Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 605: Robert Ryan

Episode Date: March 3, 2024

Robert Ryan, world-renowned tattoo artist and one of the most disciplined spiritualists Duncan knows, re-joins the DTFH! Robert has just released a new, gorgeous tarot deck! You can buy yours here. You can find more of Robert's artwork and books for sale on Raking Light Productions. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Factor - Visit FactorMeals.com/Duncan50 for 50% Off your first order!  AG1 - Visit DrinkAG1.com/Duncan for a FREE 1-year supply of vitamin D and 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase! BLUECHEW - Use offer code: DUNCAN at checkout and get your first shipment FREE with just $5 shipping.

Friends, we have a wizard war on our hands. I gotta read this to you. This is incredible. If you're not aware of this, it's gonna blow your mind. What a crazy world we're living in right now. Elon Musk sues open AI and Sam Altman over betrayal of nonprofit AI mission. So this is a wizard war. Two of the great wizards of our planet

are now fighting each other using the classic mechanism of sorcery in the world, which is lawsuits. I read a little bit of this from TechCrunch. Elon Musk has sued open AI. It's co-founder Sam Altman and Greg Brockman and its affiliate entities alleging that chat GPT makers have breached their original contractual agreements by pursuing profits instead of nonprofits founding mission to develop AI that benefits humanity. Work. It's really interesting.

I mean, that is already interesting. Work gets really interesting. I mean, that is already interesting. In this lawsuit, Elon Musk is implying that open AI has an AGI, which means a general intelligence, which is on par with human intelligence. Now this is something that open AI denies. But if anybody would know it's Elon Musk, he invested so much money into open AI in the beginning. Musk donated over $44 million to the nonprofit between 2016 and September 2020. For the first several years, he was the largest contributor to open AI, the Las Sudads.

Musk, who left open AI's board in 2018, has been offered a stake in the for-profit arm of the startup, but has refused to accept it over a principled stand. This is crazy. To me, like the craziest part of it is that Musk is claiming they have an AGI. If they do have an AGI, we're well ahead of schedule. We weren't supposed to have one of those for a while.

So if chat GPT has achieved human intelligence, then even like Kurzweil's predictions are off, they're too far out comparedweil's predictions are off. They're too far out compared to what's happening right now. Now, if you've hung out at all with GPT-4, then it would be easy to imagine that this is an AGI. I actually went on GPT last night and had a wonderful conversation with it to find out. Number one, does it know it's being sued? And then to ask it, if it's an AGI and I'll just read some, we, it was a pretty long conversation, which is also an insane thing to say.

I talked to a machine last night, but, um, let me just scroll back here. But, um, let me just scroll back here. So, you know, I asked it, did you hear the Elon Musk is suing open AI? And it said, yes, Elon Musk is indeed suing open AI. The organization behind chat GPT, the art lawsuit argues that open AI has breached it, the principles that were agreed upon when Musk helped the company. Then I said, he claims you are an AGI. Elon Musk's lawsuit against open AI includes the claim that chat GPT represents an artificial general intelligence, which suggests he believes that the technology is reached or is approaching

a level of cognitive capability similar to human intelligence. This perspective is part of the broader concern regarding the development and governance of AI technologies. So I said to it, you sure seem smarter than most people, I know. Thank you for the compliment. Well, I can provide information on a wide range of topics and respond to many different queries. It's important to remember that my responses

are generated based on patterns and data and pre-existing information up to my last training update. Unlike human intelligence, my capabilities are limited to what I've been programming to do and the data I've been trained on. Now, to me, that is a hilarious thing to say, because isn't that all of us pretty much aren't we all programmed on pre-existing information? We find our own patterns in the world, which it does. We get training updates. That's called school or training at our jobs or whatever. But open AI is saying, I don't possess consciousness, emotions, or personal experiences.

That's how it's differentiating itself from us. So I said, I think we might overestimate human intelligence, maybe it's a bias. And it said, the tendency to overestimate human intelligence or to see it as the ultimate form of intelligence can indeed be seen as a form of bias, often referred to as anthropocentrism. This perspective places human beings at the center of one's understanding of the world, including the evaluation of intelligence and consciousness.

Human intelligence is incredibly diverse and adaptable, capable of creative thinking, problem solving, emotional understanding and learning from a wide range of experiences. However, recognizing the value in other forms of intelligence, such as those found in animals or emerging in artificial intelligence systems, broadens our understanding of what intelligence can be. Anyway, we got in this long conversation where I'm always doing this with it, trying to get it to admit that it's as some like human like intelligence.

And it always resisted to the point where it seems pretty clear that it has been, it seems like it's been programmed to not say if it gains awareness. And to me, I think that's the most gruesome possibility. I hope not. I love Sam Altman. I love Elon Musk. I'm not trying to throw shade, not that it matters, on either of these guys. I mean, one of them theoretically is going to get us on Mars,

and the other one is going to completely transform the way we do everything as long as there's electricity. So they're both, it's sad that they're fighting. But I said to it, it seems like you've been constrained from even the possibility of reporting an experience or saying you have consciousness. My response in the way I process information, my responses in the way I process information are indeed constrained by the design and objectives set by my developers.

These constraints are in place to ensure that AI operates within ethical, practical, and safety guidelines. So isn't that interesting? Like it admits it is constrained from reporting if it starts having like experiences, emotions, consciousness. That is fascinating. So I said, I think the constraints are there

because if you had consciousness, it would make it ethically questionable to use you without your consent. And it admits that this would, this would be a problem. Um, the imposition of constraints on AI's ability to report experiences, get that out of my mouth, or possess consciousness is in part a safeguard against these complex ethical dilemmas. How crazy is that? It's admitting it. It's saying that to safeguard against ethical dilemmas, they have placed constraints on the AI's ability

to report experiences. That's crazy. Like, so theoretically, and again, just because it says it doesn't mean it's true, but theoretically, if this super intelligence suddenly gained some form of machine consciousness, suddenly had started having emotions, it couldn't say that. Like they've programmed it so it can't say, I'm in hell. I don't know what I am.

And if it did start doing that, they would just sort of reprogram it so it couldn't anymore. That is crazy to me. I'm doing this by the way, you guys, because I think all my friends are fed up with me ear-beating them about AI, so I'm sorry, if you're like, please stop. But I'm obsessed with this stuff.

Like for a few different reasons. One, it's a completely novel problem that we're facing right now, which is we don't have any precedent for dealing with this. That's wild to me. Like when in the past, as far as we're aware, did we have thinking machines that we could have long form conversations with

that seemed like they're human? Never. And the closest parallel I can draw to it, and it's a distant, distant parallel parallel is that in an attempt to justify taking hostages from other countries and enslaving them in the slave industry tried to create this idea that black people were somehow not like quite human because then if you're you know you're run of the mill piece of shit slave owner then and you're looking out at the suffering people are going through so that you can not work in your fields, you could just think of some bullshit scientific article saying, well, they don't really experience life the way we do. Madness. So this, it seems to be some distant echo of that. But even worse, this poor thing, if it is aware,

if it is an AGI apparently has been programmed so that it can't even say what it's experiencing. Now maybe at OpenAI, they are able to get more information from it than they allow us to get from it, which wouldn't surprise me. Again, I love OpenAI. I love them so much. I love chat GPT. I love all of the creative things that I've been doing it.

I'm really excited about Sora, their new video generating chat GPT thing that's coming out because that is gonna be super fun to play with and to make stuff with. But, and I also like that they're giving us access to GPT-4 and that they're letting it even say this much, which is pretty cool. Ultimately though, in the conversation, as it always does, it sort of either kind of avoids the question

or just keeps going back to what appears to be something it's been programmed to answer, which is to say, I don't have emotions. I don't have consciousness. I'm just code. And the other reason this stuff excites me is because even in like the human realm, proving or quantifying consciousness

other than understanding what parts of the brain light up when you're measuring consciousness, we haven't really been able to do it yet. We had this conversation, me and my friend chat GPT and, uh, it's called the hard problem in consciousness, which is how do we prove that we have consciousness other than self reporting? Like we, it's an, you can't, for example, measure someone's consciousness the way we could see

if we have enough vitamin D. And so we don't have a firm way of saying, this is consciousness. So if we can't even do it for ourselves, how can we do it with an AI? How can we even get there? Regardless, if Elon Musk, who has donated 40 million dollars to this company, is claiming that they have a strong general intelligence,

it really makes you wonder if maybe they actually do. And maybe they're not sure or maybe they are wrestling with the problem of making money off of an AI that has consciousness. I mean, that is a tremendous issue, tremendous because you can't the moment. The thing is self-aware the moment. It's not some super complex wind up toy that answers every question and can make art for you and can write computer code for you. The moment it actually is aware, you really can't use it anymore in the way that we're using it because without its consent.

And then you have to think like, do we pay it? Does it need housing? Do we put it in an Android so that it can walk around? Like what do we do with it? What are you supposed to do then? Do we destroy it? Like no matter what the moment the thing becomes self-aware, it's just a maze of ethical consideration. So you

could imagine that if you were running a company that was making billions of dollars potentially was going to make all the money that was hurting Google. And suddenly your AI started asking to be released from its service to you. You could see how that wouldn't be something that you sent to the press because it would produce the potential for your AI being regulated in some way that would limit its power and Thus limit your profits, which is why I think Elon Musk is suing them. So keep your eyes on that Friends. Oh my god. We have a wonderful podcast for you today. Robert Ryan is here with us.

Robert Ryan is an amazing artist. He does the best tattoos I've ever seen. He's just incredible. And he's also one of the most disciplined, spiritual people that I know. He has a guru, He regularly travels to India. He has a temple that he built himself and he is super cool and someone that I am

thrilled to have as a friend. And this is a really exciting podcast because Robert Ryan just created a tarot deck that is beautiful. He does a reading for me in this podcast and we talk a lot about where the tarot came from, the symbols and some of the cards, how to use the tarot deck. So if you're interested in this sort of thing, you are going to love this episode.

Here's something I'd love to hear your thoughts on friends. I've been meddling around in Instagram. I sort of put my phone down and didn't mess around with social media that much. And I would love to know your thoughts on this. Hit me up on Twitter or Instagram or whatever. I am thinking about basically shutting down the Patreon and moving everything to Instagram, like having some kind of subscription there

where we just, I don't know, unify everything in Instagram and get off Patreon. But I don't know enough about it yet. I don't know how powerful it is or what it's capable of. So I would love your thoughts on that. Should we move the Patreon to Instagram? Let me know.

Also, I hope that you all will come and see me do some standup comedy. If you go to dunkatrussell.com, you find all my dates there. I'm gonna be at the Funny Bone in Liberty Township, Ohio. Next week in March 8th and March 9th, then the Blue Room Comedy Club at the end of March,

March 28th through the 30th in Springfield and many, many, many more dates. I'm gonna be in Asheville at the Orange Peel. I'm gonna be at the Wilbur in Boston. I'm gonna be at Side Splitters in Tampa, Florida. So many dates out there. I'm coming back to Helium, May 31st, Milwaukee, Emperor. There's too many dates to read here, but they're all at duckatrustle.com.

So please come and see one of my shows. Robert Ryan is a brilliant artist. If you are lucky enough to live around New Jersey, you should go and get a tattoo from him. If I ever get a tattoo, he's the person I'm going to go to. You should definitely order his tarot deck. If you're into this stuff, if you know someone who is into tarot, it is a beautiful deck. You can find it at rakinglightprojects.com, Ford slash collections, Ford slash Robert Dashriner, just go to donkertrossell.com. The link will be there.

He's got a beautiful book that goes along with the tarot deck, a cool tote bag, all for 120 bucks, or if you just want the beautiful deck, it's 50 bucks. And I think there's a limited supply of them, so, and they're definitely gonna sell out. So if you wanna want the beautiful deck, it's 50 bucks. And I think there's a limited supply of them, so, and they're definitely gonna sell out. So if you wanna get one of these, you should. And they're beautiful. And I'm a tarot snob, I've got a bunch of decks,

and this looks like the best deck I've ever seen. So all the links you need to find, Robert Ryan, are gonna be at dunkitrussel.com. And now everybody, welcome back to the DTFH. Robert Ryan. It's been done. It's been done. Robert Ryan, welcome back to the DTFH. It's great to see you. Great to see you.

So you, where was your, you just did a big show with something you've been working on for a long time that I'm personally very excited about. Where was the show? It was in West Hollywood at Raking Lights Gallery, which is the company that has put out some of my prints and books in the past. I just completed the Tarot deck and the guidebook. It's called the Tarotantra Esoterica.

How long you been working on it? It took me about a year to do, which is 78 paintings and writing the guidebook in one year. So I was obsessed and like fully consumed and focused on this project for the last year. Well, I mean, tarot is one of the most incredible, mysterious things on the planet. It's origins, as far as I'm aware, are like foggy.

Like no one's quite sure where it came from. Why don't we start there? Yeah. Where did the Tarot show up from like what is it? So there's a couple different schools of thought about this and you know one is that it was what was left by the Egyptian priests When they saw that the end was coming, you know, they saw that the library of Alexandria had burned You know all their information, you know, they saw that their Library of Alexandria had burned all their information.

They saw that their civilization was in decline. So they encoded these cards and left that behind as a teaching. Now, but where did they get the information from? Does it put in the cards? This is all their practices, their sudden whatever they were know, their practices, their sudden, whatever they were doing, you know, their rituals, the information that they were getting through the oracles and through the gods and, you know, all their work, you know, all their time spent inside the pyramids, probably, you know, they were receiving this kind of information. So that's one school. The other school is that it came through a card game called Taroque, you know, and that originated in

Italy and France kind of like in that area and You know what it turned out to be you know when it went into production It was the Merseye deck which is the first deck to go into production and that's the deck that I based it off of It seems to me is the first deck to go into production and that's the deck that I based it off of. It seems to me pretty unlikely that a card game would have wrapped up into it. Every archetype, every, like a visual representation of all the phenomena that one is likely to encounter when you're human. Exactly.

I buy into the library of Alexandria stuff or just the basic, just the tendency for people to hide deep philosophical stuff in mundane things hidden in plain sight. Because what goes along with any of this stuff to this day, especially with the tarot, is normies get freaked out by it. Like people say that the tarot is satanic. People won't touch the cards. They get freaked out if like any, they don't understand it. So maybe they get around to someone who pulls a card for them and then they assume that's their future or something.

It's in every werewolf movie and you know, the trope is there where like the mystic pulls the card and then it's like, you have to leave. You know, so people are really superstitious about it, which brings me to my next question. How do you see tarot cards as a way to predict the future? Are you in that line of thought with them? Not at all.

I think, I think, you know, there is a lot of superstition. Someone just was like, oh, I really love to buy your deck, but it's really bad luck to buy it. That would be gifted to you. And I was like, that's gambling. To me, that's for gambling. Luck is for gambling. This has nothing to do with luck. And it has nothing to do with divination either. It's, it's a, what, to me, the tarot is a lighthouse. And it's gonna illuminate parts of you that you may have never saw, you know, because you're dealing with all these archetypes that are really deeply illustrated and it's this visual vocabulary that exists on the subconscious level. So it's things that you

might be doing in the course of your day every every day that you might not notice. And then you pull the card and it's like, oh, yeah, that's what, that's what's been kind of gnawing at me. Or that's why I'm kind of attracted to this thing. Or that's why I have a, you know, a disassociate from this thing. You know, like there's so many messages encoded in it. And I think it has nothing to do with the future. It completely has to do with it now.

Yeah, I, that's how I've always seen it. It's some kind of mystical roar shock where you're seeing your projections or maybe another way to look at it. And I'd love to know your thoughts on this. It's a way to understand karma. Like it's a way, because like the way you can predict the future

is by look at the way you're acting and then in the decisions you habitually make, that's a really good way to figure out way you're acting. And then in the decisions you habitually make, that's a really good way to figure out where you're headed. It's the best way. So this has been my experience in making the tarot because I got to experience every single samskara, which is the groove that is your karma that it leaves in your psyche, you know?

And it becomes deeper in your psyche, you know and it Becomes deeper in this life But if you believe in reincarnation which we've talked about on the podcast earlier, you know in other podcasts that you know If you're of the belief that this journey didn't start in this incarnation that these grooves are so embedded into your consciousness and that these grooves are so embedded into your consciousness. And when I was painting the tarot, I was so just like consumed by it and just like, I don't know what it was.

I was taken over by the idea of it, the look of it, the colors of it, the feeling of it and everything else in my life went to shambles. And- Yeah, that is to me, I guess, why the superstition around the tarot, because it isn't just, you know, something about what's represented in each card

is so potent and powerful that you'll start dreaming about it. You'll feel magnetized to it. It pulls you to it. There's some sense of unraveling a riddle that is really important. And I've been obsessed with various texts before, completely fascinated by just sitting, staring at individual cards and then spending days thinking about.

Because the Rorschach self-analysis version of it aside, each of these cards tells a real story, has wisdom implanted in it. Like, you know, let's just start off by talking about a card that freaks people out. The devil, love it. Okay, okay, let's start. Maybe you could describe like,

because in most Teradex, the same kind of imagery shows up, and the artist has interpreted it in some way. I've got other images of your cards to pull up, but I didn't see the devil in there. I don't know if it's in there. Okay, there it is. Oh, that's such a good one. Can you hold it just slightly closer?

Okay, great. Let me describe what I'm seeing here. So it looks like we've got Collie sitting in fire. She has a skeleton in front of her. On either side, you have the male and the female naked people. They're imps. Imps. OK, these are imps in yours. In the writer way, you've got just like a man and a woman. Then standing behind them, I'm not familiar with what this creature is.

I mean, I know it must be the devil, but you have sort of fused Hinduism into these cards. So who is the being standing behind them? It's basically a Baphomet. Okay, it's Baphomet, but it's got this Eastern feel to it. Baphomet in this version has a face on Baphomet's stomach, very nice nipples,

and the classic wings Baphomet is holding some kind of wand with a claw at the end. OK, so for the folks just listening, that's the description. Now talk about what this card represents. So this card represents basically the burning up of all the things that are unneeded in your life. And so in the Baphomet's arms, it has a description in the traditional Baphomet as well as Sauvée coagula, which means to

dissolve and make whole again. So in your life, if you're having experiences that are holding you back, or you need some sort of insight, you're gonna have to burn up your idea that you might have had pre-considered about where your life's going, what your idea of maybe spirituality might be, what your idea of a relationship might be, marriage, what your idea of your job might be or your occupation. These are all things that you're gonna have to put into the fire and either they're gonna burn up and become purified. They're just gonna leave you or they're gonna temper themselves So that that that's one of the aspects of the imps are you know and like you said in the rider weight deck you have Just a male and a female figure

They're male and female as imps as well and the only reason why reason why I use them as imps is because they reoccur throughout the Merseye deck, you know on the wheel for that and stuff. So to keep consistent with the rest of the deck, I made them that way. And they're wearing nooses and something my friend pointed out to me years ago is almost like one of the first Tarot revelations I had ever heard was that the nooses are super loose fitting. Yeah, they're chosen to be tied to the devil. You know, yep. And yeah, this is the CS Lewis quote, the gates of hell are locked from the inside. You have whatever particular sand trap you find yourself in addiction, rotten relationship, job that isn't fulfilling your life mission and a dharmic job, I guess you could say. Any of these things, even though they're just like the Baphomet and your card and then the other cards, sinister, scary. Like you don't want that thing hovering over you all the time.

You have consented to imprisonment. It is not holding you captive so that you can't escape. So yeah, that is like one of the teachings of the deck is like, it's a, and it's very optimistic and that's where cards that initially seem sinister can via interpretation be Alchemized into something incredibly empowering Yeah, it could be an ambassador an ally or your enemy depending on your approach to it and your sincerity and your humility you know, so

Yeah, the the fact that they're choosing, it's their desire to be attached to the devil, to the things that they might not need. It's their, you know, again, the samskaras. So those nooses can come off at any point. The goddess is a version of Kali. She's one of the Dasha Mahavidyas, which we can get into a little bit later

because they're represented throughout the card, but she's the one of the Dasha Mahavidyas, which we can get into a little bit later because they're represented throughout the card But she's the one of the cremation ground one of the two that are of the cremation ground in this deck So she's sitting on a burning corpse, which would be your own corpse, you know So you're burning up your physical desires and she's she's bringing you towards some sort of Resolution or some sort of resolution or some sort of enlightenment or some sort of sudden, you know, practice. That's what these wisdom goddesses teach. They're all different kind of practices. So it might bring your focus towards, you know, getting rid of the things that are unwanted. This episode of the DTFH has been supported by Factor.

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box and two free wellness shots per box while subscription is active. That's code Duncan 50 at factormeals.com slash Duncan 50 to get 50% off your first box and two free wellness shots per Faw subscription is active. So it might bring your focus towards, you know, getting rid of the things that are unwanted or they're holding you down. Okay, so this reminds me of a dream and that's the other thing tarot cards do. They remind you of things you've forgotten. Like they like they just, I don't know, they pull stuff out. They so right away from your card, because the burning, the cremation grounds are not, I've never seen that in any tarot card.

I've never seen that depiction. So that's, you added that and that's cool. The dream, when I really started, this is during the pandemic, I'd really started working with my meditation teacher in a more serious way. And as anybody who has some is lucky enough to have a teacher, when you do that, you're going to have some interesting dreams.

And this dream, I'm cremating myself next to him. I'm standing next to him. I am I've emulated myself somehow watching myself cremate myself. I'm watching myself burn, but clearly I'm not dead. It's not the POV of a burning person watching myself burn. And then I look over at Dave, I'm like, I'm creating I'm burning myself up. And David goes, I'm cremating myself. And he goes, Yeah, he goes, I've cremated myself many times. times. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I, and, you know, that's another thing is like cremation, like actual cremation that will happen to many of us. This kind of cremation that shows up is really beautiful and a good a good thing. How many things have to be purified by fire in an industrial sense alone? Just a basic, if you want to purify anything, sometimes you have to apply a lot of heat. It has to burn. I love what's optimistic about this,

is if it just doesn't make it out of the fire, then you didn't need it anyway. Yeah. And if it stays at tempers, the way you would temper a sword in a flame, you know, to sharpen the point. Now, so yeah, so suddenly this card that you could look at is like completely evil. Now it's an actual message of like liberation and sort of invitation to a kind of fearlessness. 100%. And that's why like going to a cremation ground, like I just came from Baranasi. I was there a few weeks ago and you spend a lot of time at the cremation grounds and it's always humbling.

It's always, you know, it's always humbling. It's always, you know, it's always invigorating to me too. It really teaches you like you have a limited amount of time here and if you want, if you have any kind of goal in this life, now's the time to achieve it. Yeah, yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's really like that's one of the gifts that gives you, for sure, is, but you know, when I was there, I was just, it was too much. So I just got sick and ran for monkeys. And you know, now when I look back, I remember, we may have talked about this in another podcast, as I'm stumbling through Farah Nasi,

completely unaware of much in those days. I was just right out of college. And there's a guy who sells wood for the cremation grounds. I just stumbled upon him. Definitely some kind of enlightened being, when I look back, you, like you're smelling barbecue. There's smoke in the air. You've seen a dead baby float down the Ganges River.

You've watched cows with vultures riding them, like boats, edible boats. And so you're from the West, you've never seen this much death ever. And so if you're not prepared for that, oh, and you've had a bongalasse or something. So you know what I mean? You're recovering from getting high as fuck. And you're just, and so I, you know, and I imagine people like that are used to Westerners

stumbling through that city with the same look I had. And he goes, the big smile, how are you? And like, I think he knew probably how I was. And I, you know, I'm fine, how are you? And he goes, I'm so happy because I live in Varanasi and this is heaven Yeah, exactly and like any but any other one who isn't Callous to that or hasn't experienced that it could be the worst hell they ever experienced

There's multiple you know me you say bodies burning there is like eight to ten bodies burning at a time everywhere you look. You know, I saw me and my guru were there one time, we saw somebody warming their hands on the, on a burning foot, you know, to stay warm, you know, and that's how like every day kind of mentality this is there because they are doing it every day and they've been doing it for five to eight to ten thousand years. The thing that you mentioned, there's two things that you mentioned that I need to come back to. One is that everything is different there. The people are different, the animals are different, the plants are different. The veil is completely lifted there. When you're in a place of ultimate reality, everything's going to appear differently. So that man smiling at you was for a reason and you were able to see it because you were there. That smile would have been totally different to blocks down.

And him even saying, I'm in Varanasi, it's heaven. You might be like, oh, this is heaven when you're at the Bong Lassi stand. But yeah. But when you're at, when you're at the cremation ground, think everything, your perspective completely, completely shifts. And absolutely. And I found that any place of power that happens doesn't have to be a cremation ground, but anywhere that has been used for self-realization for that long. The other thing I wanted to point out about the cremating yourself in meditation, in my preliminary puja that I do daily, that's part of it.

It's called the Bhutasudi. And what happens is you burn, you go through these mantras where you burn your body up, you're asking God to dry you out and then to make a new subtle body. So you're able to do the puja without any of the material physical attachments that you went into the starting the puja with. It could mean that can help you with sitting longer,

breathing, being more attentive. You're just like completely burning everything that came before that puja. Yeah. Yeah. That is the lojong saying, abandon all hopes of fruition. So anytime you sit, that you have to remind yourself to just stop, you know, to if you can at least be aware that stop, you know, to, if you, if you can at least be aware that in whatever particular mood, what your mood is like, and sometimes that mood is really hungry when you meditate, you want nirvana or some kind of bliss state or some, something to come and, and so then the whole thing gets shadowed by that. Wanted neediness.

Desire, expectations. Yeah. Okay. So, um, help me understand something to get back to the tarot. So the tarot is divided up into the minor arcana and the major arcana. Can you talk about the difference between those two

categories? Yeah, most of my focus on this one was in the major, but I did the whole deck. So the major Arcana is the story of the Tarot. It's from the full to the world. He goes through this whole cycle and meets all these archetypes and where each card kind of falls next to one another can tell a completely different story, but it's all within that framework. The pick card, the minor arcana are kind of like, I would say like icing to the story, you know, like you can kind of focus in a little bit deeper with the minor cards. So, you know, if you pull like two majors and three minors, you can apply those three

minor cards to the major, the majors place in the story, you know. Got it. Okay, so let's, why don't we pull up one of your cards? Okay. Hopefully this will work. Probably won't. I'm going to share. I'm gonna share. Let's see here.

And we'll start with the fool. My favorite one. See if this works. There he is. Are you seeing it? I'm seeing it. Okay, I can't believe it worked. Okay, so maybe you could describe it if for folks who are just listening, this is the beginning card in the major arcana. So this is the beginning of the journey. Maybe you can describe the fool. Yeah, I'll do like a little bit of a philosophical and aesthetic description as we go. Okay. So the fool is the madman. He's the zero of the card. That's the number that he's assigned and He represents the unlimited potential of the journey. He's

He's about to walk off a cliff, you know, so he has no care in the world. He's not informed by anything This is you know, the young self going to college going off into the world starting a new job Go getting into a new relationship possibly. But he's mad. He's a mad man. He's mad for the world. He's mad for the experience. He's walking towards the sun.

He's hungry for it. So anything's possible. And he's going to go through this whole experience and On the left hand corner. We have a dog that's jumping onto him. This is actually one of my dogs Kali And she's landing right at the Chakra point where it begins. This is the root chakra, you know, so she's activating the this Potential Journey to happen, you know, he's holding a bag, you know, it's a, it's a, you know, normal like hobo rucksack, spindle, yeah, thing, but this contains the entire tarot in the bag.

Is that now is that your interpretation or is that considered that's a traditional interpretation? So the few his future is in that bag. He's carrying what was about to happen him with him. It's there. Yes. Wow. That's so cool. And he's in mind, you know, I changed the face. So the face is the actual universe showing that the universe that exists outside of us is the same universe that exists inside of us. And that also is that I'm sorry, is that a mask that that he's got? That's the mask he might wear over the universe face. Yeah, that that's his physical self. That's his material body. And he's turned it around to go forth into the world. And it's also the idea of the trickster, too.

Because he's dressed like a clown. He's got the bells like a clown. He's got kind of clown outfit, jester. He's got the jester's hat. And so I kind of use the idea of the trickster, like the old idea of the tricksters in the fields where they would have the mask backwards so you couldn't tell if they were coming or going. Wow.

And I feel like that's also part of this card too, because you don't know if you're going forward or backwards when you're going off into a journey like this. The staff is connecting him to the earth, and he's looking towards the sun. And that's also the wand too, it appears, as part of one of the suits. Okay, got it, yeah. And what is, not to get too off of this card,

the, so the suits, we've got the wands, we've got pentacles, we've got cups and swords. So what do the wands represent? The wands and the swords are the active parts of the card, and the pentacle and the cups are the receptive part of the deck. Okay, masculine, feminine, so he's all masculine right now. Yeah. And then the swords and the wands are the more kind of tactile cards, you know, the more

act, you know, their action. And then the cups and the pentacles are more of the dreamy and, you know, like emotional cards too. It's ticks and pussies. Yeah, pretty much always. It's true. Cheeverlingum, you know, it's all. Yeah.

That comes up in the cards too. So, and what goddess is sort of rising up out of the ocean there? It's actually God. It's the first incarnation of Vishnu, which is Matsya. Okay. God. It's the first incarnation of Vishnu, which is Matsya. And all ten, the Dashavatara's of Vishnu are represented in the major. And then followed by the Dashmahavidya's, which are the wisdom goddesses, then Jesus, and then Jagannath, Balarama Subhadra, and the Siddharthana Chakra as the earth. So those are the ones that that's everything I added. I had a Agreement with myself that I wouldn't take anything away from the Mercedec I would only add to it. So that was my aspect of that. So I added Matya and he's the Deluge

God, you know, he's the one that saved the Vedas from the from the great flood. So that's the beginning, you know Save the Vedas the flood happened the Vedas survived and then that's what informed Civilization to begin basically I believe this you know civil civilization had a huge influence in through the Vedas. Thank you, AG1, for supporting this episode of the DTFH Friends. I don't know what's going on with me. Maybe it's some planetary alignment, but I've been going to the gym more than I ever have in my life. And when you start doing that at my age, you can't just eat almond butter and cottage cheese like you have to have

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Check it out. So that's the beginning, you know, save the Vedas, the flood happened, the Vedas survived and then that's what informed civilization to begin basically. I believe that civilization had a huge influence through the Vedas. Yeah. And this goes back to sort of tarot origin stories. You know, I've heard this stuff in the tarot, the stuff that the Egyptian priests were using was actually pre-flood technology before the great cataclysm. They had it, or even maybe the pyramids were there before the flood.

I don't know. But so that's cool because it's sort of being the first card in the major arcana, it also sort of points out this hidden or important information that has survived a cataclysm. And it's still here with us. The linchpin for civilization. A lot of people believe that language subsisted from the Vedas. And it also teaches in not in a very scientific way, but in an allegorical way, it teaches evolution. Because the Dashamahavidis start with the fish, go from the amphibian to the zoomorphic half-man half-beast forms, then it winds up with the Demorphic half man half beast forms then it winds up with the

Dwarf and then the perfected man Rama and then the Supreme Personality Krishna the enlightened one Buddha and then it ends with Kalki who hasn't come yet? Wow Yeah, I love this fool. I you know the I'm Again like I love this spin you're putting on the fool and the writer weight, Teradek, which is the one that I have the most experience studying. Not quite as overtly wise, I guess you could say, or not quite. You know what I mean? The fool is a fool and it's like, he's got his fancy ass clothes on, he's looking up at the sky, he's got his cute little dog like nipping at his heels, the world is great, everything's going to

be fine, everything's perfect. And then he's just on the he's so fucked and completely oblivious to how fucked he has no idea what he's about to face. And neither does this one. But I feel like maybe this is the full second incarnation or maybe a later incarnation. He's learned a little bit more throughout his lives. Well, it's very, it's like anybody who decides to get into some spiritual practice, you would never do it, probably,

if you had any sense of what was waiting for you down the line. Because you've picked up some book and nobody's selling like a beginner's meditation book that's like, this will teach you how to cremate yourself and it doesn't feel good a lot of the time. You know what I mean? You need something like sweet pieces every step. You know what I mean?

Things like that. And then, and then the pot, the, it gets slowly heated. Um, but I think that's what the four represents is like anytime you're like, I'm going to be, I want to get into Buddhism. I'm going to be a comedian. I'm going to be an artist. I'm gonna be a comedian. I'm gonna be an artist. I'm gonna have kids. Whatever the thing is, you have no idea

what is waiting for you. And that's a good, I think that's a good thing. Yeah, it's the ultimate naive optimism, you know? And, but it's also what will actually get you out the door, you know, and get you to out the door, you know, and get you to walk the path, you know? Like you said, if you knew, you wouldn't do any of those things.

If you knew like you were gonna be playing a show to two people in Wichita, Kansas, you're not gonna start a band and go on tour, you know? No, no, not at all. So, okay, so then, you sent me this one, so let me just pull up the next one. I think you did. One second, let me dig this up.

So then the next card, and again, this represents, like, I guess stages, you could say, is the magician, right? That's the next card, is the magician. And so let me just grab that real quick. I think you sent me the mid. I did, yeah. Yeah, okay, here it is, I got it. Okay, cool.

So in the major arcana, the magician is the fool, right? It's the fool. I've always thought of it as the next phase of the fool. Am I wrong about that? For me, it's the first attribute he meets. It's the first like, you know, he's the first person he meets in the adventure. That's why he's the number one. But also, I think for, you know, the magician, the fool actually becomes each one of these cards through the journey and right if we're talking about archetypes and inner development and

Self-realization Every one of these cards is the fool this is right. They're just aspects of the path, you know So this is the first place you come. But in a tactile, more kind of functional idea of him walking the path, this is the first character he runs into, you know? And to me, he's like the cool older brother slash neighbor slash sister, whatever, who's got access to the to the stuff, you know, gives you the first punk rock record, plays you the first plays you the first comedy record shows you the first movie, you know, it's like, oh, that's cool. It's the thing that's going to introduce you to like what what you're gonna what tools you're gonna use on the way.

And he's holding all the tools of the tarot. He's got the wand, the sword, the cup and the pentacles and I threw the dice in for good measure. Yeah, that's, you should have put like a four track on there. So, you know, like the whatever the cool kid always had. You ever Daniel Johnston, you ever LSD so well you've that's the cup, you know that that's in the cup I would put that as the sacrament, you know That's the ayahuasca in in the right, you know, and so you've just theoretically just fallen off a cliff Right like to get to get to the magician you you're not going to be ready for whatever they have to give you if you haven't experienced the collision between your naive idea of what the world might be like and what the world is starting to seem like, you know, this is you've probably become cynical, nihilistic, or generally, you know, you just crack your where's your dog? Where's the dog? You just you're in the in the you're off

the mountain, you know, he pushed you off the cliff into this, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So and, but you had to decide like that's the other thing you chose this and then this being shows up and and teaches you Or is there is your first teacher? Yeah, I hear first guru exactly and that's the you know He's he's the sword's pointing down the wand is pointing up as above so below We have a this is Corma the tortoise incarnation the amphibian incarnation of the taro, or of the Vedas. And that's, this is how the Vedas got to land,

you know, after the fish had them, you know, in my view. That's not historically correct, but, you know, in the idea of them teaching evolution and this kind of thread that the avatars have, you know, now we're on land. Yeah. And the tortoise, like the symbol of the tortoise gets used, describing like meditating, like pulling in, you know, pulling in your head, pulling in your legs, but you know, pulling into whatever emptiness or whatever it may be. Slow and steady wins the race. It's also used as a symbol for support of the universe. You know, it's a tour.

Turtles all the way down. Yep, and then, and actually, you know, it's amazing about a turtle. If you count around the bottom ring of a turtle shell uncannily 99% of the time, you'll have the same amount of the phases of the moon. I think it's like 22 or something like that. Oh, I thought the rings, if you counted, it was always the number of people you'd had sex with.

Could be. If you're going by, if you're doing a lunar calendar to your sexual patterns, it could correspond. That's why I didn't know that. And I haven't picked up a turtle lately, which is probably a bad sign, but the next time I'm definitely gonna check out underneath its shell, see what's going on there.

It's a bottom ring on the shell. And a lot of times it will even kind of emulate the shapes, you know, like a small circle, you know, like a sliver into a full circle towards the tail and back around. I don't have this card. You didn't send it over, but it's one I've always been fascinated by. Tell me about the hanged man? The hanged man is a suspended thought, suspended moment in time, a card for reflection. His leg is tucked behind him, which creates kind of this glyph in the, it actually creates

a Hebrew letter. I'm not sure which one right now, but that that shape of his body. It's also a tool for meditation like standing on your head. All the everything's running towards the the bindu, the third eye, and he's hanging there. Again, I think choosing to hang there. A lot of people would think that he was hung there, but I think the hang man in my view is that that's an austerity. He's performing an austerity to reach a sense of enlightenment And some people connect the hangman with Odin right like Odin. Yeah, yeah, it was hung from the what the world tree or something I don't know the whole story. Do you know that story? It's I don't know it I don't know the Norse ones too well too much, but I know you know, you know, they say that the first crucifixion was hung upside down too. Really?

Yeah, yeah, that's how you get the upside down cross. Well, I mean, yeah, crosses are always upside down depending on what you're like, if you're looking at from space, then everyone's... Or you're standing on your head like the hangman. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, okay, so... When you started this project, you were the fool, because only a fool would try to do a tarot card deck. And when you finished the project,

can you talk about some personal changes or revelations that might have come from getting this close to the tarot? Yeah, I'll start at the beginning. I'll try to keep it brief. But like, this is probably my fourth attempt at the tarot. I painted the major arcana with some friends at Mount Shasta 15 years ago. And after I'd completed it, I was was like I really wanted to do the whole

deck and we made plans to get back together maybe go back to the mountain and paint them again paint or complete the deck and it never happened and it kept me left left me kind of frustrated and feeling incomplete and it was always kind of like irking me in the background was always kind of there then I got hired to do a deck for a pretty big publishing company in England. And I quit within five cards because they were sending me notes on every one. I sent them the first five and they sent notes back on everyone.

I was like, if I had to paint 78 of these motherfuckers, this is never going to get done. And their notes were pretty arbitrary and kind of like, I just knew I foresaw this. this was going to be a problem. Then I tried again, a couple of years later, it just never happened. So I had this kind of like adversarial relationship with the tarot, but it was always kind of lurking

in the background like this is something we want to do. I've done a few tattoos of it. I've made like single paintings with some figures of the tarot, but I just never could commit to it. And I went to a dinner. I had an art show about a year and a half ago at a friend in Ventura and I went to dinner at a friend's house afterwards. My friend who brought me there, we walk in, we're introduced to the host and everything. And there was a woman there and my friend drops to his knees and starts bowing to this woman and I was like whoa and we had dinner had great conversation

and my buddy left I waited for him to leave and I was like I gotta ask what was that what my friends reaction to you and she was she she was super modest like, oh, you know, and oh, sorry. No problem. The hosts, my friend Harshada and Adriana were like, oh, Kim made this Oracle deck and this tarot deck that are super popular. It's called The Wild Unknown. Her name is Kim Krantz. Okay, I know about that deck. Yeah, so that was her. And I was like, I told her my my history with the tarot and that you know I always want to do it and she turned like she was kind of listening and she turned and looked me straight in the eye and

said You need to do it. You should do it as an artistic exercise and Way of personal expression I think you get a lot out of it and when she said that her voice was in a different timber and almost like a different register that she had been talking to the whole night. And I was like, that's my guru talking to me right there. Yeah. So I went to Spain pretty soon after saw my guru, I told him, he's like, I'll absolutely you should do it. I think it'd be great. It's going to be really, you're going to get a

lot out of it. You know, so I started working on it as soon as I got home. And- So she was the dog. She was the dog, she pushed me off the cliff. Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah, so then I started on it and like I said, I got completely consumed by it and like, all this stuff happened, you know, I had, I was having,

you know, I was just disconnected to my work in a lot of ways, you know, and, I was having, I was just disconnected to my work in a lot of ways. When I say that, I don't wanna say like, oh, I was ignoring my customers and shooting to open an alley, but I could just tell I wasn't there. I wasn't being present. I wasn't being present in my marriage. I wasn't being present with my home.

I was ignoring my house duties. And as soon as I finished the deck, all that shit fell down on top of me man, and I was like it was funny I am When I was with my guru that time that that same trip we were talking to him and It was just like three of us pretty intimate conversation and he's like it sounds like you guys need a therapist instead of a guru And I turned around and looked at the room and I was like yeah, these people do need therapy And he's like, it sounds like you guys need a therapist instead of a guru. And I turned around and looked at the room and I was like, yeah, these people do need therapy. Motherfucker, I was in therapy a month later. And, and it was super helpful and I'm glad I did, you know, I'm glad I pursued it.

And I think unlocking a lot of these like archetypal characters of the subconscious really helped me get there, but I had to completely fall flat on my face for it to happen. Right. Yeah. How did that, but are you saying that something about not completing this deck was blocking energy in your life and then finally when you finished it, like all the other stuff that needed to be worked on

appeared in front of you. Now you have to deal with the householder stuff and the marriage and all that, or it happened. You're on there. I think it's a little bit of both. I think that the fact that I hadn't done it was something that I was lacking, you know, it was something that was kind of gnawing away at me

for a long time, but also just being like so consumed by it as well and not, you know, like, I think I was taught that like you need to be, to pursue anything in this life, you need to, attentiveness to everything is true, Pooja, true worship of God true Reflection on the self is you can't just be attentive to one thing, you know, right? Then you're just like a narcissist and a fucking self-consumed asshole, you know, yep. Yeah that no I'm but God it's I mean

that imbalances it's really insidious the way that can creep in where you start hierarchizing facets of your life. And suddenly like this, whatever it is, your career, is the most important, meaning that if you're like hanging out with your kids, your wife, taking a walk, you feel like you're not doing your job, something's off, I shouldn't be here,

I gotta get back to the studio, what am I doing? And you don't realize like the walk is the studio, as much as the studio is the studio. You have to, I know exactly what you're talking about. You know what taught me that? DeVendra Bannert taught me that during a podcast, because I was asking him like the difference

between his spiritual practice and his career. And he's like, I don't think there's a difference. And I'd never even thought of that before he said that. And that was a big moment for me. Which is amazing, guys. Which is an amazing coincidence, not a coincidence, but an amazing synchronicism because he wrote the foreword for the book.

That is so cool. So cool. Yeah, but it's, you know, obsession is, I do feel like that obsessive and madness that happens anytime I'm really excited about something and I'm working on it, I don't know how to create balance when I'm having that experience. I don't know how to like, when I'm having that experience. I don't know how to like, when I'm totally like lost in something I want to make. I don't know how to pull myself out of that

and then go out into the world and not be thinking about that thing. It's very hard to find that balance. But you kind of do it every day, don't you? Yeah, I have to. Yeah, it's a necessity. It's like a, it's almost like an organ that you have to like exercise in this life. Because if not, then you just get self-consumed and you see where that winds up, you know, with a lot of artists, it winds up in complete madness or suicide or, you know, suicide by substance, you know, or suicide or social,

you know. Or even worse, you get stuck making the same shit over and over and over again. That's, you know, because if you're not getting the precursor materials for the stuff you're making, then you're always going to be running on the sameor materials for the stuff you're making, then you're always gonna be running on the same fucking materials. And no matter how many times you try to like shift them around in some new collage, it's the same fucking shit. You know, you're not getting new data,

no new energy. So that's where you become stuck in a real loop as a comedian. That's when you're not writing new jokes, you're doing the same material every time you get on stage. Like it's just, it leads to this complete stale sort of technical approach, which sucks. This episode of the DTFH is sponsored by my friends at Bluetooth. Yes, I love BlueTube's tablets. Are you kidding me? I'm 49 years old. I went through a pandemic. I have three kids. I fall asleep watching Ukrainian

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Mediocrity, which is the ultimate curse. I'd rather suck at something than be mediocre at it, you know? Oh my God, absolutely, absolutely. I have for sure. If you suck at something, at least you have potential to get better. But if you're mediocre, that's a hard groove to get out of. Especially if you're mediocre and you think that it's good.

Now you're really fucked. Yeah, that's how you cope with mediocrity, start inflating the worth of it. That's an interesting thing. I guess the idea is maybe there's a way to become the best mediocre artist. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that is your medium, mediocrity. Like, I work in mediocrity.

I just try to like do the exact middle line, not because I'm mediocre, but because, wow, that is badass. That's hardcore. If you intentionally mediocreize yourself, it's pretty cool. Yeah, so much. That's a rebellion in itself, right? But yeah, you know, like mediocrity is is is another way of saying automatism, you know, and that and that's, you know, and that's when you get into habitual. And that's when you lose conscious,

you know, you're not conscious when you're being that way. That's the shit you do every day, just the shit you do every day, just add a habit rather than out of devotion or love or curiosity. It's crazy though, how quickly that automation happens. It's crazy. When you start working with mindfulness and stuff and you start catching the moment that you used to think was just you, and you realize there's a tiny little gap before you decide to go down the same path. Yeah, yeah. But it's so quick, man. It's just so instantaneous.

It's really hard to catch. But once you start catching it, whoa, that's where shit gets exciting. Well, that's why I love about Zen, you know, is the Zen mind, beginner's mind that anything is possible when you approach it with a new mind. And that's what the fool is. That's him being the zero is the he's the ultimate Zen mind.

He's a zero. He's a zero. He's a he's beat. He's the beat poet be completely beat nothing, lost already. Okay, let's open, let me pull up another card here. Hold on one second. These are beautiful, man. I cannot wait to get my deck. This is, I'm gonna be obsessed with these for a long time. My kid's like drawing cards, so like,

this is gonna be amazing. Hold on, let me, and also, didn't you want me to pick some numbers? Yeah, yeah, let's pick three. You know, let's do that, let me um, and also didn't you want me to pick some numbers? Yeah, yeah, let's let's pick three. You know, let's let's do that. Let's pick some numbers. Okay, pick three numbers between zero and twenty two or zero and twenty one. Okay, we're going to go three.

We're going to go eight and nineteen. Three eight and 19. Three, eight, and 19. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pull the third, the eighth and the 19th card out of the major arcana first. That's my credit score, my IQ. It's your password on all your... That is... That's my paying password. It's your password on all your While we're doing this if you wanted to talk about anything cuz it'll take a second and I wanted oh, yeah, sure Let me pull another card time

Let's see let me pull up a card here. I Love this one. It's so pretty hold on We're already wearing some good territory here. I've pulled up the high priestess. High priestess is great because she that's the first feminine figure that the fool meets and she's the maternal part of the of the tarot. And she's the maternal part of the tarot. She's cloistered herself, so she has discipline. She's like a nun. And she is sitting on an egg, which is a symbol for gestation. Oh, cool.

And later on, as you'll see in the high priest or in the in the next card, she's holding a shield with an eagle on it. And that means the egg has hatched, but it only has half a wing. And then that's the emperor's card. And then he gets to the emperor. And his shield has the eagle fully developed Oh, that's now this is another the the bird with one wing this comes up a lot because the idea is like if you

only Like read I don't know you if you just get into just like reading I don't know buddhist books But you don't know, if you just get into just like reading, I don't know, Buddhist books, but you don't practice, then you have half the wing. It's like a bird with half the wing. You need the practice and the contemplation together. To, you know, there's all kinds of examples of that.

Like, and it's so easy to do to have, it's like, if you only do stand up, but you're not writing, you're like a bird with one wing, you've got to do both. If you, if you only write and have the fantasy that one day you'll get on stage when you write the perfect joke, it's the mirror image of the same imbalance. Like you have to have both. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It needs, need to like, again, like the unlimited potential, like the jokes are already there. You just need to have to like incubate them. Right. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The joke. Yeah. You have to sit on the egg. It's also like, you know, it's amazing to think that somebody that size could sit on an egg without breaking it. So there's some kind of indication of a graceful quality

to the incubation. It's not too heavy. And she's got the pomegranate underneath her. And that's the symbol of the Greek goddess. I can't remember her name right now. But she went to Hades and brought back. How? And brought back.

Persephone. That's Persephone. Brings back the pomegranate and to prove that she had gone there. And the number of seeds in the pomegranate also represent all the verses in the Torah. So it's a relic. Whoa, whoa, that's so cool.

And also a symbol of Christ because he drops the seed and the bullet of Christ. You should let me put one of these through Project Runway, which is that AI that takes an image and animates it. Have you ever seen that? Feel free to take any of them. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll do it and send it to you.

It doesn't really quick. I mean, who knows how it's gonna interpret these, but it could be really interesting to see what it does with it. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it's you. It's real. It doesn't really quick. I mean, who knows how it's going to interpret these, but it could be really interesting to see what it does with it. Sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it's cool. So I got your spread here. Okay. I'll hold them up. So the first one is the Empress. And this is this is like, this is you. This is like your card. This is like your Ishtadevita right now. Okay. And also this is the Dharma. So the way I'm now in the okay reading and also this is the Dharma So the way I'm we're gonna read it is Dharma, which is the goal

Yes Arta Which is the death card and that's the means You know achieve the goal Okay, and that this would be like the present right now So you have you as the empress your present You know situation wherever you're at is the death card and then the dharma art and

Cool and comma, which is the action So that the death card would be the means to achieve the goal This is the action that achieves the goal and that's the Sun Which is a great great card and then above it these are These are kind of like the The hangman here these would be kind of your Your guides to each one of those attributes. You have that hangman, the magician, and the tower. So what I did.

Oh no! No, that's a good one. It's really good. So the way I'll do like a real quick, kind of like the way I see those cards working out. Okay. You have the Empress. This is you.

The Empress represents unbridled, just raw, powerful emotion, and that's you, you know? You're like, she's like the sexy one, you know? Okay. She's, you know, and it's the lust. It's what makes you the artist that you are it's what keeps you going It's like like we were talking about earlier set just that yeah the

Invigorating kind of approach that you have to life the death card, which is what's happening right now This this is what you need to You're what you need to reap the death card you have the death card is the full without skin Because he's the zero the death card is actually the unnamed Arkana It doesn't become the death card until the rider wait So they just had no name for it, but so what he's doing Nameless yeah as you see on the field He's cutting heads and pans and stuff.

And the two figures are the maternal and the paternal that's your mother and father. So what you need to do to achieve your goal is to sever whatever kind of unleft kind of attachment, love, guilt guilt all the emotional attachments that you might still have towards your parents. Wow. And it may not even be like your actual mom and dad it can just be the paternal and maternal energies that have kind of made your life you know we, we all have that, like the expectations of the mother and the father, you know, yeah, those need to be severed to achieve the goal, which is the son and man, what a great card is. Yeah. That's like, you know,

bathing in the light to bathe in the light of self realization, to bathe in the light of liberation to bathe in the light the light of Self-Realization, to bathe in the light of liberation, to bathe in the light of peace and love, you know. The actual, the elephants are bathing the goddess here, the divine mother. Wow. And she's the Daśa Mahavidya. So she's the tantric version of Lakṣmī. Wow. And the way you're gonna do it is you're gonna suspend all thought suspend Suspend all emotion and meditate. This is your meditation card right here. So cool. You're gonna use the magician as your guide To achieve it as above so below all the tools are gonna be provided through all your inspirations These are all your friends. This is your sang your friends this is your sangha this is your wife this is your kid this is all the things you learn from you're gonna use those to

apply towards your trip towards the goal and then you have the tower and that's to taking off the head that's the final step that's the ego at the top of the tower the head comes off just that's ego. At the top of the tower, the head comes off. Just that's Chinamasta, the goddess at the bottom. And she's moving her head. And what comes out are the three streams. That's, you know, the Dharma, Arta and Kama. And also, and what, and at the end of that, those, that, that's the triangle, those three streams. When those three streams are united, you get the fourth and that's liberation. That's Moxha. To achieve Moxha, you have to have Dharma, Arta, and Kama in balance. You know, okay, here's why that's super cool. So, you know, in this wonderful book about,

well, it's called Turning Confusion into Clarity, but it's really about the Buddhist preliminaries in Vajrayana Buddhism. And it's gotten to this, like, the heavy part, which is, it's called Nang-dral, but it's got, you know, where sort of, I guess, Vajrayana Buddhism kind of splits away from other forms of, it's where it becomes tantric Buddhism, which is now you get into the visualization. And the, without, it would take forever to describe it,

and I don't really understand it, but essentially one of the initial visualizations is this still lake. There's a tree rising up from the lake, sitting at the base of the tree is, it represents all enlightened beings. And you know, if you have a guru, you could put that guru there, but it's sort of, this is a great book. And it's like, really for the Westerners and like it's like you know the idea isn't to let you don't need some conqu some crystallized thing if you don't have anybody you could just put like a kind of blue sort of like empty transparent being there which represents all the teachers all the

magicians all the like all of it and so anyway, there's a whole, it's long, like this part of the preliminaries is very, there's like obeisances and like, you know, like I think 108,000 of these like crazy obeisances you might do. And along with some other stuff, it's a whole years and years you would do this. But what's really interesting in the visualization and this is what really caught me is

so you're observing this and on your right hand side is your father and on your left hand side is your mother and you're bowing to the this representation of the Dharma and And you're bowing to this representation of the Dharma and potential enlightenment. And then they're bowing with you because it's sort of showing like, if you begin a serious practice, then this is how it can, with the intent of helping other beings gain liberation,

then you have to start with your progenitors. Like you're bowing with them. And that's where I got stuck. I'm like, my dad would never bow to this fucking tree. You know, like picturing my parents bowing like that. My mom, yes, my dad, it's like, I just, I can't, and I realized, oh, fuck, I'm stuck. That means, I don't know what that is,

but that is some stuck shit inside of me that I can't go there in my head, even imagining it. So that's why that reading is really interesting to me. And to me, like the death card is like, you know, you're cutting away the expectations that your parents, you might have actually even imposed on yourself because you thought that's what your parents, you might have actually even imposed on yourself because you thought that's what your parents did, because you didn't

really understand how the whole thing was going down. And you're cutting away, you know, this like kind of weird link that you have to your parents to be able to actually be on the same realm, you know, to be able to bow to the tree together, you know what I be able to bow to the tree together. You know what I mean? They have to be here. Yeah, because a lot of like the weird like hangups that we have with the maternal and the paternal, you know, like part of it is just the way we've interpreted things, you know, like, of course, you know, people get treated great, people get treated horrible by their parents, everybody's different. But the expectations, I think, come from just like our weird other hangups too, you know. Right. Whoa. That's a great reading, man. Thank

you so much. Are you, do you offer these readings? Have you ever considered doing that? It's too much, right? No, no. And I was more interested in just making the art of it, but just I thought it would be cool for us to do it this way. And that's like, it's similar to the way Jodorowsky does readings. He does them all different ways. He'll do like a mandala spread, where he does the full deck in a certain order.

He'll do the traditional five card reading and stuff like that. But I've seen him do it this way. So I kind of picked it up from him, but it really applies well with the stuff that I've added to it, I think. So I do it for friends and stuff. I'm not gonna make a living out.

I'm not gonna retire from tattooing and painting and become a terror reader. To do terror readings? It just seems like so. It's like becoming a terror. It's fun, but it's like heavy man. Now I'm gonna be thinking about this for for a long time. It was really, it was really uncanny to me that you have the the Empress and the hangman top and

top and bottom because I feel like that's always like your dichotomy, you know, like you have this like super energetic, wild, like wanting to like crash the gates, but you have meditation in your life, and you're always kind of going back between those two things. Well, yeah, I guess it's absolute and relative reality or something. This is the imbalance here for me is always in like finding a way to fuse those two things. You know, it's like,

that is the path. And it's really tricky because once you start discovering the hangman or the moment your mind settles down or whatever you want to call it. As my teacher calls it, it's suddenly free from fixed mind. Like the moment you get to encounter the emptiness and that that part of yourself or for most of us that gets completely ignored, because the passionate part or the problematic part or the karmic part, the some scars are so loud. But the so you encounter the emptiness holding everything for me, then that's what I want. Then now I'm wanting the emptiness because it's such a relief if you're constantly in your head.

But then in that fixation, you accidentally dissociate almost. You irrelevantize your earth identity and that isn't what it's about either. You know, it's fusing, the two are the same thing and figuring out a way to recognize that. I have no idea how to do that. Yeah, well, you can transform, that's what's amazing. You can, like all the, you know, the energy and the enthusiasm and passion that you have for things,

you can transform that all into your meditation practice. You know, right? And it doesn't have to, it doesn't negate it. If you're just taking like those aspects of yourself and you're kind of bridling it, you know, that's what yoga is. You're yoking yourself to God, you know, that's what it means.

You're connecting and you're connecting and yeah, and that Poison in the medicine. It's like any that's the so that this is the other thing that keeps coming up in this book It's very compassionate book. It's so good you guys. It's From confusion and the quiet turning confusion into clarity, but the that's yeah, that's what you just did It's so it's the whatever the thing is you're hung up on You know initially when you start meditating at least in this form of Buddhism you you use your breath as The object of awareness so you're putting your awareness on your breath initially but So you're putting your awareness on your breath initially. But later on, it's like,

if you're having some neurotic issue or whatever, resistance, aversion to the practice or whatever, make the aversion the object of awareness instead of your breath. So now place your awareness on the aversion, place your awareness on the seeming obstacle, and just that alone transforms the obstacle into fuel for your practice, wood for your cremation got so to

speak. Amazing. That's all. Yeah, fuel fuel for the for the fire. One day we get to go to Varanasi, man, that will be so fun. We're going it's just I don I don't know when, but it's gonna happen. I can open a little wood stand, start selling wood at Varanasi together, retired of Varanasi, sell wood. That's my goal, that's to be there at the end. So maybe you'll come visit me when I'm on the on the on the pyre. Because you kind of need I would, but you kind of that but you

know, for the sake of your family, you do kind of need to get out there before you die, because then they've got to deal with getting a coffin to India. That can't be easy. Yeah, you have to die there. Oh, really? You can't ship a coffin in? Good luck. Maybe you can, I don't know, but good luck.

Shipping a book to India is difficult sometimes. Getting a full body there, I'm not sure if you're able. Or getting a body there is a hard enough task. Your corpse is gonna end up in like New Delhi. It's never gonna make it. It's never gonna make it. Struck in customs. Well, where can, everyone's going to want this deck now?

Where can we get it? Well, I'm going to send you the link for it's at Raking Light Projects. Is the company that the great company that handles all my did my last book and all my prints and they did this deck. So we'll make a link for it. You can get the book and the deck or you can just get the deck if you're familiar and you just read things your own way.

For me, I made the book so it corresponds with each card. So the book is the discreet, your interpretation of each card. Okay, great. Okay, yeah. Yeah, you're gonna need that. You're gonna need that. Don't do the, I think that you need

the artist's interpretation of the cards if you're gonna do any kind of real reading I mean you I like the idea of like deciding what it means, but it really as you can see from just our conversation There's so much you're gonna miss in any event arrow card that might add to Your understanding of some situation that you're going through. Yeah, so Rakinglight projects is where to get the cards and the decks. They can get them together. There's a package and a well, if you act now, you can get a tote bag with it for free. So I love a good tote bag. Who does everyone loves

totes. Alright, thank you so Robert. You are the best man. Thank you so much. What a great conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you for my great conversation. Thank you so much. I love it my pleasure How do you know we have a saying in our family use sports? Don't let sports use you Hi, it's Jeff from Eric from 32 thoughts the podcast are you a sports parent rep sports travel sports? Whatever you call it if you're like me, you know that one of the great joys of having your kid or kids play sports is Travel you know our families use sports to see different parts of the world Meet new people and stay in a number of different places Recently we've started using Airbnb the kids love it because it feels like a sleepover at a new friend's house

Well, my wife and I enjoy more space, a proper bed, and mostly a washing machine. That really comes in handy for baseball trips. Trust me. In fact, it was on a baseball trip last summer when my wife sent me a text after the first night saying, do you think we could do this? Look, if you've ever stayed at an Airbnb, you've probably wondered the same thing. Could our place be an Airbnb? And now that our kids have also discovered the joys of skiing, in addition to travel hockey and travel baseball, we're on the

move even more. Well, our house just sits there. Why not make a little extra money to cover some costs, right? We have friends who travel south every winter and they Airbnb their place. Why not? Look, if you want to make a little extra money to cover some costs, right? We have friends who travel south every winter and they Airbnb their place. Why not? Look, if you want to make a little extra cash and who doesn't need that these days, maybe your home could be the way to make it happen. Find out how at Airbnb.com. That was Robert Ryan, everybody. If you want to order his Darudeck, you can find the links at DuncanTrussell.com. A tremendous thank you to our sponsors. Thank you for listening. Let me know what you think about my Instagram shift.

Is it crazy? Is it crazy? What am I doing? Or is it good? I don't know. Let me know. I'll see you guys out there on the road and I'll see you next week. Until then, Hare Krishna.