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Summary
Dive in with Lucas and Vision as they attempt to unravel the mysteries of self-actualization. With tales of life, death, and the transcendence of fear, they explore the liberating acceptance of mortality, unlocking "cheat codes" for life, and the meditative magic of physical practice. In this soul-stirring episode of a quest for ever greater understanding, help us to decode the ultimate puzzle of what is "Life" with curiosity and purpose.
SUMMARY
In this episode of Sacred Conversations, host Vision Battlesword and guest Lucas Ferrer delve into self-actualization, exploring profound themes of life, death, and human potential. Ferrer, a surgeon who has faced the fragility of life through his work, recounts poignant stories of patients confronting death and the peace that can come from accepting mortality. He shares experiences from his youth, such as learning about anatomy through pig-slaughtering, and how such engagements reveal deeper truths. The duo discusses transitioning from predeterminism to free will and the importance of discipline and practices like semen retention for mental clarity and creativity.
They touch on societal programming, linking it to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and self-actualization, and highlight the impact of physical activities like gardening and surgery in unzipping traditional wisdom into tangible knowledge. Ferrer shares insights from his personal routines that lead to heightened clarity and discusses his evolution from ego-driven motives to creating value for others. This transformation reflects in simulation scenarios where he envisions spending large sums of money, ultimately leading to the realization of wanting to help others globally.
Exploring life as an infinite game, they describe self-actualization as a continuous spectrum where authenticity and decision-making reflect one's values. Ferrer underscores that clear, meditative practices can lead to receiving life-guiding truths, viewing life as a puzzle with subtle directions. The conversation ends on the belief in the oneness of all beings, the importance of embracing simplicity, and continuing exploration through spiritual communities like Sacred Light.
Notes
### Sacred Conversations Knowledge Base
#### Episode Title: Self-Actualization with Lucas Ferrer
#### Participants: Vision Battlesword (Host), Lucas Ferrer (Guest)
---
#### Key Insights & Takeaways
1. **Unpredictability and Lack of Control in Life**
- *Experiences*: Lucas Ferrer shares experiences with patients facing death—highlighting a lack of control in life.
- *Story Insight*: Case of a young shooting victim illuminating life's inherent unpredictability.
- *Implication*: Embracing life’s unpredictability can mitigate fear and increase resilience.
2. **Acceptance of Death**
- *Fear to Peace Transition*: Acceptance of death leads to a fearless, liberating state.
- *Witnessing Death*: Ferrar describes witnessing souls passing and the profound impacts.
- *Realization*: Accepting death as a natural process brings peace and fearlessness in life.
3. **Self-Actualization Curiosity**
- *Meme Bombs*: Ferrer discovers truths hidden in old sayings through actionable activities.
- *Activities*: Experiences in gardening/surgery providing meditative quality, leading to new knowledge.
- *Practical Application*: Engage in hands-on activities to experience and understand traditional wisdom.
4. **Multiple Purposes and Giving Value**
- *Life’s Purposes*: Reframing focus to giving value, discovering multiple purposes in life.
- *Fun and Prosperity*: Connecting the idea of infinite growth and levels in self-actualization with prosperity consciousness.
5. **Societal Programming vs. Genuine Values**
- *Contrast*: Ferrer discusses cultural programming and its impact, emphasizing discovering core personal values.
- *Maslow’s Hierarchy*: Linking societal structures to self-actualization and assessing limitations.
6. **Daily Routines and Practices**
- *Discipline*: Importance of a structured daily routine (e.g., early rising, exposure to sunlight).
- *Mental Clarity*: Ferrer practices semen retention, reporting benefits in clarity and performance.
7. **Causal Influence and Divine Intention**
- *Perception Shifts*: Seeing life as a series of problems with transformative learning opportunities.
- *Daily Problems as Learning*: Solutions and insight from treating life’s challenges as learning modules, emphasizing openness to guided directions.
8. **Integration of Philosophical Concepts**
- *Self-Actualization Spectrum*: Understanding self-actualization as an ongoing spectrum, not a final goal.
- *Free Will Interaction*: Discussion on the transition from predeterminism to free will, assessing how fear impacts decision-making.
- *Life as a Game/Puzzle*: Concept of life as a game of problem-solving and discovery, led by an overarching guiding consciousness.
9. **Mindset Shifts**
- *Growth through Discipline*: Implementing rigorous discipline (meditation, routine) for mental clarity.
- *Free Will via Fear Conquest*: Recognize fear-based decisions limit possibilities—overcome fear to exercise true free will.
10. **Experiencing Traditional Truths**
- *Physical Practice*: Gain deeper insights from engaging in traditional activities (e.g., surgery, gardening).
- *Experiential Learning*: Encourage embracing hands-on learning to unwrap traditional wisdom and sayings' real-world implications.
---
#### Actionable Steps for Personal Improvement
1. **Embrace Life’s Unpredictability**:
- Accept lack of control and unpredictability to reduce fear and gain peace.
2. **Engage in Meditative Activities**:
- Incorporate hands-on activities such as gardening or crafting into your routine for new insights and mental clarity.
3. **Structured Routine**:
- Adopt disciplined daily practices (early rising, sunlight exposure, meditation) for improved mental and physical health.
4. **Shift Focus to Giving Value**:
- Reframe personal purpose to focus on providing value to others, discovering multiple fulfilling purposes.
5. **Self-Exploration and Reflection**:
- Regularly contemplate and interact with your core values beyond societal programming for genuine self-discovery.
6. **Overcome Fear**:
- Identify and overcome fear-based decisions to unlock broader possibilities and exercise free will.
7. **Embrace the Game of Life**:
- Approach life's challenges as opportunities for learning and personal growth, aligned with a larger guiding consciousness.
#### REFERENCES
1. **Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs**:
- Mentioned by Vision Battlesword in relation to self-actualization and the stages of human development.
- Maslow's framework is used as a way to discuss how individuals meet various needs, such as physiological, safety, love/belonging, and esteem before achieving self-actualization.
- Background: Abraham Maslow's psychological theory detailing a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.
2. **Zach Weinersmith's "Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal"**:
- Referenced by Vision Battlesword when talking about the idea of living multiple "lifetimes" within one human life.
- The specific comic mentioned is the "Eleven Lifetimes" poster, which articulates the idea of mastering multiple domains within an average human lifespan.
- Background: "Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal" is a webcomic by Zach Weinersmith covering a wide range of topics from science to philosophy, and it often includes humorous and insightful takes on complex ideas.
http://smbc-comics.com
3. **Concept of 10,000 Hours to Mastery**:
- Part of the discussion on the "eleven lifetimes" poster that suggests it takes about 10,000 hours (or approximately seven years) to master a craft.
- Background: Popularized by Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers," the idea is that significant time invested in deliberate practice is crucial to achieving mastery in any field.
4. **Programming and Aversion to Risk in Puerto Rican Culture**:
- Discussed by Lucas Ferrer in terms of the societal and cultural impact on individual choices and perceptions of risk.
- Connects to broader concepts of how environment and social programming influence personal development and self-actualization.
5. **The Path of Meditation and Spiritual Wisdom in India**:
- Lucas Ferrer references a story about a man in India who transformed his life through meditation and chanting the name "Rama," linking to spiritual practices leading to self-realization.
- Background: "Rama" is a deity in Hinduism, and the practice of chanting a deity's name is a form of devotion and meditation.
These references could serve as points of interest for listeners who want to explore the episode's themes more deeply.
Transcript
Vision Battlesword [00:00:00]:
Well, hey, Lucas.
Lucas Ferrer [00:00:01]:
Hey, Vision.
Vision Battlesword [00:00:02]:
How you doing today?
Lucas Ferrer [00:00:03]:
Doing great. It's been a great, great week.
Vision Battlesword [00:00:06]:
Nice. Who are you, Lucas Ferrer?
Lucas Ferrer [00:00:12]:
I think that I would like for you, or like for anyone that I interact with, to know that I think I'm an action in the world. I'm somebody that is always looking for an action and a response or a result to come from that action. I think that deep down, that's probably something that truly defines me.
Vision Battlesword [00:00:38]:
Nice. What kind of action in the world do you see yourself as?
Lucas Ferrer [00:00:43]:
A lot of the actions that I do in the world come down to a very specific thing, which is surgery. I fix people's problems with their blood vessels. Very specific. It's very narrow. I like it like that. It's kind of my thing, but. But again, it's very narrow. It's very limiting.
Vision Battlesword [00:01:06]:
It's funny to me that your self definition revolves so much around action, because the topic that you brought here today is self actualization.
Lucas Ferrer [00:01:15]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:01:16]:
And we were just before we started, we were just kind of glancing over some definitions of just words, like actual and actualized, just to see what the dictionary says they mean. And there's so much in those words, the history of those words that revolves around action, interestingly enough, because it just never had occurred to me to think of it that way before. So I'm just curious, what does self actualization mean to you?
Lucas Ferrer [00:01:46]:
Well, you know, from getting and from experiencing and from reading, I guess, different downloads of information to my brain or consciousness. I've kind of come to the idea that, and I think a lot of us have a similar idea, that we come into this world to learn certain things or certain lessons. Right. And I'm very curious to discover what that is for me, because I don't know exactly. I mean, I have certain themes that I know are my struggles, are my accomplishments, my strong suits, and my not so strong suits. So I think it comes down to that. Like, I was talking to a mutual friend of ours, and we were talking about this, and he came down to the topic of values. So what are my values? And I never really thought about that.
Lucas Ferrer [00:02:48]:
What are my values as a human? What do I value? And it's not like you're necessarily your average loyalty or like all these things, like, predescribed notions that people should have as values or as society thinks that we should have values. But what, deep down inside, what are my values that I've been exploring that I still am not 100% clear to name them, to give them a specific name, but I've been very curious about this whole process of just, okay, what is my path? What does my path look like? And how do I walk along that path in the biggest way, I guess. And then the other con or thought to that is, well, what if I just don't choose to for that, you know, how much freedom do I have in choosing my own adventure? That's another. That's something like a contradicting point of tension of that. And how much freedom do I have to. Okay, no, I'm gonna stop this and I'm gonna do something else. Cause a lot of humans have done that. A lot of humans have had multiple lives.
Vision Battlesword [00:03:55]:
Sure.
Lucas Ferrer [00:03:56]:
Most of us have one life, you.
Vision Battlesword [00:03:59]:
Know, maybe some, maybe so. Or does it seem to you that most people at least have several different phases of life, like chapters, if you will?
Lucas Ferrer [00:04:10]:
Yeah, of course. But certain people just break completely with the storyline and jump to a new storyline, and I find that fascinating.
Vision Battlesword [00:04:19]:
Yeah. Yeah. What reminds me, I can't remember if we've ever talked about it before, or if you happen to remember the poster. I had it. I had it on display in the last house. You remember the Eleven Lifetimes Poster?
Lucas Ferrer [00:04:33]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:04:33]:
Okay. Yeah. I wonder. That's just resonated for me so strongly. I suppose I could just articulate it real quickly to refresh our memories. I have this poster that's based on a comic, like a webcomic that I saw many years ago. It was created by a guy by the name of Zach Weiner or Wienersmith, who does a webcomic called Saturday Morning Breakfast cereal. And the gist of it is based on the sort of 10,000 hours to mastery concept, you can sort of break that down and come up with approximately seven years.
Vision Battlesword [00:05:08]:
It takes about maybe seven years, let's say, to master a domain, a craft, a profession, something like that. And so if you just sort of take the average lifespan, or let's say a generous lifespan of a human, like 88 years, and divide that by the time it takes to first begin a path to mastery, then actually accomplish that mastery, and then actually make a contribution to that domain, you can come up with about eleven. You could have about eleven complete cycles of that. Or you could call those lifetimes eleven lifetimes. The gist of the poster, or the comic is you only live eleven times, which I just think is such a beautiful spin on YoLo. Right? Or you only live once. I've taken to saying something along the lines of yo 110 or something like that to refer to that, but I've really embraced that philosophy, that idea that we can totally redefine ourselves at any point that we want and start a completely new life and even celebrate that.
Lucas Ferrer [00:06:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh. It's interesting. I mean, growing up in. In Puerto Rico, I think, like, really. I mean, like, a lot of places, I imagine, but I feel like it really stifles that freedom, that liberty. And I think it's something about being, like, enclosed by the sea in a very small space.
Lucas Ferrer [00:06:43]:
There's something about everybody behaving in a certain way together, cohesively, and that has its positives and it has its negatives. You know, positives are that, like, everybody's very friendly, very welcoming and such. And negatives are that if you stray from the zeitgeist, I guess it's frowned upon in a sense. So, you know, you get into these very. You strive for careers or whatever is a career that society values highly. And then to even think that you are going to do something else, something different would be, you know, would be very disruptive, you know? Yeah. You carry that. You carry, you know, where you come from, you carry, like, your culture, and you come to a place like Austin, which is completely different in a certain ways.
Lucas Ferrer [00:07:39]:
And you see people not have this. This weight, and you're like, oh, that's interesting. That's very interesting. I wonder, uh. I wonder how my life would have been different, you know, having these different experiences. But also, you see that. Okay, I can. I can let go of these things.
Lucas Ferrer [00:07:58]:
Jeez.
Vision Battlesword [00:07:59]:
So you notice a cultural difference between people here in Austin versus where you. Where you came from in Puerto Rico?
Lucas Ferrer [00:08:07]:
Yeah, it's. I think cultural is like a very. It's not even, like, the right word. It's. It's a certain set of instructions that.
Vision Battlesword [00:08:18]:
You come with, you know, how's that different than culture?
Lucas Ferrer [00:08:20]:
I guess it's the same thing. Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:08:23]:
I don't know. Is it?
Lucas Ferrer [00:08:25]:
No, but no, I think culture encompasses other things. What I'm talking more about is, like, you know, this. Programming.
Vision Battlesword [00:08:32]:
Programming?
Lucas Ferrer [00:08:33]:
Yeah, programming.
Vision Battlesword [00:08:35]:
That's so funny, because the. As we are recording this conversation right now, the most recent episode that I just released is programs with dawn. Did you happen to listen to that one?
Lucas Ferrer [00:08:46]:
No, I haven't.
Vision Battlesword [00:08:48]:
It's just fascinating how these conversations are evolving and building on each other and completely organically. Like, I could. I couldn't have planned it this way, and yet it's just coming together. So you notice that there's a program in, maybe you don't want to call it the culture, puerto rican culture, but at the very least in that society, that micro society, let's say, that has something to do with picking one track and staying with it.
Lucas Ferrer [00:09:17]:
With safety. I see, yeah. With safety and risk. I see, yeah. There's an aversion to risk, which again, is very. It makes a lot of sense historically, just because people that have lived in that place has. Have gone through a lot as a lot of people, but there is an aversion to risk, a certain type of risk. And not being connected to a landmass has something to do with it.
Lucas Ferrer [00:09:45]:
Being surrounded by the ocean, I think, in a way, is beautiful, but in a way, it's like it's limiting in a way that, because of the flow of information, I think, probably flows different than if you're like, in a center of a landmass or something. That's my theory. I could be completely wrong.
Vision Battlesword [00:10:05]:
Yeah. I was wondering if there's something about island culture or island life that's just fundamentally different. I mean, I suppose any different type of geography maybe, whether it's coastal, mountainous, inland, landlocked, these are probably all gonna have different. There's gonna be different consciousness that arises just from the environment, from the stimulation and the realities of getting along with that environment or creating safety in that kind of an environment.
Lucas Ferrer [00:10:37]:
Yeah. No, for sure. 100%.
Vision Battlesword [00:10:39]:
It's interesting that you bring up safety to me because starting from self actualization, and I asked you, what does self actualization mean to you? It sounds to me, I'm hearing. What I'm hearing is you're talking a lot about self actualization has something to do with being able to choose your own path in life and then bringing up your experience in Puerto Rico. And I. The connection that you think that societal programming has to the idea of safety reminds me of Maslow's hierarchy. So that's sort of classical pyramid stage development model that starts with physiological needs. It's a hierarchy of needs, I guess I should say, starting with physiological, then safety, then love or belonging, then esteem, and then finally self actualization. That's the simplified version, five stages. So safety is kind of like the second tier of that pyramid.
Vision Battlesword [00:11:42]:
I don't know. What do you think about that model and how it relates to your idea of self actualization? Does that mean anything to you?
Lucas Ferrer [00:11:50]:
So it does make sense. It's difficult to categorize yourself where you are in that pyramid and where other people are around you. So. Yeah, so giving that context in reality, I guess I'm probably the wrong person to ask that question to. What do you think?
Vision Battlesword [00:12:11]:
Well, we had a really interesting conversation about this me and you and another one of our friends from our men's group. If you remember that day by the creek, we had a really interesting conversation wherever we were, bringing up a lot of those similar content, and it occurred to me that there could be both stages and states at play. It was self actualization. Like, I guess what came up for me on that day, which felt like a new thought, was that the idea of self actualization kind of can be on a spectrum that could occur at any different stage of human development. Like, so it doesn't, I think, fully resonate for me anymore. It did at one time. It made sense. Maslow's hierarchy made a lot of sense to me at one time, and other stage developmental models still do.
Vision Battlesword [00:13:05]:
But it doesn't totally. It doesn't totally follow for me that self actualization is sort of like a thing that you achieve or a state of being that you acquire once certain other. A hierarchy of certain other fundamental needs have been met. I'm not looking at it that way anymore. I'm sort of looking at it as I can be on some spectrum of self actualization, even while I'm meeting my physiological needs or even while I'm meeting my needs for safety or meeting my needs for love and belonging. I'm kind of feeling right now that it's like, on a different axis altogether, actually, that it has something more to do with an inner sense of empowerment, to be self directed, or I guess, to be self authoring. That's another word that I sometimes hear used, is self authoring.
Lucas Ferrer [00:14:00]:
And by authoring, meaning you're the author of your own story, or by authoring as more of, like, authority.
Vision Battlesword [00:14:08]:
That's an interesting question. I've always thought of it as, yes, you're the author of your own story for sure, but you're even sort of the author of your own self definition, your own personality. Like, to me, that's my sense of what self actualization is really kind of all about. Or I think what people are getting at is it's sort of that state of being when you like what you're talking about, coming from Puerto Rico and then to Austin and having a completely different experience of what's possible. It's like that state of not just breaking free from, but actually having the self reflection to see the story that you have that someone else has authored for you that you've been living in and now realizing, oh, wait, I can actually rewrite this any way that I want.
Lucas Ferrer [00:15:01]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:15:01]:
Does that make sense?
Lucas Ferrer [00:15:02]:
No, that makes complete sense. And I sometimes think about that. And it's like sometimes we can see people making a mistake, right? And you can clearly say, okay, that's a mistake, or that's something really good from a level of, like, higher knowledge or experience or judgment. And sometimes I think, oh, like, I wonder what someone that has more experience, more judgment than me can point out the mistakes that I'm doing. Sometimes I find myself thinking that, and somehow it comes back to what you were saying. Yeah, but coming to a different place and seeing other possibilities, there's probably another state of being or place or group of people that offers even more possibilities. And there's a level about that, probably, that offers even more possibilities. Right.
Lucas Ferrer [00:15:56]:
I think about those things sometimes. I was like, I wonder how. What's the limit? Is there a limit? You know? And I think that's where, like, this concept of self actualization comes in. It's like, you know, how much can I learn, how much discernment can I be able to obtain in the way we navigate life with an expanded level of possibilities? An expanded level of, again, choosing correctly or choosing what is most is truer to me. Correct, truer, probably. So all these, like, it's like a game that I've been obsessing over lately of that. It was just like, okay, let me explore. Let me explore this.
Lucas Ferrer [00:16:45]:
It's also, like, daunting because you realize the magnitude of where you're against, right? And you're like, okay, how do I start chipping at this? This is a big mountain that I have to chip down.
Vision Battlesword [00:16:56]:
Hmm. Tell me more about that. I'm not quite following you. Right at the end there. What is the thing that we're against? Or what is that mountain? Why do we have to chip away at it?
Lucas Ferrer [00:17:06]:
Well, it's. I guess I see a lot of things in the world as problems and solutions in this choose your own adventure story. You know, as I keep going through storylines learning, I keep experiencing. I keep feeling different truths because there's a difference between. I feel like there's a difference between knowledge and rational way of understanding the truth and feeling truth. And as, you know, as I've had different experiences, I feel like the things that have transformed me the most are moments in which I've felt different truths. And I think that that has taken me, taken my life to a different place. And every single time I feel a new truth, I feel like my life changes slightly in a positive way.
Lucas Ferrer [00:17:59]:
So it's a game. It's like a little game that we play, and then somehow there's a nugget at some point in the side story that you didn't expect, and you're like, oh. And it takes you to a different side story, and it feels like a little puzzle that you're trying to solve, you know, Mike. And it feels like there's. The direction comes in very subtle ways that can sometimes be, you know, difficult to grasp at the moment.
Vision Battlesword [00:18:23]:
Mm hmm. Yeah. That resonates a lot for me. The game, the puzzle, side quests, all of those things resonate for me and kind of how I look at life and self actualization, what that means. I'm still. I'm still curious, though, a little bit about that piece you brought up a moment ago about what you were talking about with it feeling like there's something big that's against us or that we have to kind of chip away at. What does that mean? Or do you still feel that way? Or was that just kind of a.
Lucas Ferrer [00:18:56]:
It feels. Yeah, I don't. I guess it. Sometimes it feels like we're striving. Sometimes I feel like I'm striving for something that I can't define.
Vision Battlesword [00:19:05]:
Yeah.
Lucas Ferrer [00:19:06]:
Again, it's all a point of reference, and it may come from, again, programming. I think part of my programming is this, like, life is a battle thing that might not be as useful. It might be useful in one scenario, but, like, I think maybe when you going to different paths, maybe that framework doesn't really work, but it does sometimes feel like life is a battle.
Vision Battlesword [00:19:36]:
Is it like the battle itself is just to figure out what the true path is for oneself?
Lucas Ferrer [00:19:43]:
Yeah, I think the battle. Yeah, for sure. That's a major part of it. And I would like to stop calling it a battle because it's kind of like more the way you name things, what they become is more like a beautiful exploration. Mm hmm. But, yeah, but there are other things. There's things in daily life, there's tests in daily life, especially where you strive for things. I feel like one of the rules of the game is that if you strive for something in the path, for that, for whatever it is they strive for, there will be a moment where life puts a little challenge.
Lucas Ferrer [00:20:20]:
It's like, oh, do you really want this? Oh, let's show me. Show me how much you really want this. And I think we talked about that at some point. You know, sometimes, is life telling you this isn't for you, this isn't the best thing for you? Or sometimes I feel like, is life just asking how much you really want something? And I've experienced both. I experienced things where I said, oh, I should have just let that go. That did not serve me. Or I experienced other things where I was like, oh, thank God that I did that. So, yeah, it's interesting, again, discernment, like being able to discern when you see a roadblock, it's like, is this something I should solve or push through, or is this something where I just take a different turn?
Vision Battlesword [00:21:07]:
I think we've brought some pretty interesting pieces out on the table here. There's a piece that I want to circle back around to at some point about learning. You touched on that. That was one of the first things you said when I asked you about self actualization. And then you touched on it a couple of times since then. There's something I think is real important and interesting, which is this idea of truth, of finding one's truth, the true path, that feeling of truth, which is different than thinking or knowing. Thinking we know what's true. And then I, when life dot, dot, dot, like, life wants to show me something, life is telling me this is not the right way.
Vision Battlesword [00:21:50]:
Life. And I'm just curious about that concept of thinking of life as a person, thinking of as an entity with a personality or intentions. And I'm kind of curious about that.
Lucas Ferrer [00:22:03]:
That is cure. I've never thought about that.
Vision Battlesword [00:22:05]:
Is that how you think of life? Or what do you really mean by life? I suppose maybe is a different question.
Lucas Ferrer [00:22:10]:
That I don't know. That's a really good question. It does feel like there's a script, there's a. There's a force. I think we've all felt that. Yeah. And I definitely, like there, there are certain, like, moments where it just shows you its hand. There are certain moments where you have a thought.
Lucas Ferrer [00:22:33]:
Like, it happened to me the other day. I was thinking about something related to career, and I was on a plane, you know, 30,000ft, no signal. And I said, okay, when I was waiting for someone to schedule a meeting and it was taking time, and I was like, why is this taking so much time? I have the person's phone number. I can just schedule the meeting myself. But it's like, you know, this person wanted to arrange it. And then when I was out there, I was like, you know what? When this plane lands, I'm just gonna make a phone call to this person directly and make the meeting, have the meeting as soon as I land, get a little text message message sound. The person that was supposed to schedule had sent a text. Okay, we're doing this dinner meeting at this day next week.
Lucas Ferrer [00:23:14]:
And I was like, oh, that's hilarious. That is hilarious that. I was just thinking that. Boom. So what is that? Is that just me? It's just me and my thoughts calling things. Is that. Is there. Am I acting through a medium? Like, we're all act and connecting through this medium, and when we some.
Lucas Ferrer [00:23:38]:
When somehow we make a mutual connection, things materialize, I guess. I don't know. That's life.
Vision Battlesword [00:23:46]:
Okay. That's life. So life is whatever that thing is that's tying us all together into some kind of coherent.
Lucas Ferrer [00:23:57]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:23:58]:
Seemingly orchestrated.
Lucas Ferrer [00:24:00]:
We act upon it and it acts upon us. And that's super interesting because there's all this talk about, you know, and we kind of all know it. Like, there's this talk about manifestation, or even that people. The people that are not really into, like, alternative spiritual consciousness, whatever, it's. It's in the sight. Guys, my. My little niece talks about it. My mom talks about it.
Lucas Ferrer [00:24:27]:
It's like it's this thing that people talk about because we experience it. Everybody experiences that. My dad used to call it causalities instead of casualidades. Something random. It's not random. It's just there's a cause to that event. Causality. Oh, okay.
Vision Battlesword [00:24:51]:
Causality. Got it. I see.
Lucas Ferrer [00:24:53]:
So we've known about this, but so there is this interaction. There's this interaction with whatever.
Vision Battlesword [00:25:01]:
With something.
Lucas Ferrer [00:25:02]:
With something.
Vision Battlesword [00:25:03]:
A force, a consciousness.
Lucas Ferrer [00:25:05]:
Yeah. And somewhere in there is our path to self actualization. I think it wants us to do that. It feels like it wants us to do that. And then it's like you asking it, you know, through whatever your practice is through, like, you know, through. And you come to realize this. There's really simple things. It's just like, you, okay, wake up early in the morning, get some sunlight, stare into nothing, and these thoughts come into your brain, into your brain, into your mind, and they kind of guide you.
Lucas Ferrer [00:25:38]:
And if you do it consistently, it's better if you do it not as consistently, it's not as good, or it's not as fast.
Vision Battlesword [00:25:44]:
But is self actualization kind of the process of learning how to guide yourself?
Lucas Ferrer [00:25:49]:
Well, it is the result of guiding yourself. It seems like what I've gathered from, again, small experiences, is like, okay, if you follow these things that are in this heitgeist, they're everywhere. You just have to pay attention. If you gather these things, then you open the door. Like, there's this. There's this guy in India that was like a robber, like a thief or something. And then one day he just decided to, like, go under a tree. And just meditate by just saying rama consistently.
Lucas Ferrer [00:26:30]:
Rama, rama, rama. I think it's like the word for God or something. And eventually he got, like, a download of information and wrote, like, the book of Rama or something like that, which is one of the major texts. And, like, supposedly I may be getting this completely wrong, but that kind of feels, like true. It kind of feels like if you clear your mind and if you do these things to help you clear your mind, you will get these keys of information of know or feeling truth that you can act upon in your life, and they kind of guide you. They kind of, like, show you. They're kind of like these things are happening. You know, you meet this person that actually was really great to do these other things.
Vision Battlesword [00:27:15]:
Almost like we're an antenna or a receiver that can pick up this signal from life.
Lucas Ferrer [00:27:22]:
From life.
Vision Battlesword [00:27:22]:
But we're full of static example of interference, and we just can clear that out, quiet that out. Then all of a sudden, a signal just comes right through.
Lucas Ferrer [00:27:30]:
Yeah. And I feel like that's, I guess the process I'm trying, that's what I think I want to head to. Like, that's kind of like the direction I'm like, okay, this is kind of what I think I need to do, although I'm clueless about it. It's like, it might be, or it might not be. It might be way more complex than that.
Vision Battlesword [00:27:47]:
But a minute ago, you said that learning how to guide yourself is the result of self actualization.
Lucas Ferrer [00:27:54]:
No, no. I think it's like. It's like, if you like what it feels to me, that is the path or is to do these things, these actions in your life being what. And they're probably different for different people that allow you to clear your mind, to have these events happen in your life, to have these realizations of very specific things. It's incredible how we know so many things, but we just haven't integrated them into our brain. It's really incredible.
Vision Battlesword [00:28:30]:
It seems to happen when sort of like, a lot of times I think of it. You used the puzzle analogy earlier, and a lot of times I think of it that way. Like, we have these life experiences, or we stumble across some new information. One way or another, a piece of data comes to us either from our own lived experience or from exposure to it. And each one of these data are like a puzzle piece. And we've got these puzzle pieces, and they're different colors and different shapes. It's abundantly unclear how they go together or even if they go together. If this is even pieces of the same puzzle.
Vision Battlesword [00:29:11]:
But somehow or other, our brains just keep sort of like, stirring them, stirring them around and trying different pieces to see if they fit over and over and over again. It's like just sort of the natural integration process, the thing that we're doing. And then eventually you get that one piece. That's the linchpin, right? It's like. And you couldn't have possibly predicted it. It's like, why that thing? I don't know. But for some reason, that thing drops in, and all of a sudden, all of these pieces click together, and you can see the picture. It's like, oh, I wish I'd known that 20 years ago.
Lucas Ferrer [00:29:42]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:29:46]:
It's like that. But there's still something about what you're saying that I want to get cleared up for myself, which is you're talking about this process, or you're talking about this state of self actualization, and then you're also talking about this experience of receiving this kind of guidance or receiving this clarity from somewhere, from life, from the universe or the collective consciousness, whatever that is. So there's something that feels a little at odds to me about that, where on the one hand, there's something that feels a little fatalistic, meaning just that, like, there is a path for me, and what's mine to do is to discover it or to allow that information to come in which will guide me to it. But it's sort of like it's there for me, waiting, if I can just find the correct direction to go. But then, on the other hand, what self actualization means to me more. So is that idea of choosing my own path, you know, even creating my own path. Like, yeah, maybe there is a path over there, but you know what? I've got a machete. Like, that self authoring is like, nope, we're going this way.
Lucas Ferrer [00:31:00]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:31:01]:
And so I'm just curious how you reconcile that or help reconcile that for me, in terms of what you thought of as self actualization.
Lucas Ferrer [00:31:09]:
Well, I don't know. Well, that's so free will. Free will exist. I have no clue. I feel like, for me, it comes from the idea of self actualization comes from my grandfather, who was very poor, with, like, a genetic deformity, very little education, but somehow managed to live an amazing life filled with success, with love, with really creating something that lasts to this day. And I feel like at the end, he has so much inner peace and knowledge. It was crazy. It's really amazing.
Lucas Ferrer [00:31:55]:
So how did he achieve that? And I feel like that is kind of like what I'm trying to emulate in a way. So what is my version of that? Because I see that you cannot choose that and then you can. You can have a different life.
Vision Battlesword [00:32:11]:
What does that look like? What does the not choosing of that type of path look like?
Lucas Ferrer [00:32:16]:
It looks like acting like living life, making decisions in life based on fear instead of possibilities. Yeah, I think that's one of the big thing is just conquering those fears in that there is free will because we choose to do that. Right. And I think in that being aware of that limited mindset that fear gives you is kind of where we have to exert our free will and just know deep down that. That there is abundance for us. That's difficult. It's a difficult thing to do. Now, I also somehow, deep down that, down inside, feel the possibility that I could erase this life that I built for myself and have a completely different life and it would be equally as great.
Lucas Ferrer [00:33:11]:
That seems farther away from my reality.
Vision Battlesword [00:33:14]:
I think that is self actualization. Yeah, that's my opinion. Yeah, I think. I think being in that place, being in that place where you not only have that realization, but you also feel comfortable with that.
Lucas Ferrer [00:33:29]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:33:29]:
And I don't mean to say that erasing your current life and starting a new one would necessarily be comfortable. Yeah, but I mean being comfortable with that as a possibility, knowing that you could choose that.
Lucas Ferrer [00:33:42]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:33:42]:
And having the confidence, I think, in yourself to maybe not necessarily having certainty that you will succeed, but having a confidence that you're going to give it your best and that you're not going to be afraid that you're going to turn toward possibility instead of away from opportunity because you've mastered your fear in that way. I think that's really what it is.
Lucas Ferrer [00:34:04]:
Yeah. So again, it's fears. So maybe this concept of self actualization is being able to understand fear but move past it. Yeah. And that's. I guess that's something that I, again, struggled with.
Vision Battlesword [00:34:21]:
I just want to drop in my own perspective on free will. I have a kind of very practical perspective on this or approach to this question, which is it kind of doesn't matter.
Lucas Ferrer [00:34:37]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:34:38]:
Because it looks like we have free will and we might as well behave as if we have free will.
Lucas Ferrer [00:34:46]:
To me, it looks like we don't have free will.
Vision Battlesword [00:34:48]:
Really?
Lucas Ferrer [00:34:48]:
Yeah. Tell me more, because I just see patterns and people repeat it over and over again and it's like, God, this pattern is so boring. You know, I deal with patients that have. You have to do certain things for a long time to come to my office. And it's the same things. People do the same things, meaning you.
Vision Battlesword [00:35:06]:
Kind of engage in certain lifestyle choices or behaviors that lead to certain types of health conditions that land you in my office. In your office, yeah.
Lucas Ferrer [00:35:15]:
And the answer is very simple. I heard recently someone say, like, in a podcast, the gates of hell locked from within, you can open it at any time and get out. So, yeah, so my daily experience when I have clinic every Wednesday is like, oh, there's very little free will. Cause you tell them it's okay. It's clear as day. Your body doesn't like what you're doing, you should stop doing it. This is how not to do it.
Vision Battlesword [00:35:46]:
See, to me, noticing someone making a repetitive choice isn't an argument necessarily against free will. It doesn't necessarily prove that whatever they're doing is predetermined.
Lucas Ferrer [00:35:59]:
What if it's, like, not just one person, but just, like, a mass of people? Does that change anything? A big group of people with similar life experiences all tend to make the same mistake.
Vision Battlesword [00:36:16]:
That seems obvious, right?
Lucas Ferrer [00:36:18]:
Yeah, we're worse. The free will in that.
Vision Battlesword [00:36:21]:
Again, just noticing that someone makes a predictable choice based on the patterns of their lived experience or the programming that they've been exposed to or the, let's say, predispositions of our animal behavior, it doesn't to me, just because something's predictable doesn't mean it's unchangeable or that it.
Lucas Ferrer [00:36:47]:
100%, yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:36:49]:
And so, but this, I think that's an. I think there is an interesting exploration there to be had, and I'm certainly. I'm sympathetic to a kind of fatalism or, you know, I'm susceptible to even a kind of fatalism in terms of, there's something demoralizing about, you know, watching repetitive choices get made or repetitive mistakes happen. But at the same time, it kind of brings me back to, like, my second. The second practical perspective that I have on free will, which is just okay, whether or not you agree with me that it looks like we do have it. All right, that's arguable. But regardless of that, we might as well behave as if we do have it, because what's the alternative? That piece doesn't make sense to me. It's like, how does.
Vision Battlesword [00:37:36]:
My question back to kind of free will determinists is, well, how does this inform my behavior? How would I. How do I behave differently? If I agree with you? How do you behave differently? Yeah, you know, someone's like, okay, let's just scratch this one. Interesting philosophical question. But from the perspective of my own subjective experience, it's like. It seems like I can make choices, and why would I not want to live that way?
Lucas Ferrer [00:38:06]:
No, 100% I agree. Another thing I heard someone say once is that they try to do is introduce randomness into their lives every day. And I feel like that's a really good advice. Just do something different every single day. Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:38:21]:
I don't know, but the universe knew they were going to do that.
Lucas Ferrer [00:38:24]:
Maybe. Or you did when you chose to come here as this form.
Vision Battlesword [00:38:28]:
Oh, I wanted to come back to that. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah. That was the first thing you said. I remember you said, when I asked you what is self actualization? You said, well, so we come here. We come into these bodies, we come into this life, this existence, because there's something here for us to learn. Is that you believe that?
Lucas Ferrer [00:38:50]:
I do believe that there is something. There is a. I feel like there. There is a process through which, like divinity. I get the word cleaning itself. It comes into mind, but that makes no sense. There is a process through which divinity expresses itself. And for some reason, it takes my form.
Lucas Ferrer [00:39:11]:
It takes your form. It takes a form of that leaf. And I think that there is learning. I mean, what does learning even mean? I guess experience and this concept is around everywhere also. These ideas are all over the place. But I feel like we're. Some people are having these ideas pop into their brain after going through certain experiences, and a lot of people are having the same idea. Yeah, I've heard it from.
Lucas Ferrer [00:39:43]:
In different continents, from different levels of education, from different, like, cultural backgrounds, time and periods. Like, this is not a new concept. There are certain truth things that appear to be true because they empirically come out in circumstances that are not related across time, culture, experiences and such. So this idea that divinity comes to experience itself as the best and the worst. We've been the best and we've been the worst. We've been trees that have consciousness that operate in different time frames than us. We have been everything. So, yeah, so, yeah, I think that, you know, whatever my form is at this moment is here to have a certain experience.
Lucas Ferrer [00:40:31]:
I kind of explored the idea, or I had this kind of, again, like, download formation on the exploration of free will. And I don't still truly understand it, but I kind of saw for me that I had two arcs of in life because I saw that there is one. One arc which was shorter, but not. But I came to understand that it wasn't good or bad, that it was shorter. There was another arc next to it that was longer. And both were equally good. Just that. It's just there were different experiences, and I could choose.
Lucas Ferrer [00:41:12]:
How many arts are there?
Vision Battlesword [00:41:13]:
This happened in a dream, did you say?
Lucas Ferrer [00:41:15]:
No, this happened in a ceremony.
Vision Battlesword [00:41:18]:
Oh, in a ceremony?
Lucas Ferrer [00:41:19]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:41:19]:
Oh, that's really interesting.
Lucas Ferrer [00:41:20]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:41:22]:
Okay, well, so how about this? Let's try this on for size. Based on everything you told me so far, what if the process of becoming self actualized or the state of self actualization is actually flipping that switch from predeterminism to free will?
Lucas Ferrer [00:41:42]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:41:43]:
And as you described it, we start out in this kind of state of where we are actually being driven by our programs, by our programming. We're not actually fully awake in a way. We are actually kind of just following the path that's been predetermined for us, but that there is a way to unlock our next level of consciousness in a way. And that is actually what we call self actualization, which starts with that first, that self reflection of, like, whoa, I'm here in a meat suit with a computer brain, and I've been programmed like, whoa, wait a second. And then from there, to become self authoring to say, oh, wait, can I change my code? Can I change my own code? Can I even change my physical form? Could I choose a different path? Are there different paths available? What does life. Tell me about that question, right? All of these. This idea of kind of like a higher state of awareness, which includes self awareness. Maybe that's what we mean by self actualization, and maybe that's what we mean if we say that we've come here to learn and to gain experience is to kind of to get to that point where we can now actually make a contribution, giving back to life in a way of, like, new experience or new ideas or new paths to explore.
Vision Battlesword [00:43:12]:
And that's what life, as you say, life wants us to do that. Maybe that's what life wants. It wants that freshness that we can only add through the expression of our.
Lucas Ferrer [00:43:24]:
Free will that feels like there's some truth in there. So then how does that process look like? I'm very, like, you know, scientific in the way I view the world based on, like, my training. So every single time, you know, these questions are answered, my next question is, okay, what's step 12345 to this? You know, what's the secret sauce?
Vision Battlesword [00:43:51]:
Well, how's it gone for you so far?
Lucas Ferrer [00:43:53]:
There is a component to, like, a routine when you first wake up. There is something about that moment of coming out of sleep, which is you know, think about sleeping. It's crazy. Like, right, where are we? Right, dude.
Vision Battlesword [00:44:14]:
And don't get me started on dreams.
Lucas Ferrer [00:44:15]:
I know.
Vision Battlesword [00:44:16]:
What is that all about?
Lucas Ferrer [00:44:17]:
I know. Yeah. Interestingly, I never remember my dreams.
Vision Battlesword [00:44:24]:
I have that a lot, too. Yeah, I rarely remember them.
Lucas Ferrer [00:44:27]:
I rarely, but I know. Yeah, I know. I'm a septum. But anyways, that, that process of waking up and just, like, getting into your body by sitting down, being calm, for me, I like making a coffee. That's part of my routine. And then dawn taught me this about stretching. Something about it just. And then, and then the sun, like, hitting your face for a little bit.
Lucas Ferrer [00:45:03]:
If I do those things, I feel like I operate at a different level. And this is kind of comes from, like, the human optimization part of it. But it also, like, if you do those things enough, after a certain while, ideas, realizations just start popping into your brain. And that's the secret sauce. Right. It's just information. I mean, it's all about information. I feel like it takes consistency, and then, so it takes resilience.
Lucas Ferrer [00:45:31]:
So it takes, like, you know, dealing with all these things that hinder your resilience.
Vision Battlesword [00:45:37]:
There's a word that comes to mind, which is discipline. Yeah, I love. You mentioned Dawn. I love Dawn's spin on discipline, where she brings it back to the root word disciple.
Lucas Ferrer [00:45:50]:
Yeah, she mentioned that.
Vision Battlesword [00:45:51]:
To become a disciple, to whatever it is, your practice, your dream, your journey.
Lucas Ferrer [00:45:58]:
And somehow that's a really powerful. It gives you purpose to be a disciple. I like the idea of being a disciple. There's, like, truthness and there's, like, an honor thing of being, like, committed to something.
Vision Battlesword [00:46:11]:
Yeah, it's a totally different energy. Right. Like, that word discipline, it immediately invokes what punishment, you know, childhood punishment, memories, or an idea of pain and suffering through working hard and things of this nature. But a disciple like that invokes, like, a student, a learner, a person on a path to enlightenment.
Lucas Ferrer [00:46:37]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there's, like, there's something noble about being a disciple of something. You know, there's choosing something and giving your all to it.
Vision Battlesword [00:46:49]:
But anyway, you were just saying about how a daily, there's a daily practice or there's practices that can sort of help you to clear your mind, to allow that information to come through.
Lucas Ferrer [00:47:02]:
Yeah. The, the most powerful one that I, probably the most difficult one is semen retention. For some reason, that gives you a level of clarity, determination, creativity. It's like, yeah, I did it for, like, a month. And just in my daily, like, experience in my work, it was crazy. It was really crazy. I remember, like, there was like this. I'm gonna go into, like, some technical stuff, but there was this person that had a plaque in their carotid artery.
Lucas Ferrer [00:47:42]:
And to fix that, you open it up, take the plaque out, and you put a patch that can get infected. Gets infected, the patch, the suture breaks down, and then you get something called a pseudo aneurysm, which is where blood is outside the blood vessel, but contained by the tissue around it in a very, like, unstable way. And it's. It's a mess. You know, the human body has planes, which is super, like, interesting. So it has planes through which you can navigate your way through. There are avascular planes, planes where there are no blood vessels. And that's how you navigate yourself.
Lucas Ferrer [00:48:21]:
And you find what you need to find. And when you get in those planes, it's beautiful. Things just, like, open themselves magically, right? Once you operate on someone, those planes get destroyed. And with infection, it's even worse. So it just. There's no plane. Everything's mushed together, and it's all, like, infection and whatever. So when you have that, you have to.
Lucas Ferrer [00:48:44]:
You can't dive into it because the person's gonna exsanguinate in front of you. You have to first control blood going in, and blood coming out of.
Vision Battlesword [00:48:53]:
Exsanguinate is to die bleeding. Yeah.
Lucas Ferrer [00:48:56]:
The person's gonna bleed out in front of you. So. And then the neck is a very, like, it's a small space, so it's a problem. It's a simple problem, but it's a complex problem at the same time. And I kind of, like, came into this problem, and I was like, oh, fuck. How am I gonna fix this? And then I realized that a tool I used for something else could be used to get that control from the inside. And that way I could just, like, dive into it, remove that tool and get the normal control I usually get out of nowhere. This idea just, like, came into my mind.
Lucas Ferrer [00:49:34]:
And it could have come even if I wasn't doing all these things, but it felt like I was in that place to just be able to get that information from somewhere. I don't know how I came up with that. I did. I don't think I came up with the idea. The idea came to me from somewhere. So these things, then, that's something very trivial and very specific to what I do. But it was very meaningful for that person because they had a good outcome. They went home in the same way.
Lucas Ferrer [00:50:08]:
I think you can have ideas that can come and affect your life in a positive way when you are open and when you do these practices. So anyways, that's one of the. I was really surprised, and I don't, you know, I saw some YouTube videos and some, some. I've never heard anybody talking about it, but somebody came to me like, oh, I'm gonna try this. And I try. And every, like, after, like, the first 14 days are hard as fuck, but then afterwards you get this amount of energy. That's incredible. It's addictive.
Lucas Ferrer [00:50:43]:
And you're like, oh, this is why the concept of, like, celibacy is, like, all over the place. It has nothing to do with any moral thing. It's all about, like, oh, this is like a source of, like, power. This is like a cheat code.
Vision Battlesword [00:51:00]:
So why'd you give it up?
Lucas Ferrer [00:51:01]:
Because it's hard. It's hard.
Vision Battlesword [00:51:05]:
Yeah, I have those kind of experiences. Just what you're referring back to, you know, when that kind of. That idea came to you from somewhere. I have those kind of experiences pretty frequently also. And it's. Yeah, it's like in the other story you mentioned about the synchronicity that you had on the airplane, the text message and all that. I've just had so many of these experiences, and I keep having more and more and more of them and weirder and more frequently, the more I go down the spiritual path and the more. The more I go down, you know, the path of opening up our consciousness in all the ways that we do.
Vision Battlesword [00:51:47]:
I can't. I just can't. You know, it's. It got to a .4 or five years ago where I just. My reality had to break down, you know? Yeah, my paradigm had to break down. I had to start entertaining other possibilities than the kind of, you know, pseudo rational construct that I was that I had been trying to maintain for some time. I just couldn't do it anymore. And it's really fascinating when you start to allow yourself, like you say, just kind of allow clear your mind, open yourself to other possibilities and allow that information to come in, what will start to come to you.
Vision Battlesword [00:52:26]:
It's really interesting.
Lucas Ferrer [00:52:28]:
I mean, the most. The most powerful circumstance like that was, like, during my power activation, when the rain started.
Vision Battlesword [00:52:38]:
Yeah, that's. You were at that ceremony. Yeah, that's right.
Lucas Ferrer [00:52:41]:
That was.
Vision Battlesword [00:52:43]:
Forgot about that one.
Lucas Ferrer [00:52:44]:
That was the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. Probably.
Vision Battlesword [00:52:48]:
Me too. I don't know. I've seen some crazy stuff, but that was really wild.
Lucas Ferrer [00:52:54]:
Really weird, really wild. And I was like, at that point, because I was like, you know, we had talked over the phone, and I was like, okay, what am I getting myself into? I wasn't really, like, convinced. And then that storm came out of nowhere in the middle inferno of August and July, where there were no clouds in the sky, zero. And I was like, okay, okay, universe force, you have my attention now. I'll go. I'll go into this with my mind fully open. Yeah. It's insane.
Lucas Ferrer [00:53:33]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:53:34]:
So it's hard to explain things like that, and especially when those kind of curious events and coincidences start to stack on each other. It seems like it's almost every ceremony that we have. Something weird like that happens. I mean, weather wise, specifically. Yeah, very weird weather usually has something to do with rain, and frequently totally unscheduled, like, let's say, you know, in terms of a meteorological forecast, like, not planned. Very. It's very curious. I don't know how to explain that.
Lucas Ferrer [00:54:11]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:54:12]:
A lot of what you've been talking about has to do with this idea of truth. It has to do with, for you personally, your journey has a lot to do with finding your true path, purpose, mission, whatever that. What is that contribution that would be, let's say, most fulfilling for you to make for the world? I'm trying to relate it back to the story you told me about your grandfather. And the words aren't quite coming to me to describe, like, what that life was that you saw that he led that was so inspiring to you. Like, was it about what he created in the world? Was it about how he expressed himself? Was it about the kind of everything, peace and clarity that he had at the end?
Lucas Ferrer [00:54:59]:
I think it all comes together, it's all integrated, and they're like force multipliers. They feed on each other. In a sense. There is something about developing and harnessing your gift and then giving it away. There is something there, there's some truth there for, and that's different for everyone. But we know when I started, my job is very integral to who I am, and it started a very selfish, ego driven way, as most things for men in their twenties are. I think the reasons I chose what I chose were more about, like, fulfilling my ego, myself, my sense of importance, you know, material things. And then the more I do, the more I sense that the only way forward is by creating things and then giving them away.
Lucas Ferrer [00:56:03]:
Like, I started the. After the power activation, started the podcast, and it was amazing. Amazing. And at the beginning, I did it for myself because I wanted to have these conversations, you know, they're interesting to me. That's the only reason. And then now I've, you know, I've been thinking about the podcast, and it's kind of hit a place where, like, it's going, but it's like that excitement is not there as much, and it's okay. I think this is important. I think, you know, I don't want to let this go, but I feel like I need to reframe it.
Lucas Ferrer [00:56:40]:
And the way I reframed it is, it's like a way where it's not centered on me. It provides a value. So how can I bring value with this thing? It might seem trivial or small, but it does have. I do get texts from people like, oh, man, that really helped me. Like, people that are in training and stuff like that. I was like, okay, this brings value. This has the potential to bring value, but I have to reframe it in a way that it's not about me. It's about giving value to other people.
Lucas Ferrer [00:57:07]:
And I think through that, I will achieve it becoming something more than it is now. And I think that there's some truth in that. As we go through this life and as we gain these experiences, we find a purpose, one of our multiple purposes, and we dive ourselves into that. We have one of those eleven lives where we obtain mastery. But then I think somehow we have to give it away in this whole mixture of, like, your practices, your mindset, the way you frame your actions in this whole amalgamation of concepts there. Like you said, I hope that there will be this linchpin piece of that puzzle that will put them all together, saying, oh, okay, this all makes sense. That's kind of my wish.
Vision Battlesword [00:57:58]:
But like you said at the beginning of the conversation, it could be that there's levels upon levels upon levels upon levels.
Lucas Ferrer [00:58:08]:
Right? Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:58:08]:
Oh, I solved. I solved the puzzle. Oh. And it gave rise to a new puzzle.
Lucas Ferrer [00:58:13]:
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:58:14]:
And, I mean, to me, that's beautiful. That's the most beautiful thing about life, is it does seem to be truly infinite. Like, there's no upper bound to this thing. We can keep growing. We can keep learning. We can keep expanding our consciousness.
Lucas Ferrer [00:58:32]:
The only way that I can conceptualize it is that, okay, if you come to certain truths, and then you say that you can materialize in this world, whatever thoughts you have in your mind, you know, whatever ideas, and then you come to the realization that, oh, this is just a game. Let's just fuck around. Let's just fuck around. And I'm just gonna, like, you know, live this life that it looks exuberant, but just because I'm having fun, that makes sense. That's how I can conceptualize it.
Vision Battlesword [00:59:07]:
Mm hmm.
Lucas Ferrer [00:59:08]:
That's the only way I can think about it. That's the only way. It's like, okay, if I.
Vision Battlesword [00:59:12]:
That what you just said makeshi makes sense to me. And I also. I recognize what you just said as a form of self actualization.
Lucas Ferrer [00:59:21]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [00:59:21]:
But that's different than what I hear other people saying sometimes where it feels to me more like. More like a magical thinking process. Do you know what I'm talking about? Where it's like, there's still a subscription to an older belief system, like this older belief system in this concept of money and materialism.
Lucas Ferrer [00:59:45]:
And it was like, I'm gonna go do ayahuasca so I can manifest a Range Rover.
Vision Battlesword [00:59:49]:
Yes.
Lucas Ferrer [00:59:50]:
Thank you.
Vision Battlesword [00:59:51]:
That's right.
Lucas Ferrer [00:59:52]:
And, you know, that's not the point. Or maybe that's. I don't know. I don't want to be judgmental in it, because, again, I feel like there's a comedical aspect to everything we do. And I sometimes find myself laughing at myself. They're just like, oh, man, you know, that's so funny what you're doing, what you're thinking. Cause we all. We fall in different versions of that trap.
Lucas Ferrer [01:00:14]:
Some are funnier than others, but they're still funny. You know, the ones that we fall in are still funny, and other people see it in ourselves. That's the even funny part. It's like, you don't see it when you're out doing it, but other people do it and they point it out to you. And then if you catch when they're pointing it out, you're like, oh, yeah, that's hilarious.
Vision Battlesword [01:00:35]:
I think that's so critical. I mean, everything you just said. I think when we take ourselves too seriously, that's when we're vulnerable to the programs, to the fear, to, you know, just falling into more rigid parameters of what we allow for ourselves in terms of possibilities or behavior, expression, our own evolution, I think when we can come to that mindset of, like, oh, wait. This is a frickin super high fidelity 3d video game that we came here to play. We're here to play the earth game. Exactly. Our mutual friend, the mandarin man, describes it. He calls it the earth game.
Vision Battlesword [01:01:19]:
Yeah, yeah. We came here to play the earth game. So let's not take ourselves too seriously. And when you can self reflect and see the hilarity in your own beliefs, in your own behavior, in all these paradigms, all these patterns that have gotten you to this point and then laugh at them and say, okay, well, what would I prefer for it to be? Yeah, that's self actualization.
Lucas Ferrer [01:01:44]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:01:44]:
You know?
Lucas Ferrer [01:01:45]:
Yeah. Courtney's great at that. Courtney is really. Courtney's way, like, more wise than I am, which is hilarious, because she comes in this. Her meat suit is this exuberant bubbly, but she's really wise. So we played this game. My dream of my life is truly not exuberant. I have no desire for that.
Lucas Ferrer [01:02:10]:
I've found the most beautiful moments in my life in my grandfather's farm in, like, the one. I have very few child memories, but one of the. The ones that stay with me is going with my mom to the beach. We live, like, four blocks from the beach and bringing, like, crackers and just crumbling the crackers and seeing the fish eat the crackers. So I know that happiness lies there, but there's this other part which Courtney has, which is, let's fuck around with it. Let's just fuck around with it. Let's just go big. So we played this game because I told her, like, when we're doing our conversation, we talked about that.
Lucas Ferrer [01:02:52]:
She's like, okay, let's play that game. So she said, all right, this is day one. You have, like, $10,000, and you have to spend it or you'll die. Okay, so spend it. And then I said something stupid. Sorry. So I was like, okay, I buy a mountain bike, and I'll. A really nice mountain bike or something.
Lucas Ferrer [01:03:12]:
Okay, so now you have $50,000. Spend it or die. And then you're like, okay. And then you get to a point where you're like, okay, I'm going to fund you. End up. What you really want is, like, to end basically, like, give free energy to anyone, solve the homeless problems. Like, they're really, like, the things that when you get to really ridiculous numbers are like, I'm going to give the opportunity for everyone in the world to just have one psychedelic trip or something like that. And it's.
Lucas Ferrer [01:03:43]:
But it's a fun exercise. I've never played that. Never allowed myself to. Yeah, to be ridiculous, too. Like, yeah, one of the. Yeah, many of the things I said were really funny, but in a ridiculous way, and I was like, oh, this is a very playful way. So I feel like there is a level of the game, and that's probably not the highest level of the game, but it's probably a level where, like, people like Billy Carson are playing, where they just become. Yeah, they're just.
Lucas Ferrer [01:04:06]:
Okay, this is my meat suit. I figured out this key. I'm just gonna fuck around for a little bit. And that's interesting. That's very interesting. But that gets mixed in with this religion of prosperity version of alternative consciousness, which is a human trap. It just takes a different form because truth gets twisted. We twist truth.
Lucas Ferrer [01:04:32]:
And part of this journey has been seeing all these. There's truth in these things that we perceive as, like. As, like, not normal, like. Like celibacy. And we're talking, it's like, oh, I understand now why for men, this is important. It has nothing to do with, like, being pure or anything. It's just like, it's a little cheat code that allows you to, like, have this other.
Vision Battlesword [01:04:54]:
So, by the way, just real quick, it is super interesting to me hearing about your experience with that and making that connection between semen retention and celibacy, which somehow had not occurred to me before just now, that now noticing the connection between celibacy as a tradition and a spiritual path.
Lucas Ferrer [01:05:16]:
Yeah, yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:05:17]:
Wow. Like, light bulb moment. Yeah, that's so interesting.
Lucas Ferrer [01:05:21]:
So there is a truth. There's probably some truth in the whole, like, religion of prosperity version of whatever it is that happens in the spiritual community, and the fact that, you know, at some point, maybe you get to a point where you just can fuck around with things and just, like, express yourself in whatever way you want to express yourself.
Vision Battlesword [01:05:39]:
See, but I think that's what I was trying to say earlier when I was saying that self actualization is more like a continuum that can occur at any level, any stage, any situation, any.
Lucas Ferrer [01:05:51]:
Circumstances, that has nothing to do with self actualization.
Vision Battlesword [01:05:54]:
Oh, I'm sorry.
Lucas Ferrer [01:05:56]:
I think that's just a comedic aspect of it. In a sense. It's a side quest.
Vision Battlesword [01:06:02]:
I don't know about that. I mean, to me, it seems real tapped in. I feel like those things are really closely related somehow. Just the idea of, I see what you're saying about when you. When you talk about, let's just fuck around and see what we can do with these meat suits or see what we could, you know, let's take the thing apart and see how it works or, you know, whatever. I see what you're saying with that. And at the same time, it really strongly resonates for me as a part of self actualization, like, getting to that.
Lucas Ferrer [01:06:33]:
Point of being able to do that.
Vision Battlesword [01:06:35]:
Comfortability with the idea that, again, you're not taking yourself too seriously. But at the same point, I think true self actualization is not irresponsible or frivolous. Which sort of brings us back around to another thing I wanted to revisit, which is values, because, again, how did you choose to spend your money in the game you were playing with Courtney? Yeah, I think that is very much a reflection of your values. So you give someone else, a different person, that same opportunity, you know, thought experiment, like, here's a million, billion, trillion, whatever. Here's some money. You have to spend it or you'll die. What do you choose to spend it on? I think that very much is a reflection of whatever direction your inner compass is currently pointed or an expression of your value system. But that, that idea of.
Vision Battlesword [01:07:32]:
So not like, let's fuck around just for the sake of like, you know, trying to break the game. To come back to the video game analogy, I'm not going to necessarily, like, try to break the game, or maybe I will. I don't know, maybe that would be interesting. Like, yeah, but more from a perspective of no longer being a non player character, no longer being a scripted pawn, if you will, in the experience, but now becoming a player character that can try different approaches and figure things out. Mainly, I think, for the purpose of, like, redirecting that experience back into an ongoing process of personal development or expanding consciousness, adding to experience, learning, growth, whatever that looks like. I think that whole collection, that whole constellation of attributes, I think that's the essence of self actualization. Yeah, what do you think?
Lucas Ferrer [01:08:37]:
Yeah, I think that it's kind of like what I said before. There is an amalgamation of actions, situations, thoughts, internal growth processes that I feel like at some point there is that key puzzle piece that comes and lays in the middle, and then boom. I think that, you know, somehow you come to a state of being again, it comes to, like, actualization comes is action. And maybe coming to being in a state of self actualization feels like an action.
Vision Battlesword [01:09:07]:
Yeah, right. Well, and in the dictionary definitions that we looked up before we started, that word action comes up a lot in all of the definitions of actual and actualize and all that stuff. But then additionally, that word actual, it means to make real. It means not fake. So that comes back to the concept of truth. Like, there's something really critical about self actualization that also has to do with authenticity or that has to do with authentic expression. Yeah, but then also, I guess to get to that point, first there has to be a process of self discovery of like, well, what is my authentic expression? What does that even mean? And that kind of brings me back to that question about values. What are your values?
Lucas Ferrer [01:09:57]:
That's a really good question. I think my values. Well, I think one of my values is curiosity. I think that is definitely one of my values. And I think one of my values is also, like, the concept of not being stagnant in a way, or not stagnant or just like. Or reaching a place and striving to, like, to go to the next place. Like, in everything I do, I just try to. Okay, so I got this so I could do it better.
Lucas Ferrer [01:10:30]:
Like, what's the next thing that I'm gonna. Like? How we're gonna refine it always, like.
Vision Battlesword [01:10:33]:
So you call that, like, continual improvement?
Lucas Ferrer [01:10:37]:
Yeah, I guess so. I think those are things that really define me and things that, you know, I kind of observe one of my values. I don't know if it's a value or if it's a purpose, but in certain situations, I give people peace. In difficult situations where people are, like, presented with life and death, there's a confidence in me that gives people peace. And I recently discovered that it's one of these things that kind of, like, again, clicks and says, okay, this is one of my purposes in life. It's not to do the surgery. It's to give them peace in the process. And I like that.
Lucas Ferrer [01:11:20]:
So I don't know if one of the is serving in that way. Serving is too much of a broad term, but it's that one very specific thing that I think is part of my purpose that I truly value and care for and protect.
Vision Battlesword [01:11:36]:
Yeah. I think a purpose could become a value. If you value it.
Lucas Ferrer [01:11:39]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:11:41]:
Like, if it's something that becomes important to you, if it's something that you hold dear. I think those are values.
Lucas Ferrer [01:11:46]:
Yeah. So I've seen so many things. I've been so close to death, other people dying for many years that I, you know, you feel like you understand certain things that other people don't get to see. There are certain things that human beings do or act like very nuanced things that you pick up.
Vision Battlesword [01:12:10]:
Well, I'm really curious about that. What kind of things do you see? What are attributes of how people respond to death?
Lucas Ferrer [01:12:18]:
Well, first of all, people know that they're gonna die. Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:12:21]:
How do you know?
Lucas Ferrer [01:12:21]:
Days in advance.
Vision Battlesword [01:12:22]:
How do you know that?
Lucas Ferrer [01:12:23]:
They know, because they tell me.
Vision Battlesword [01:12:25]:
Oh, okay. And then they do.
Lucas Ferrer [01:12:27]:
They.
Vision Battlesword [01:12:28]:
Yeah.
Lucas Ferrer [01:12:28]:
And then they do. It's really crazy. It can be, you know, a lot of people say, like, are afraid. I mention it in different ways, but I had a patient pass recently that was really like, I hadn't had somebody pass in a long time. And she mentioned it multiple times, and I was very confident that she wasn't going to die. I was like, no, I got this, it's fine. And then she made it past the surgery and everything, but then certain things happened, which I always take full. I believe in extreme responsibility in situations like that.
Lucas Ferrer [01:13:08]:
So I always think it's always my fault. It's something I did. There's some things that were external, but she died. It's crazy. And that. That's happened to me multiple, multiple times. Then people look at you straight in the face and they tell you, and some people, when they're not gonna die, they're just afraid, they're flailing, and they're, like, chaotic. And when they die, they just have this, like, peace.
Lucas Ferrer [01:13:32]:
Not peace, necessarily, but kind of like deep understanding.
Vision Battlesword [01:13:37]:
Hmm.
Lucas Ferrer [01:13:38]:
Not necessarily peace, but just like this deep understanding that this is going to happen. I've understood. I understood the lack of control. I think a lot of fear comes from, like, wanting to control the world. And one of the things I'm very grateful for, like, understanding very early in my twenties, was the lack of control that we have in life. And the way I understood that was, you know, this. This young. I was in.
Lucas Ferrer [01:14:07]:
I did general surgery in North Philadelphia because I. Part of me wanted to do trauma. So North Philly is like, you know, it's a rough place. And you see, we saw, like, maybe on the average Saturday, about twelve people come in shot per night. Twelve to 20 to that lot. So this. So you start seeing again. You see patterns and everything.
Lucas Ferrer [01:14:31]:
So, so this, this kid doesn't. Didn't really fit the patterns of it. He was like, you know, dressed a certain way. African american kid dressed a certain way. He just didn't fit. But he got shot in the back of the head. So. So I.
Lucas Ferrer [01:14:45]:
We take him to ICU, we stabilize, and we're gonna see. Well, maybe, you know, we'll be able to. His family want to donate some of his organs because we had a transplant program. And then the grandma comes in with the Bible under her arm, crying. And then she tells me the story, how she, like, raised him. It was like, super, like, did excellent in school, was going to college. What happened was that he was at the movies with a girlfriend, and somebody said something to a girlfriend. He said something like, hey, like, don't mess with my girlfriend, or something.
Lucas Ferrer [01:15:22]:
And somebody else came in the back and shot in the back of the head. And I was like, man, I would have done that. Probably. I would have died. So this grandma really spent all this life, raising this kid in the straight and narrow. Right. Did the best that she could. She did it really well.
Lucas Ferrer [01:15:41]:
And then something out of her control came, and just her life project, which was to give herself to this other human and have that human succeed in life, came crashing down. And at that moment, I realized, oh, there's absolutely no control in life. There's absolutely no control. So. And that is very frightening and sad, but it's also very liberating in a sense, because I like when you really integrate that, you. You just live freely because you accept death and then you accept that you're not in control of it. So you're free. You're completely free to live life however you want to live it.
Lucas Ferrer [01:16:29]:
Because at the end of the day, the thing that you fear the most is, like, there's nothing you. There's examples there. There are people that do crazy things and then they die because they do those things. But there's other examples of people that do crazy things. And you live to, like, 90 years old, and there's example of people that live in certain era and die very early. So there's a randomness to them to that. That's liberating but frightening, in a sense. Yeah.
Lucas Ferrer [01:16:54]:
Those are the things you learn from death.
Vision Battlesword [01:16:57]:
Wow. Death is not what I fear the most. Yeah, there's actually quite a few things above that on my list.
Lucas Ferrer [01:17:05]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:17:06]:
Of things that I'm afraid of.
Lucas Ferrer [01:17:07]:
I agree. Death is. I don't. I don't feel death as much. I do fear it. I'm not gonna say I don't fear it, but, yeah, there are. I think life, you know, certain.
Vision Battlesword [01:17:20]:
I can see there's ways of living.
Lucas Ferrer [01:17:23]:
Yeah, there's ways of living, ways of.
Vision Battlesword [01:17:24]:
Being alive that are much worse, seems to me.
Lucas Ferrer [01:17:27]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:17:27]:
But maybe that's my work. That's my process.
Lucas Ferrer [01:17:33]:
I think this working my way through.
Vision Battlesword [01:17:35]:
Acceptance of that list and the liberation that comes from that.
Lucas Ferrer [01:17:39]:
Yeah. Yeah, that's a tough one. That's. That would. I think a lot of people are afraid of certain ways of living that could be worse than death, and that can be very stifling.
Vision Battlesword [01:17:53]:
Huh. Is there anything else about. I'm just so curious about this particular topic, just because of your experience. And I can just see, you know, I could see in your face, I can read in your body language and hearing your voice how much you've learned from this and how much it's affected you. Just witnessing what relationship people have with death when they're so close to it and when you're so close to it. I'm just curious if there's anything else in there that you feel is worth sharing.
Lucas Ferrer [01:18:26]:
There is. You know, there is. We live with the fear of it, but when the time comes, there is. There is an ex. There's a peace in the acceptance, and most humans instinctively, automatically get there. You don't have to worry about it. You don't have to worry about being afraid, because I think another fear that we have is being. Knowing that we're going to die and being really afraid of it.
Lucas Ferrer [01:18:55]:
When you get to the moment, you. You. There is a certain piece of a. There's an piece through acceptance that I've seen a lot, and you kind of, like people understand, and then you have this innate understanding that this is just a process. Process in whatever game we're in. So I would say you don't have to worry about that.
Vision Battlesword [01:19:21]:
We will all reach acceptance of death at the appropriate time.
Lucas Ferrer [01:19:25]:
Yeah. You're saying, yeah, we were all like, yeah, it's. It's a very. It's a very fearless process. When you're actually doing it, you're actually going through it. It feels like a very natural process. You know, when somebody truly, like, passes away in front. I had a.
Lucas Ferrer [01:19:41]:
Had a patient that had a lung transplant and didn't go well, and he kind of had, like, I was in the ICU. I was covering the ICU paths in front of me. And this, the act. The soul is a real thing, too. The soul is such a real thing. It's like the one that, you know, it, like the moment when it happens.
Vision Battlesword [01:20:06]:
How do you know?
Lucas Ferrer [01:20:07]:
You just know. It's just like self evident. It's really crazy. If you really, like, yeah, I remember another gentleman that had another kind of catastrophic situation where he didn't have any options to have anything resolved. And, you know, it's just gonna be a couple hours. And he knew, like, imagine that. Imagine going to being in a place and saying, you have this big problem. You have about two to 3 hours to live fully conscious, fully within your mental means, and knowing that.
Lucas Ferrer [01:20:44]:
So I, you know, I remember that. And, you know, there was an acceptance to it. It was a very gracious way in which that person handled that. And I was there when he passed, and it was just, again, like, self evident in a sense. Like, you know, the eyes were the same, kind of like, you get to a point where, you know, breathing is very shallow, so it's almost in imperceptible. And then, but then you kind of know, you look. And then you look at the. At the monitors.
Lucas Ferrer [01:21:16]:
And they're like, it's obvious. But then you knew before you looked at the monitors.
Vision Battlesword [01:21:21]:
Yeah, that's fascinating to me. So, two of your most important values, as you self evaluate them are curiosity and improvement. What are you most curious about as it pertains to self actualization?
Lucas Ferrer [01:21:36]:
I'm most curious about, like, other, you know, I'm sure there are other, like, cheat codes that I just don't know about, you know, in these things, and. And all these things are. All these truths are in the world. That's the other thing. You realize they're all over. You've heard them all your life.
Vision Battlesword [01:21:54]:
Yeah.
Lucas Ferrer [01:21:55]:
These words. You've heard them all your life, and then you just have them putting them together. So I know there's concept that. Concepts that I've heard all my life that are floating around me, and then one day I'm just gonna go like, ah, okay, I get it. That's fun.
Vision Battlesword [01:22:13]:
I agree. That's.
Lucas Ferrer [01:22:14]:
That's.
Vision Battlesword [01:22:15]:
Yeah, that's one of the most fascinating and fun experiences for me as well, is when one of these old sayings just suddenly drops in and, like, the light bulb goes off, and I'm like, that's what that means. Like, this is some deep wisdom.
Lucas Ferrer [01:22:32]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:22:32]:
I can't remember who I was talking to, but I think I said to someone that, I think those little sayings are the original memes, you know?
Lucas Ferrer [01:22:42]:
Yeah. There's so much, like, information. Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:22:45]:
Packed in these little. Right. These. These little compressed.
Lucas Ferrer [01:22:49]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:22:50]:
You know, like, the original zip files that we passed down from generation to generation in these just traditional sayings. And I think that we don't know how to unzip them. We don't know how to unpack them in our lives in this modern. This modern lifestyle that we have, because a lot of times they're opened up by experience, specific experiences.
Lucas Ferrer [01:23:15]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:23:16]:
I had that when I was living. I don't know if you even know this about me or not, but I spent about nine years living on a little ranch out in Wimberley.
Lucas Ferrer [01:23:24]:
Yeah, you told me.
Vision Battlesword [01:23:24]:
Homesteading.
Lucas Ferrer [01:23:25]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:23:25]:
Yeah. Okay. And I had so many of those little meme bombs go off while I was out there gardening and hunting and learning how to do all of the kind of homesteading activities. Just all these. I can't think of any off the top of my head right now, but just all these old sayings that we're so disconnected, we don't have an actual connection to really, to the real world in so many respects anymore. But going out into nature, getting your hands in dirt, trying to grow food, building things, just doing all of these tangible things in the physical world suddenly unlocks all of this knowledge that's, like, latent. I think it's both in our actual programming code and the memes that have been passed down to us. But also, I think it's in our actual physical.
Lucas Ferrer [01:24:26]:
But it's also in the process of doing those things. Because in doing those things put you in the moment.
Vision Battlesword [01:24:32]:
That's what I mean. Yeah.
Lucas Ferrer [01:24:33]:
Yeah. So when you're in the moment, then this information comes. Like, it happens to me when I'm operating. I can be operating. And like 8 hours pass and I don't know, like, what the hell, like, happened during that time. But during that time, I get all these ideas. It's crazy. I'm like, fully into something complex, but my mind is just like, completely random ideas.
Lucas Ferrer [01:24:57]:
And they're like, oh, that's a great idea. When I get out of here, I'll do that.
Vision Battlesword [01:25:01]:
Yeah, I think you're right about that. I think. I think there's something about a meditative quality to a lot of the kind of activities that you might do on a farm or on a ranch or a homestead that puts you into that quiet mind space where that information can come in, or your mind can just make those connections between the puzzle pieces that it just hasn't made before. But also, I think that there's certain kinds of knowledge that we. You just cannot get except through experience. Like the actual physical practice of doing things, of working in the garden and seeing the bugs, seeing the ecology, watching a plant grow over a period of months and being like, oh, like, I can't even.
Lucas Ferrer [01:25:48]:
It's.
Vision Battlesword [01:25:49]:
It's so hilarious to think that, like, at one point, I didn't understand where broccoli comes from. Oh, that's what broccoli looks like as it grows on the plant. Like, oh, how interesting.
Lucas Ferrer [01:26:00]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:26:01]:
All these different things calling back to when you were talking about doing surgery and the planes of the human tissues and stuff. And I'm immediately recognizing what you're talking about from my experience with butchering.
Lucas Ferrer [01:26:15]:
Yeah, exactly the same thing.
Vision Battlesword [01:26:17]:
Same thing. It's like, well, you get in that groove and it's like, oh, this thing's just come right apart and it really starts to look like steak, you know?
Lucas Ferrer [01:26:25]:
Yeah, it's really funny because, like, I. Again, like, back. Back home, like we would, you know, whenever we would kind of celebrate something, Christmas, whatever. My grandfather raised pigs and we would slaughter the pigs. And we'd kill the pigs and slaughter the pigs. So he would actually, like, teach me, like, oh, this is the kidneys, this is the lungs as a little kid, and then I end up doing this, you know, and he taught me all about, like, oh, then you get here under this, and then there's, like, a little thing where you put your hand and separate it and move it out of this way. So he, like, taught me how to fucking do surgery when I was, like, a little kid, which is really funny.
Vision Battlesword [01:27:06]:
But I really believe strongly that those experiences, there's things that we learn from those experiences that are essential to our development as humans that we're missing. If we're missing that information, we're. We're coming out strange.
Lucas Ferrer [01:27:29]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:27:29]:
We're coming out different. Like, you can't. That there's just nothing you're gonna read in a book, see in a video or see in a movie or that anyone's going to tell you that's gonna. That's gonna allow you to understand viscerally, emotionally, sensorily.
Lucas Ferrer [01:27:44]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:27:45]:
All of the different information that comes in to crystallize that experience that then, in my case, gives birth to something like empathy. You know, like, I did not think that I was going to go learn how to hunt for food because I was on this mission for self sufficiency, and then I was going to come out realizing, like, I've got to be nicer to people, you know? But these are the kind of things that, you know, we're fundamentally developing and being educated very differently.
Lucas Ferrer [01:28:16]:
Yeah. You know, there's a difference between a rational knowing of truth and a feeling of truth.
Vision Battlesword [01:28:23]:
Yes.
Lucas Ferrer [01:28:24]:
And that's where, you know, I didn't understand that for a long time.
Vision Battlesword [01:28:29]:
Yeah.
Lucas Ferrer [01:28:29]:
Until you feel something true and they're like, oh, okay, this is different.
Vision Battlesword [01:28:33]:
You were saying that at the beginning of the conversation, too. I'm so glad you came back to it. What does that feeling of truth feel like? Or what is it like?
Lucas Ferrer [01:28:41]:
It's just unshakable in your core. It's just an unshakable. You're like, you understand that you could be wrong. I understand that, but I just truly feel that as a. As a truth.
Vision Battlesword [01:28:55]:
Yeah.
Lucas Ferrer [01:28:55]:
As a guiding principle. And there's a real sense of groundedness in it, in that I don't need to go argue about it. I have no intention to, like, convince anyone about it. I just know that this is, like, deep inside me, I know this is true, and I know that it guides my decisions.
Vision Battlesword [01:29:13]:
What's an example of that for you? Something that you feel to be true.
Lucas Ferrer [01:29:17]:
That we've been every human that has ever lived. My essence is you. You are Ghengis Khan. Genghis Khan is Trump.
Vision Battlesword [01:29:31]:
Yeah, Trump.
Lucas Ferrer [01:29:32]:
Trump is mother Teresa.
Vision Battlesword [01:29:35]:
You feel that in your core at all? In my core, that oneness.
Lucas Ferrer [01:29:40]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:29:40]:
Of all being.
Lucas Ferrer [01:29:42]:
Yeah, of all, exactly. And then that. You know that the same experiences, like the wind has that. The trees. Like the trees. Yeah. Have that.
Vision Battlesword [01:29:53]:
How does that. Knowing of your own divinity and the oneness of all being. How does. How does that relate for you back to self actualization?
Lucas Ferrer [01:30:03]:
I kind of see. I see the possibility of things. I see the possibility and I see my limitations. I can see them clearly and accept them as they are. That's just without judgment, in a sense. I just see, okay, this is like. Yeah, this is my. Me, too.
Lucas Ferrer [01:30:21]:
This is my computer brain. This is my programming, but this is not me. This is just like my enclosure. And it's for me to figure out how I can remodel it, how I can open it, how I can, you know, transcend it in a way where it's okay if I don't. It's okay. Like, I can just go through the process without a fear of, like, if I don't get there in time, kind of a thing. It's like, okay, I understand that. This is the game.
Lucas Ferrer [01:30:57]:
This is what I like to. I love that you introduced that, the concept of games. I was like, this is the game. These are the rules of the game. I didn't make the rules of the game, but I decided to play the game, so.
Vision Battlesword [01:31:11]:
And guess what? If you don't get it on this slide, put another quarter.
Lucas Ferrer [01:31:15]:
Put another quarter in. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:31:17]:
Yeah, that's cool.
Lucas Ferrer [01:31:19]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:31:20]:
What would be the best advice that you could think of in this moment right now to give to yourself about how to achieve self actualization?
Lucas Ferrer [01:31:31]:
Explore the process. Just explore the process. Just give yourself into the simplicity of the process. Complex things come from simple things a lot of times, so just give yourself to the simple and kind of like, the complex overwhelmingness of it. We'll kind of, again, be self evident. That feels true.
Vision Battlesword [01:31:55]:
I love that. Yeah, that feels true for me, too. I really believe things can be very simple.
Lucas Ferrer [01:32:02]:
Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:32:04]:
You know, and again, common theme or central theme of our conversation, you know, because it relates to self actualization, is choice. It can just be so simple. It's just a choice. Every single moment is that opportunity for a choice. What would I like my life to be now?
Lucas Ferrer [01:32:26]:
No. Yeah.
Vision Battlesword [01:32:28]:
And it's a new story every moment. This was a lot of fun.
Lucas Ferrer [01:32:33]:
Yeah, it was great.
Vision Battlesword [01:32:33]:
Thank you, Lucas.
Lucas Ferrer [01:32:34]:
Thank you, Judicia.