Vision Battlesword [00:00:00]:
Something that I've been thinking about sometimes this idea of, like, what exactly do we mean? Like, I think sometimes we use the word expansion just to mean things feel easeful. I feel good things are going well. And then contraction means, like, oh, I'm going through a rough period, or I'm experiencing some challenges or struggles. Somebody said to me a while back, I can't remember, it was like a reframe on contraction. I can't remember if it was you or not or if it was someone else. But instead of contraction, to talk about consolidation, it's just a different, more positive reframe on. Instead of it feeling like we're losing something more, like we're integrating or bringing things together, I guess. Like, we go out and we gather new, and then we can consolidate and bring it back in closer.

Vision Battlesword [00:00:45]:
I don't know. What do you think about all that?

Michael Hollinger [00:00:47]:
Yeah, that's a good question. I think, for me, what I'm seeing lately is expansion is directly for me. I used to be more of a lone wolf, and I still find myself going back into that phase of lone wolfing it. Like, I, you know, I can do all of it. Everything I need to do, I can get all done, and I get in my little, like, monk mode, or I just sit at the coffee shop, sit at home. Like, I just, you know, I'm just trying it all done. And that gets very contracting because it's just in my head. And so I think the expansion for me is realizing that, like, it's in the heart, because it's, like, connecting with more people.

Michael Hollinger [00:01:15]:
Like, the more I connect and expand into, like, pouring into other people, then I get that reflection back of that love coming back, and it's more and more expansive in the heart. And then the contraction is when it goes back in my head where maybe. And this is where expanding into new levels. Like, I'll expand and I'll be like, oh, my God, I'm learning so much. Like, I'm expanding and I'm getting all this reflection, seeing more who I am and just feeling that love. And then it could be, like, one reflection from somebody that just, like, I went past an edge where I get to look at that. Like, what story was I making up that I got this reflection from somebody that pointed back to something that was coming up for me? Because I think, for me, there's some kind of a self sabotaging element that's like, you're getting too big. Get back into.

Michael Hollinger [00:01:59]:
You know, that's the ego. The stories are like, you're getting too big. And so it can be a simple reflection with somebody that, like, I can take that in and be like, okay, that didn't feel good. Something came up. Something triggered me to look at, you know, and then I look at that and, like, what was that all about? And rather than judging somebody, how can I look at that and say, okay, there's a lesson here for me. And sometimes the contraction is my natural ego to come back in back, almost like in a lone wolf. It's like, get back into your cage, and just like, you went too big, and then I'll sit with that and be like, okay, there's the lesson. I see where I was trying to be, right, or there's something coming up around how I see the world that I get to look at and take that resistance out and then get back into expansion now, okay, let go of that story.

Michael Hollinger [00:02:42]:
Stop using that story to make yourself small.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:46]:
So, expansion for you has a big association with feeling more love in your life, and contraction has. There's a connection between that and feeling less love in your life.

Michael Hollinger [00:02:57]:
Yeah. And I think it's the same thing. If you, like, look at love and fear, right? They're on both opposite ends of the gradient, and that's one's expansive and one's very contracting. And I think the mind wants to contract. The ego is like, trying to say, these stories of, you're not good enough. You can't do that. You're not smart enough. All these stories that want to keep us small, and the heart doesn't know anything about.

Michael Hollinger [00:03:16]:
The heart's like, no, we can just love and expand, and so I can tell them in my heart versus my head how it feels.

Vision Battlesword [00:03:23]:
That's interesting because it reflects to me on a conversation I had with Tiffany a little while ago where we were talking a little bit about love and fear as well. And the topic of our conversation was actually love. And I kind of came to a new awareness for myself, which is that love seems to be that emotion or that state or that energy, which is about reaching out or reaching toward or turning toward or enfolding. And fear seems to be more that emotion or that energetic state of pulling back or withdrawing or choosing protection as compared to choosing connection or choosing communion. Something along those lines.

Michael Hollinger [00:04:05]:
Yeah, 100%. That's how I see it, too. I think that protection can be almost like, in that victim energy of somebody did something to me. It's easy to go back in that victim story, but then we can look at, what story am I telling about myself that wants to be in that place because it's so easy to be like, it's not my fault, but we source all of this. Like, all this is our source. So, you know, the more we take responsibility for what we're creating around us, the less resistance we can take out of it, and the faster we can also get to expand into more love.

Vision Battlesword [00:04:35]:
Who are you? Michael Hollinger.

Michael Hollinger [00:04:39]:
So I like to talk in terms of not what I do, but who I am. And I am a powerful, playful, authentic leader. That is who I am.

Vision Battlesword [00:04:50]:
Nice. Well, I'm Vision Battlesword. I founded Sacred Light. I'm the creator of Intentional Autonomous Relating, and I'm the host of this audio series, Sacred Conversations. And I get the sense that what we're talking about today is actually expansion. Does that sound like fun for you?

Michael Hollinger [00:05:07]:
Let's do it.

Vision Battlesword [00:05:08]:
Great. What is expansion? What does it actually mean? We've kind of danced around a few different connections or connotations of how we experience that. But, like, what is that state? What is that state of being? An expansion?

Michael Hollinger [00:05:22]:
Yeah. I think it's all about love, pure love. That is expansion. And that's why expansion feels so good. I don't know if you're familiar with the David R. Hawkins levels of consciousness, where they've mapped out energetically, the energetic log of all the different levels.

Vision Battlesword [00:05:39]:
Yeah. Is that the one that kind of maps them to frequencies and emotions?

Michael Hollinger [00:05:43]:
Yeah. So grief and shame and guilt are at the very bottom, and then joy, bliss, love and enlightenment are the top. So I really been playing around with that lately. It really speaks to me. And it's not about the words, it's about understanding that energy level. And so, like, I get to see where I'm attaching guilt and shame or grief to something. It's very heavy. It's a very dense energy, and it feels dense, and that's very contracting.

Michael Hollinger [00:06:10]:
And I think it also is very ego driven and self driven, and also more the mind where the ego wants to, to drive and create stories. And I think the higher densities around, like, love and bliss and enlightenment, those are more the expansive energies where it's like you're in your heart and it's like, like you said, you're giving love outward, you know, not making about you, but. But making about others, like service to others versus service to self. And there's no room for guilt and shame. If you're like, literally, like, I'm just loving people out here in front of me. There's, there's no room for that.

Vision Battlesword [00:06:45]:
Yeah, that's interesting. So to kind of map now, the idea of density to this concept of expansion, the expansion contraction spectrum, if you will. So what we call the higher frequencies or higher densities or emotions, we could also term lighter, like less dense. They're more expanded or more expansive. And then denser, heavier energies, we could just say is like energy in more of a contracted state. Like, it's kind of the same stuff. But how expanded versus how contracted are we dealing with? It's kind of an interesting model or way to think about it, because I personally, I have a preference in my life right now for looking at things in a way that has less moral judgment or as little moral judgment to it as possible. Looking at things as neutral as possible in the sense of like, okay, so we've got all these different possible types of experience that include things like guilt and shame, pain and anger, and also include love and bliss and joy and euphoria and excitement and all of these different things that we return to be more pleasurable.

Vision Battlesword [00:07:58]:
But I like to try to see the usefulness in everything. Or, like, why does this entire spectrum exist? Or why is this all a part of this earth game, this particular plane of existence? Surely these things have a function. And so I'm not saying that I want to go through my life seeking out heavier density emotions or something like that, but just having an appreciation for them and sort of recognizing that there's a yin and a yang, there's a light and a shadow. Heavy and a light, you know, kind of thing to life, I guess.

Michael Hollinger [00:08:36]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:08:36]:
What do you think about that?

Michael Hollinger [00:08:37]:
Yeah, I see it the same way. I don't think there's any. There's not good or bad. They're just signals. It can feel like what we might call bad because heavy just doesn't feel. I think we come from source where probably is pure bliss and pure love. And that's ultimately, I think, what we want to get back to because that is what feels amazing. And the heavier densities just seem like the heavier densities are on the other side of the spectrum of that, and they just feel very heavy.

Michael Hollinger [00:09:02]:
I was thinking about this the other day. I'm gonna kind of go a tangent, but bring it back in here for a minute to kind of bring us to, like, how I think we are in this playful realm and what we get to who we really are. I was looking at a sperm. Okay, so a sperm has, you know, has a head, has a neck, has a body, and has a tail. If you look at it biologically. And the way I see it is so it. When it. When the sperm goes into the egg.

Michael Hollinger [00:09:26]:
There's a spark that's been identified. A spark actually happens, right? So that's like the spark of life coming in. I as light source just got downloaded into this biological thing. And then the sperm, if you look at us biologically, the brain, the spine, the tailbone, that is the sperm, like, essentially the thing just turned into our brain, our spine, and the tailbone. And then the nervous system just kind of went off of that and then just like locked into this body that is like this robot that we get to operate as a vessel. So, like, we're like this light source sitting inside of a fully grown sperm that has now got nervous system tentacles into the body that were then operating like our robot in 3d reality through our five senses. So our five senses are like how we then operate through this 3d reality. And they're just signals, right? So whether it's.

Michael Hollinger [00:10:17]:
There's no good or bad, but sometimes. But it feels either heavy or lighter, expansive, contracting. And that's just how we get to operate, is like, what feels right. What feels good to me. And I do think, though, all humans, though, love, love, like the feeling of love and bliss and enlightenment feels good to everybody. But I think it's very easy to get normalized into not knowing what that feels like. Going into default mode and then living in guilt, shame, desire, fear, all these things that become so normalized that we don't even know what love can actually feel like. And then when you feel that feeling of love, it's like, I never want to go back to that density again.

Michael Hollinger [00:10:52]:
That does not feel good. So I want to keep working on getting back into that place of expansion, what we call expansion or love, because it just feels so damn good.

Vision Battlesword [00:11:02]:
So do you think these signals, like, okay, so thinking of ourselves as a robot with these sensory.

Michael Hollinger [00:11:09]:
We have a robot.

Vision Battlesword [00:11:09]:
We have a robot. Yeah, let's just say we inhabit a robot, and this robot has these sensory equipment that can detect things in this reality. So just looking at it that way, is it your opinion then, that the way that we experience or like, whether we consider ourselves to be enjoying or experiencing pleasure from one particular type of signaling versus another, is that like a guidance system for us? Is that meant to help us to calibrate toward. Okay, this is the sort of thing that's good for me to do versus. This is the sort of thing that maybe, you know, isn't as good for me? Me?

Michael Hollinger [00:11:46]:
Yeah, 100%. Absolutely. I think that's what the body is designed to do. It's like it's a guidance system. So, you know, if you put your hand on a stove and it burns, I'm never gonna do that again. Like, don't put my hand on that stove, you know? Or, you know, if you are broken up by the other gender, like, I get broken up by a woman, it's like, that hurts. Like, so do I want to go in a relationship again? Or whatever? It is like, we're constantly having experiences that then sit in the body as stored emotion. Right? So that's, now the guidance system is saying, don't do that again.

Michael Hollinger [00:12:16]:
Don't do this again. Don't do that again. But we also get to look at those things and look at them and say, does that still serve me? You know? Yeah, that was there for a purpose in that moment. I put this program into the guidance system to say, don't do that again, because this hurt in this moment. But then, you know, just like the old story of, like, getting chased by a lion, evolutionarily wise, we're not being chased by lions anymore. Right. So there's, I think the guidance system is extremely powerful and helpful, and we also get to come up a level and not be stuck in the guidance system, but realize that we can actually program the guidance system and take out the stories from the guidance system that no longer serve us.

Vision Battlesword [00:12:49]:
Yeah. Well, I know that you're a person that's very much into physical fitness and growth in terms of strength, health, just optimizing your robot in a physical way. So I wonder, how do you reconcile those ideas of the guidance system in terms of, let's say, unpleasant sensations like physical pain or something like that? That might be a reflection from the environment to say, don't do this anymore. But then reconciling that with the intentional pain that we create for ourselves when we're doing strength training, working out, trying to increase our flexibility, literally expanding in that physical way. What do you think about that?

Michael Hollinger [00:13:29]:
That's a great question. I think they're very much the same. So I think we can work our mind and the body the same way. So just like going to the gym most mornings, I'm like, I really don't want to be in this gym right now. Like, I'm going to the gym. I'm like, I pull up to the gym and I'll sit out there for five minutes going, like, I really don't feel like getting out of this car and going in the gym right now, you know? And so. But making myself do it, knowing that on the other side of that hour, being in the gym, I'm going to feel amazing and ready to get on with my day. And I think it's the same with the mind and the guidance system of what's going on here.

Michael Hollinger [00:13:58]:
The guidance system is when we come up against these resistances that don't feel good because, like, I'm coming up against something that maybe there's some trauma in the body that's saying, don't do that. But then my higher selves going like, no, but this is going to be really good to know that if I can push through that and just make myself go through that experience and have my body relearn that, hey, it's actually safe. It's not the same as it was ten years ago or 20 years ago. And sometimes it takes just, like, the gym many times of doing that. Like, public speaking is a good example, right? Like, it's, like, one of the biggest fears that most people have, but people get over it all the time by, like, doing the reps and getting in there. Like, I'm gonna speak, I'm gonna speak, I'm gonna speak, I'm gonna do it. Scared. I'm.

Michael Hollinger [00:14:36]:
At some point, I'm not gonna be scared anymore. And then it's like, the guidance system is like, this is normal to get up here and speak in front of people, and I can't imagine not talking to people like this anymore. You know, it's a new guidance system now.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:47]:
Well, so does that represent, does going into, intentionally going into that kind of discomfort or challenging situation, does that represent contraction or does that represent expansion? Or is it, like, both at the same time?

Michael Hollinger [00:15:01]:
Yeah, that's a great question. I know. I think that's really great. I think my experience has been that sometimes there is a contraction before an expansion, that there's an intention to expand, and expanding into new areas where it feels edgy and uncomfortable can cause, I call it, like, two steps forward, a half step back, right? So it's like two steps forward into the unknown, edgy places of uncomfortableness, and you feel that contraction of, like, oh, my God, this is, like, uncomfortable. My guidance system is saying, don't do it. It's shouting from all my nervous systems, like, you're in trouble. And just keep pushing into the areas for as long as you can until, like, a breakdown happens. Almost.

Michael Hollinger [00:15:37]:
Sometimes we're just like, okay, I am just. I'm done. Like, this is stupid bullshit. Whatever. It can just be like, all kinds of ego saying, I didn't want that anyway. That was dumb. Whatever. I don't need that.

Michael Hollinger [00:15:48]:
You know? And then it's like, okay, let me just sit with that. What's my ego? What's my story trying to tell me here? And then just really finding the blessing in that and being like, okay, what story was I telling about myself from some kind of old pattern that I get to look at that is no longer serving me here? And then part of releasing that is then is getting rid of the resistance to going then back into those edgy places now which may feel a little bit less edgy, you know? So it's like. Like a balloon, right? If you, if you blow up a balloon, a balloon is a certain shape. When you blow it up past a certain size and then when it comes back, it no longer has the same size. It's now stretched out a little bit. Right? So you keep doing that. It keeps changing size and stretching and stretching and stretching. It's no longer the same balloon anymore.

Michael Hollinger [00:16:29]:
So to me, that's. That's expansion.

Vision Battlesword [00:16:32]:
Yeah. Okay. So you push your boundaries to a degree where your actual scope of limitation changes or your scope of reverse reframe would be. The scope of possibility has grown. But you use the word, in the example of public speaking you actually use the word reps to describe that. Which, of course, is what we do in exercise many times, strength training and things. And it occurs to me that a rep is literally a cycle of expansion and contraction.

Michael Hollinger [00:17:03]:
Right, exactly. Yep.

Vision Battlesword [00:17:04]:
So is expansion. I wanted to ask this question a while back and I'll ask it now. Is expansion an unmitigated good. Is it what we ought to be striving for? Is it the state that we want to choose to be in whenever we can or as often as we can, maybe permanently, if possible? I guess that's my question. Are we just in pursuit of expansion?

Michael Hollinger [00:17:28]:
Yeah, I think we're here to expand. I think that's the purpose for all of us here, is to expand. And we're born into a system. This is the way I look at too. Like we talk about the matrix. The way I look is I think the matrix, it was something that was designed for us to expand in. We call it magic, whatever it is, but it's quantum. We can look at all kinds of different levels but law of attraction, all these things, we can call in and create whatever we want.

Michael Hollinger [00:17:51]:
And we're here to learn how to expand. And the way I look at it is I think the matrix itself was hijacked.

Vision Battlesword [00:17:59]:
So what is the Matrix? Sorry to interrupt, but I want to drill into this.

Michael Hollinger [00:18:03]:
Yeah. Yeah. This is the way I like to talk about the matrix. Because everybody talks about the Matrix like the movie. They talk about it as if, like, the matrix is the control system, everything else. But the idea of the original matrix, I like to call the matrix, which comes from etymologically, mother and matter. So it is the creation that we were born into, right? We get to create from this place called the Matrix. And that is all about expansion through love.

Michael Hollinger [00:18:26]:
You can't create from fear. It's all love, all love based. And when I say hijacked, what I mean is that very, I think, a long time ago, I think some dark energies have figured out that, hey, we can actually create consensus among people through fear and get them to do things for us in the creation of this matrix for our benefit. That's the service to self energy, right? The service to self energy was like, we can actually hijack the Matrix through fear and ego, and we can convince people to consent to doing things on our behalf because we are actually so powerful. Like, all of us are such powerful beings that we don't even know that we're creating. So whether we're creating for ourselves through love or creating for somebody else through consent to some other, you know, whatever they want for themselves, that's what, like, the media, news, all this stuff is designed to do is to move the masses into expanding somebody else's world for themselves through fear. So. But we can step out of that system and be a pure love and expand.

Michael Hollinger [00:19:28]:
And I firmly believe that we can actually create a world that's so separate and different and unique. We can have a totally separate reality in our own world. Like, ever since I've turned off news and media, I have no idea what's going on in the world. And I used to be in total fear of all kinds of things. I'm like, I have no idea what's going on in the world, dude.

Vision Battlesword [00:19:43]:
I just did that, like, a little over a week ago, and I am so much happier. I didn't even realize how unhappy I was. I guess I did to a certain degree because I knew I had to change something. I was feeling very unhappy in my life, and I had different things to associate it with. Turned off the news. Boy, that filtered out a good 50% to 70% of my unhappiness overnight. It's amazing what they're doing with propaganda and information these days. Incredible.

Vision Battlesword [00:20:16]:
And I'm not saying that I don't know that some of it's actually happening out there, but I do think that there's something really dangerous about when we let information about things that are happening in other places with other people that aren't actually a part of our sphere of influence or our sphere of control. Things that actually don't really impact our environment ever maybe, or certainly on a day to day basis. But they infect our mental landscape and it can be so damaging for, I think, people's just peace of mind and state of well being. But I want to come back to this matrix thing. So you're saying, what I'm hearing you say is that what you're referring to with the matrix is like a false mother that's been created for us. Something that appears to be a loving, nurturing system, structure, presence, but is actually something which is teaching us to be in some sort of false service. Is that what you're getting at?

Michael Hollinger [00:21:20]:
I think the original matrix is a loving matrix created by some kind of loving creator. And this is why we can create from love. Because when we're in the expansion, when we get to expansion, if we're in that energy of love, which is a very expansive energy, the matrix responds. People call it law of attraction, you know, manifestation, whatever it is, all that means is that putting out the right energy of love into, call it the universe, whatever, you know, I just using the word matrix because that's become such a popular word and I do think that has a meaning again, going back to mother and matter and being the womb, right? Like there's some kind of, like it's an incubator of ideas and creation. And so we get to create in that as creators that create from love. And what I'm saying is that there's a dark energy. You can call it all kinds of things. People.

Michael Hollinger [00:22:09]:
Some people call it satanic energy, some people call it just dark energy. Some people call it. There's all kinds of different energy that is, maybe it's man made, maybe it's created by man through the other energy of fear. That energy of fear, the energies come to realize how the matrix works. And they've realized that they can get us as creators to do their bidding because we're so powerful simply by using fear to get into our minds, out of our hearts and into our minds where we're in fear. And then we do things like most people are doing things, don't even know why they're doing them. They're just doing them because teachers said so, parents said so, friends said so. I'm being, you know, people are peer pressured and guilted in doing things and they don't know why.

Michael Hollinger [00:22:51]:
Like, we talk about the news and the media says do these things. That's what the Matrix is about is somebody who's been essentially hijacked through fear and ego and their emotions have been completely hijacked and they're just doing somebody else's bidding. Does that make sense?

Vision Battlesword [00:23:04]:
Yeah, I see where you're getting at. And when you're talking about people who are enacting things that they're not even really fully conscious of, it makes me think of the word pattern. And the word pattern, of course, comes from the word father.

Michael Hollinger [00:23:18]:
Interesting. Yeah, I love her.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:19]:
So you've got the matrix and the pattern.

Michael Hollinger [00:23:22]:
How beautiful. I like that.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:24]:
And I think that reflects back on also what you're saying when you're talking about like, how we come into this robot suit. You know, that spark of life, that sperm and that egg. It's almost like you can think of like if I think of a matrix, a way of visualizing a matrix is, let's say a grid of rows and columns, like a spreadsheet, right. Is a matrix and then a pattern kind of like the data.

Michael Hollinger [00:23:48]:
Wow.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:49]:
That fills the cells.

Michael Hollinger [00:23:50]:
Yeah. Yeah, right.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:51]:
So there's a very, like, masculine, feminine.

Michael Hollinger [00:23:53]:
The cells are like the holding the womb of the data.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:55]:
Yeah, in a way, if you think about that. So, so the matrix, I'm still trying to get clear on what exactly this thing is that we're talking about. And I'm not, like, challenging, I'm actually trying to figure it out with you. Like, when we talk about the matrix, like, what exactly do we mean? Yeah, but I think we're getting somewhere with it. When we think of it as that grid or that container. The container, the structure, the scaffolding. Like the matrix is like the scaffolding, the computer system, if we want to bring it back to the analogy of the movie. But then there still needs to be a program.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:30]:
There still needs to be that information that fills that space, that gives that matrix its, let's say, direction or meaning or purpose or something along those lines and that we could call the pattern or the patterns. And so sometimes I think, okay, let me bring it back to when you say that we're in a matrix, I wonder, are we talking about a virtual reality like the Matrix of the movie? Is it a false reality that we take to be what's real or what's true, but actually it's a container. It's a prison I that we're trapped within, but outside of that, there's a larger, more expanded reality. Or are we just talking about. Cause there's sometimes when you use the word matrix where it sounds like you're just kind of talking about the universe itself which is then just sort of susceptible to whatever programming.

Michael Hollinger [00:25:24]:
Yeah, I think that's the same thing. Yeah. The universe to me is matrix. That's why I don't think it's a trap. I think it's something beautiful. It's an amazing thing we have access to. It's only a trap if you allow the dark energy who's trying to trap the mind into doing its bidding. And those are programs? Those.

Michael Hollinger [00:25:41]:
Absolutely. Like, I think the movie the Matrix got that right with the programs. Like, they're putting the programs in and they're just running and that's what's going on in the subconscious again with our guidance system, suit body. We're running around in the mind body, all this stuff going on. It's like a lot of the programs aren't even ours. You know, it could be some of it, we come up and get some trauma somewhere when we did something, but then some, you know, whether it's news media, parents, teachers, all these other things too they're almost designed to put programs in as well that we don't even see them happening. And then we get programmed. So it's our job to deprogram and reprogram the guidance system as we come online and realize that there's more to this than what we see.

Michael Hollinger [00:26:18]:
And as far as what is the matrix? I look at, it's an energy. It's energetic. I do think I ascribe to some kind of a simulation. There's some simulation going on here. The way I look at it is we are living in some kind of a simulation. And the speed of light is the processor speed of this simulation.

Vision Battlesword [00:26:37]:
I love that.

Michael Hollinger [00:26:37]:
Yeah. Yeah. And so think about how fast energy is moving at the speed of light. That's how much energy is just constantly. We are energy, money's energy, everything's energy. It's just, everything is just constantly flowing. And the heart is the key to becoming the magnet of the energy we want because that's where love. It's like a magnet.

Michael Hollinger [00:26:54]:
They can pull in through love. What is that we want to create?

Vision Battlesword [00:26:58]:
Yeah. I was just thinking, I love that, that analogy that like the clock speed of the processor, it just happens to be the speed of light. It's like as if outside of here somewhere, there's a turbo button that you could push and, like, overclock the simulation. Yeah. I was just thinking, though, as you were. As you were talking a moment ago, I was thinking to myself, because you were talking about the programs going again back to the movie, the Matrix. And. And that metaphor, the beautiful, incredible metaphor.

Vision Battlesword [00:27:25]:
It just gets richer for me. Richer and richer over time. Especially as I go down my spiritual awakening path. And exploring non ordinary states of reality through all different methods. Psychedelics and meditation, breath work and all these other means that we can use to expand our awareness, our consciousness. I come to appreciate it more and more and in more different ways what that movie is really all about.

Michael Hollinger [00:27:53]:
You mean documentary?

Vision Battlesword [00:27:54]:
Yeah, exactly. Right. Exactly. But it's a weird sort of documentary. It's, like, based on a true story, right? Like a dramatization. But, yeah, just thinking about the sentient programs, for example, and coming to start to become more and more aware and learning through studying the toltec teachings and studying with my own spiritual mentor and my own personal experiences. And a lot of other people who relate the experiences that they've had with inorganic entities. Aggregations of energy.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:29]:
This idea that there can be inorganic. There are other sentient life forms inhabiting this plane of existence, reality with us. That are not based on this kind of material form that we are. But they're no less real. They're no less sentient. And we are, in fact, interacting with them. And they are, in fact, interacting with us. But we can only have a limited capability of sensing each other because of the differences in our equipment.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:57]:
And just how interesting that is. To start to think about the matrix, the movie, as, like you say, a documentary. And taking some of the computer analogy and the metaphorical analogy. I'm not saying it's not a simulation of what we live in, but mapping the different characters and components of that story to all of the weirdness that we can start to become aware of through expanding our consciousness in this reality. It's kind of interesting.

Michael Hollinger [00:29:27]:
It is? Yeah. It's interesting because you're talking about the organic entities. And I always go back. I always look at everything as, like, an energy. Like, there's always energy to something and bringing it back to also, like, our bodies and our guidance system. That I actually look at cancer as literally an entity that is growing from some sort of low density energy. Like resentment, fear, anger. These kinds of energies have been shown that they can build up and be stored in an organ somewhere.

Michael Hollinger [00:29:56]:
And then they can actually, like, turn. Turn into an entity on their own in the body. This is why it's so important that we clear out our guidance system and, like, look at some of this stuff. Because it can literally turn into an entity and destroy our vessel. That we're actually operating in this 3d reality.

Vision Battlesword [00:30:11]:
Well that brings me back to the concept of expansion.

Michael Hollinger [00:30:13]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:30:14]:
Cause one could take the perspective of a cancer and like let's just personify it for a moment and inhabit that cancerous consciousness and say, well my mission in this world is to expand. Here I am, I'm expanding. I'm going through expansion. Isn't this wonderful? So it just brings me back to the point before I took us down the detour about trying to define the matrix and what are we talking about there? You had just said our purpose here in this realm is to expand. So my question is, expand what?

Michael Hollinger [00:30:44]:
Yeah, that's a good question. And so I think another part of, I guess I'll bring it back to the matrix here. And the reason I brought it to the matrix is because people have askew or my way I look at it is because of that documentary the Matrix. There's this idea, the matrix is this dark bad thing. And I'm just saying the idea of the original matrix is a loving, expansive thing that got hijacked by a dark energy. So I want to go back to the original idea of what you said. It's the universe called the matrix, whatever, but it's this all encompassing loving energy source, womb, whatever that we get to create inside of.

Vision Battlesword [00:31:22]:
Okay, so you kind of imagine the matrix universe as a benevolent simulation, 100% something that has been created here for a purpose, for us to come into and play in and do our expansion thing. And it has an original benevolent reason for existing. But then within that, within the simulation there's different types of energies and a certain type of energy has learned how to kind of hack the system in.

Michael Hollinger [00:31:51]:
A way through fear, ego, all this other stuff, scarcity. And that's why it's important to go back to expansion, right? So being in love we can utilize the benevolence of the matrix to what we want to create. And I ascribe also to the idea that there's constantly ideas like basically coming into the matrix, the universe, whatever, coming into all of our minds. We think, I had this idea and there's probably a million other people had the same exact idea at the same time. And it's like who's going to run with it, you know? And I think that whoever commits to running with that is the one that now like the Matrix universe, source, whatever goes, okay, let's pour all of it into this person. Now this person is running with, they're showing me that this person is committed to going all in on making this idea a reality and he wants to play. He wants to expand and play in the matrix with this new idea. And so we're going to give him resources.

Michael Hollinger [00:32:44]:
We're going to give him, this person's going to bump into on the street tomorrow and then this other person is going to drop some cash in front of him or whatever. Something's going to happen where all of a sudden resources start showing up because you go all in on idea. The universe is like, yay, he wants to play. Let's give him some fun. Let's give him some resources.

Vision Battlesword [00:32:59]:
Where's this information coming from?

Michael Hollinger [00:33:00]:
I have no idea.

Vision Battlesword [00:33:01]:
Okay. You know, there's another documentary movie that came actually not quite two decades, but more than ten years, I'm sure, before the Matrix, which is called Tron.

Michael Hollinger [00:33:12]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:33:13]:
Do you remember that movie, the original from the eighties? That was a cool movie too. And what you're talking about now makes me think about Tron. You know, the little programs running around in the computer, which is the whole universe to them. But then from time to time there's this new information that comes in from the users who are like the gods of the system. Like the users have a message for me. It's like, oh, it comes in on a kind of a beam of light and I can download it and then maybe it's instructions, maybe it's new capabilities, maybe I just received an upgrade, like just thinking about how you imagine it. But if there's information coming into the matrix, where is it coming from? That would imply that there must be an outside the Matrix.

Michael Hollinger [00:33:53]:
Yeah. Yeah. I guess what I would take at the next level is whatever source is. And I think this goes back to some of the ancient stories too, is like source wanted to experience itself. So it broke off into duality. So we could basically have experiencing of itself. And I think even each one of us is one more infinite expansion of that source having experienced back to itself. That's why everything is a reflection.

Michael Hollinger [00:34:15]:
Have you read the raw material?

Vision Battlesword [00:34:18]:
I haven't read it, no. I have dabbled in it. Some people have told me some things about it.

Michael Hollinger [00:34:24]:
Yeah. So the idea though is that basically everything's again an octave right. So we start off in first density, second. Now we're in third density and it also goes back to our chakra. So we're actually moving into fourth density right now, which is all about the heart. So as we continue moving up in density over millions and millions and millions and millions of years, we get closer and closer to being able to reach other's thoughts, get closer and closer to getting more closer to light. At some point when we get to that 7th octave and then we basically expand to the point we're just pure light. This experiment and this reality is done like that, finished its completion and now it's done.

Michael Hollinger [00:34:58]:
And I was thinking the other day, I was like, what if that expansion from first density to 7th all the way up to 8th is just one single thought from source? Just, that's a thought, one thought. And then from that one thought, like all this stuff is happening over millions and millions of years and it's like, who knows what that source is? But there's some kind of a game that source is playing that it wants to come back to experiencing every single possible infinite possibility ever. You know, it's all possibilities of characters and experiences and you know, wars and you know, love and everything that can ever happen ever is impossible to think. All the infinite possibilities.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:36]:
What do you mean, 8th density?

Michael Hollinger [00:35:38]:
Well, so really it's, there's no eight. I think it's 7th. Ultimately it's an octave. So eight is always the first, the next of the next octave.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:45]:
Yeah. Okay.

Michael Hollinger [00:35:45]:
Once you're done with seven, it's complete, right? Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:48]:
And you start over whatever one is at the next. Yeah, okay. Yeah, got it. Fascinating.

Michael Hollinger [00:35:54]:
So let's talk about expansion. That is expansion, right? Going from first density all the way up to second, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th density, expanding from, you know, first density, it's hard to even imagine what 1st, 2nd density looked like, right? We're in third density, which is like solar plexus, third chakra moving. And this is why right now it's so important that we get, that we access our hearts, because this is the density we're moving into is fourth density, which is the heart, that is expansion. Like we're expanding over an octave, over millions of years, we're expanding more and more and more and more into light. That is the game.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:28]:
I wonder, do you think that that expansion and that movement, that transition through frequencies overlaps and is also reflective of the expansion of the simulation itself? Meaning like, does first density start with a singularity, start with a big bang, if you will, like the ultimate density, right? Infinite density. And then from that, that's first density manifest, and then from there it's all expansion. And that idea of 7th density or that infinite expansion, that completion of the cycle, it just sort of makes sense if you overlay that on top of the kind of scientific materialist view of the big bang and the expansion of the universe. Yeah, kind of all makes sense together, right?

Michael Hollinger [00:37:22]:
Sure. Yeah, I'm not sure where I am on Big Bang and evolution, all that. I mean, it's like, I don't know. When I hear scientists say this and scientists say that, I get very skeptical. Like, a lot of that stuff's been skewed too. So I, you know, I tend to look more at like, what ancient civilizations have to say about things and try to piece those things together. And so us being more have been in the third density, having that willpower to create, and then now moving into that fourth density from fourth density going back to, again, the expansion. So the expansion is if we keep expanding and we keep removing the resistance to that expansion by looking at, I do think, a lot of the subconscious, the stuff that's in our guidance system is resistance because it is heavy.

Michael Hollinger [00:38:05]:
Right? Again, going back to cancer, a very dense thing that actually builds in the body. You know, fear, anger, guilt, shame, these are all things that prevent us from really moving into the heart because they're very ego driven. And the more we expand and look at what we can do over millions of years, that we can actually get to the point where you and I don't even, we aren't even talking with our words anymore, like our mouths, we'd be sitting here having a conversation completely mind to mind, because that's the expansion that's going to happen at some point where we're just so connected as we move up to the densities that we just all sudden also, we become one again. We're all pure light. We're all one at that final octave, I think we just become back to one, like you said, that singularity, and we start all over again, and then we work our way back up again. So you ask, what's the point to expand? When I look at that, it seems like, yeah, that's why we're here, is to expand, expand into light. That's the game we're playing is eventually get to light.

Vision Battlesword [00:38:57]:
Hmm. Why does the raw material make any kind of answer to, I guess, the overall question of why? Why create the game, why create the simulation? Why go through the process? Just curious.

Michael Hollinger [00:39:17]:
Yeah, it's been a while, but I think the idea is it goes back to duality somewhere. I think there's, again, service to self and service to others. I don't remember how it all plays out in the book, but there's some talk about how at some point when certain planets get to over 51% service to others versus 5% service to self and different things like that, the planet eventually graduates into a different kind of planet. And then the entities move into other different planets, and then that expansion happens too, where these planets now become more like service to others planets. And these are service to self planets. And so it's almost like going back to the game of duality. The source originally wanted to play out. Let's see how the game of duality plays.

Michael Hollinger [00:39:55]:
How negatively polarized or positively polarized will things become if we just keep letting things play? And it's not good or bad, it's just a game we're playing that he's just like, let's play this game. Let's see what happens.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:06]:
I want to come back to service to self and service to others. I want to come back to the heart, the heart chakra, the fourth density, the fourth energy center, whatever it is. We want to like that thing. I want to come back to that. And there's another model that's occurring to me right now that comes to me from integral theory. I learned it from Ken Wilber. And that material, the integral material, although he didn't invent it, he's just more of an aggregator. He's invented some things, but he's more of an aggregator of a whole bunch of other domains and disciplines and systems and an integrator, obviously.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:45]:
And that's what integral theory is all about. And so this particular model has to do with like a. Like a cosmology or a way of like a. Like a structure of reality that talks about three main areas or domains of this overall existence that we inhabit. And the three main areas are gross, subtle and causal. So gross is the physical stuff, the atoms and the molecules, the densest type of energy. Meaning it's so dense, it's actually frozen, right? That's kind of what matter is in a way. It's cold energy.

Vision Battlesword [00:41:29]:
It's energy that's frozen and solidified. And so everything that makes up that material, that whole material realm, the stuff that can actually bump up against itself, is the gross realm, the gross plane, if you will. And then the subtle is actually the biggest sort of band in the middle because it's got a lot of gradients and levels of differentiation to it. But that's the energetic realm. Everything that we would consider to be energetic, degrees of reality can all be summed up as the subtle. And then the causal is that pure source connection that when the simulation folds all the way back on itself, starting from singularity, going through all of the different individuation and separation states and all that sort of stuff, and wraps all the way back around into the kind of infinite unity, maybe it's diametrically polar opposite to the singularity. Or maybe it's just the circle that comes back to the same thing, but that causal realm of reunification with that source, as you called it earlier. And we do, in fact, according to this model, we do, in fact, inhabit all of those things simultaneously.

Vision Battlesword [00:42:49]:
We're like a slice through all of reality and everything. Every piece of this simulation is some specific slice through that reality that also has an extension through that dimension of time, which is a whole different ball of wax. But in the middle there, that subtle realm, the gradients there start with the ethereal. This is where I'm testing my memory to get this right. So, according to this model, things start out, and they're gross, meaning they're material, but not sentient. They're just atoms and molecules and then rocks and bigger rocks and more complex rocks bumping up against each other. But then eventually, the rocks themselves have reached some level of complexity that they take on a new energy body. That is what we would describe as the life force, the life field, if you will.

Vision Battlesword [00:43:50]:
And that's called the ethereal field. So when things. When rocks start getting up and walking around by themselves, then they now have an ethereal field that is animating them. I'm sorry. These are all the different bodies. That's really the word I should have been using all along, is these are all of our different bodies that are a composite of these creatures that we are. And so then when an ethereal creature reaches a certain level of complexity, it manifests an astral body. The astral body is the energetic field of emotion, emotion and intuition.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:32]:
And that higher level of sentience, that higher level of sensitivity of the environment, as well as of these other creatures who we're also bumping around with and interacting with, then, is the thought field. So this is the kind of mental body that layers over top of our astral and our ethereal and our gross bodies, where we now have a kind of a new psychological. There's a psychological manifestation. This is the realm of concepts and reason and language and all of that sort of stuff. And what's interesting when we get to this level is that this is kind of the level that we're currently inhabiting as these human creatures on this specific planet, where we have convinced ourselves that that is actually all that reality consists of, for whatever reason, ha ha. Pun intended. We have a center, a dominant center of gravity in that field. And there's a part of us that manifests in that field, which maybe we call the ego, which has itself convinced that it is the whole person, which is just kind of funny.

Vision Battlesword [00:45:45]:
And then we have to sort of like, progressively go through this process of learning and expansion of awareness and remembering that, oh, we have an astral body and we have an ethereal body, and our gross body is important. And in fact, we have higher bodies as well. So above the t field or the thought field is where we enter the psychic realm. And this is kind of what you're describing is like. As we continue in that process of expansion, eventually we can get to a point where our psychic bodies and our psychic fields can interact with each other and are already doing so. Just the fact that we're not consciously aware or really necessarily controlling it very well. But we can get to a point where we do become conscious and aware and intentional in that field such that we can exchange information with each other in a much more expedient and sophisticated fashion than what we do with these language vibrations that we pulse through the air back and forth at each other. And then above that psychic field is when we enter the true causal, where we're just re merged.

Vision Battlesword [00:46:50]:
We're re merged with each other and we're re merged with source. There might be something there between psychic and causal, but that's the basic framework. Like those six bodies and also sort of levels of energy, I guess, that they're equivalent to. I'll pause there for reaction.

Michael Hollinger [00:47:07]:
That's fascinating and interesting. I think what's coming up for me is we said six. Six bodies.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:13]:
Did I not say six?

Michael Hollinger [00:47:14]:
We said six bodies. I was just wondering because I was kind of relating it back to the seven.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:19]:
That's why I feel like there's something missing. That's exactly why I feel like there's something. There's a 7th one that either hasn't been accounted for or we just haven't found it yet.

Michael Hollinger [00:47:28]:
Yeah, it just almost seems like that's the overall bigger suit that we're in. The energetic levels of the suit we're in, that we going back to expansion and we get to expand into that. We're still expanding into this body that's been created for these bodies that have been created for us. It's like different levels of the different suits we get to be getting into as we get bigger and bigger and expand into it.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:51]:
Right. Or you could like, imagine as like nesting dolls or something like that. But so the piece that's, I guess, important about that to me is a lot of times in kind of spiritual, new age y consciousness circles and whatever, there seems to be this idea that we're on our way somewhere and there's a destination ahead. And, like, our purpose here is to try and grow toward that or to expand toward that. We haven't gotten there yet. There seems to be this idea that there's this holy land that we're headed towards, where everything is all peace and love and bliss, and there's no more shame and pain and all of these different things. It's like to me, there's sort of a little bit of, I think, an older style religiosity to it about kind of a promised land or a heaven type thing or something along those lines. But the piece that's important to me about the model that I just described is that it inherently assumes that we are actually in all of these bodies all the time.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:53]:
The thing is not about, oh, we haven't achieved the psychic plane yet. It's just that our locus of awareness happens to be resident, happens to have a center of gravity in whatever you would call subtle three, or the thought realm, or however it is we want to call it. And I think that's part of what you're talking about. Maybe when you're talking about getting out of your head and into your heart, that it maybe has something to do with moving your locus of awareness to some other point within your overall energy system or within your overall organism, like energetic and experiential organism or something. But to me that feels more true. That feels like an important piece of perspective. I am an extension all the way from density one through whatever it is. And it's just a matter of like, okay, where is my center of attention? Where is my center of awareness? Is that a thing that I actually can expand to have a broader aperture for information from a different range of these frequencies that are available?

Michael Hollinger [00:50:01]:
Yeah, that's good. I think, because you mentioned density, and I think this goes back to density as well. And again, looking at the lower density energies, guilt, shame, grief, fear, you know, desire, all these, like, lower densities, those were to keep us in the lower bodies even, I think.

Vision Battlesword [00:50:17]:
Like they're anchoring points.

Michael Hollinger [00:50:19]:
Yeah, they're anchoring. I think that's, again, part of the game that we get to play, and getting into these higher density suits is releasing these lower densities, which are, which create resistance also in moving within this fabric of the matrix or whatever, it's total resistance to allowing energies to flow through you and move around with you. And it could be something as simple as seeing somebody and could potentially create an amazing relationship and maybe bringing somebody on as a business partner or creating something of value in the world together. That could be, like, amazing and also bring in tons of money for you and make an impact. But that relationship may not happen because you see somebody in that person you don't like, that's just a trigger to you. It's something that you haven't dealt with internally and so you just missed opportunity to expand with somebody. That's a 3d reality idea of it, right? But, like, we can't move freely and create expansion and connections with the people if we're afraid to connect because we're being triggered by our own internal guidance system of the past. And so to be able to expand to the point where you can, you can connect with anybody, anywhere, it doesn't matter.

Michael Hollinger [00:51:21]:
And even if somebody calls you an asshole dickhead, you're like, okay, cool, whatever. Like, doesn't bother me because, you know, I've worked with, I worked with that story a long time ago. You know, that guidance system piece is out. Like, I'm not bothered by it anymore and I can move freely without being by that. And, you know, I love you, you know, I complete compassion for you. And no matter what you say to me, and it's all good, you know? And so that's how I think how we can expand is by releasing the resistance through these lower densities.

Vision Battlesword [00:51:47]:
That's cool. That resonates a lot for me in just some experiences that I've had lately. And I love that idea of getting to a place where it's not even just, like, total loving acceptance of someone, no matter how it is that they're treating you. But, like, even going one step further to saying, like, okay, yeah, you think I'm a dickhead, that's cool. But, like, what can, how can we work together? You know? Like, there's gotta be, there's gotta be something we can do for each other here. Even if you do think I'm a dickhead, and even if I think you're a doofus, like, whatever, great. So, like, what's the best case scenario for how we can collaborate toward our mutual flourishing? Even still, that'd be a cool place to get to.

Michael Hollinger [00:52:22]:
And if you can have total love and compassion for that person, for seeing you as a dickhead, knowing full well that it's not you, but it's something inside that person that he's seeing in you and proving, not proving him wrong, but showing up completely differently than what he expects by being the loving, compassionate person that's also very healing, you know, that's, that's, again, service to others. It's like, I get to heal this person by showing up fully in love and compassion and whatever hurt he has cause. Like the saying, like, hurt people hurt people, right. So this person is hurt. This person is trying to hurt me, or he feels hurt by me, so he wants to hurt me back by calling me a dickhead. I can have love and compassion, heal whatever is there. And we're all expanding together.

Vision Battlesword [00:53:01]:
Mm hmm. Okay, well, you've invoked the service to others thing again, so that's my cue to drill into that, because I really want to. And I've heard this piece a few different times from a few different places. I think it all sources back to the raw material, but. Okay. Again, though, like, we talked about it earlier in the conversation, I sense a judgment here, and I'm not sure how I feel about it exactly, but what exactly is wrong with service to self?

Michael Hollinger [00:53:32]:
That's a great question, and that's something I'm working on for myself.

Vision Battlesword [00:53:35]:
Okay.

Michael Hollinger [00:53:35]:
Yeah, that's a great question. And, yeah, what's come up for me lately is, like this. I'm glad you brought this up, because this is definitely coming forward. Maybe we can talk about this is like, what's the difference between being, like, where is it? Where. So having self worth, self love, you know, all these things that are really important, where does that line end? With being selfish, you know, and having boundaries. Say boundaries come from love, love for yourself, but having the boundaries to where, like, you're willing to be, like, I matter. And this is such a paradox to you because really, ultimately, all they're all. Only thing that does exist is me.

Michael Hollinger [00:54:10]:
That's all that exists. Like, we're all just reflections of the original source. Not to say, like, michael, but, like, me being the original source, it just says, you are the original source, and it's all just one big reflection. So the more self love we have for each other, we actually have more love for other people. You know, it's like the old saying, like, you gotta put the oxygen mask on yourself first. Right? It's just. It's what that means is you gotta love yourself first. And.

Michael Hollinger [00:54:31]:
Yeah, and so I'm. I'm playing around with that boundary, what that. That gradient looks like of having full self love and self worth for myself without being selfish, you know, and then also being supportive and giving to somebody without giving all of myself away and, you know, finding out where that's too far, where I've now burned myself out, giving too much of myself away. So that's a. That's a line I'm working on.

Vision Battlesword [00:54:52]:
Well, what's the difference between self love and being selfish?

Michael Hollinger [00:54:56]:
That's what I'm trying to figure out.

Vision Battlesword [00:54:57]:
Okay.

Michael Hollinger [00:54:57]:
All right. That is something that lately, something I've been really looking at, is what that means. And there are some people who do that very well. You know, you can tell they have total self worth for themselves and, you know that they care for you. But you also can feel the boundary of, like, don't encroach on my time. But it's done in a loving way, you know? And that is, that is the, that line I'm working on building and understanding more is what that looks like for myself.

Vision Battlesword [00:55:23]:
We learn, I think, in this culture, anyway, a phrase that we certainly come to understand as having a very negative connotation. It's an insult even, which is to call someone self serving.

Michael Hollinger [00:55:37]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:55:38]:
Why?

Michael Hollinger [00:55:38]:
Yeah. And I think that's the challenge because that is the program that's been given to us and probably on purpose in some ways. You know, in a way, it's like we've been taught not to look at self and be. Have self love for ourselves. It's almost like there's guilt and shame. Right. If you don't love yourself, if you, like, you don't care about other people. What? You don't care, like, no, I care.

Michael Hollinger [00:56:00]:
Absolutely care. And that is the program that we get to work on, too, is like, there's no guilt and shame around loving yourself and taking care of yourself. And because those programs have been deep in me that I've allowed those programs to run with me, the self serving, the selfish, those programs is like, okay, I get to look at those programs and see where I get to be self loving and having self worth and taking care of myself. And where does that look like when it's, like, self serving or selfish? So that's a program I'm playing through.

Vision Battlesword [00:56:30]:
Right now, see, but I want to obliterate the program that takes the phrase self serving or the word selfish and applies a universally pejorative connotation to that. I just want to obliterate that program because that doesn't even make sense to me. Like, how about take the phrase self care?

Michael Hollinger [00:56:49]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:56:50]:
Do you have any negative connotation to self care?

Michael Hollinger [00:56:53]:
No.

Vision Battlesword [00:56:53]:
Well, what's the difference between caring for yourself and serving yourself?

Michael Hollinger [00:56:57]:
Yeah. And I think because everybody has those programs in them, it's really more of, like, when people feel hurt, it's easy to be like, you're selfish because you don't care about me. And I just really have a story running in my head that I just want somebody just to validate me. And so it's easy to point somebody, be like, all you care about is yourself. You're self serving. It was like, okay, well, I also get to love myself, and you get to love yourself, too. Like, I validate you've got something going on, and let's, you know, let's. Let's help validate that and get you back into loving yourself again.

Vision Battlesword [00:57:24]:
Well, I think we're putting our finger on it.

Michael Hollinger [00:57:25]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:57:26]:
Now. Because I think there's a big difference between saying I care about myself and saying I only care about myself. I think that's really what we're talking about. I think there is a, let's say, unhealthy or dysfunctional program out there running around. Maybe sometimes we call it narcissism. There are certain sets of beliefs and behaviors which are actually harmful to others in serving oneself. To me, that seems to be a problem. Like, if you're harming others while serving yourself, that's a problem.

Vision Battlesword [00:57:59]:
If you're serving yourself as a form of taking care of yourself, as a form of expanding yourself, evolving yourself, having a great experience in this earth game for yourself, while you also care for others and you also are doing no harm and you're also doing your best or something along those lines. I call that winning.

Michael Hollinger [00:58:21]:
Yeah. And what really resonates with me is, again, hurt people. Hurt people. So whenever anybody's, like, lashing out at me, I'm like, this person's in pain, you know? And so what if we all looked at it that way instead of taking offense to somebody coming at you, instead of turning around, going like, you're in pain. I love you. I have compassion. What's going on here? How can I hold space for you to heal through that, whatever that looks like? And you'll go back to narcissism. That's a perfect example.

Michael Hollinger [00:58:47]:
Narcissism. I talked to a psychiatrist who helped me see this. Narcissism is rooted in shame. So there's a pain and a hurt of shame in there somewhere, and they're standing in this, like, false power structure to basically hide the shame that they're actually living in. And so if you can heal the shame, the narcissism goes away because there's no reason to hold that false bravado anymore. It's like, I just. I'm healed. I love myself.

Michael Hollinger [00:59:12]:
I don't need to show up differently. And then that person can do the same thing and look at somebody and say, oh, you're you're lashing out at me. You're hurting. I can now, instead of being offended, hold space for you with compassion and help you heal whatever you're doing. That's expansion, too.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:26]:
But here's the funny thing about that. I notice that I think there seems to be a shame component to the self sacrifice program, which is kind of the flip side of self serving, if you will.

Michael Hollinger [00:59:40]:
Yeah, people pleasing.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:42]:
Yeah, people pleasing. But, like, going beyond. Beyond that. I think that my parents generation, you know, my parents were born in the forties, you know, early baby boomers and stories that they told, you know, even about, like, how things were in the early 20th century, depression era mentality. Deeply religious, you know, like Catholic, for example, kind of belief systems and mindsets that are very, very shame based, but that are also very much about service to others. Always service to others. In fact, it would be shameful even to give any form of service to yourself. It's just there's something interesting about that.

Vision Battlesword [01:00:21]:
Like, I sense that there's something very important to creating a resilient community, a resilient society, like a foundation, like a bedrock of people coming together to help each other out, especially through a crisis, through tough times. It's like, hey, if I serve you and you serve that person, that person serves the other guy and the other guy serves me, then we're all getting served. There's something cool about that concept. I get that. But I think there's 180 degrees from shame is still shame sometimes. On the one hand, you've got the narcissist that's always taking, never giving, engaging in manipulative behavior and harming others in a self serving way to try to fill that hole that's originally created from some kind of a shame based wound. But then you've also got people who give everything away and sacrifice their own health, happiness, well being, or whatever that is from a place of shame or from a place of judgment, thinking that they're not a good person unless they're only helping others. I think both of those things are unhealthy.

Michael Hollinger [01:01:28]:
Yeah, no, for sure. And to bring it back to expansion, too, on this, because I think what I see is it's easier for humans to get stuck in those emotions on default and identifying that I am these things. And again, going back to the beginning of this conversation of coming all the way out and being like, I've got this guidance system that is storing all these emotions that are getting triggered by the environment. And so there are all these programs. Somebody's going to step into self sacrificing because an event or person happens in front of them triggers the guidance system to immediately click into gear. Like, do this. Because that was a program that they started running many years ago. That was survival.

Michael Hollinger [01:02:03]:
That's how they survived whatever that was. And so the first step is, what is the big thing you want to create? Because if you're going towards that, then you can start looking at the programs and be like, how is that serving me or holding me back from getting there? And that's the expansion, right? Right. You gotta have something to go towards first. And then what if we all held each other high to that? Like, what is your vision? What is your vision? Dude, you got this. I love you, man. You're gonna get there. And it's like, what if you're open to the feedback? You know? Like, I'm open to feedback. You're open to feedback.

Michael Hollinger [01:02:30]:
And it's like, it's nothing bad. It's like, hey, man, I see you showing up this certain way, you know? Is that your self sacrificing program running? Are you open to, like, seeing how I'm seeing you show up? Yeah, man. What is that looking like? Okay, cool. Yeah, I did not know I was showing up that way. I see that. Thank you for pointing that out. You know, and then before willing to be open to that and realizing it's not me, it's just programs running in my guidance system that we get to help each other, like, reflect that and be open to that support. I think that's the community you're talking about.

Michael Hollinger [01:02:56]:
Something like that, where it's just like, holding each other high to your vision, having that neutral feedback on what's in the way of getting there.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:02]:
Yeah, I love everything you just said. For me, one of the big themes of my life right now is balance and just wanting to see the balance and everything, wanting to see how it's like, yeah, it is service to myself and it is service to you, and it is service to the community, and the community serves me. And, you know, it's like. I don't know. I just. I'm suspicious of binaries, I guess. Right now, it's a gradient. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:28]:
Or rather, I guess I'm suspicious of binary. I'm suspicious of good bad binaries right now. And so that's where it comes back for me to the raw material on this idea of service to self versus service to others, where there does seem to be this idea that we're in this paradigm right now of service to self. And the idea is to move toward this other and opposite pole called service to others. And to your point, when we hit some sort of a tipping point or we hit some sort of a critical mass of a shift of consciousness, then we get to level up and we get to move into the next phase of the program, whatever that is. And there's just something about that that doesn't, that just doesn't quite resonate for me. I mean, I can get it from a perspective of like on a step of evolution. Like if I think of it as a hegelian dialectic thesis to antithesis to synthesis.

Vision Battlesword [01:04:23]:
Like, okay, we're in a thesis and first we have to experience the antithesis to get the perspective so that then we can bring the two things together to have synthesis. Like, if it's that kind of an evolutionary process, okay, I can kind of get it, but I, but it doesn't resonate for me in a sense of like, oh yeah, what we really want is we want to have a universe that is 100% service to others and 0% service to self. Like, wait, that feels like it's out of balance in the other direction.

Michael Hollinger [01:04:52]:
Yeah, I hear you, but I, the way I see a little bit differently, I don't think that there's an endgame. Like we win if this is what happens.

Vision Battlesword [01:04:58]:
Okay?

Michael Hollinger [01:04:59]:
I think the whole game of duality is like, it can just, it can keep playing. It can go back. I think we go through cycles of dark and light, love, fear. Like, I think we're constantly changing through the ages and different cycles of like, hey, darkness is way more heavy right now. Hey, darkness. Or like, you know, love is more heavy now. We're coming out of it. We're learning this process and I think it's constantly shifting and that's the game we get to play.

Michael Hollinger [01:05:21]:
And so the game of expansion is choosing what feels good, which is love and joy. That does feel good, you know? And so the game also is the darkness likes to play the game again of hijacking the systems and keeping you in their game. And so we get to pull out of that game again. That's what the Matrix is about, is pulling out of the game and playing my own game of love and expansion and no longer part of that game.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:45]:
The other thing I really liked and what you said a minute ago made me realize something that I've just never occurred to me before, that in the process, in the sacred light process, that first part of dream storming really is kind of blowing up the balloon as big as possible to create the space to expand into where it's like right now we maybe feel constrained or we don't know where that space is. We don't know where that expansion can go. And then we create that space. It's like, okay, well, now you have the opportunity to expand because we kind of blew the universe up bigger, so there's more room here to play with. That's really neat. I never thought of it just in that analogy before.

Michael Hollinger [01:06:26]:
And the real stretch of the balloon, though, comes in the reps of the physical movement into that dream. You know, it's one thing because we can dream big, but until we actually expand physically into, like pushing ourselves into the edge, that's when the balloon gets bigger.

Vision Battlesword [01:06:42]:
Right.

Michael Hollinger [01:06:43]:
And stretched out. Cool.

Vision Battlesword [01:06:46]:
Well, so tell me more about the heart. We started the whole conversation about, you know, moving up the energy channel, you know, moving up from 3rd, 3rd level to fourth, which is the heart center. You've talked a lot about coming out of the head and into the heart. You've talked about the heart being that nexus of expansion, where expansion also has an equivalency to. To experiencing more love. Just tell me more about that.

Michael Hollinger [01:07:12]:
Yeah, there's a lot to it, I think, I guess, as it relates to expansion.

Vision Battlesword [01:07:16]:
Yeah, I'm just curious about the heart, the physical heart. The heart as an electrical magnetic source generator, the generator of our electrical magnetic field, the center point of our overall chakra system or energy system. There's also been talk about, and I don't know if this is just pure hubris or where this comes from, but there's some talk out in the new age community that for some reason we think the Earth is maybe the heart chakra of the galaxy or something like that. But, yeah, I'm just thinking about. Yeah, as it pertains, I guess, to this expansion that you feel that you've been experiencing and how that relates to, you have related that very much to feeling like you're getting more into your heart.

Michael Hollinger [01:08:06]:
So I think the ego is the mind and the body kind of all connected somehow. I don't think anybody can really say, well, the ego's in the mind, the ego's in the body. This is like one big operating system that we're inhabiting. But it does seem like the ego is kind of mind based. It's the thinking, the analyzing, the figuring it out kind of energy that's just very contracting. And when I hear myself saying things like, I got to figure this out. No, you don't have to figure anything out. Like, if you.

Michael Hollinger [01:08:32]:
I find if I'm in my heart and in an expansive place of, like, I'm declaring I'm going to get, I'm going to create this vision and it's coming, it's going to happen, and I'm all in. The figuring out just happens. I think that's the, what holds most people back is the how to. Like, I got to figure out how before I go. It's like, no, you just need the vision and the will and the willingness to, like, push through the reps and just start moving towards that. And like I was saying earlier, like, the ideas come into millions of people and the person who says, I'm willing to go for it and they be expansive and trusting, like, that's another, I think that's another language of the heart, is trusting through love that it's all going to work out, that the more you do that, the more things do, the how to just starts happening. Like I said, resources start showing up. You may even get an inspiration of something that you're supposed to do just because you're in it.

Michael Hollinger [01:09:18]:
You're committed. Like, I didn't think about that or, you know, like, I should do this event over there. Instead, I just got this idea of how to do this thing or something. Things just show up inspirationally because you're committed. That comes from being trusting and loving in the heart. I don't need to figure it out. I don't need to be in my mind going, like, how, how, how? It's just, it's, it's more the why connected. The heart.

Michael Hollinger [01:09:39]:
The heart is the why. Like, why do I do this? Because I want to impact. I want to create. I have this vision. Like, I want to, I see this big thing. I want to create, you know, and that lights, when that lights you up in your body, you get goosebumps. You're like, you know, you're onto something. That means for me, I know I'm, it means I'm connected to something that's very powerful.

Michael Hollinger [01:09:58]:
And if I just keep living that and just being in that all day long and then also wanting to connect with more people, like, I was inspired to reach out to you do this call the other day. I was like, I feel, I was feeling like I was getting kind of contracted in my house. I was getting into some how to. I was getting into my head. I was kind of just like, I got to figure some stuff out. I'm like, okay, I need to step back and connect with some humans. So I'm like, all right, vision, offer me up this call. I'm going to set this call I think it'd be great to get out and just, like, connect at the heart, you know? This has been an amazing conversation, and I feel like I've expanded just having this conversation.

Michael Hollinger [01:10:33]:
Yeah. So I think that's a big part of it. Just, like, trusting, getting out, connecting with people, and just keep expanding beyond just your own little, like, world of lone wolfing, getting stuck in the head, overthinking. That's kind of how I look at it.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:45]:
That's cool, man. Yeah. Yeah. There's something you're saying here that's really resonating for me a lot. The heart and the head are natural partners, but it's very. It's actually a very masculine, feminine dynamic, in a way, with the heart being.

Michael Hollinger [01:11:01]:
More feminine than that and going back to the matrix we create from the feminine.

Vision Battlesword [01:11:05]:
Right.

Michael Hollinger [01:11:05]:
That's the heart. The heart is the feminine energy we actually get to create by allowing the creation to unfold in front of us. If we push through our mind, it's like fear based, you know? I don't know how it's like. It's like it's a pushing sensation. I can feel that contraction and scarcity when I'm there. And that's always a reminder to be like, okay, breathe into the heart. Just relax, allow it to unfold, and it'll come faster than we think. And it probably goes in a direction you never thought it was going to go if you try to push it to the mind.

Vision Battlesword [01:11:36]:
Right. Well, and so it's not a perfect matchup or something, but if you think of the head as the what and the heart as the why, I think in this culture, we're taught to lead with the what and then kind of figure out the why after the fact. We kind of, like, reverse engineer the why. It's like, you know, well, the what is the project, the career, the mission?

Michael Hollinger [01:12:02]:
What do you want to be when you grow up?

Vision Battlesword [01:12:04]:
Exactly right. Why? I don't know. And then we're in this place of trying to create meaning all throughout our lives. What does this mean? Why am I such and such? And it almost feels like it's a cart before the horse. It's like. Well, it's not to say that the mind is not useful. It's supremely useful. An epic problem solver.

Vision Battlesword [01:12:27]:
It's the what figure outer. Right. But it makes a lot more sense if we lead with the why and then the what is the supporting component of that? Like, kind of what we do in the power activation. Right. Although there's an extra step, which you're suggesting in what you said a moment ago is not necessarily important, which I'm not sure I agree with. And that is the how. Because we've got three parts in the power activation. We've got the why.

Vision Battlesword [01:12:54]:
Well, I guess a different way of calling it. You used the word will earlier, which I think is really important. There's the vision, and then there's the will, and that's all you need. And I say, no, I think you need the vision. That's like blowing up the balloon, giving you the space to expand into. Then you need the will. The will is like that motivating energy that causes you to expand into that space. But then I think the what or how is also important, because you could be totally unfocused with your creative energy.

Vision Battlesword [01:13:26]:
Right. And not necessarily accomplish anything specific. A lot of activity, but not necessarily meaningful results. I think that's where the what how comes into play. It's more of the how than the what. That's where the mind, I think, is really is the most useful tool for that to say. What did they say about the mind? Great servant, cruel master. Something along those lines.

Vision Battlesword [01:13:50]:
I think that's the perfect example of the mind as the servant of the heart and the will to say, like, look, this is what we want to do. This is following the joy. This is following the bliss. This is the expression of the desire. Now figure it out. Project manage this.

Michael Hollinger [01:14:10]:
Yeah, I think you're right. Also, the how can be more like, you get the balloon blown up so you have your why and you have your will to go to get there. It doesn't necessarily have to be like, all the steps of how to get there. Sometimes it's just the first step or even just like, okay, my vision for five years is this. I see it now. Where do I see myself three months from now? Like, the first little step. What's three months from now? And then committing to having a certain amount done in three months, and I don't have to know how it's going to happen yet.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:39]:
Yeah, that's true.

Michael Hollinger [01:14:40]:
And then, you know, taking that first step towards, I'm gonna make that happen in three months. And just waking up the next day with that commitment. Sometimes all of a sudden, a ping and inspiration comes in, and it's like, I should call this person. I should do that, you know, why did $500 just come on a bank account today? Like, you know, like, all kinds of stuff starts happening just by making that big commitment.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:57]:
Yeah, you're right. You're right. And that's the other kind of secret sauce or secret trick. You know what we do in the power activation? Cause that's the analysis paralysis trap. That's the other pitfall is thinking or convincing yourself that you have to have it all figured out, that you have to know every step along the way or else you can't even get started. And that's just not correct. And actually all you need to know is really the first step.

Michael Hollinger [01:15:21]:
Yeah. An example. So I have. Did I share with awakened kings with you what happened with that?

Vision Battlesword [01:15:26]:
No.

Michael Hollinger [01:15:26]:
Okay. Yeah, so I am hanging out in Zilke park with some friends, and I've been having this inspiration to step in and do coaching and podcasting and really committing to doing that. And I was standing there with some friends in Silk Road park and literally, like, came into my mind. Awakened kings. Like, what the hell was that all about? It came in and like, when I went to Godaddy and like, awakenedkings.com was available, I'm like, what, $20? I bought it right there and then. And I went and looked to see if there's no podcast called that. I'm like, this idea was created for me. Like, it was given to me, served up, saved for me to step into.

Michael Hollinger [01:16:00]:
I'm like, fuck, let's do this. So nice. So I committed to doing ten podcasts by the end of September. And I made a list of like, five guys. I'll find ten. I'd love to have you on if you're open to that.

Vision Battlesword [01:16:12]:
I'd love to.

Michael Hollinger [01:16:12]:
Yeah. And so I love the analogy of putting a plane together as you're taking off, because that's what we're doing.

Vision Battlesword [01:16:19]:
Yeah, I mean, that's. I want to have great conversations with people that I really enjoy as an excuse to get together and hang out and keep these amazing relationships going. And why would we not record them? Just in case. Then one thing leads to another, leads to another. And I promise you, you don't need a studio, actually. Although if you do want one, I've got some recommendations for you.

Michael Hollinger [01:16:45]:
Here we go. I'm sourcing it already just for the conversation.

Vision Battlesword [01:16:47]:
It's happening. It's happening right now. But, yeah, it's just so much fun. And I think that's the other secret sauce, right? Is just make sure it's fun. As long as it's fun. It just pulls itself forward. It's like, okay, well, what's the next step? As long as you're enjoying it, it will have a life of its own.

Michael Hollinger [01:17:06]:
Yeah. And there's that word, joy. Joy is a very high, high density. It's a very light density, and it's, you know, you asked me who I am in the beginning of this, and my second word was playful. Playful is, I found, just being curious, open and playful. It's like, this can be fun. That's part of the expansion. Expansion is just, we're here to play.

Michael Hollinger [01:17:24]:
Let's have fun with it.

Vision Battlesword [01:17:25]:
Why is everybody obsessed with 5D?

Michael Hollinger [01:17:29]:
When I talk about 4D, I'm talking about fourth density.

Vision Battlesword [01:17:32]:
Yeah.

Michael Hollinger [01:17:33]:
5D is fifth dimension. They're talking about fifth dimension. And then. So I think the idea is that fifth dimension is like, there is no time and it's beyond time or something like that. Density wise, though, we're in a third density, moving into fourth density, which is.

Vision Battlesword [01:17:46]:
I always got the idea the densities and dimensions were the same, but that's not how people talk about 5D. Like, there's this. There's this idea of the ascension, but it's like we're gonna move into a different state of being where everybody's happy. I don't know. It's all been kind of unclear to me.

Michael Hollinger [01:18:04]:
Yeah. What I don't like about it is it's like it's happening tomorrow.

Vision Battlesword [01:18:08]:
Yeah. Right. It feels a lot like the end is nigh kind of thinking.

Michael Hollinger [01:18:14]:
Yeah. I think we're at the very beginning. I mean, I think the age of Aquarius is a big part of this. Like, as we're moving into it, that's what it's all about. The water bear pouring out, the hidden knowledge we're expanding into, which is why everything is in upheaval right now, because everything was hidden is now coming to the surface, and it's always been there. We're just now seeing it. So it's all going in the right direction. It's just gonna get a little ugly, I think, before we get there, as this stuff has to just unfold and heal, we're gonna go through a healing process for a bit.

Michael Hollinger [01:18:41]:
And I think being stuck in our ego for so long and getting into our heart is a freaking process, man. It's like getting those programs out of the guidance system. It takes a bit of time. We're all healing. Shit's coming out of us right now. So, like, hurt people hurt people. You know, you're hurt, something's coming up. You know, let's.

Michael Hollinger [01:18:56]:
Let's heal that. Let me reflect that back with love to you. So, yeah, I think, you know, based on the raw material, it could be like 25,000 years. It could be like a long, long, long drawn out period, you know, even like age of Aquarius. These ages, they take thousands of years too. So we're just at the very beginning.

Vision Battlesword [01:19:10]:
Of an age change, 2300, something like.

Michael Hollinger [01:19:13]:
That, or 2000 some years. Yeah, yeah. So we're just the very beginning. It's an exciting time. I used to think the sixties and seventies would be a cool time to be alive, but this is like coolest time to be alive right now to see all this stuff unfolding in front of us and all this stuff just like purging out, detoxing and. It's cool.

Vision Battlesword [01:19:28]:
I'm starting to think that we do actually live in a unique time. Not unique in the sense of the history of the planet, but like very rare. A rare cusp, which is the boundary of several different cycles stacking on top of each other. And so are you aware of the saculum, the 100 year cycle or approximately.

Michael Hollinger [01:19:51]:
100 year cycle, is that the same as like the fourth turning? The turnings, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:19:54]:
So I believe that we're on that cusp as a society, but then we're also on the astrological cusp that we talked about, the turning of the age. That's definitely happening at the same time. I think there might be, I mean, we just passed the mayan, the mayan calendar, right. So that's what I think that's 20,000 years or so.

Michael Hollinger [01:20:14]:
Yeah, I think that's leaked age of Aquarius somewhere. I think that's what that was all about. And. Yeah, so, like when you look at the fact that we're moving out of a fourth turning. Yeah. For the first turning, supposed to be amazing. So like we're coming out of that at some point soon, you know, and. But again, that's a gradient.

Michael Hollinger [01:20:29]:
It's like the binary thing, right. It's not gonna be like tomorrow. We made it to the first turning, you know.

Vision Battlesword [01:20:32]:
Well, I don't feel like we've even been through the crisis.

Michael Hollinger [01:20:35]:
No, no, no, it's. Yeah, it's starting to unfold.

Vision Battlesword [01:20:37]:
Like you said, it's get messy before it gets cleaned up again, unfortunately. But it is interesting. It's very interesting. I am currently reading the fourth turning maybe a little bit more than halfway through, and it's just been absolutely fascinating, not just coming into the awareness of where we are in the cycle and looking back at the 20th century and just seeing the beat for beat for beat and. Wow. Yeah, this thing really seems to line up. But the generational piece, are you aware of that part of it, the generational archetypes?

Michael Hollinger [01:21:12]:
Not exactly. I can imagine what you're talking about. But yeah, go further into that.

Vision Battlesword [01:21:16]:
So there's the four phases of the saculum cycle, or like the.

Michael Hollinger [01:21:21]:
And this current one, or all saculums, all.

Vision Battlesword [01:21:24]:
There's always the same four phases. There's the high, the awakening, the unraveling, and the crisis, which are each about a generation of time long, about approximately 20 years. 20 to 25 years. But they each also represent a generation, a generation of people which map to a specific archetype. And it's the constellation of archetypes. So the type of person and what phase of life they are in, and those four in combination that create the turnings. So it's really fascinating, especially for a systems and a frameworks geek like me to see. It's very logical, mechanical, but also organic.

Vision Battlesword [01:22:14]:
Organic at the same time. Yeah, but it's complex. So you've got four archetypes, which are the nomad, the hero, the artist, and the prophet. But then depending on which of the four phases of life any of those archetypes find themselves in, whether it's coming into childhood, young adulthood, midlife, or elderhood, determines kind of their place in society and then their relationship to where the other generational archetypes are in which in their phase of life and their role in society creates what they call these generational constellations. And so the generational constellation that's in effect at any given time creates the mood which leads to the turnings. So it's just fascinating, and it's given me so much perspective of just about my own life and the so called 13th generation, or sometimes called generation x, of which I'm, I guess, nominally apart, although you could call me an early millennial or a late Gen X. Or based on the description of the archetype, it seems like I fit more in the 13th, the Gen X archetype, which is a nomad archetype, but, yeah, so the nomad has the, I don't know what you want to call it, enviable or unenviable lot to be entering midlife during the crisis. So here we are.

Michael Hollinger [01:23:39]:
Perfect. I mean, I love that, actually. I'm glad I'm at this age in this crisis. Like, I get to learn a lot of my lessons. I'm still doing a lot of healing, but I got a lot of wisdom from all the stuff I've been through. And it's like I feel like I'm being called forth to be a warrior in this time of crisis right now. It's like, such a beautiful time to be at this age.

Vision Battlesword [01:23:58]:
Yeah. It's us and the heroes, the heroes are in young adulthood. They're the ones that come after us. So it's us and the heroes that basically have to deal with this shit. And then we can blame our elders, the prophets, for creating the situation for us.

Michael Hollinger [01:24:13]:
Yeah, and it's like it goes back to like, it's, it's not our fault, but it's our problem. You know, it's like there's no reason to blame anything. It's because it is organic. When you look, when you step back from that lens and like this is all supposed to happen, there's no way around it. Whether you're looking at all the way back at ages or, you know, saculums or whatever else. Like there's these fractals of times and ages that just, they, I think they go in cycles. And so then we don't get to blame anybody anymore. It's like this is part of an organic way of how we get to play this game.

Michael Hollinger [01:24:41]:
We're just being called up for different things depending on what's going on when we're alive at this time.

Vision Battlesword [01:24:47]:
But there's something else too, which I think feels true. Tell me if this resonates for you as well, but that there's something different. Like we can go back in history and see the saculum cycles and 2000 year cycles and look back at all the recorded history that we have available and say like, oh yeah, these things have happened before. These are the kind of things that we can expect and so on and so forth. But we've never had an Internet before. We've never had a global civilization before. We've never had, you know, we're practically a space faring species at this point, you know, never quite got off, quote unquote off the ground with it, I guess I think to the extent of what our true capabilities could be right now. But doesn't it feel to you like we're on the cusp of, of a radically different expansionary phase right now? Like we're like, we get through this crisis and shit's gonna like blow up, maybe in a really good way.

Michael Hollinger [01:25:44]:
Yeah, I think that's age of Aquarius. So age of Aquarius is. It's an air. It's an air. Air symbol.

Vision Battlesword [01:25:51]:
Sure.

Michael Hollinger [01:25:51]:
So we're air. So we got cloud computing, we have the Internet, we got crypto. Like, this is all air, you know, this is what this is all about, is coming off of water. Yeah, we're coming out of water and coming into light density and air, which is all these technologies and, yeah, that's, I think that's part of that bigger age change. And of course, we've got the age of an empire. So we also got the collapsing of the current empire coming down right now. So we've got a lot of things coming together right now. We get the end of a fourth turning.

Michael Hollinger [01:26:19]:
We got the age of Aquarius coming online. We got an empire failing all at the same time, crossing right here at this time. So it's, yeah, it's definitely interesting, you know, and then you look at, I think this is why, again, going back to some of the dark energies, if you look at the world economic forum, I think this is why they've got agenda 2030, because they know that that is a timeframe where all this is really going to start kind of coming together in some big melding point of, like, whatever it's crisis or ticking off or things. That's a point where the dark energy feels they've got to figure how to get a hold of it by that time. Or I think the light and the love wins. We're like, no, we've already expanded past all your little agendas. Like, we're out, see? Yeah, the darkness loses. We're going.

Michael Hollinger [01:27:00]:
So I think that, I think 2030 feels like some kind of a timeframe of all this really collapsing into a time where it's like we're going one way or the other, you know, and it's definitely a time of collapsing timelines happening all the same time right now.

Vision Battlesword [01:27:14]:
Yeah, there's something that feels really true about that. I don't know what it is, but this decade, this seems like an important decade that we're almost, almost halfway through now.

Michael Hollinger [01:27:24]:
Crazy.

Vision Battlesword [01:27:25]:
Can you believe that? But, yeah, there's. Yeah, I guess just to think about all the concepts that we've touched on and explored and, you know, new ideas we've kicked around and stuff. But I just keep coming back to this idea of cycles and balance and expansion and contraction. Like the beating heart, you can't have one without the other.

Michael Hollinger [01:27:48]:
Yeah, right.

Vision Battlesword [01:27:49]:
It's like expansion band, send it out, contract, bring it in like the breath out in. Maybe we're coming out of a big contraction. Like, maybe that's what age of Pisces is all about. Like, it's the heart, just like bringing it all in. And now we're getting ready to send it all out for another big growth phase. Something like that.

Michael Hollinger [01:28:14]:
I like that. Yeah. I mean, certainly, again, looking at those fractals, there's little contractions and there's a big contraction. You're right. Some big contraction is shifting, which is probably going back and forth between love and fear, dark, light, whatever, throughout different timeframes. And it's constantly changing in bigger ages.

Vision Battlesword [01:28:31]:
What are your final thoughts on expansion? Anything you want to say before we wrap it up?

Michael Hollinger [01:28:37]:
Yeah, expansion. Going back to your original question, we're definitely here to expand, and it's not meant to be done alone. I think expansion is connection and curiosity and play, and we can't do it by ourselves. And so the more we connect up and have fun and joy and play together, the more we get to expand, the more, the faster I think we get through this crisis, too. You know, there's a lot of hurt and there's a lot of purging of pain that has, that gets to happen before we get on the other side of it. And the more we just get into joy and love and play and curiosity and just enjoy the ride and hold space for people to heal, the faster we're going to get through this.

Vision Battlesword [01:29:16]:
Yeah. Yeah. That's my hope. Looking back again at those cycles of history and the expansions, the contractions, the dark ages and the golden ages, the times of pain and the times of love and growth and beauty, it'd just be really nice if we can make it easier, if we can make it a little bit less brutal, if we can make it a little bit less violent, less painful, if maybe that can be the direction of our evolution to say, yeah, we're still going to expand and contract and, yeah, we're still going to go through wounding and healing and dark phases and light phases and different things. But, boy, it'd be nice if we could do it without like, another big war, you know, if we can keep things in the, in the realm of ideas, in the realm of competition without violence.

Michael Hollinger [01:30:03]:
And war is within us, you know, hurt people. Hurt people. So the more that we need to look inside of ourselves and heal this stuff out, the faster we also get to, you know, release the need for war on this planet.

Vision Battlesword [01:30:16]:
Well, that's my prayer. Let us have, I would love to see us have the most beautiful expansion we can in the most painless way possible. Yeah, that's my prayer.

Michael Hollinger [01:30:24]:
I'm with you on that.

Vision Battlesword [01:30:26]:
Well, this was a gorgeous conversation.

Michael Hollinger [01:30:28]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:30:28]:
Thank you so much, Michael. I really, I really enjoyed this a lot.

Michael Hollinger [01:30:30]:
Me too. Yeah, I feel expanded.

Vision Battlesword [01:30:33]:
Yeah, me too.