Back To The Beauty Way w/ Poranguí | AMP #409

PORANGUÍ: How do we make the world? How do we bring beauty into everything that we do, and how we express ourselves, how we speak, and how we walk? How we dance? How do we bring that beauty? How do we bring that forward with our very life, with what we're doing? And of course, it's connected deeply with the prayer that we always refer back to, [inaudible 00:18] for the greatest good of all beings. What does that look like? And what is the deeper teaching of this sweet grass? Why is it the braid, and the sweetness that, it's weaving together of the elements. It's you, I, and the other. And the other is like the offering, right? The Holy Spirit. Many names that we can do it.

AUBREY: My brother, Porangui is a musician, a medicineman, and all around one of the most spectacular human beings I've ever known. He has a new album releasing right now. He's out on tour. And this podcast was just a beautiful conversation with a dear brother who's had some of the most incredible life experiences of anyone I know. So, enjoy this podcast with Porangui. Porangui, my brother. Here we are.

PORANGUÍ: Here we are.

AUBREY: Why don't you lead us in with that flute?

PORANGUÍ: [inaudible 03:22].

AUBREY: I had a vision when you were playing the flute, and it was like a condor-quetzal mix of a bird. But it's back half was cut off. So, just the wings and the beak, and the back half where there was supposed to be this plume of gorgeous feathers, just filling the sky. And just, there's a whole plume of beauty was missing. And, a surprise to have a vision. I mean, I'm not surprised when I'm on medicine. But I'm surprised here in the morning, here in Sedona and just a little cacao to have that vision. And I think it really is highlighting an aspect of the beauty way in which right now, in our modern culture, everything's focused on function. Are the wings flying? Does the beak work, right? But we've lost, like, that's not the whole picture.

PORANGUÍ: Right.

AUBREY: There's a whole other thing and it's the beauty, it's the individual uniqueness, that flourish, that extra plume, like you see a quetzal, and it's like, that is more than necessary. You know what I mean? And it's just beautiful, it's just beautiful. It's not pragmatic or functional. No, this is beauty for its own sake. Lishma is the Hebrew lineage, for its own sake, beauty for its own sake. And that's what this bird was that we were... That was missing. I think that's something that you really bring to everything you do. It's not just the function, but the beauty of it, which has a function that's even higher than the function we attribute to the utilitarian nature of what we're looking at.

PORANGUÍ: Completely. Yeah. It's like when we look at a galaxy, when these images come back from these telescopes that we have now. We see these details and we just see why would it take this unique form that's so unique, singular in the vast cosmos, and create such beauty that when we see it, we just ponder our very existence? It's like that beauty that strikes the inner chord of our very essence, and awakens us to, like, this, why would I not want to contribute and be like that immense beauty in my life? What is the expression of my life? How can it just be an unfolding offering of beauty?

AUBREY: Yeah, it reminds me of, Aldous Huxley, in "Doors of Perception". He talks about how we're attracted to gemstones, and we're attracted to these things that are inherently beautiful. Because in the psychedelic experience, where in his mind we were actually seeing a deeper truth of the cosmos. I mean, it's beautiful. When the DMT chrysanthemum descends upon you, and you see with spectacular delight, the fractal wonder of the universe, you go, "Wow!" And then anything that approximates that, all the crystals, and all the rainbows, and all the things that approximate that in our life, we inherently know that we're taking a glimpse at the numinous. It's something that exists, like almost as a first principle of the cosmos, beauty. And we're just seeing a little glimpse of it in our life, and we know that it's good, and we know that it's true, and we know that it's where we come from. That was his kind of... I'm paraphrasing, of course, he wrote about this. But that was an idea he had. And it makes a lot of sense to me. This is actually where we come from. We come from beauty, and we go back to beauty. And the trick is, can we find beauty in the whole way through? All the way up, all the way down, all through our life.

PORANGUÍ: Yeah, yeah, precisely. And how do we continue to come back to it. it's the actual act of that hard work of returning to beauty that shapes us, that shapes the river. It's constantly balancing, it's winding and finding its way back to the source. And it's that journey, it's those winds that are not controlled, are not defined, are not linear. They're not canals, they're not these hard, angular things. It is winding. And it's the way that it winds, like our veins, that creates this spiral of life. It's the actual architecture of all the cosmos, which is a spiral nature, everything is unfolding like a spiraling flower. Like the agave, when we play the didge, right? They play that instrument, that spiral is in us. And our bodies, when we're doing bodywork, there's a spiral that we're working with. It's not this rigid structure that's actually symmetrical. It's asymmetrical, and if you actually look there's a spiral, starting the in feet going up into the crown, to the energy bodies, and they're spiraling. So, it's constantly everywhere we look. We walk through Sedona, you look at these junipers, and one is kind of like this subtle spiral and then you see some and they're like just a little twisted. Like, what? Why?

AUBREY: Yeah, it's like some are able to tap into the instrument of the divine, which is really like, how the fuck do you play a flute like that? You can't think about that. You have to be catching a current of the truth, beauty, intelligence of cosmos. And you just tune in and you catch the current, and you translate that current. Which again, goes and really reifies that idea that there's a first principle of the cosmos all the way up and down, that there's love, truth, beauty, intelligence of the cosmos. It's moving all the way through. And actually, our finding of our own beauty way is really listening to that, and then expressing it uniquely through our unique body prism in only the way that we can with our breath, and with our training, and with our tastes and unique configuration of desires, and all of the things that we have that we get to translate that. And then in that, and this is also very Gafni influenced. I just want to give him credit. But in that moment, we're uniquely expressing an aspect of the divine. And what he would say is expressing the more God to come, because God can only express and evolve through actually our own evolution because this is the first time that you ever played that flute. And so, in that moment, when you're in that beauty, the divine is smiling, like wow, like all people, as us expresses the divine, are listening going, "Whoa, wow." We stopped for a moment, and just...

PORANGUÍ: Appreciate it. There's an awakening, I would almost say. It's like awakening to the now, to the present moment, is something so unique about music and dance. I always say are two sides of the same coin. That vibrational temporal phenomenon that arises in this moment, and brings our full awareness. We're not thinking about, what am I doing tomorrow? What just happened there? It's like, note to note, breath to breath. And the space between the notes creates this infinite feeling, and that's the divine. That's that spiral. And it's like, the more we get out of the way, is how I would complement what you just said. We have to get out of the way. And when I say we, that we, that conscious, that mind, it's that attachment, the ego, which is beautiful. It gets us through, it helps us survive in this place that we find ourselves, in this walk. But divinity is when we surrender that, when we let go of the bank of the river, and we allow it to really take us on its winding curves. And we don't know what's going to happen. It's in the unknowing and just surrendering to the mystery, that then divinity can really unfold its magnificence.

AUBREY: Yeah, it's an interesting and kind of intricate idea of, so the development of the psyche. There's the separate self, which is the ego structure, the identity structure, which is actually always in the way. Because by its very nature, it's saying, I am not the divine, and I am not connected to anything, and I am the only one. It's like fucking Tigger. "The wonderful thing about me is I'm the only one," which is true on one level. And then also true on another level. It actually goes and circles back around. So there's that separate self. Then there's the full connected self, which is seamless self, which is like the one taste as the Buddhist would say. Like merging into the unified field, completely surrendering identity, very difficult to actually get to that. Because you usually bring at least some witness perspective to that. But nonetheless, like we all have a taste of the unified field. And then there's the place where our uniqueness actually participates in the unified field. And so, that unified seamless code of the universe is seamless being that it's one coat, but it's not featureless. We're that unique feature, we're that prism, so that it flows actually through us and creates something new, some novel new experience. So, it's both getting out of the way enough so that your ego and identity that says, "I'm not that, and I can do it all on my own, self-made man, let me carve myself out of my own statue." Fucking statue annoys the shit out of me. So, we get out of the way enough of that to allow the field, the field emanation, emanation of I am, to move through us. And then the eye becomes like the refracting prism I am, and I, and all your uniqueness, your unique fingerprint, your unique psyche, your unique configuration of desires. All of em, the emanation splashes through the , and creates that, that song, that will never be created again. For the first time and the last time of all history was created through the ultimate Poranguiness of that moment. And that's where the real magic lasts. It's this combination of alright, surrendering the lower aspect of the separate self, allowing yourself to feel the field and then stepping back in as your unique prism. Then allowing the emanation to move through your eye. And then that's when the most beauty, the most beauty occurs.

PORANGUÍ: Yeah, yeah, I love that. One of the ways, makes me think about when I'm performing on a stage in those contexts. There's this really interesting thing that happens. And even in this moment, it's like how... There's getting out of the way, there's the splashing through the eye. But then I would almost say there's this refinement, and then cultivating, as you cultivate this muscle, if you will, this skill, that sense, is then learning how to direct that, and how to really focus it, and channel it. Because we can just be raw energy just expressing, just beating on that drum and just let that... And that's a beautiful thing. And then there's this refinement that comes with time, with cultivation, which we all have. And it's something that I really believe. It's like every human being, in fact, is a musician, and is a dancer. Every single human being has the capacity. Some of us are born innately with certain just propensity and gift, if you will. We call that gift or talent and this kind of a thing. But everyone has that within us. This old proverb, African proverb that says, if you can walk, you can dance. And if you can talk, you can sing. And it really catches the essence of this, is that, do we choose in this life, especially in our modern life to actually dive into that? To give that space, to give it importance, weight? And those of us who don't, I really feel like we get disconnected in a way that maybe is really tragic. And in our modern society, with the advent of technology, and recording, and Spotify, and all these things, where we can just consume music if you will, just at the flip of a switch or just a glance of the eye, and the finger, we forget that we are authors. And that music and dance are something that are so wondrous, magical. In fact, it's sorcery, it's a spell, right? Because we're tapping into these song lines, like you said. We're listening, and really listen, and the artist has cultivated himself or herself. We totally get out the way. We come this channel. We're receiving a river of music that is always there, we're just stepping into that river. And we're capturing it, capturing this current, like you said. And then we're bringing that forward into the present moment to be expressed. So in this moment, we are in the hands of the Creator, we are in the hands of Mother Earth, and we are her hands. We are the hands. And so in that moment, we get to really become that. And so, we channel it. But what happens when we just consume and we have this relationship to music that is purely from this consumer content perspective, which is the modern kind of context we find ourselves in? Is that we no longer feel empowered, we feel disconnected, we lose our authorship, our authority. We literally become powerless in a way, and it's a form of control. And it's what I really believe, it's essential right now at this time, is awakening everyone to their power as creators, as authors.

AUBREY: Ad you're saying a form of control from the energy of empire, you could call it, something that my brother John Churchill calls it, empire, which wants us to just simply consume and be disempowered from our access to our own love, truth, beauty, intelligence, uniqueness that we're in. So, just consume, consume, consume. You're broken, we'll fix you. Here's a pill, here's the thing. We'll dial you in, don't worry about it. All the while, everybody's lifeforce energy, their God flame is just getting lower and lower and lower. Yeah.

PORANGUÍ: And I don't know that it's even conscious. Some people might say, oh, they want to get us. Like, who's the they, right? The day is right here. It's that unconscious part of us that has fallen asleep, and has gotten comfortable, and got uncomfortably numb, as Pink Floyd so eloquently puts it. And so, there's this invitation at this moment, which is so, it's only now to step into that again, to reconnect to that authority, to inhabit fully our being. And it's an embodied place. That's another thing that's so interesting with the advent of all the technology that we have now, like DJs, and like production. I was just talking to my aunt, she works with Warner Chappell Hill Music, and licensing for Latin America. I just saw her in Miami. She was telling me how so much of the music now that people are asking for, and the content they want to license, all these big companies want to license different music... She's meeting these artists. She had a meeting with them, no one pulled out an instrument. They pulled out computers and controllers. There's no instrument, there's no... It's changed so much now, music. What has become even music, and how we create music has gotten to this digital place. It really raises some interesting questions about what happens to us when we completely start to virtualize and leave the motion that is required, the dance of my fingers, the dance of my heart, and that act of the connection of that in emanating a vibration, that is then palpably felt in the skin, in the cells, in the water of our being.

AUBREY: It doesn't mean that... So, that's super important. But I want to make a distinction here, because I was always somebody who is like, plant medicines, the natural, that's what I'm all about; psychedelics that are the natural plant medicines. But Rick Doblin always challenged me on that. Obviously, he's promoting the legalization of MDMA, which is huge. It's going to change the world. And super in favor of that, of course. But he was like, well, there's a some kind of inherent bias towards this kind of pre modern glorification of... Indigenous culture is always better, First Nation culture is always better, natural is always better. And there's some truth to that, of course. It's true but partial, right? Because there is also a lot of superstitious practices and different aspects of that that aren't exactly... And there's great advances in technology. Mostly, I think that's right. There's also kind of exceptions and beautiful things that can happen. So, to go back to music. So, that kind of opened my mind to actually the artificial medicines, and of course, my experiences with ketamine subsequently to that, have been like, oh yeah, Rick, you were right. This is a key ally in my pantheon of medicine and it is entirely artificial. There is no ketamine fruit. If there is, and somebody knows how to get ketamine off a tree, let me fucking know, because we're going with baskets. But, ultimately with music, take someone like Jon Hopkins. He's one of the musicians that I admire the most, and gives such profound transmissions. But one of the things that he does, so alright, so if we take the three stages of development. There's the kind of the pre-modern, which is just play your music. It's like iboga music, just a jaw harp and someone uttering these kinds of guttural tones and like leading... Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's fucking gorgeous, and Icaros, and chakapa and the sound, or what you're actually producing, when you just play the flute. That's gorgeous. And then there's the modern, which would be just the digital music. Like dubstep or something like that. Which has its place. It can get you moving, it can push energy in an intense way. Even more it amplifies what a normal drum could do, and puts it in a way that your whole body just like, oh, I can't stop moving. So there's something valuable about it, but we've lost something. And then there's the third way, which is like, I would call it trans modern. So the third, which takes the best of the pre-modern, the best of the modern, and then weaves it in. So it's a little bit like when you and Amani get together, and the album we made, "Remembrance" where it's the natural instruments with some digital amplifications, and things like that, that can create something also uniquely beautiful and uniquely for our time. And I mentioned Jon Hopkins, and I just want to finish this thought, to not leave that an open loop. One of the things that I think makes him different than other ambient music artists and also he also has his own electronic DJ kind of vibe, but I'm more into his ambient catalogue. So, much of what he's putting in start with field recordings. It's a fire first, or it's the waterfall at Tayos Caves, or it's the sound of his friend's children playing, or it's the clink of a beer glass. And it'll be like, "Wow, that sounded cool." And then he takes that, and then he applies somebody to it. But because it started with the source sound of the Earth itself, then when he makes adjustment to it, it retains a bit of the spark of that naturally beautiful thing. And I think that to me is what excites me the most about music is like, I love all the different types, but when somebody can blend both the instrumentation and the ambient nature of wind, and I know use this a lot too, the crickets, the sound of rain, weaving that in.

PORANGUÍ: Something I learned in the project creating the music for Kuya with Dr. Dan, and when he invited me in to work with ketamine for the first time. I was same as you, I'm pretty strictly stay away from synthetics for many years. It was a big ask, and it was in the middle of the pandemic. I was like, "Really?" I'm like, "I don't know about this, Dan. I don't know, this molecule, I don't know..." But he's like, "I think you're the person to make music for this. Like the best person." And he approached me. So, he dropped Ashley and I into this space to do a session, several sessions, just to understand and get to know this molecule. And in the space, we played a couple of playlists that he'd worked with up to that point. One of them, the first one was really insightful, because what was unique about it, it was mostly organic instruments. And it had some nature recordings in it that were in there. And that was really impactful, because where it took me in that space was into the underground caverns of the Earth. It took me into the deepest, deepest recesses of the Earth. And I realized, wow, this is a way that I can go into myself, but also go into the mother in a way that we could never do in a physical body. And nor should we, in fact, I think there's places in the earth that are meant to be her sacred places. Not to be penetrated, or explored, or mined, or extracted by humans. And so, that's a whole other big piece. And what I got was that the use of these natural sounds weaves us through the ketamine specifically, is able to stitch us back into the fabric of life and Mother Earth, rather than dissociate it. Because it's a dissociative. And I really got them, like oh, this is a way actually to weave us in more if it's done correctly in the music. The second time he took me in, Gunther was with him. And they played me this track, this music, that was synthesizers. It was more like Hopkins style, but even more like real synthetic. And I could hear the consciousness of the composer. I could feel their ego in my journey, and was like, the synthetic piece, and I felt very disconnected. So, I realized how important it is that music is used with ketamine. Ketamine specifically is like a blank canvas. So it can literally be distorted any way or woven any way you want.

AUBREY: Absolutely agree.

PORANGUÍ: And your captured audience there. You can't go anyway. You're in for the ride. So, when I made the music, the two that had been released so far, "Cura" and "Samadhi" and now "Akasha" is going to come out, and then "Soul" the fourth one, all of them, if you listen to them, they're all woven with the nature escapes. It was so clear that was essential. And using the blend of what you're talking about, some pads, some sounds that are electronic, and using the technology to enhance and to open up realms and possibilities with the organic sounds, but the organic sounds are woven throughout. Because there's something about organic instruments, and the overtones and the harmonics that are there naturally without having to use synthesizers to create that, I really believe that that awakens and helps our cellular body remember. And this remembrance, like the album we created together is really, really at the core, I believe, of what is going to help us heal. And that's the difference between music for healing versus music for entertainment, distraction, this kind of thing. So, I love Jon's work, it's awesome. Some of his stuff goes a little too synthetic for my tastes. But I do love when he keeps, like the Tayos Caves like you mentioned is one of my favorites of his. That's where I would lean personally.

AUBREY: Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. We all have our own particular palette for what works for us in the best way. I think this idea of remembering is also very important. I've been kind of contemplating on how we are given this story that we can't figure out what's going on with our body, and that we need somebody. We need to go to the priest in the white lab coat, and do all of these things to figure out what's happening. But how could it be that we're the only organism on the planet that doesn't know what it needs to do to remedy itself? A dog has an upset stomach, it starts eating grass.

PORANGUÍ: Yeah, cats too, right?

AUBREY: It just knows what the fuck to do. It's just like, "Oh, this is off. Let me tap into my instincts, and I'll figure it out." But we've been fed this message that oh, the body is a black box, you'll never understand it, you've got to go to us, and we'll prescribe the thing that you need. And it's just like, no, that can't... Yes, alright, I'm not saying there isn't a place for doctors, and there aren't medical mysteries. And there isn't sometimes Dr. House who can figure out some crazy shit that's happened, because we've been so disconnected from ourselves for so goddamn long, that it is fucking all chaos in there, and we're just putting out fires, llike a crazy deranged fireman, because everything, all the alarms are going off at once. And it's a full triage situation.

PORANGUÍ: Yeah.

AUBREY: I get it, we might be in that position. But there's also a place where if you really listen, you'll know. It's like, I need some more sun. I need more time with my feet in the earth, I should really stop eating this type of fucking food--

PORANGUÍ: Or looking at this thing all--

AUBREY: Looking at this thing all day. I need to go in the cold plunge. I need more rest. There's so much that we know, that we don't actually allow ourselves to believe. And instead we'd rather go for some other thing. But part of taking our power back, which is key for us in this society is saying, no, I know my body. I know my body more than anybody, actually, because it's fucking mine. I can tell you my symptoms, but you don't know what it feels like. I know. I know.

PORANGUÍ: But do you really know?

AUBREY: And that's the goal. The goal is to really cultivate that self-awareness where you know.

PORANGUÍ: Remember when we first met early on, it was like 13 years ago or something. We were sitting there and I remember the first time when I was sharing with you, like the didgeridoo, and what's possible, opening the breath, and the concept of circular breathing or spiral breathing as I like to call it. It's things like that that are so primordial, and that you're capable of doing but we have these stories, like I can't do that. That's crazy, only Aboriginal people do that because they have a special anatomy, like extra big lungs, right? So, that whole mindset is like... So, there's things that we've yet to discover in our own body. I love for instance, when I'm teaching, when we do the music as medicine courses. I've had elders come who are like 60s, 70s, 80s. I teach them a sound they can make with their body. I'm like, "Did you know you could do...?" And they're like, "What the hell is that? I can do that?" And they start doing it, and they start making that sound, you see this light going. They're like, "I had this body for how long? Six, seven decades. I didn't know I can make these sounds." Creative, creating sounds. Then all of a sudden, they're like... And they're making all these sounds with their own body and being musical. And they don't have to use their voice. And they realize, oh, this is a drum, this is an orchestra, I can create all of this from just what is here, and I've had this for all this time, and I haven't even tapped into the potential. So it turns on this light of what else have I not discovered here?

AUBREY: I mean, the technology of being human is so underdeveloped for us now. And it's not that it's been undiscovered. Like all of the, from the tantric schools and the mystery schools and all of the different trainings, and all of the different ways in which these things have been cultivated. It's not like we don't know, but we haven't learned it and said, we're learning what date the Treaty of Versailles was fucking signed. I had to memorize that. Is that useful for me now? No, it's not fucking useful for me now. I'll google that shit if I really need to know. I don't need to know that, it's not important. But how to breathe. What the difference is between nose breathing and mouth breathing is.

PORANGUÍ: Completely.

AUBREY: All of these different crucial things, this is part of the revolution of moving from this old story to the new story, which is really a story of empowerment. Empowerment of the human to get back and understand at least a fraction of what we're capable, because I actually think that we don't even truly even know what we're capable of. Because there's a lot of stories. You listen to Matias de Stefano tell stories of the civilization of [inaudible 31:52]. And they were doing some magical shit that we've forgotten how to do. And potentially, the field of belief is not actually, this is another topic, but the field of belief collectively is not actually allowing that to happen, both internally and externally. But in either case, we're not even close to even knowing what we already do know, let alone advance and discover what's even more possible.

PORANGUÍ: Which raises a really interesting, I think, question that I kind of feel at this time with what we're seeing happening, a collective of this, wanting to go into like virtual reality, wanting to go into what's the future of AI, what's the future of all these technologies that are moving so fast at this exponential rate, and ask the question. We don't even understand our own biology, and the instrument that is the human. And now we're already trying to skip it, we want to already exit, we already want to virtualize ourselves. And it's really, I think it raises really important questions like, I think actually what we need is a new renaissance and it is happening. But there's a renaissance that's bringing us back to the body, bringing us back to the power of presence, and the power of intimacy. And what that really is. I love that piece in your conversation with Gafni, I believe where he says, the divine is... Really enlightenment is to be intimate with everything. And I think that's--

AUBREY: And our problem is a global intimacy disorder.

PORANGUÍ: It's a global intimacy disorder. And I 100% agree. I feel part of that is that we've been disconnected to our relationship to sound, vibration, music, dance.

AUBREY: Yeah, I just got goosebumps. For sure. That's one of the huge portals back in.

PORANGUÍ: Huge! And even we talk about psychedelics. It is so psychedelic, like music and dance can take you to all those states. And when you're making it yourself, when you're singing with somebody, you're singing by yourself, like how healing that is, how it [inaudible 33:48]. When you play that didge, you're in... Like angry, stressed out, anxiety. You pick up a didge for three minutes, three minutes. I don't know any other drug that can do this. You're dropped right back into your center, you're totally aligned, just like, man.

AUBREY: See, I'm fucked up, because I take that as a challenge. I'm like, you don't know any drug that can do that? Let's put that to the test.

PORANGUÍ: Let's go, let's go.

AUBREY: But, yes, no, you're absolutely right. Especially you start singing into the didge, and then you create that beating effect, like you taught me, where it's like vibrating your own head and in this kind of entrainment, like your own binaural beat that's actually vibrating your entire system. You become the box that's actually emanating the sound of the speaker. It's like, fucking A. It's special.

PORANGUÍ: Yeah, and you drop into flow. Flow state is like right there. Next thing you look at the time, oh shit, I thought it was just going to be three minutes, it's actually like 20 minutes later, I'm late for my whatever. But you're so dropped in and present now.

AUBREY: And as you said, it requires the cultivation and the patience of the skill. Because playing one breath of didge, taking a big breath outside of it, playing another breath, it's going to be harder. It's good, but it's the circular breathing, when you actually get that. And to get that at a level of proficiency where you're actually just able to continue playing, that's where it really opens up. So, it's like on this exponential curve, one of those kind of hockey stick up value curves where it's a little bit cool, a little bit cool, little bit cool. But then you get the skill, and it's like, oh shit. Then it really takes off.

PORANGUÍ: It opens up portals, yeah.

AUBREY: Same with meditation, same with breathwork, same with so many of these different practices. It's like, you have to have a little patience--

PORANGUÍ: And determination.

AUBREY: And determination and faith, that if you keep at it, you're going to see and yield these incredible results.

PORANGUÍ: Completely, and suddenly, it happens instantaneously. It's like you're doing it, you're doing it, am I ever going to get this? And next thing you know, it's just that little extra, that little extra, suddenly you pierce through, and you're in it. I remember when I first, with the didge, when I first got to circular breathing, I thought I couldn't do it. I thought something was wrong with me. I didn't give to this didge.

AUBREY: I think everybody thinks that--

PORANGUÍ: You be like, "Man, this is so hard."

AUBREY: You want me to breathe in and out at the same time? Get the fuck out of here, that's impossible. Then you watch somebody do it, and you're like, "Oh..."

PORANGUÍ: This is possible.

AUBREY: This is possible.

PORANGUÍ: This is possible. And I didn't think it was possible for a long time, and turned out the didge I was gifted was like from Indonesia. It was all dotted, painted pretty like touristic didge, but it had a little crack in it that I didn't know about. And so, I never could get that. No one could get that thing to [inaudible 36:32] because it didn't have the back pressure. And it was later that a Brazilian friend of mine, [inaudible 36:36] he was playing the didge here in Sedona, an agave one. And I go, "Wait, we share genetics. I know that if you can do that, I should be able to do that." And that was all I needed was him to kind of give that. And he gave me one of his digits. And within 24 hours, I was circular breathing. I was determined. I sat there for hours. And my partner at the time, she's like, "What's wrong with you? What are you doing?" Just going at it. And when I finally got, I'm like, "Come in." Remember those LED clocks, those big ones with the big red numbers? I had one of those in the corner of the room. And I'm playing it, and I start to circular breath, and I saw it, and the numbers were all dancing. I'm like, "Holy shit, I'm making these numbers dance. Hey, babe, come in here, check this out." And she's looking at the clock and she's looking at me, she's like, "What are you talking about?" Like, you don't see that? You don't see the numbers? Like no. And I realized, it's me, my instrument hole. I'm vibrating. So, the LED flashing on and off, suddenly I can see the actual movement.

AUBREY: Yeah, there's something I've been also contemplating too is, so many practices, whether it's like trauma release therapy, which is like shaking and moving the body. We've we talked about this on the podcast before. Like what a dog does when it runs into a screen door, or just shakes. It's like we're we receive these kind of distortion into our body. You can call it trauma, but it's not exactly maybe the right word. But it's just like a distortion of the blueprint, from something that happens. Whether it's emotional, psychic, physical, a distortion of the blueprint comes in the body. And then it's actually vibration that helps release it. And also expression, which helps release it, which is another way to express vibration through your voice--

PORANGUÍ: And witnessing, the listener.

AUBREY: Yeah, so all of these things are like the ways to actually help us shed and purge some of this distortion energy that we collect.

PORANGUÍ: Through the walk of life. That's returning to the beauty way. That's the invitation. As we do that, the more we're equipped and we make the effort to cultivate, to vibrate, to move the things that become stagnant that become these wounds, these traumas, these scars if you will. We heal, in the process of healing ourselves, we generate the beauty, and we literally learn to make what we come in contact with, starting with ourself, our own vehicle, this body, more beautiful than we found it.

AUBREY: Yeah. I wrote a poem recently and it feels like it's relevant to what we're talking about. So, I'm going to read it.

PORANGUÍ: Yeah, please.

AUBREY: We have a health care crisis and it's not some virus, some new itis. The crisis is we don't care about our health. Too busy mongering for cheese, getting that dough, nuts for the drip, flossing our gold teeth and our wallet. Living life, climbing the mountain of do more, code red until we're dead. There's a hole inside us, an emptiness, a loneliness. We try to fill it with ease, fast food, heavy porn, hard booze, until ease becomes disease. But worse than all these is the stress of the pace, the constant rat race. Cortisol oozes and spills. We try to clean it with pills and promises, without the will to keep our word to ourselves. You see, the problem with a rat race is even if you win, you're still a rat. Spinning the wheel for some bigger fat cat who will buy power with money, and open the gates of hell, and send us the bill. The sad part about it all is that this is the story of the fall. We're still in Eden, we never left. And it wasn't an apple, it was the snake of empire that hissed in our ear, shaming our pleasure, teaching us what to treasure. So now we can't see that the trees are laden with mangoes and we don't need fucking Cheetos. This is an invitation, not a condemnation. A time for celebration of a global liberation. Welcome back to the garden. We've got some tending to do.

PORANGUÍ: I love that, yeah. You kind of like hit on some of the deeper messages of this new album that I've been working on, in a big way.

AUBREY: Not surprising.

PORANGUÍ: Not surprising.

AUBREY: As brothers tapped into the same frequency, expressing it through our own art. So, tell me about this new album. I've listened to some of the music on it. It's a big departure from what I've heard you play and produce before. It's powerful. It's this kind of staff in the ground moment for you.

PORANGUÍ: Completely. Yeah, thank you. The pandemic had a lot of challenging things that this amazing virus brought to us and upgrades. And one of the big upgrades for me was having the space and time and the touring schedule, and all the moving about to kind of get really in with myself, and have some time, just by myself again, more than I'd had in a while. And then in that silence, in that meditative state, receiving and witnessing what was unfolding all around between the race riots, between what was happening with our leadership, not just in the United States, but also in Brazil and other parts of the world. With women, with people of color, all of this, was just like raising all this stuff up in me, and it's like, oh, it's time, I really need to hone like the next evolution of the prayer of what wants to come through. And it was just so clear. And this whole notion of beauty was what is the core, which the Navajo, the Dine people, [inaudible 42:30] and this notion of beauty, and how do we make the world, how do we bring beauty into everything that we do, and how we express ourselves, how we speak, and how we walk, how we dance? And how do we bring that beauty, how do we bring that forward with our very life with what we're doing. And this of course is connected deeply with the prayer that we always refer back to, [inaudible 42:50], for the greatest good of all beings. And what does that look like? And what is the deeper teaching of this sweet grass? Why is it the braid, and the sweetness, it's weaving together of the elements. It's you, I, and the other and the other is like the offering, right? The Holy Spirit, many names that we can give it.

AUBREY: If you really think about it, I mean, the First Nations people of most everywhere, but particularly since I'm most familiar with our own North American First Nations people and their story, the anger of the injustice--

PORANGUÍ: Genocide.

AUBREY: Genocide, like fuck, man. Fuck, man. It's so deep. It's so, so deep. And for any of them in that to be able to transcend, [inaudible 43:56] of course. Of course there's that sacred rage, but to transcend that and still be able to find and teach, and live the beauty way. And I know there's so many struggles on the rez and it's a deep challenge. Of course it is. Of course it is. It's completely severed and disconnected from the entirety of your history, your whole story. Like your life and your people was a book, somebody just takes it, and just rips all of the old pages out. And a few people can maybe remember some of the words, burns half of the books, it's fucking insane. But to really connect to how special it is for those that have been able to step forward and transcend that, I mean that's an alchemy at a level that is difficult to understand. And it's not exclusive to those first nations, and of course our African brothers and sisters out there--

PORANGUÍ: Vietnamese.

AUBREY: So many. And even my people, the Jewish people. Fucking lots of persecutions all over. My ancestors fled Russia when the pogroms were going around, which is basically, they were just hanging out in their house doing their thing. And Russian cavalry comes in to just slaughter you. Fucking crazy. And the beautiful thing is we are in a time now where there's still a lot of inequity and inhumanity, but at least that shit's not going on in most places. Still is in some, sadly.

PORANGUÍ: It's still happening.

AUBREY: It's still happening.

PORANGUÍ: About three hours north of here on the Navajo rez. It's happening right now.

AUBREY: Yeah, and that's the effect of the things that have happened back then. But I guess, to get to the original point is, because this album is speaking of that particular... To all people but it has a deep affinity to those people, our First Nations people of this land that you've actually studied and worked with and shared like a cultural heritage with, just wanted to just take a moment to bow to what impossible alchemy it is to transcend that which they've had to endure, to find their way back to beauty. I mean, holy shit.

PORANGUÍ: Yeah, I would almost say... I don't know if I'd say transcend. I would really say, it's an ongoing unfolding of an act of resistance, and resilience. It's truly resilience. What is it to take it, all of that wounding, all of that not being seen, being treated invisible, ongoing, literally raping, taking right now. Peabody Coal mining is up there, just contaminating the water. Taking right now as we speak. Uranium mines for nuclear weapons is happening right now up in the Four Corners area, it's ongoing, contaminating all the water. They have everything. And they were given the worst piece of land that was left there, like here, that's your land. And then they still have that taken away. Ongoing right now. People are still living total in shacks. Right now, our chief... I was telling you about our sun dance chief who was just in a car accident because a drunk woman hit him. He's 87 years old. She came out DUI. She's just alcoholic. Alcoholism, diabetes, all the processed foods, all of the things that we've brought to the people there continues to contaminate them, continues to kill them, eradicate them. It's extermination and no one talks about that. That's never on a headline. No one mentions it.

AUBREY: Every once in a while, there'll be a flare up of some protest at a pipeline or something that'll get a moment of shine but as you said, it's this ongoing--

PORANGUÍ: Quickly, it's like poof! Suppress. We want to erase that because it's shameful. There's a lot of shame there and we have it as a people, as an American people, because we're all responsible. We're all connected to that. Everyone has an ancestor that was directly involved with that genocide and we all benefit from it. All this land right here that we're on right now, this is indigenous land. It's much older. We didn't ask permission. Chapman Resort built right on ceremonial grounds. It's ongoing. For me, this album is speaking to all peoples. It is. I do a lot of the songs there in Portuguese, Spanish and English. I did it to be Pan American, because the conversation is inviting us at this time, how do we create beauty with everything that is and shed the shame? The shame is a shackle. It's a prison. It's never going to get us back. There's remorse, I believe, is the healthy part of that shame, that then takes us back to our heart, and then helps us connect to our soul esteem. And from that place of soul esteem, then we're actually able to do something about it. We do it by starting with our own body, and then rippling out from there, and the instrument of coming alive, coming back online, and actually doing something because we can. Right now, just being able to make a gesture right now... Our chief's truck is totaled and they don't have money to buy a new truck. I'm just like, "Let's raise some funds and let's get them a truck." Just those little gestures that go so far when you're dealing with people who are that repressed, just that little bit, man, that is nothing to somebody. $6,000. What is that to somebody nowadays? You can't do much with $6,000 in our modern society. That, right there, allows them to get wood to get through a winter, using their truck because without a truck, you can't do anything up there.

AUBREY: It's such a strange paradox because most people I know, hold the First Nations people in such high esteem, actually. However, you hold the people in a culture in such high esteem. However, you just drive by the rez, maybe not literally but metaphorically, drive by the rez, whether it's in our consciousness or whether it's actually on the highway and just look the other way and squint your eyes like, "Let's not look over there." But meanwhile then we'll go back to our friends and we'll tell some story about... That the native people once told and talk about, Wakan Tanka and these ideas and feel it and--

PORANGUÍ: People buy a headdress and wear a headdress at a festival--

AUBREY: Well, fortunately, people don't do that anymore. They get that idea but nonetheless, there's real, nobody's taking real action. I think we're all also confused as to what do we do? How can we really help? Sometimes money can help and sometimes it actually doesn't help. I saw that when I did my own charity work in Africa. In Uganda and Tanzania and Kenya, I saw how disruptive it was to actually the local infrastructure of actually building the economy from the ground up when the best and the brightest of all of the people there were not working to build anything, but actually working to just get grants because that was actually the best source... That was the way to gamify and improve their life for themselves and their kin, their close family. So if they could get a grant, then they would be good. That's not everybody. I don't want to generalize. I know there's a lot of beauty that happens there. There's also a double edge... There's another side, there's a shadow side to just giving money, saying like, "Here's more money!"

PORANGUÍ: It can corrupt, it can distort.

AUBREY: Exactly! It can be the only way! Something else, something deeper, something bigger, something more meaningful!

PORANGUÍ: Make relations, make relations and that's it. When we say [inaudible 51:43] word that everyone says, "Aho," nowadays. We use it almost as a general expression. It's been adopted by a lot of communities outside of the indigenous ones. I feel like sometimes there's that fine line of when is it appropriation and when is it an honoring? When is an actually an embodying--

AUBREY: Appreciation. Yeah.

PORANGUÍ: How do we really embody it? That phrase. Be a good relative. Honoring all my relations, not just my human ones, how can I be a good relative? I think that's one of the greatest ways that we actually can bring positivity and bring good relation, bring more beauty, is create relations. Connect with our indigenous relatives. One thing that really hurts my heart is how often I see people refer to indigenous people or culture or story as if it were dead, as if there's no native people left, as if it was all from a museum. I see people even wanting to do sweat lodge or temazcal but they're doing it in this way that's so surface level, if that makes sense. I just see that... We call those rainbow lodges. That's good, people are praying. No, I don't think anyone doesn't want people to pray but there's a reason why the Chanunpa exists, why the pipe in this ways, why we sun dance and why these ways were created: to prepare medicinepeople to be able to be leaders in society. That's a living tradition. So when people just take that and go buy pipe at the trading post, they're doing their ceremony, it's good, they're praying; everyone should pray. It's not just good but there's a way to do that. Why aren't we inviting living indigenous teachers who are alive right now, why aren't we inviting them to the event or to the table or to the ceremony? Why aren't we bringing those teachers forward? They need that. That's part of seeing. That's part of inviting and creating relation, creating good relations? Because as we do that, that's healing forward and backwards?

AUBREY: So my relationship with Maestro Orlando Chujandama of the Quechua people, I've seen that with him bringing him out to serve with our tribe and our people. During the pandemic, nobody could get out there to brew. I heard from somebody who actually went based on me talking about and went out to see him. He just DM'ed. He's like, "Hey, man, it's tough times for Orlando down in Tarapoto where he lives in the village. Nobody can go." A lot of his revenue is based on people... Him serving medicine because he serves medicine to his village for free. It's just what he does, [inaudible 54:27] Yeah, you just send some money and create the relationship and then learn. Also recognize that it's… Not he knows everything about everything just because he's native. There's aspects of human psychology. There's been some advancements in the way that you understand this, but then in the areas that he does know, the depth of Gnosis that's available is astounding and it's irreplaceable. You just can't replace it. It doesn't mean you can't have another great Ayahuasca ceremony with somebody else, Westerner, anybody. I think we've all had experiences and I won't name names, but somebody who's not from an indigenous culture, fucking gorgeous. It's great. It feels like building these relationships is really the thing that makes the most sense. It's not going to be the easy thing where you just lob a check like it's coming out of a fucking drop from a stork and then land on the... You have to get in there a little bit deeper to actually do anything meaningful.

PORANGUÍ: There's too much trauma. There's really a lot of trauma. There's a lot of hurt and a lot of different distortions have happened. A great example just was with our relatives up there, on the Navajo, on the Dene nation. You can't just hand somebody some money. People are struggling with meth addictions, alcoholism. There's all these things that they may not be able to make a good choice, say. So as we know, anybody who's struggling in a place of trauma and wounding, one of the examples... You've actually helped with this, with sun dance is every year when we go to dance, we take a project. We've brought composting toilets. Scotty, Siltronic, dear brother, who created the EcoZoic toilets that they've used at Burning Man, they're composting toilets, and solar-powered. We brought that to the sun dance. That's changed their understanding of just having an outhouse or a hole in the ground where it's contaminating the groundwater. Now, we actually have this thing that takes our poop, and is mending the hoop, creating soil that they can grow food from. That's mind-boggling. It's an ancient technology, so to speak, brought forward into now and weaving that back into the community. When the elders see that, they're just like, "Wow, this is..." You can see, it's like turning something back on. And the solar power... Before they used to have a gas Jenny to power the microphone for the drummers for the ceremony. And you'd just hear... in the background as they're trying to sing over this thing with the drum at the ceremony, the sun dance. Now we're using a solar panel, which is mind-boggling. It's silent and it's powered. It's a sun dance, and we're powered by the sun, which is just so beautiful and poetic. That's all been possible by donations in but channeling those, making the relationship, going there and find out what is that we really need. What's going to support the community and actually doing that in that way. It's the relation-building, is more important than the actual money. It's how that's being brought, and having the relationship. That's where the healing happens. That's where the mending of those relationships–

AUBREY: For anybody listening, listening first is the most is the most important thing because they have a story to tell and it's important to hear that story before you come in--

PORANGUÍ: Trying to rescue.

AUBREY: "I know what we need to do. All right, you guys over here, you guys over here," settle down--

PORANGUÍ: Yeah, misses the whole thing.

AUBREY: Settle down, sit down. Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. That's part of what needs to happen is just a deeper listening and not reactive listening even if the emotions come or all of this. Just--

PORANGUÍ: Have some tobacco. Share, commune, pray, it's like that. And when you do that, that tobacco helps to translate all the things too that the language isn't quite getting, that master-teacher plant, a translator plant. That's how we do it. That's what they teach us. We take a little corn husk, you make that smoke and you make an offering, and then we talk. It's in that way, then there's an understanding. So much is transmitted in that and healed in that. That's really an invitation to anyone listening. How do we create those relations with our indigenous relatives who are alive right now, every part of America, from north to south. It's seeing the people and inviting them, creating relation like that.

AUBREY: We can't set our storyline on the right track until we actually finish this open loop. It's like there's this open loop that we all have in the storyline of our country that somehow... I mean we can't go back in time and it also doesn't work to continually self-flagellate and punish ourselves for the thing that was done by our relatives. We can't pay forever for the sins of our fathers but we can actually take on the burden of closing the loop and make it, not a burden, but actually a pleasure, a part of our purpose, something that gives us meaning to say, "Alright, I didn't participate in this, but I've certainly benefited from it and nonetheless..."

PORANGUÍ: Which is participating.

AUBREY: Well, yeah. It is in its own way. It is unavoidable in some ways. But yes, we're definitely benefiting.

PORANGUÍ: But how do we move forward?

AUBREY: But how do we move forward? That's the fucking question.

PORANGUÍ: It's the witnessing of the trauma. It's that part of witnessing the song, listening to the song, receive the medicine of that being, creating that, sharing that story. That's why I say tobacco, just them being able to express and asking, actually having genuine curiosity. It's in the sharing of the telling of that story, of the wounds of all of that, which is hard to be with, but just giving it voice, giving it the space and the audience from someone who's descendant of colonizer is so healing. That's the healing right there because otherwise, it's never expressed. It literally turns into the disease. And then there's just wound upon wound because it continues and we just go back and even with the rescuer mentality going, "I'm going to do all this," it's the same exact mentality that goes all the way back to colonizer like, "I'm going to impose my solution, my plan." It's missing the whole point. The whole point is stop and listen. Allow the authentic story to be told and sit in it, feel it, have empathy, be intimate. It's in that intimacy.

AUBREY: The word privilege gets thrown around a lot. I think a lot of people pull back from it. What people pull back from is this idea of that we need to... It's almost like original sin that we have this thing that's sinful and shameful about us and there's nothing we can do and no matter what we do, we'll never overcome it. We know, anthro-ontologically, we know that doesn't feel right. However, we have, to use the word privilege, we have the privilege to be able to serve and mend the hoop that was broken by, whether it was our ancestors directly or whether somebody, we have the privilege to be able to mend that hoop. And this is what we all want, ultimately, anyways. If you look at any different study, what brings people happiness, joy, satisfaction, what is the thing that changes every different marker of mental health? It's having purpose. Everybody's like, "Oh, I don't have a purpose." Well, there's lots, they're all over the place. You have the privilege of choosing one of those different paths to hope to go and mend the hoop. There's many, many different vectors. Find the one that you're naturally allured to the most. Trust that and use that in a beautiful way. That's, I think the real invitation and I think what... And your music is really expressing so much of what we're saying in words. Music actually probably expresses it a lot better. I could just fucking plagiarize your album.

PORANGUÍ: We should probably just do that.

AUBREY: Yeah, we should probably just do that. I think that should be the next thing we do but it's I guess, for me, understanding privilege in that different way. No, yes. It's now the privilege to be of service. That is the fucking greatest. That's the greatest joy. We're here at the Fit for Service Summit, start of it and I'm so looking forward to it. Why? Is it because the people who are giving me things? No, it's the opposite. It's like man, I get to serve 250 people. We get to pour out all of our medicine, all the accumulated wisdom, everything we got. We get to pour that out, weave with them, create new relationships, the whole thing.

PORANGUÍ: It's that relating, relationship.

AUBREY: Exactly. Exactly. What a fucking gift!

PORANGUÍ: Familia.

AUBREY: What a gift! Let's play some music.

PORANGUÍ: Let's do it. Let's do it. So this one is called... The first one I'm going to play for you is called "Walk In Beauty". And it, of course, connects to... The name of the album is "Beauty Way". And this song, for me, is very much connected to this medicine here of the sweet grass and our brotherhood so with that...

AUBREY: As I anticipated, that said everything we said prior to that in a much better way. Music, man and the words--

PORANGUÍ: Expresses the inexpressible.

AUBREY: Yeah. We clumsily threw a bunch of words and ideas at something. And then it was like, "That was it. That was it." Sorry for everybody. You listened to us talk for 15 minutes when that song just captures it all. And be the prayer, be the prayer the world needs now like P is in every way, because it's not just the First Nations people that are hurting. We're all hurting. It's a global intimacy disorder, intimacy with ourselves, with each other--

PORANGUÍ: With the Earth.

AUBREY: With the Earth, everything, all the way across the board, all the way up and down. It's reconnecting all of the broken hoops and mending all of those... First, our own circle of ourself and then once we find that wholeness of self, bring that wholeness, inviting the wholeness of other selves, and then the connections and rippling all the way out to the cosmos. That's such a good song.

PORANGUÍ: Thanks, brother.

AUBREY: I mean... Fuck. To call it a song, it almost feels blasphemous. Did I just call that a song. That's rude. I'm sorry. The words... I don't know. What do you want? What do you want to call it? It is a prayer. It's more than that. It's more than anything. It's ineffable.

PORANGUÍ: Thank you. Thank you. That definitely came through. It's an honor to be the hands for this moment, to be the voice, put it down but understanding this is for all of us right now, it told me, at this moment in history, at this moment in the great continuum, this offering, it's to help us remember, stitch us back in, put us back in that sweet grass breed and... I think Putin, Trump and all these leaders, Bolsonaro. Why would we make a decision to hurt and to create more separation, more fear, more hatred? It's coming from a place of deep hurt. We're like that thread that got broken off and sticking out. We just stitch it back in. Let's braid it back in.

AUBREY: Braid it back into the love intelligence, beauty, desire of cosmos itself. Weave it all back together.

PORANGUÍ: And that's beautiful. It's supposed to do that. We have to just keep putting ourselves back into her.

AUBREY: And that's, as Charles Eisenstein beautifully articulates, "The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible," is a woven, braided hoop. I think we see other people trying to create top-down system of control of, "Oh yeah, we're going to be one world, but these people are going to be on charge of everybody. We're just going to be a number, we're just going to be a cog in the wheel." It's like the difference between being a cog in the machine, the wheel that they talk about in "Game of Thrones" of constantly seeking more power, the wheel of the separate-self looking in a perpetual rivalrous conflict with everybody else, and win-lose metrics to something else, a whole different octave of understanding of wholeness. That's the only way forward and now, whether you call it blessing or curse, it's now the time for us where... We don't have a choice. We got to do this. This is it. This is go-time, baby. We're here for this. Re-understand this moment. There's some gnarly stuff going on but now, it's our honor again, it's our privilege to be able to stand as the Shambhala warriors--

PORANGUÍ: Hoka hey!

AUBREY: Say, "Hoka hey." Let's find the rainbow in ourself and spread that rainbow of the truth of who we all are to everybody, everybody. Nobody gets left out.

PORANGUÍ: Exactly. It's the circle. It's the hoop. That is the hoop, right? Everyone's at the table together in this. No better, greater, lesser. The hierarchy thing needs to crumble. That needs to shift. The hirarchy needs to be in the hoop. It's the real architecture.

AUBREY: And the grief and the pain in the purge--

PORANGUÍ: It's all there.

AUBREY: All of that to actually start to start to braid back.

PORANGUÍ: That's how we heal it.

AUBREY: You feel it and there's so many different ways. You feel it when you're in the lodge. I got to share a lot of lodges with you. I can't wait to share a lodge where you're actually... Now you've been blessed to be able to lead lodges and I got to sit with you and to do that and fucking A. I can't wait to be in that with you. I've been in so many different ceremonies with you and it's essential. We need not only the knowledge but we need to step into the practice and whether that's the simple practice of playing music and dancing... We have an amazing ecstatic dance we're going to have today with our Fit for Service community. That's one little step, to actually find our own liberation and our own wholeness and all of these different ways and bring that out into the world is a living prayer, an embodiment of a living prayer. That changes the world. That changes everything.

PORANGUÍ: That's it. That's it. This is, I hope, a soundtrack, that people can support them in this journey and this walk. Bring us back as music does so beautifully.

AUBREY: Another trap we can get in is to think of it as that's too overwhelming. What are we going to do? Which is just actually a way to shrug the inherent gnosis of there's something we want to do and there's a responsibility to do it. It's actually an obligation. This is something that also Gafni has been helping to teach me about is our unique obligation. And what he calls a unique obligation is to do that thing that is needed and that only you can do. We all have that. If, uniquely, only you can do that and that's through your voice, through your song, through your prayer, through your... Again, it goes back to that unique expression of who we are. There's a unique obligation to fill the unique need that only we can fill. Everybody has that, everybody. It's not a matter of scale. Again, we got to remove... Eisenstein talks about the myth of scale. "Well, if I had all of the money of a billionaire, I would do all..." It doesn't matter. Yes. Okay, resources matter, these things... That's all important, but everybody--

PORANGUÍ: It can happen wiht so little.

AUBREY: Everybody, everybody has an opportunity to share that. As soon as you start comparing what you can offer to what somebody else can offer, you're lost.

PORANGUÍ: You miss it.

AUBREY: You miss the whole fucking point.

PORANGUÍ: Yeah, yeah. It's so simple. Starts here. Just open this voice, open this heart, show up authentically, show up with presents. You've already done it. It's already happened. Then it just tells you what that next breath, what that next note wants to be. Just follow that. Let divinity then lead you into that [inaudible 1:17:22], in that beauty, that beauty way. That's really it.

AUBREY: Do you have another song you want to share?

PORANGUÍ: Yeah, yeah. I'd love to share another one. There's two options. There's "These Hands", which is a really strong song. It's a warrior song. And there's one called "Jazmín", Jasmine, which I'd love to also share if there's time, which is a song to the feminine, to the daughter which is been also, I know, very alive. I know we've been in these... Moving into this space, potentially, to be fathers at some point and even if we don't ever have biological children, there's this energy of father. So it's a really special prayer too so if there's time--

AUBREY: Let's go!

PORANGUÍ: What do you think?

AUBREY: Let's go!

PORANGUÍ: You feel it?

AUBREY: I think we're good for both. Let's go. Alright. You pick the order.

PORANGUÍ: Okay. This is called "These Hands". This was written... Actually, first, I wrote these lyrics during Standing Rock, when Standing Rock was happening, the protests. I couldn't be at Standing Rock because we had this crazy schedule. All my friends were there and I wanted to be there in the mix with everybody. But the song came through, just flowed. I know how when... You're a writer. The muse just comes like, boom! Here it is. It's been waiting to be recorded. I've performed it in different variations. So now it's finally throw-down.

AUBREY: All right. Fuck, yeah. That's a revolution song. It's a fucking revolution song right there.

PORANGUÍ: 1,000%.

AUBREY: That's that warrior spirit that I think we have just this deep misunderstanding of the warrior nature. Yeah, alright. Sometimes warrior nature expresses in actually needing some form of standing and physical force. Of course, there's always that point. However, that's not the warrior that's going to heal the world. The warrior is that sacred aspect of the warrior of no. Enough. It comes straight from the heart. It comes through the hands but force of it, it has to come from the heart, the heart that's inextricable from the heart of the cosmos itself and the heart of Gaia. Find that fucking thing and allow it to be that unstoppable force.

PORANGUÍ: Yeah, yeah. The sword cuts away the illusion like this is the truth. This is dignity. This is what is right. This is beautiful. That's why we're doing this, we're creating beauty. It's what our hands came here to do. For me, that's such a big part of this, "These Hands" is the prayer that these 10 fingers, with these amazing hands, these opposable thumbs, we can create everything, and we can destroy everything. What we choose to use these hands, to pull the trigger or to create a fire, to ignite the heart of another into ecstasy, into bliss.... How we can use these hands to build all of this magnificence, this amazing place, and do it in relationship rather than I'm going to make it be this, I'm going to make that sculpture you were talking about? No, instead, what happens when we, what is this [inaudible 1:26:07] already want to be, what is already presenting itself? How do I complement it? How do I support its inherent beauty? That's all Mother Earth is asking for. We are Mother Earth. We forget that. We think we're separate from nature, we are nature. We're nature, remembering ourselves and getting to sit back and hear, listen to that sound and recognize that it's music and not just a sound wave. That's beautiful. It's becoming self-aware.

AUBREY: This brings me to... It's a bit of a tangential topic, but it's really relevant for me because it's been something that's been illuminated in recent contemplation. I've always had a part of me that... I have part of my mind that I haven't been able to tame. It's this part of me that actually works in resistance to what I want, and it can happen in visualization. It's been persistent with me my whole life. I try to visualize myself... I'm a good basketball player but I tried to visualize myself shooting a basket and having it go into the hoop and it won't. My mind won't let it work is this: There's this part of me that's like, "You want to do that? No. It's going to clang off the rim and it's not going to go in." And I'm like, "Mind, what the fuck? I'm trying to visualize myself draining this three, and you're just showing me brick after brick." There's many different ways where this shows up but there's been this part of me and I've never been able to reconcile it, these intrusive thoughts that will come in and ways in which I can actually... I had this whole flip of consciousness that happened recently. What I understood is there's something we deeply appreciate about a wild horse or that we appreciate about a tiger. What do we love about the tiger? We love that the tiger is never really tamed. We love that a zebra will never allow a rider to actually sit on its back. It'll die first.

PORANGUÍ: The quetzal can't be caged.

AUBREY: A quetzal cannot be... We love that. We appreciate... It's a wild part of it that's untamable but we have this idea that, well, for us, we want to tame ourselves entirely but actually, anything that's fully tamed entirely, it starts to lose its natural quality. I realized that this part of me, this part of my own mind that's untamable, I reframed it as, "That's just my wild. That's just my zebra. That's just my quetzal. That's just my tiger." That's okay. That's beautiful. That's actually what I would love in all the creatures that I love. We have cats and I love the fact that you never quite tame a cat. A cat is still going to be a fucking cat. Even if they're doing some shit that you don't want them to do, you're like, "A cat's being a cat." And there's a little smile that creeps in your face because we respect the wild. It's this balance of yes, we need to tame some of our wild, actually direct it, give it tilos, give it direction, but to not stamp out our wild and allow it... How can I express my wild? Take my shirt off on this ecstatic dance today and just pour my sweat into the earth and cry my cry out in the cosmos and feel that, tapping back into that, that is a key aspect. I don't know if I want the entirety of myself to be tamable. It's okay. I just want to be able to direct my own wild into a direction that's going to be of service to myself and the rest of the world. It's been this deep reconciliation of this thing I've been wrestling with for 25 years. Aubrey, that's just your wild, man.

PORANGUÍ: I love it.

AUBREY: It's cool, right?

PORANGUÍ: It's very cool. It makes me think of my live performances. When I'm playing live, it's like... So many artists have a set list. Like this album, it's a studio album. I played all these instruments. It's a huge, orchestral… I can't tour that and I'm never going to play with the track that's totally against my ethos. So I'm like, "Am I going to just do some versions of these things?" Actually, my shows… You know, I improvised the whole thing. For me, it's like I show up with all the instruments, and I get out of the way and I don't know, I have no set, there's no plan. I'm just going to, show up and just allow, and listen and see what arises with who's there, seen and unseen, and allow that to just flow. And what I've realized is that part of me is like, "That's really scary." There's a risk in that, there's a vulnerability in that because it could go totally wrong. It could totally not be the right thing.

AUBREY: And you can't take it for granted.

PORANGUÍ: Yeah, you can't take it for granted that it's going to be good. I always know that and I have this deep respect, and it's like I recognize that's my wild. It's I got to let that be this wild. It's that unknown, it's that so vulnerable? Because it could literally fucking, like the cat, just fucking do something crazy, rip your shit up. You know what I mean? Your thin expensive couch is done or whatever it is. It's like that Jaguar but that's what we love. It's the risk and I think the audience and we're there, we feel that. They can feel it--

AUBREY: That unpredictability.

PORANGUÍ: It's unprdictable. It's mystery.

AUBREY: It's mystery. And the wild always contains a little bit of mystery. And to really deeply appreciate that aspect. Respect it, it's built in, it's built into what we love.

PORANGUÍ: She can eat us. We can die in a moment. It's that death, that little death, it could happen any moment. Something about that that's--

AUBREY: It's beautiful. We get it because what do we think about when we admire a horse? We admire the wild stallion running free, mane in there. Meanwhile, we spend our entire lives trying to control ourselves entirely and stamp out that wild. I think this is part of the indoctrination of empire, which is empire... And again, empire doesn't have to be any person; it's just the energy of empire wants control, absolute control and tries to stamp out the wild, and keep the wild from actually being unpredictable. It's that balance of, "No, we got to tap back into that and also have structures and tilos to give it direction and channel it in ways that are really productive."

PORANGUÍ: That ties in so well to... Of course, it connects to that feminine principle, that wildness and that masculine principle structure, just thinking it's the complement, how that structure can be there but not stifle the wildness and the yin and the mystery which the river herself, how do we support it? How do we create that, that groove for our beloved to rise and move through that energy for instance? When we make love, how do we do that? How do we hold that presence rather than making it a prison, wanting to contain her, imprison her or something and control it? Jealousy and all of that, which is just our forgetfulness of the beauty, of sacredness, of the wild and how that actually is what enlivens us and that wild within us is awakened?

AUBREY: The wild is chaos, and I think that all of the myths talk about the one who slayed the Titan or slayed the slayed the beast of chaos. We're like, "Victory of the masculine, full destruction of all that is unpredictable and all that is wild." It's like, "Hurray. Now, where are you at? Really? Is this what you wanted? Here it is!

PORANGUÍ: Pretty miserable.

AUBREY: Yeah, fuck no! We don't want that and this is also a part of the rise and in I think Vylana's album "Goddess Rise" is really about this, is a reclamation of the wild aspect of the feminine, which is, can be expressed obviously, equally through a man as it can be through a woman. This is about energy and chaos and order. It's about the balance of both of those. I think when people really get that, then they become a really potent, potent force. The shadow, the shadow masculine is dangerous. But when you actually integrate the feminine and the masculine into that divine masculine, which must contain both, it's actually an expression of both, then it's not dangerous, it's just deadly. The potency of it is so much stronger when you can really actually put that... And deadly is maybe the wrong word, because it evokes death, but it's another level of it. Instead of just being dangerous because all of that aspect of our wild's in the shadow and wants to come out in some way... If you put an angel in a cage, the angel becomes a demon. That which you place outside of God must only follow a path of evil or of the devil. If we start to push an exile this aspect of ourself, our wild and put it in a cage, it's going to start to come out in all of these shadowy manipulative, controlling violent ways. But if we actually say, "All right, no, I know that's in me. Let me find the right way."

PORANGUÍ: Acknowledge it.

AUBREY: Acknowledge it. Let it breathe, let it give it space and let it sweat and let it bleed and let it cry.

PORANGUÍ: And honor its message for us.

AUBREY: Fuck yeah.

PORANGUÍ: And again, that witnessing. It's letting that voice that we've suppressed be heard, and have space and acknowledge. Not that that's the ultimate either. How is that informing the hoop? How is that infoming the song, the orchestra of life?

AUBREY: Let's play "Jazmín"

PORANGUÍ: So this one, "Jazmín", Jasmine is the name of a goddaughter of mine and it's also the name that I would have given or I would give to a daughter if I were to have a daughter in this lifetime. She's an archetype, she's a spirit, she's a being and she represents so many things and I'll let the song speak for itself but speaking to what we were just saying, it's that primordial relationship between the masculine and the feminine and the relationship of father and daughter.

AUBREY: One of the most special experiences is when we're in that body work ceremony journey that you've blessed me with an apprenticeship to learn and also receive from you, there's a particular scent from Floracopeia, which is also one of the things you turned me on to, and it's the night-blooming Jasmine. It's precious and it comes in this little vial. When you're actually dropped in and you're really listening, you understand that it contains the essence of the feminine, of a jasmine flower that blooms at night. It's so impossibly beautiful and gorgeous just to behold her scent that if you're really listening, it'll just blow you into ecstasy. It's too much like, "Goddess, calm down. Wow. Are you serious?" It's the abundance and the abundance of the feminine when you really listen. It's the same with your lover. There's moments where I'm with Vylana where I'm like, "You got to be kidding me." It's blowing my capacity to even understand pleasure and understand the tapping into the erotic beauty of life itself. It's so important to have that to understand what we're fighting for. Otherwise, what are we fighting for if not that. Every movie knows it, "Braveheart" knows that if it wasn't for, Murron, his sweetheart, being killed by Empire, in that case, which just happened to be the British in that story, we wouldn't care as much. There's something about the feminine that we know we're here to show up and protect, but we first have to feel her and let her love us and fuck us open whether it's the scent of jasmine, or whether it's our lover holding us in her embrace, or whether it's... It could be any aspect of the great mother. It could be the river, it could be this pond we have outside here and the koi, they're swimming around, but to let the mother in and let her love us and open us up and then at that point, we look around and go, "No, to the end. To the end." Otherwise, the fuck, just talk shit to your friends and whatever, it doesn't matter. But to really call out the warrior, to me, whether you're male or female, you have to tap into the beauty of the feminine, the absolute abundant beauty of it and just let it blow you open, just blow you wide open. Then you're, "All right, whatever it takes, mama, I'm here. Whatever it takes." And then you find that in a person and you find that in the flower and you find that in, if you're if you're listening, if you have the eyes to see, you find it everywhere.

PORANGUÍ: The lyric there in the beginning, "May all men see you for who you truly are," for me, it really speaks to this deep peace for us as men of being able to really witness the feminine not just as the surface thing that we think we see and maybe have desire or craving for and go immediately to our sexual energy or route, but to witness the beauty in its divinity, and the fact that all women are an embodiment of creator, they are the giver of life. They uniquely are having the womb, carrying that. It goes back to this old story of the White Buffalo Calf Woman. There's an old story says how the chanunpa came to the people, in this time of warring. It's a longer story. But the very beginning of it, speaks to there's two braves that are on a hunt. And White Buffalo Calf Woman, creator, wakan, takes the form of a woman, and appears to these two braves and she's carrying the bundle, very sacred bundle that has the chanunpa. One of the braves just sees this beautiful woman, immediately has thoughts of wanting to copulate, wanting to get with her and he's turned into a pile of serpents. Of course, the symbology of that is he's consumed by his desires. The other brave recognizes wakan, this is creator, Wakan Tanka, this is Ptecincala in this form. He is given the gift. It's this deep archetypal teaching just in that piece of the story alone of when we can really witness the true beauty of why the women, our sisters are here and what they represent, our mother, our daughters, when we can get in that place is beyond just our carnal desire, which sometimes I think can almost distract us from the deeper honoring and reverence for the feminine and their deeper purpose besides even just giving life, which is the most sacred and holy responsibility they carry, is to be actually the guiding staff for the masculine. When women are in their internal order, and have done the work within themselves to be connected to Mother Earth herself, they actually can channel that psychic knowing and help to direct us as men to know how to wield the sword in a good way.

AUBREY: Because we're learning how to serve her. It's just listening to learn how we serve you? How do we serve you, mama. I think that is the highest calling of the masculine, listening. How do we serve you? I think it's important not to split off our sexual desire, it's there.

PORANGUÍ: It's part of there too. It's in the hoop.

AUBREY: It's in the hoop.

PORANGUÍ: It's in the hoop. It's not the only thing which is in our society, it has been this--

AUBREY: And it's the commodification of the feminine beauty.

PORANGUÍ: Yes! The distortion.

AUBREY: There's ways in which that can happen and every other way. You could do that with... I dieted rose, which I've described before, but basically, it's going on a spiritual isolation where you connect with the spirit of plant. So you can commodify a rose, you can just buy them at fucking H-E-B or whatever your supermarket is, and give them and maybe not even smell them, just do it. You can do that with all aspects of the feminine, whether it's a flower or whether it's a woman. Obviously, our pornography culture is the commodification of that essence of the feminine or you can include the Eros, the drive the desire, but actually expand it to something much more and so much bigger and that's actually what informs us. Otherwise, we're just in the consumption mindset of empire itself. Here's the femme, here's the Earth, how do we get her gold out? How do we get her oil out? How do we get her precious out? Here's a woman, how do we get her clothes off?

PORANGUÍ: It all comes back to that sexual distortion.

AUBREY: It's this consumption idea rather than actually feeling everything that she really is. Food as well, food is the mother. Can we get back to sacred relations to the meat that we eat, the fish that we eat, the plants that we eat, whatever your dietary choices are? I've had this deep feeling of... It extends to every way to actually walk in beauty. You have to look at it holistically and how do I do this in a way that's embraced by spirit, informed by spirit all the way through. It doesn't actually put limits on what you do. It's not saying, "No, don't fuck with vital passion." No, it's not saying it. It's just saying include the whole picture. It's not saying, "Don't eat any meat ever." It's saying--

PORANGUÍ: How to do that in a good way.

AUBREY: "Make sure, make sure that you do that in a good way.

PORANGUÍ: In a good way. How to do that in a beauty way.

AUBREY: Exactly.

PORANGUÍ: How to do that with consciousness, with presence, with reverence. That's it. And it goes back to beginning of our conversation. How can you be a good relative? How do you make good relations, good relations with my food, good relation with my partner, good relation with the land where we live? With my own sexual organs, with my sexual energy, how do I make good relationship to my sexual energy instead of just using it to find momentary ecstasy, to masturbate, to just check out and feel that gratification. How do I actually wield this and feel the energy moving through my body, instead of just going to this ejaculatory state, what is it to actually circulate that energy through my body, feel more alive through this sacred, sacred thing that we've received this gift, this present? How to feel every part of my organs, how every part of, down to my toes, up to my crown, out into my energy field, how do I then let that inform everything I do in my life? How do I play music from that place, and move that circulatory energy and then feel that through the audience and come back and create this infinity loop? That's when the portal opens. That's when something is birthed. We have that power too as men. It's not that we do. We actually do. But it's honoring that relationship and recognizing that sacredness. One way that we get that I think, as men; and we haven't had the honor yet to do this, because we're still not dads, quote-unquote, biological dads, although I would say we do father a lot of things in this world; by having a daughter, daughter, specifically, because the daughter has really has this unique medicine for father in that reverence, and helping us to really see her for who she truly is. There's something so sacred in that. Jasmine carries this essence for us and the flower carries this essence for us. There's so many layers that are woven into this, the prayer of this song. I was actually asked to write this song from a dear old friend of mine, old professor and collaborator of mine from Duke University. He was trying to just help me out during the pandemic. He's like, "I know you're not working. Let me give you a little gift here. Just write a song for Jasmine, for your goddaughter." I'm like, "Cool." I started writing the song and I realized it wasn't just for her." I was like, "Oh, this is actually for all the daughters, for all the fathers." I recognized it. I don't think there's any songs out there that I know of that captures this unique part of the fractal, the prayer, so it's really a--

AUBREY: Wonderful and beautiful.

PORANGUÍ: Yeah, brother.

AUBREY: It reminds of... Obviously, I've been in a deep dive in Hebrew lineage. There's a concept in just regular Jewish culture, actually and it's kosher. You go back to Leviticus, there's a bunch of different random rules about what you should and shouldn't do. It's been condensed to rules that you're supposed to follow. But if you just look at the rules, you're not going to actually understand what I think the highest articulation of an idea of kosher would be. I think there's a place for something where you actually know what food is kosher or not kosher. It's not about what type of food it is. It's about how the food was prepared, where it was grown, how it was cultivated, it's all about relationship. In every aspect, there's a way in which you know that it's kosher or there's some part of you that actually is just squinting and looking away, just like, "No, no, no, I don't want to look at that."

PORANGUÍ: Denial.

AUBREY: Denial like, "Let me just turn my head." That's, in the lineage, what they call Sitra Achra which is the turning of the face from God. The upside down world. It's where God is looking right at you. And when you're looking right at your food and where it's sourced and making that decision: do I consume, that's face to face with the divine? That would be the new kosher. Sitra achra, you're just turning away and squinting just enough so that you don't have to look at what you're doing because you know that it's not right. The more you turn your face, the farther away you are from the true path, your spirit.

PORANGUÍ: And that's the course correction that we all absolutely need. If we don't have this course-correction on the individual level, and then on the collective level, on the planetary level, it's... We need that. It's like I always think... The amazing thing when I realize pilots or captains of ships and ocean, they're always off course. They're constantly making these course-corrections to get back on course. We need that course correction. We have to look and make that relationship, make that decision: is this good for me, is this honoring, by me buying this food or making that vote through our dollar in a capitalist society? What am I supporting with this because it's all the way backwards and forwards. And as we do that, even one person making that choice, that's making that impact. We absolutely have to do that this time. Absolutely.

AUBREY: Aho.

PORANGUÍ: Aho.

AUBREY: My brother, I love you infinitely.

PORANGUÍ: Yeah, thank you [inaudible 1:54:28].

AUBREY: So grateful for our brotherhood and our alliance. It's been such a gift. I was sharing, just out loud, that I don't think there's anybody I know who's taught me more skills in this life. The reason I can play the flute a little bit and play the [inaudible 1:54:45] and drum a little bit and do the body work and tough and all, there's so many things that I've gained from our alliances. I know it's mutual in its own way. So just deep admiration and respect for you as being and gratitude for us being able to walk this path together.

PORANGUÍ: Yeah, brother. So honored. [inaudible 1:55:08] Beauty before us, beauty behind us, beauty to the side of us. [inaudible 1:55:12] within us. May beauty always be here in this sweet grass braid, brother of our past together, continue to ripple that out to all of our beautiful relatives out there that are going to receive this prayer. Gracias.

AUBREY: Aho.

PORANGUÍ: Aho.

AUBREY: Aho. We love you guys. Thank you and check out the album. The album. When we release this podcast, the album's going to be out, right?

PORANGUÍ: It'll be out in April. Yeah.

AUBREY: Okay.

PORANGUÍ: It should be right around my birthday, April 21st, Earth Day.

AUBREY: Fuck yeah. All right. Let's do it. Let's do it. Much love everybody.

PORANGUÍ: Much love.

AUBREY: Thanks for tuning into this video. Make sure you hit Subscribe. Follow me, @aubreymarcus. Check out the Aubrey Marcus Podcast available everywhere and leave a comment. Let me know if this video resonated or what else you would like to hear from me in the future. Thank you so much.