagine she might pray for me. I imagine she'd want to pray for me. Well, then you have an amazing woman, and so do I. And she's been with me every step of the way. She's been there for some of them. She's seen some of the things happen, but it's been tough. It's been really tough. And you know what's interesting, too, is when I started talking about this, you feel like you're alone and you're crazy. And I never really have cared what other people think about me, but this is pretty personal stuff. But especially with the psychedelics thing, I had extremely influential military figures, SEALs, SF guys, Delta, like all these guys have reached out and said, man, I thought I was the only one that had that kind of an experience.

1:14:44And they're telling me how brave I am for talking about it, you know, but I guess what I'm saying is I'm not the only one, you know, that this stuff happens to. I guess I'm just the only one that decided to articulate it. How are you? I'm good. Yeah? Yeah. I was going, you know, there is a positive to all of this. And, you know, for me, are you a Christian? It's a good question. I was raised Christian in a very, very Christian household. So, you know, to some degree, it's somewhat in your bones. I think at like 18, 19, I started having lots of questions. and then I became, I was one of those people in the sort of new atheist movement, they called it, that got really interested in reading all the Richard Dawkins books.

1:15:30And I went through that phase where I just wanted to argue with everybody because I was trying to form my own opinion. And I came out of that and stopped caring. And now I find myself in a place that I would describe as agnostic, but curious. And that curiosity, I think maybe from doing this podcast, frankly, and interviewing some of the people that I have, has continued to develop. So I find myself in a place where I think it would be, extremely arrogant for me to say that I didn't think there was something more, but I couldn't say what it was. I couldn't define it like some people are able to define it, like the Christian apologist, like Wes Huff can define it.

1:16:08I can't define what that means for me. Well, don't you think it's interesting that all these people keep coming on your podcast and bringing this stuff up? People that maybe you would never expect, like your most recent one? Andrew Huberman. Yeah. No, it is fascinating. It is truly fascinating. That's what started happening to me. Oh, on your show? Yeah. That's where the seed was planted. You know, I grew up, like I said, I grew up Catholic, but that's what started happening to me is all these people started coming on and they would, and it was fascinating to me to hear their journey, but I didn't, you know, I was like you on the fence.

1:16:42You got baptized quite recently. Yeah. I can't remember what year. 2024, I think it was. Yeah. On Easter. Yeah. It's just funny, you know, how it works. So where I was going, you know, with all this stuff that's happening and it's scary, but it gets less scary and less scary. And, you know, what it is doing is it's strengthening my faith and my wife's faith in Christ because the things that are happening are just undeniable. you said to tucker carlson in july i'm going through a crazy spiritual transformation right now it must be somewhat difficult to share this with with the world like you know for lots of different reasons because it's a it's a subjective experience so to sort of communicate that publicly you i could see as you were explaining it like you you're well aware that people will think it's like it's what's he talking about or some whatever like when you deliver your truth you also acknowledge as you're saying it some people will think i'm just saying but you just have to take my word for it so it's not easy to make that decision to share it what what inspired that what inspired your decision to come out and tell your audience very publicly you're going through this a couple reasons one is we get access to a lot of people that nobody gets access to you know and and And we get a lot of time with them.

1:18:16I ask them on my podcast. I just ask the questions, you know, that I'm genuinely curious and for myself. And on top of that, I feel like it's kind of maybe my responsibility or maybe I'm supposed to do that, you know, because I do have one of the biggest podcasts in the world. And I'm just a normal guy. And I think a lot of people realize that about me. And because I get the access to the people that I get access to, you know, I think it's important that I ask those kind of questions. You know, one thing that came out of this, you know, for me is I just, I've never, some of these things, some of these supernatural type things happened the night before I had Cardinal Burke on.

1:18:59And he is? Very high up in the Catholic Church. And so one thing I decided I wanted to do is because I got way more involved in politics than I wanted to be. And now I think pretty much all of them are just lying pieces of shit. And so I don't really want to do it anymore. Well, that leaves a huge gap in my content. And I'm not saying I will never do it again, but it's unlikely. So now I have this gap that's opened, and I am obviously very interested in Christianity now. And I've read maybe half the Bible, maybe a little bit more, understand maybe 5%, 10 % of what I've read. So what I want to do is, you know, just like I was saying, I think I'm supposed to ask these questions.

1:19:44And I get access to people that almost nobody gets access to. And so I want to do a series breaking down every single book in the Bible on my podcast. And it'll take several years, you know, to get through it all. But right when we kicked it off with Cardinal Burke the night before, all these wild supernatural things, you know, started happening the night before. And so to me, that's a sign like, yeah, I am supposed to be doing this. Were those the supernatural things we talked about before? Or is this lots of other different set? The timing. You cannot make the timing up. And have supernatural things ever happened to you before that experience you had three months ago?

1:20:33Not like that. Not like this. This is the spiritual realm playing out in real time. A battle over my soul. A battle over your soul? Yeah. And this is why you have to pray several times a day, is to, I'm assuming, to reinforce which side of that battle is winning? It is to release oppression. And you don't know how long you're going to have to do that for or how long this is going to take? No idea. Really? Do you know when you'll know that it's that battle for your soul has been won? All I'm told is that you will just, you'll know. You will know. It will be very apparent. Is it difficult to be you right now?

1:21:21Yeah. I know what this is. for me. And now that I know what it is now, you know, we were talking about responsibility earlier. Now that I know what this is, this is a battle between good and evil. Now I, I'm no longer on the fence. I can't pretend that I don't know. So for example, I've already had advertisers who have been with me for years. We just had a meeting on how to deepen the relationship with this one particular advertiser because they've been with me for so long and they just canceled because they don't advertise on faith-based content. This is a life insurance company who wants to get to people who give a shit about their wife and their kids so that if something goes wrong, their wife and kids are taken care of.

1:22:15Now, I'm sorry, what fucking audience are you're trying to reach people that give a shit about their families and you don't want to advertise on faith-based content, they are maybe the only ones that put family at the very top of the priority list. And you're going to cancel when I get farther into that? How do you feel about that decision? What do you think that is? I think it is a influence to try to get me to not talk about it. Just like the series of events that happened the night before I had Cardinal Burke on. You think it's part of the battle for yourself? I think that my platform, as well as yours, has a lot of power.

1:22:58And when you have the ability to reach more people than you and I could ever count in a lifetime, and you're leading people to that book, it It pisses a lot of entities off. It pisses a lot of people off. There's no more pretending for me. Like, I know what this is. So I have to make a decision, you know, because I do believe in heaven and hell. And so if I say, we can't do the Bible series anymore because we're going to lose advertisers.

1:23:35I can't take any of that money with me after this is over anyways. It sucks. I have goals. I'm sure you have goals. I think me and you have both probably seen a pattern in the guests we've interviewed. You focused a lot on life stories. One of the remarkable things I notice in the life stories often when I'm asked, what is the pattern of these successful people? I always cite that in their stories, there is a moment when they made a decision that was against their near-term incentives. And often, I mean, this could be, you know, I think about Jimmy Carr. He had a great job and he went to do jokes in pubs for like five or ten years and got paid nothing for it.

1:24:12Or Darren Brown, one of the world's great illusionists who had a great job, but went and did card tables in Bristol for 10 years because that was his thing. You look at these moments in their life, you go, only an idiot would have done that at that moment. But consistently what it leads to is a better place. And I think when you were saying, you know, there's a short-term sacrifice potentially to pursue living more in alignment. I don't know, the conversations I've had is every great person that I've interviewed has got that in their story. Sometimes several times. they've all walked away from something that other sane humans might not have because of the strength of the incentive in the pursuit of alignment with themselves yes there's some near-term turbulence but consistently like living out of alignment is i think a much worse long-term place to be it's like you're right do you know what i mean we kind of talked about it even with like booking guests on the podcast like yeah i could have insert famous celebrity person on, but then I'm, I'm incrementally swaying away from my own like alignment.

1:25:12And, you know, in the near term, I might get a couple more subs, but over the long time I have a life I hate. Exactly. You know, you know, exactly. You become part of the herd. It's easy to be part of the herd. What is your goal now? Is there a central goal that you sort of orientate yourself towards? In podcasting? In podcasting with your businesses? is in podcasting you know i think it's a couple of things i think it's you know we already talked about this the bible but i think that you know your team actually sent me a similar question before we got here and i thought a lot about it you know because it always changes but there's one commonality i think in my in my show and i just don't want people to be afraid to ask questions and I don't want people to be so tribal.

1:26:06I have a pretty open mind, you know, regardless of what people think about me. I'll talk to both. So I've had Ro Khanna on several times and Cenk Uygur is a friend of mine, you know, Tucker Carlson's a friend of mine. And so I'm open to all ideas. I'm able to say I've made a mistake. I'm able to hold myself accountable, you know, for things. And I've publicly made statements saying that I messed up, saying that I've put out misinformation unknowingly, you know, and I have to correct the record because I just, I really pride myself on integrity and we don't see very many people left holding themselves accountable.

1:26:47And so I, you know, a couple through my show, I just, I want to show that you can ask questions and take a stand for what you believe in and maybe the repercussions that you have come up with it in your head aren't going to be near as severe as is is what you what you might think they're going to be you know they say courage is contagious and i think that this country needs i think the people in this country need courage and so i want to show like you can like talk about these things and ask questions and it's going to be okay man it's going to be just fine yeah you might get a little bit of hate but like i'm i'm still here and i've covered some of the most controversial shit on the planet you know i think that's really important and what does it what does a good life mean to you these days a good life to me is just create memories with my wife and kids i think we're both in very good financial situations and I don't know where you came from, but I didn't come from money.

1:27:54And what I've realized is you hear it and nobody's going to believe me when I say it, but you just can't buy peace and you can't buy happiness. You have to create it yourself and you're not going to create it with money. Yep, it will take some financial stress off, but it brings a whole other side of stress And so you have to do what you love and you have to live in the moment as much as you can and create as many memories with the people that you love as possible. And, you know, so it's made me, I wouldn't say back off my business because I'm a workaholic. I know you are too, but you have to work smarter and look for the power plays.

1:28:42and sometimes no is the is the best business decision you could make not because it was a bad deal because it wasn't the right deal does that make sense smarter decisions it's something a narrative that i hear from from fathers and mothers much more than anybody else because now they really do have to think deeply about priorities whereas you know i'm yet to have children i hope we'll have i will have children soon but um but uh right now my life is probably a little bit more selfish in that regard than yours is because the competition for my time is my business and then you know my partner my fiance but you love your business i love it there's nothing else you'd rather be doing so for whatever it's worth i i think you're doing the right time the right thing the time for you to build is now because when you do have kids and you do realize how fast they grow when you look, you know, when your kid's born.

1:29:39And then six months you look back and you're like, holy shit. Like, he was this big and now he's this big. And now he's this big five years later. And you're like, I mean, it makes me tear up right now. It's like, where did it go? Where did the time go? So build, man. Build it as big as you can get it right now. look for the smart deals and then I hope you know I hope you do get the opportunity to raise kids but business can destroy a family you gotta be careful of that why is that the warning that you give me is that from experience and what you said you almost tear up thinking about the speed of growth of your son why you only get one shot at this you're everything to them And if you're not there, somebody else will be everything to them.

1:30:40Where is this coming from, Sean? You can see it sometimes. It's a battle. I mean, it's a battle, you know, for me.

1:30:53And so the time, you know, it's always, you know, you hear people complain about it and try to find it all the time. What is the right balance? How do you do the balance?

1:31:06I don't know. I do the best I can to figure it out, but...

1:31:19You can see how much time they want to spend with you, and all the phone calls and all the business deals and, you know, the shit that seems so important because it's going to put you at the next level, you know. And you're probably like me. Your team's like, holy shit, Stephen's got to pivot and we got to get the shit done in 12 hours, you know. And it's those kind of phone calls, you know, like, hey, this guy went on this. We're going to shift this podcast to this day, put this one in, this thing hit, you know, it's a chessboard. You know what I mean? and that's a 24-hour-a-day business to be the best.

1:32:06You're always switched on. Even when you're not trying to be switched on, you're switched on. Pistons are firing in your brain all the fucking time. And you got your two-year-old over here that just wants to play trains with you. And you can't get in the mode. You can sit there and push a toy train around, but they know when you're there and when you're not there. Have you got regrets in this regard? Is it guilt? What is the emotion? Yeah, there's some guilt. With that being said, I'm very close with my kids, but I could be closer. And that really matters to you, doesn't it? It takes a lot for me to leave home to come do stuff like this.

1:33:01Incredibly admirable, you know.

1:33:06And dare I say that even, you know, I think about all the gifts my parents gave me by demonstrating the values of work and striving and overcoming. And I think generally, like some of the gifts that I look back on as a young kid where we didn't come from money, some of the things that I'm most thankful to my parents of is just, it's nothing they said. It's not that they pushed the trains around with me. It's like the fundamental lessons they gave me about life by vicariously watching how they conducted themselves. And one of the things I think about with my mum is just like, she never complained.

1:33:49She just worked all the time for us, to make sure that we were good. And to the point that at one point she started sleeping on this bag of rice in the back of her little corner shop. And she never complained. And through that she taught me the lesson of hard work and striving. And there's no possibility that I'd be sat here now with a life that I love, doing something that I love. with a perspective that has been helpful for me in terms of dealing with hardship and all those things, if I hadn't watched her through her absence teach me this lesson. So I sometimes, you know, all I say that to say that the nature of the absence I think also matters.

1:34:30You know? Because that's going to be the story. I think for a lot of, that was the story for me. It's like, where was my mum? My mum and my dad, they were out working for me. But it's a trade. It's a trade. It's a trade. Yeah, it's a trade. Because am I as close to them as I might have been otherwise? No. But you're talking about necessity. And what we're talking about is abundance. Yeah, true. And there's a difference. So what's your conclusion there? Is there a conclusion? Is there an action to take? I'm still figuring it out. But the conclusion is look for the power plays. look for things that make sense hold off for the right deals only do what you really believe in the quick money is all bullshit like my newest business glacier i didn't know that was going to come but i knew something big was going to come that made sense and i've turned down so many opportunities because i just i didn't feel like it was me and then this came along and it was just me solving my own problem and it's a privacy and digital security mobile app what does it do we made the simplest phone privacy app of that's out there it's got a vpn it's got secure dns and it has burner numbers you walk around every day you have all these apps these apps are sucking information out of your phone they're pushing it to data brokers that's being sold to who the hell knows who.

1:36:06I mean, I just had Byron Tau on. He thinks that the Iranians attacked a base by buying data from a data broker and then attacked a U.S. base because of it. Basically tapping into soldiers' phones just through everyday data broker marketing shit. And so what the secure DNS is, is it blocks all that from getting sucked out of your phone. The VPN is great, but that's not the focus. The real win here is the secure DNS. and the burner numbers. I mean, now you can hand out burner numbers. Yeah, here, you can get a hold of me on this burner number. When that burner, can you feel like that burner number's been abused?

1:36:42You just hit the button, it goes away. They can never contact you again and you buy another one. What a cool product and very well aligned. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Look, for me, I'm not going to do two podcasts a week forever. I love to do this. Two a week, it's too much for me and my family. especially traveling around and doing foreign countries and this other stuff. Like I have to slim it down. So eventually I'm going to go to one a week and I've been given this platform and I want to start businesses that I truly believe in that solves a real problem because I love business. I love, you know, I also think about the other side.

1:37:28Like, well, what if I was, what if I was solely a dad and husband and I didn't get any of the phone calls and I wasn't able to, I didn't have a creative outlet. I love the creativity of business and creating your way on how to win. You know, I mean, I think a lot of people hit a roadblock and like, oh shit, didn't work. There's always another way. There's always another way to win, you know, and that's, that's one of the things that I took. And one of the positive things that I took from my days at contracting for CIA and being a Navy seals there is always a way to win but you have to you have to be creative enough to find all the different avenues to the goal that you want to get and reverse engineer that and dare i say have a bit of persistence yeah a lot of persistence it's an education you know and you get smarter along the way so in a long way i think that's my conclusion we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for.

1:38:27And the question left for you is, what is love? What is love?

1:38:37The first thing that comes to mind is love is what you're willing to die for. And what are you willing to die for? My family. Sean, thank you. Thank you for being an inspiration for us podcasters. We've learned so much from what you do. I think the big lesson that I've taken from you is actually just around kind of what we talked about earlier on is you're such a high integrity person that lives with such great alignment to what you believe. You do things your way. And that's why I think, you know, people like you, I admire so much because in the world we live in, it's so easy to copy and follow and, you know, all those kinds of things.

1:39:14But there are some people I look out there and I go, you know, that person's doing it their way. I know who they are because what they're producing is so n of one there's only one of them and that and so that's those are the people that i have the most respect for as a sort of a podcasting peer and you're certainly one of them and you know as well with the subject matter we talked about you being in pursuit of your truth and your alignment even in spite of there being obvious costs like losing advertisers or what people might think if again it's a it's a demonstration of your integrity as a man and and then lastly your um real focus on family being at the heart of it and seeing the emotion in your face as you describe this sort of battle that I know a lot of my audience have every single day in their own lives between ambition and goals and these types of things.

1:39:57But then the love of family and kids and all those things is another wonderful reminder for me at this point in my life where I feel like I'm about to tussle with the same situation. So thank you for doing all that you do. I'm a great fan of yours, both as a fellow creator and podcaster, but also as a man and the service for the country as well as something that is of great admiration. So thank you, Sean. Thank you. I was really excited to meet you. Great job with what you're doing. Thank you so much. Thank you.

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