Vision Battlesword [00:00:00]:
Michael Barr, my friend, long time no speak. How are you feeling today?

Michael Barr [00:00:05]:
Vision, I'm feeling a lot. There's a lot. In a really beautiful way, you know, I'm hesitant to say, hey, I'm good, Because it's...

Vision Battlesword [00:00:15]:
Yeah, I love that about you. You know, Like, I love that when, whenever we get together and have a conversation, we do a check in. Like, it's a real check in. I'm just so. I don't know. I've lost a lot of patience for these kind of scripted responses that we do with each other, like, oh, I'm fine, or, oh, pretty good. But, like, I really.

Vision Battlesword [00:00:34]:
I actually really want to know, like, if I'm going to ask. So I'm glad that you choose to be sincere and truthful when we talk to each other.

Michael Barr [00:00:45]:
Yeah, absolutely. It's. It's been. It's been a fun challenge to break that pattern of just give the answer that the mask or the. The default wants to give and just kind of dig a little deeper and also finding, like, the okayness to not have an answer that's like, can summarize all the experiences so far.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:07]:
Yeah. Speaking of masks, did you happen to have a chance to listen to the recent episode I did with Vic called Integrity? Because we talked a lot about masks and this kind of thing in that episode.

Michael Barr [00:01:19]:
No, I haven't had a chance to check that one out. I was listening to the. The Money one today, which is really, really had me on the edge of the seat.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:26]:
Oh, nice. The one with Courtney. Oh, that was so good. Yeah, I really enjoyed that one. Nice. Well, of course, you know what my first question is going to be? Who are you, Michael Barr?

Michael Barr [00:01:40]:
I am a lot of things. I'm a wanderer, I'm a father. There's a lot of different labels. Business owner, somatic guide, nature lover, musician. Lots. Lots of fun labels and experiences. So who am I? I think I'm still discovering, so.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:04]:
Nice. Well, I know that you wanted to talk about a breakthrough or. And I want to talk about just the whole idea of breakthroughs and what that's all about. So is that still what's on your mind? Is that what would be fun for you to explore today?

Michael Barr [00:02:20]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I'd love to just tell it from my own experience, you know, and what I've. What I've personally picked up along the way and, you know, found my way way through.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:30]:
All right, let's go for it. What do you want to say about breakthrough?

Michael Barr [00:02:36]:
Yeah, breakthrough has been a word that's just kind of it's been in my forefront. There's been some moments in my life where there has been like a catalyst of some sort, whether I've been aware of it or not. But once the awareness starts to kind of grab hold of breakthrough, like there's a shift or a transition, it becomes a little more obvious and you're like, okay, something's happening, you know, and then, then like the exploring and wandering and fear and all the things that come with the emotional responses to something unknown or something new, you know, so that's, that's really been a lot of my journey lately is just kind of mustering up enough curiosity and courage to go take a look, kind of peek.

Vision Battlesword [00:03:24]:
What is a breakthrough?

Michael Barr [00:03:25]:
I'll tell you when I'm through it. I think a breakthrough is a transition from one state to another. And this is just my own definition that I'm kind of just feeling into right now. Like you were in a old state or current state and there's some sort of shifting and some sort of like, like maybe, maybe self imposed limiter that wouldn't allow progression to happen. For curiosity, exploring. And so the breakthrough, what in my own experience has been like I am no longer in the place that I felt stuck in or I've experienced that enough and I'm ready for something different. So it's, it's almost like a shift or a transition in, in my own own terms.

Vision Battlesword [00:04:10]:
Yeah, we seem to talk about it a lot like that it's something that we're seeking. Like people are trying to find different methods or a process or a tool that can help them to have a breakthrough. We talk about it a lot in therapy, right? Psychotherapy, counseling. We talk about it in psychedelic facilitation and ceremony that, you know, oh, I've, I've had another breakthrough or I'm trying to find a breakthrough. And it's interesting to me because it implies that there's something that is blocking us or that there's something that needs to be broken. Like the word break. Like why wouldn't we just call it a pass through? Or why wouldn't we call it a transition? Or why wouldn't we call it a crossing over like you said? But we use that term as though it's something that we're, we have to muster enough force or we have to muster enough energy or like almost something that we're fighting against. And then we can have this kind of like cathartic release.

Vision Battlesword [00:05:15]:
That's all the different concepts that sort of unpack. For me when I start to open up Breakthrough and see what's in there. How does any of that land for you?

Michael Barr [00:05:24]:
Yeah, it brings me to the place where I go back to Austin and a really fun friend shared a really great nugget that I've been chewing on for about a year and a half. And it talked about the ego needed something to engage with. And there's a certain kind of, like, good break when that ego gets to engage with that and the subconscious patterns begin to, like, free themselves, you know, for my story, I lived in a. In a constant state of fear my whole life, and I didn't know that until very recently. And kind of breaking through that old pattern was seeing that the felt sense in my body had something to tell me that I wasn't ready to listen to or didn't quite have a. Like, an entry point to until it started to become more clear, you know, and the experience started to kind of naturally unfold. But I felt like looking in the rearview mirror now. The ego then needed something to challenge, you know, it needed something to catalyze it for something better and not to put labels on where I was at was not a good place.

Michael Barr [00:06:31]:
I think it's exactly where I needed to be. But there was a longing for more balance and more harmony in my own life.

Vision Battlesword [00:06:42]:
What about that whole piece? Like, I was talking about that when we talk about a breakthrough, that it feels like we're fighting with something or we're kind of bringing in the language of force and destruction almost, in a way. What do you think about that? Just the way that we frame this experience that we have. And of course, I, like, there's part of me that can understand it because again, I think a lot of it does come from. Or the word itself, the way we use it comes a lot from psychotherapy, where, you know, maybe someone has gone through. You know, has been going through a very long period of not feeling like they're making progress in their life or with something. And then all of a sudden, like you say, there's a catalyst, and then there's a shift and then a transition to a new state of being. And it can feel very rapid, and it can feel very expansive. And so, you know, we call it a breakthrough in a positive way.

Vision Battlesword [00:07:37]:
But I'm just. I'm just like. Well, no pun intended, breaking down the language and just looking at it as. I wonder if there's something about that experience of frustration and resistance and feeling blocked that even comes from a deeper pattern in our psychology of thinking as of these patterns as things that we actually are Fighting against or that something we're stuck in. I don't know. What do you think about all that?

Michael Barr [00:08:09]:
It's interesting. I find that there's patterns in this process. I just see patterns in my life and I also see them correlating in nature. And for things to progress, there's a certain death, an evolution that needs to happen for, you know, like there's a. There's a case to be made that shame is helpful, you know, and so to break beyond shame, how What? You know, if we were to just sit in our shame and not actually feel it, there wouldn't be any usefulness to it. So I think. I don't know, I think that's where the balance comes in. You know, to build something, you gotta break something or make space for it or create more room.

Vision Battlesword [00:08:52]:
Yeah, like that old saying about making an omelet and you gotta crack some eggs. I love what you're saying about shame right now though, because that's something that I've been thinking about a lot recently. Just the usefulness of all emotions in all emotional states and especially kind of like their evolutionary function maybe, or their function in society and their functioning community and stuff. And especially shame and. Yeah, so I love what you're saying because I've noticed that there can be maybe what I would call an overreaction of almost demonizing or degrading certain emotional states as if they are lesser or not desirable. Like I can't remember the name of it. The spectrum. There's a name of that chart that shows like vibrational frequencies and then supposedly like the emotional state or state of consciousness that they map to.

Vision Battlesword [00:09:55]:
You know what I'm talking about?

Michael Barr [00:09:56]:
I do, yes.

Vision Battlesword [00:09:57]:
And then shame is always put at the very, very bottom as if it's like the worst thing, the worst state you can be in. Right. Like there's like a. There's like a hierarchy idea to it.

Michael Barr [00:10:07]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:10:07]:
But to your point, like I think that there is some kind of a usefulness to all of these states, including shame and guilt and anger and fear, because they can provide us with motivation to change our behavior in productive ways, you know? But to your point, if you're just sitting and wallowing in some of these states and you're not changing your behavior or not doing anything productive with it, then yeah, maybe it is self destructive. But I like what you said there.

Michael Barr [00:10:35]:
Yeah. That. That chart is exactly where I've been kind of my playground lately is looking at the vibrational frequencies of the emotions. And something I discovered that was like helped me Understand the connection between shame and like elevating that into a different state or a different emotional state would be. Right in the middle of that chart is courage. And I just found that really, really interesting that like once it's like courage is the, it's like the gatekeeper to that chart, you know, everything below it, you put it in the negative vibrational. You don't want to feel it like loneliness or sadness or discontentment or whatever you want to put down there. And then all of a sudden courage pops up in the middle and then they start getting a little floatier, they start to feel a little lighter, you know, they're a little more expansive.

Michael Barr [00:11:27]:
And I just thought that was really curious. So yeah, shame has been, I think something deeply embedded in our culture too, you know. And there's a usefulness as a collective to have shame, even though interpersonally it's very destructive, you know.

Vision Battlesword [00:11:47]:
Yeah, that's a really good point about courage. There's something that feels really true about that chart in that sense where it's, you know, like you say there's these so called negative states or the, let's say the undesirable ones or the ones we'd prefer not, you know, that we prefer to move out of. And then courage is like that inflection point. It's like that turning point. It's the moment where we maybe flip our intention. We are in the place where we can make a choice or we may, we may choose to exercise our intention or our will or our desire to change our state to catalyze that shift or that transition. And that is like the threshold of the breakthrough is the moment of courage.

Michael Barr [00:12:36]:
Absolutely. You know, and it's in those moments where you get to test it out and you find that you're, you're safe, you know, and you're, you're in your body and everything's going to be okay. What you're feeling is not going to be the end of it. And that your safety, or at least in my experience, speaking from my own journey, is that safety as it starts to increase into. I feel safe. And I could say that my body resonates with that. It's like one to one gets to hang out with authenticity, you know, and authenticity gets to really be the. Be the dreamweaver or the co creator or the author.

Michael Barr [00:13:15]:
It felt like courage had a big part in that and that was just me trying to plug in the pieces and see, see what fits and what doesn't fit and, and just keep stepping, keep, keep walking.

Vision Battlesword [00:13:26]:
Well, tell me more about fear. You were saying that this breakthrough that you've had recently that was sort of the inspiration for us to have this conversation had something to do with fear. Do you want to tell me more about that?

Michael Barr [00:13:39]:
Yeah, absolutely. So it was in some very intentional containers involving plant medicines and ritual and ceremony and finding my way to fear almost all in all of those arenas until my body started to have a relationship with the fear and the ability to really start to feel into it and to allow, to just allow. To just, to just start to allow. And little by little, the labels and the judgments and opinions of the mind start to kind of lovingly peel layer by layer. And so it's just been. It's just been a rinse and repeat kind of journey. You know, here's an opportunity to feel something that fear hangs out in, and what can we do here? How can we really complete this emotional state? And I think that that's where I'm playing at right now is there's like a completion of the emotion, kind of like that last 2%. But it still keeps the program alive.

Michael Barr [00:14:42]:
You know, you've got the awareness, you've got the new skills, you've started to integrate new patterns and ways of being in the world and are showing up differently for yourself and for others. And then, you know, your friend comes by and hits the button again and it's like, okay, we're afraid again. So, yeah, it's just, it's just been, it's been a beautiful journey of just allowing fear to be a teacher, you know, and, and, and, and really just how, how deep can I get in it? You know? How deep? Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:15:13]:
Were you going into your ceremonial and, and development work seeking a breakthrough? Did you know that there was something you were trying to find? Or did you know that you wanted to experience some kind of a profound shift in your state of being? Or were you just kind of exploring out of a place of curiosity or for some other reason and then the breakthrough just happened, or were you seeking the breakthrough?

Michael Barr [00:15:41]:
Truthfully, it was an impulse of courage. It was like, it was like a burst of. I'm going to hit the send button on this payment link and I'm. I'm not going to think about it. It was just one of those things where I felt like it was calling. It was a, it was a go do this. You've been thinking about this for a long time and here is a great opportun opportunity. And yeah, as soon as I press the button, it scared the shit out of me.

Vision Battlesword [00:16:08]:
Yeah. Because fear Knew what was coming.

Michael Barr [00:16:11]:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. But there was a. There's a certain. There was like a certain peacefulness to it that it's like, okay, well, I made. Made the move. Now I just gotta. Just gotta show up.

Michael Barr [00:16:22]:
Yeah. And I just. I've always kind of trusted those. I've always trusted those little winks of time where it's kind of break through the noise, break through the chaos of stress and all that. So to me, it was one of those moments where like, oh, oh, here we go.

Vision Battlesword [00:16:43]:
I noticed I used the word breakthrough in a different way. Right. So it's like almost as if that part of you or there is a part of you that's trying to break through into your consciousness to communicate, to say, I am ready. I want to be seen now. I want to be witnessed. I want to be integrated.

Michael Barr [00:17:05]:
Yeah. And I also credit the support of my family, my wife and two children. Huge catalyst for me to want to show up as a better husband and father. So that was a big, big support on the external. That really, really helped kind of support me going forward with that. Because it's like as I grow and go deeper into developing the man who I want to be, I'm doing it for them too. You know, it's fun. Little byproduct.

Vision Battlesword [00:17:44]:
What did you mean earlier when you said that you sense that you're still completing the emotion or you're seeking the completion of the emotion? Can you tell me more about that?

Michael Barr [00:17:56]:
Yeah. So transparently, this is the part where I'm currently at. Clearly, something shifted. Like the. The way I think, feel, see, the way my senses interact with. With the world right now is completely different than it was a month ago in a really beautiful way. What shifted is really just a matter of perspective. So I'm in this new place where I'm still kind of playing with your question.

Michael Barr [00:18:24]:
I'm experiencing that part. So I don't really have a whole lot of clarity there. I think what I'm kind of experiencing is this old way, and feeling still has a way of working its way back into. Like, I'm sitting on the couch or hanging out with a friend, and whatever it is, that experience comes up and it reactivates and it's like, oh, that's interesting. I've been playing with that a lot and been having some really tough moments, surrendering into it and really feeling into that experience and not trying to judge where I'm at in those moments. But it's like, okay, what other layer here would be helpful so that we can really Allow these to flow a little more naturally. It feels like it still has that button, you know, that it can press, and it's like, hey, I'm back.

Vision Battlesword [00:19:15]:
Okay, so if I can paraphrase a little bit just to. Just to kind of reframe it for myself to understand better. When you say the completion of the emotion, what you. What I'm hearing you saying is that there's a pattern and a kind of overlay of your perception that you now, since the breakthrough, have been able to realize is being generated by this heavy emotion that's maybe, let's say unprocessed that you've been carrying around for your whole life. And so a lot of that seems to have shifted or moved or changed for you in some sort of a processing of that emotional state. But it's like there's still some residual that's still there. And so you're kind of mostly in the new state, but then occasionally the old state can come back online. And so the completion that you're seeking is to kind of move fully into the new state.

Michael Barr [00:20:12]:
Yes. And I think I'm. You just helped me pull a little more clarity on this, that there's a. There's a new transition into a new felt sense. And it's. It's understanding that there's a muscle memory tied towards the old way. I mean, it's all I've ever known. Right.

Michael Barr [00:20:28]:
There's. There's a. There's like a muscle memory is the way I can only describe it. It's just. It's very familiar and very easy to feel that way. And with this new state of feeling, in some ways it can be sometimes just as new and unpredictable where it challenges and those emotions and feelings come back of, okay, well, what's going on with this shift? Are we. Are we still experiencing and what are we feeling? And, and how do we. How do we.

Michael Barr [00:20:58]:
How do we kind of find love and acceptance here and untangle it?

Vision Battlesword [00:21:02]:
Totally. Yeah.

Michael Barr [00:21:03]:
That.

Vision Battlesword [00:21:04]:
That idea of muscle memory, the. The idea of familiarity. Familiarity is comfortable. We can associate familiarity with safety just because it's what we know as compared to the unknown. Right. So we can say this thing that's familiar to us is something that's more predictable. It's something we've seen before. It's something that we know how to do this dance.

Vision Battlesword [00:21:32]:
We know how this cycle is going to play out. It's almost like the phenomenon of the song on the radio where, you know, they used to play songs and I guess they still do probably on streaming services or Whatever. But they'll play a song over and over and over again until you think you like it. But what's really happening is you've just heard it enough times before that it triggers your sense of familiarity so it feels comfortable. So you catch yourself singing along to the hook or whatever when you might not even remember. Or if you do, you realize that the first time I heard this song, I hated it, you know? And I think negative emotional states, or what we might call more undesirable emotional states, are the ones that don't feel as pleasant to us. They nonetheless can become so familiar that they feel like an old friend. Even if we can, maybe when we have more presence of mind, we can look at them and recognize, like, oh, this behavior pattern is not actually something I desire in my life anymore.

Vision Battlesword [00:22:38]:
This is destructive to me, or this is destructive to my loved ones or those around me, or it's just not getting me anywhere. This is just repetitive or it's de energizing or whatever it may be. And yet we can catch ourselves slipping back into that just because we've done that particular dance, we've done that particular move so many times that it's just familiar. And it may even feel safe and comfortable because of that familiarity. And to your point, like, you've had a major breakthrough and a shift into a completely new, as you described it, a new way of perceiving reality, a new, you know, experience of this thing we call life and a different emotional state. And so even though maybe you can intellectually or consciously recognize that, like, oh, this state is preferable, this feels better. I like how I show up this way better than the old way. Nonetheless, there's a sense of unfamiliarity and maybe unpredictability and caution around that because it's new and different.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:43]:
Does that feel right?

Michael Barr [00:23:45]:
Yeah, absolutely. As I'm reflecting on that, it's like something Cat. This is. This has just been my framework for. For these experiences. If you can just imagine, like there's a soft ramp up on. On a graph and it kind of just starts at zero and it kind of works its way up. That's like the catalyst, the beginning, and then there's a bunch of dots and points in between on the journey.

Michael Barr [00:24:06]:
And it goes up and down, up and down, you know, expand, contract, all of those things. And then at some point that graph goes back down to zero and it resolves. And I think in some of these breakthrough moments where we have either some sort of very clear catalyst of, okay, here it is, I'm aware of it. Now I get to experience it, and now it gets to resolve in some sort of way. It's that. That resolution part that I think we're. That I'm. That I'm looking for after the experience.

Michael Barr [00:24:33]:
And it's like a continuation sometimes where you're like, okay, I thought I resolved it, but here it is again. And maybe there' more to go. Often that's usually the answer for me. There's. There's more. There's always more.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:45]:
Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's an experience that a lot of people can relate to, where you may have a breakthrough. And it feels in the moment or maybe for a period of time, like everything is different now. Everything is going to be different now. I. I could never go back. I could never be the same. And yet, weirdly, sometimes things do kind of slip back or start to feel the same as they were before again, to me, I've started to take on a framework of looking at things kind of as a spiral.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:20]:
We're going around and around in a kind of an iterative loop of kind of repeating the same experiences and repeating the same kind of patterns. But we're also. We can be moving up and we can be moving down in that, you know, on a different axis, where it can be, yeah, things are different, but they also feel kind of the same too, because I'm looping back around to a familiar part of this particular pattern or process or experience, but it's actually not the same as it was before. It's just similar. And that's kind of, to me, the process of integration, where we kind of take these new experiences, we break through. You know, you could look at that same cycle as the hero's journey going around and around, over and over again. Right. Like, we have this breakthrough, we go into the cave, we face our deepest fear, or we face the most existential threat or whatever that is.

Vision Battlesword [00:26:24]:
We come back out, we've vanquished the enemy, we've found the elixir, we've returned home, we've done all these things. We'll never be exactly the same again, and yet we still are going to go back on the journey another time. And there can be more, you know, more work, more fun, more play to do even with the same pattern over and over again after the breakthrough. And that's just the process of evolution. And it can go. The spiral can actually go in the other direction, it seems to me. What do you think about that?

Michael Barr [00:26:54]:
Yeah, I don't know if there's a loss here. Kind of reframe failure. I love that spiral model that you talked about and I've certainly experienced that where you're spiraling through an experience and what looks like failure can certainly be failure and it'll keep you there. And I've certainly hung out with failure quite a bit. And then going through the failure and kind of spiraling upward and outward, you touch the edges of the conscious awareness and oh, wow, we're in some really new territory here, you know, and that's a good thing because it doesn't feel like failure. It looks like growth, looks like some sort of progression. Yeah, it feels like we're spiraling here. Yeah, spiraling here.

Michael Barr [00:27:47]:
It just, that, that, that just sounded fun to say. I don't really have much meaning behind that.

Vision Battlesword [00:27:52]:
No, I get it, I get what you're saying. Like, yeah, I think that's a really useful frame is to just always keep in mind that we're here, we're spiraling here, wherever that is. Because it's, I think it's a trap actually. But it's, it's also a temptation to frame things for ourselves as this like linear line of progress. Like I'm either moving forward or I can slip backward even. I can even lose progress that I've gained before. But that's not really true. What's really happening is that we're here doing, doing whatever we're doing now.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:32]:
And it may look something like what we've done before, or it may look like something new that we haven't done before. But whatever it is, it's just what we're doing.

Michael Barr [00:28:40]:
It was, that was the conversation with my 11 year old son right before I dropped him off. We like to have fun conversations on our drop off line. And the conversation today was, hey son, you see that tree over there? Is that tree ever gonna be in tomorrow? And he looked at me and he smiled. He goes, well, no. I said, well, why? He's like, well, that tree will only ever be here right now. Like, I don't know how you know that, man. Did you find the cheat code or something?

Vision Battlesword [00:29:13]:
Wow. How old is your son?

Michael Barr [00:29:15]:
He's 11. He's 11. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I mean, it's simple, right? We like to complicate it. We like to complicate it. I think that's, that's where a lot of my suffering originated. Was trying to come up with complications, to find different answers to simplicity.

Vision Battlesword [00:29:34]:
What was the actual experience of having the breakthrough like for you?

Michael Barr [00:29:39]:
Wow. It felt like a rocket ship in moments where it's like, you know, Going so far, so far from the old place, from the old state of feeling and being into this like wildly new place in my mind, body, spirit, complex. It just felt like massive expansion, spiraling in all of the directions and in all of the ways. And it also felt like moments of retraction where it's like, okay, I went really far. I kind of forgot where home was, you know, and, and let's come back and it's like, okay, no, I remember where home is. Here I can find my center. And so for, for it's, it's a lot. It's the breakthrough.

Michael Barr [00:30:25]:
Kind of felt like there's, there's like this moment in the beginning where it feels really slow and sluggish and you're, you're not making much progress and you can't see those steps that are, that are happening. All the things that are aligning for you. If you were to be tomorrow, you could see all those things. But right here, right now, it still kind of feels like I'm stuck. And then for me, in a lot of ways it like, boom, pow. There's some sort of explosion, there's some sort of like massive expansion.

Vision Battlesword [00:30:54]:
What questions have been most powerful for you?

Michael Barr [00:30:57]:
Yeah, there was a question around shadow work and it was right before an Ayahuasca retreat, which is perfect timing to get that question. You know, it was almost as if the facilitator knew what they were doing with that question and they saw something that I couldn't see. And so it was just, it was an initiation into the shadow. And so, you know, that question turned my awareness to something that I had. I didn't even know. There was a whole arena for that. You know, it was like think about love and light. Forget about the shadow, forget about the darkness, forget about all that.

Michael Barr [00:31:35]:
And it's just completely neglected. So there was this whole half of me that, that never really got to experience that. And so, yeah, that, that moment in the jungle definitely, definitely got a little intimate with shadow.

Vision Battlesword [00:31:51]:
All right, so what happened in the jungle?

Michael Barr [00:31:54]:
So it was a multi day retreat with multiple different medicine modalities from Wachuma to Ayahuasca to five Meo Bufo. And it was a lot, it was a lot of medicine in a very short window and a lot of breakthrough. Just personally, you know, I was out of my, my comfort zone as an international place. And you know, it's, it's, it was very, very tropical and very nature inspired. So there was, there was tarantulas and giant, you know, scorpions and all sorts of Stuff that. That are just like, okay, all right, all right. But there was, like, a harmony to the whole thing that, you know, there was a. They were playing a part, you know, and initially, in those moments, it felt.

Michael Barr [00:32:51]:
It felt like, oh, wow, this is. Nature's really creeping in. So we go into the ayahuasca ceremony right at sundown, and I am Peak anxiety. Like, I am so nervous. I feel like I'm just going to get punished the whole night. I had read too many stories, too many trip reports, and I believed most of it. And what I expected and what transpired in the ceremony were two completely different things, you know, this was your first.

Vision Battlesword [00:33:24]:
Sorry to interrupt. This was your first ayahuasca experience.

Michael Barr [00:33:27]:
It was. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:33:28]:
And what did you think was going to happen from the trip reports that you read?

Michael Barr [00:33:33]:
I thought I was going to go into psychosis and absolutely lose my damn mind. But there was also a chance that it could help me. So I was like, let's roll the dice here a little bit. You know, it felt risky. It felt very, very risky. First, at that time, I didn't want to surrender fully and allow that control, you know, to be in something else's hands. I don't want to go offline and be very vulnerable, you know, in my body. So that was a really hard thing to navigate.

Michael Barr [00:34:03]:
But little by little, it started to free up, and the medicine kicked in really quick for me. It was really strong. I'm pretty sensitive to most medicines. It doesn't take a whole lot for me to go. And within 20 minutes, I'm full on in the medicine and the purge starts happening. And it was just like, very, very confusing. I was delirious, and it was just like. It was just enough of, like, somatic confusion in my body and mind and all.

Michael Barr [00:34:36]:
It's just like. It was like a jumble. And it got to the point where I'm like, I can't fucking hold this any longer. I can't. I can't. And I like, I give it up. I give up. I give up.

Michael Barr [00:34:46]:
I let it go. And it was in that moment that the medicine just. Just filled. It was almost like it was waiting for me to say, yeah, okay, it's time. Let's go. I was just. I was resisting it. I was resisting it really hard.

Michael Barr [00:35:02]:
And I didn't know. I didn't know. I was. I was just trying to keep myself safe in that moment. And so that's where. That's where she started to teach me the peace offering to just allow those feelings to fully feel and go, just feel it. Look. Look at it.

Michael Barr [00:35:18]:
Feel it. It's okay to look. And there were some beautiful, nurturing moments where she's like, I will hold you here. Watch this. Look. Look around. There's. There's an incredible jungle that's alive, and they're all cheering for you right now.

Michael Barr [00:35:34]:
They want to see you. They want to see you whole, you know, and they want to be part of your healing journey. And it was just so beautiful. And as soon as that purge happened and I let go, like, just trying not to purge for. For an hour was really hard. And then you just run out of fight. And. And when it happened, it's just like it felt like that.

Michael Barr [00:35:54]:
That pressure release valve that I've been trying to relieve with my mind my whole life was able to fully just pop loose. And wow, that would circle back to breakthrough, that first release within the medicine. And she gave me a gift of absolute bliss, absolute peace, and everything I was looking for beyond the fear. The Ayahuasca experience gave me kind of a front row seat to that. And it's like, this is you. You're here. Welcome, welcome. And it felt like I initiated into some sort of secret classroom, and there was going to be all sorts of fun lessons that could be utilized in here.

Michael Barr [00:36:45]:
And so, yeah, it just felt like that first. That first ceremony, it was more cycles of that same lesson. You know, let's practice bringing something to surrender. And it was just like, okay, pick it up and bring it, or just allow and flow into it. And it was like, as soon as I did that, it was like, boom, right back into the place of oneness and connection to nature and myself, and just an immense love for everyone who I've ever connected, connected with. It was really, really beautiful. Really beautiful. And it gave me a new baseline for what I want to carry in my everyday life.

Michael Barr [00:37:25]:
I want to feel that beauty around me. I want to be inspired by nature. I want to see people's eyeballs and know that they've got a story, too. And we're all just trying to figure it out. So just really beautiful stories that kind of unpack. And I can remember that experience as if it was yesterday. Just deeply, deeply embedded into my experience. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:37:50]:
And so I feel like we've taken the first step now on a journey, had a first breakthrough, certainly it sounds like you described a breakthrough in that, you know, resistance leading up to the Purge and then what you experienced on the other side of that threshold. And I feel like we're on the first step of the journey. Which leads over a period of a couple of years to a more recent, the most recent experience that. Where you had this particular shift that. That prompted us to have this conversation. So what else do you want to tell me about what led up to this current breakthrough that you're actually still in the process of? Is there another important peak experience that happened along the way, or do you want to skip all the way down the path to the most recent experience?

Michael Barr [00:38:42]:
Yeah, I like to think of these medicines or these ceremonies as a tool or a teacher or a technology of sorts, where you interact with it and it's helpful and you find some sort of way through something. And so I use it as a perspective tool, a discovery tool, and I find that the discovery aspects are some of the most helpful, especially when you're trying to figure out, okay, what is it that's causing this suffering, what's at the core of it? And recently that the tool has shifted into, okay, well, we. We can get to the. We can get to the place of neutrality within these spaces, and we can really discover and find more layers. But it's like kind of running out of layers, you know, and. And then. And then I'm in a massage therapist office. I was looking for someone who can help with some of the somatic energy releases within my own body.

Michael Barr [00:39:42]:
And I found this really incredible practitioner who's five minutes from my house and no medicine involved, just bodywork, and had a breakthrough. And I was not expecting a breakthrough, but it was in the surrender of the pain. And she was jamming her elbow deep, deep, deep into my hip, trying to help with my psoas, you know, tendons that are. That. That often like to get flared up. And. And I just remembered inside of all the journeys and all the breath work and all the opportunities to, like, go into pain, I'm like, oh, shit, here we are again. All right.

Michael Barr [00:40:20]:
And it was. It was deeper and more profound because I was consciously involved in that, like, fully online, you know, and it was 10 out of 10 pain. But the relief I got on the other end was exactly like the medicine gives. It's like a gift. Here's the. Here's the pain. Now that. Now the gift part, you know, typically, I haven't found.

Michael Barr [00:40:42]:
The offering hasn't been returned back. It usually has something for me, and I think that's a really kind of beautiful part of the process.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:51]:
Hmm. What's your interpretation of that breakthrough, that somatic breakthrough that you had with the massage therapy? Do you interpret that as a purely physical, mechanical, you know, type Phenomenon with muscles and tendons and nervous systems and stuff? Or do you interpret there being a psycho spiritual emotional connection you. You know, in that somatic release?

Michael Barr [00:41:18]:
Yeah, yeah, I. I'm definitely in the second camp. The body keeps the score. You know, it's the. The emotional memory in the body, the experience that lived in that place. And I have found in my own journey with those triggers of, you know, the various triggers that they. They impact those locations in my body, whether it's like the gut, the lower back, neck and shoulders. Those are typically places where things get a little squeezy.

Michael Barr [00:41:51]:
And so now that I'm aware of that, I can get proactive with it and get to the place where I'm like, oh, what's here? What's here? What's going on? Rather than, oh, man, my back flared up and now it's out for three months, and I'm just kind of like in the wind at the will of something. I'm not even aware of what's happening. So, yeah, it's definitely. It's definitely in the body, you know, and that's something that I've neglected. My. My. My emotional body, my. My physical body most of my life.

Michael Barr [00:42:23]:
And now that it's got some attention, it's pretty neat. It's actually telling me what it wants. It's telling me where the areas are. And it said, hey, go get some breath work. And like, okay, let me go get some body work. And like, all right, you got it. And it was right. It was right.

Vision Battlesword [00:42:42]:
Do you have an awareness of, like, what was being stored in your body there? Was it a. Was it an experience? Was it a memory? Is it an emotional imprint from something that happened to you? Or do you not know what it was?

Michael Barr [00:42:58]:
No, I. I know. I know what it was. It presented itself in a. In a kind of like, what some would describe, like a traumatic re. Experiencing and. Yeah, but it didn't have the heaviness that I was anticipating. It was like the body was.

Michael Barr [00:43:16]:
Imagine the. It's tough to put to words, but I'll try. Imagine the body is crying, you know, like tears. And it feels soft and heavy at the same time, but there's no, like, heavy emotional worry attached to that. It's just like the body's just allowing that. That feeling in that moment, it starts to evaporate, and it's nothing short of, like, miracle, you know? Like, how. How does it do that? How. You know, and that's.

Michael Barr [00:43:47]:
That's the part I'm playing with right now is how does it do that. How. How is my mind, body, spirit able to transition this state? It is such a mystery because it's been so buried in my subconscious, I didn't even know it was something I could play with. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:08]:
What do you think is the difference between a breakthrough and a breakdown? When you talked about going into that first ayahuasca experience and you read the stories or heard them from somewhere and so you thought, yeah, the possibility of psychosis is like on the table here. This is.

Michael Barr [00:44:25]:
There's risk involved.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:26]:
You know, that would be what maybe some people would call a breakdown or, or like, if that were to happen, you know, people can have a. An emotional, psychological, whatever, breakdown or breakthrough. Sometimes they can go together. Right. Sometimes maybe one precedes the other. What do you think about those two concepts and their association?

Michael Barr [00:44:50]:
Well, let me break it down. Break it down, Break it down. Yeah, I, Yeah, I'm playing with that word right now too. I. Is that often associated with like, some would say a bad trip? Like, is it going backwards when breaking down or together? Does that necessarily mean negative? Does that mean we're regressing? I have a lot more questions.

Vision Battlesword [00:45:13]:
Hmm.

Michael Barr [00:45:14]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:45:15]:
Well, like a car can break down and then it's not working anymore. It's not functional. I think that's. I think that's what we tend to associate with the idea of a breakdown is like going into a non functional.

Michael Barr [00:45:25]:
State, whereas the breakthrough is like going from the non functional to the functional. Possibly. So is it more of a perspective and direction point of view kind of thing?

Vision Battlesword [00:45:37]:
It could be, but I think maybe the two are different in kind because to me, like, a breakthrough doesn't necessarily imply going from non functional to functional. It just, to me, it implies going from one state to another in a sudden way. Does that make sense? And, and it imply. It implies that there's some resistance that's been overcome.

Michael Barr [00:46:05]:
So, like more into the transition. Yeah, the transition of it. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:46:10]:
Whereas a breakdown is more like fall. Things can fall apart and we call that a breakdown. Or there. That can also be sudden. You know, there can be a sudden.

Michael Barr [00:46:21]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:46:21]:
Trauma or state change that leads to a breakdown or a breakthrough or. And sometimes I think, I mean, we could say that in ceremony. Sometimes we can have a breakthrough or. Excuse me, sorry. We can have a breakdown right. Before we have a breakthrough.

Michael Barr [00:46:36]:
Right, Absolutely. I mean, I. It felt like it needed to break down so that it could break through. Yeah, there were some. There were some things that just needed to like, dislodge or free or upgrade or something as soon as the medicine kicked in, in my first ayahuasca journey, I was up on my feet, looking to just start running, like, oh, my God, what did I do? So there was a breakdown for sure, to get to the place where I can lay back on my mat and be in a still body. But yeah, there was, there was, there was a necessary breakdown that needed to happen for, for me to, to allow. And, and it didn't feel like a failure. It didn't feel like, oh, you know, there was no guilt or shame associated with that.

Michael Barr [00:47:22]:
It was just. Okay, all right, what. What's going on here?

Vision Battlesword [00:47:25]:
So, yeah, yeah, I think that's a really. I'm sort of glad we explored that a little bit because that does kind of seem important. A breakdown can be a necessary step toward any type of evolution or a breakthrough. There can be structures that, like, they have to get broken down, you know, so that even. Just so that you can examine them, or maybe so that you can reintegrate those parts in a different way. Or maybe there's a wall that has been causing some kind of stuckness or inability to make progress and it just needs to get broken down. But that can feel like a breakdown in the sense of losing control, becoming non functional or losing a grip on what you thought was reality.

Michael Barr [00:48:21]:
Yeah. And I think, I think everything in nature eventually breaks down, right. Is anything ever permanent in. In the material world? So I, I guess I go to the place. Why would I, Why would I personally be any different? So I guess I, that, that leads me to acceptance. I'm like, okay, I'm part of that cycle, so I accept that.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:45]:
Okay, well, let's fast forward me a little bit in time. You know, let's get at least a step closer to. Or if you're, if you feel like we've already covered the ground, we need to tell me about this current breakthrough.

Michael Barr [00:48:58]:
I kind of. I was talking about that with the, with the body work a couple weeks ago, and it really. Something really shifted in me personally. I was able to experience. Able to experience something that I had been suppressing. Like the very first time we met back in Austin. I had a real tough time with anybody, like being close to me physically or to be touched physically, that was like a massive trigger and a big part of my journey there was, you know, finding safety into that, into my body, you know, and, and that, that helped catalyze a lot of things for me. It opened up a lot until till recently when I found, when I found this really special guide here in the bodywork realm.

Michael Barr [00:49:52]:
I've never experienced any of that because my body wouldn't allow me to go into those places to do those things. And so there's just a lot of newness to this. Whereas for some folks this may be like, well, yeah, that's a huge part of my self care. Well, I'm just now discovering it and it's really rich, really potent because it's just been waiting for me for a while. And this breakthrough that I'm experiencing right now is I really am safe in my body and I have this new connection with it. Almost as if it's like the thoughts in my mind can exist in my body too. Like there's a conversation that can happen both ways now, which is really interesting. It's just really interesting because if you'd have told me a couple years ago that your body can tell you things outside of like, hey, don't feel that or you're hungry or you know, you're thirsty, just the basic stuff, I would have been like, I don't know what you're talking about.

Michael Barr [00:50:51]:
That you'd have gotten a blank stare, you know. So, yeah, it's, it's like, I'm catching up, I'm catching up to. I'm like, oh, wow, new zone. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:51:06]:
So a little while ago you mentioned that your perception had changed. I'm curious to hear more about that with this recent breakthrough. Like, can you describe what your perception and your experience day to day was like before the breakthrough and then how it's different now?

Michael Barr [00:51:25]:
Yeah, it feels like my perception has shifted in just experiencing the new, the newness of it. And I'm in that fun discovery realm, you know. So what shifted is it kind of felt like caveman body, just very primitive. And there's not a whole lot of depth to the detail of what I'm feeling in my body. And now that I am curious and engaging with it and playing in different ways and, and exploring in different ways, my body is responding to that saying, let's go deeper, let's go discover new things and keep finding, keep exploring.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:19]:
Do you think that humanity, or maybe at least our society is on the threshold of a breakthrough?

Michael Barr [00:52:28]:
I feel that. I do. I feel it in a way where it feels like in some kind of way it's all just turning together. Like we're accessing the experience together collectively. And I don't believe that we are separate. I do believe that we're all in this together and we're best when we're serving each other and ourselves. So yeah, I think, I think we can all serve each other together and collectively transition and shift and break through for sure. And we are doing that.

Michael Barr [00:53:06]:
I see it, I feel it. I feel like I'm just part of it too, you know, this is. This is amazing. It's. It's truly an experience that, that I. I am enjoying. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:53:19]:
If we're having a collective breakthrough, would that be like the aggregation of all of our millions and billions of individual breakthroughs that are all happening at the same time?

Michael Barr [00:53:29]:
Yeah, I would sure hope so. You know, it's fun to see people grow. It's fun to meet someone that isn't holding that baggage or emotional weight like they were before, you know, it's awesome to see that. Okay, you found some of the same things I found, too. That's really neat. And then we resonate together and we're like, oh, sick. And. And it just keeps happening that way.

Michael Barr [00:53:53]:
That's like that, that ripple that, that. That just keeps. Keeps going. It's beautiful.

Vision Battlesword [00:53:59]:
Do you. Do you think there's any analogies or metaphors that we could use looking at what it's like to have an individual breakthrough and, and kind of deconstructing that experience for yourself and seeing what that was like and the path that it took to get there and what the sort of sign posts and, you know, twists and turns were along the way that happened, and then applying that to collective groups to be able to detect, like, oh, this looks like the beginning of a breakthrough, or, you know, like, we might actually be going through a breakdown on our way to a breakthrough, or.

Michael Barr [00:54:37]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:54:38]:
Do you think we can draw those kind of parallels?

Michael Barr [00:54:40]:
I absolutely do. And I love this game, by the way, because when you first started asking the question, I was like, I don't know what would be a good parallel? You know, there's one that I love. It's the going to the amusement park as a parallel for breakthroughs. So you buy a ticket, you know, you set your intention. Why are you going to the park? Well, I want to have a good time, you know, want to ride some rides, have some thrills and eat something and. And just have a great day outside. And then, you know you're going to ride that ride, the one that's at the peak of the experience where it's just, like, really fucking scary. And so you get in line and you wait and you feel the urgency of being in line and you're ready to go, but also, you know, you're not quite ready and then you get in.

Michael Barr [00:55:31]:
So let's say this time you're in an empty park and you're just on that ride by yourself. You know, in a lot of these moments where you can get on the ride and it goes click, click, click, click, all the way to the top. And that moment of no turning back where the, the, the roller coaster is just going to keep cruising down the hill and you have that moment of weightlessness as you start to go down. And as you hit the very bottom of the roller coaster, it starts. The gravity really starts setting in and you feel really heavy and it really squeezes you and it really condenses you. And for me, that's the part where it gets really scary. It's like, oh, wow, I'm. I am, I am really in it, you know, and on, on the experiencing emotions that you don't want to experience, it can feel the same way.

Michael Barr [00:56:17]:
It could feel very, very heavy. It could feel very, very like, I don't know how heavier it's going to get because this, it just gradually gets heavier and heavier and heavier. But then once you shoot through that bottom part where you start to go up the next hill, you find yourself immediately pendulum, you know, floating into this moment where you're now light into your body and it feels really expansive, you know, so. And there are twists and turns on the roller coaster that are unexpected and you signed up for it, you know, and you're along for the ride. And by the time you get past a couple of big dips and turns and loops, you're like, you're really in it. You've accepted that, okay, this is, this is about the experience. It's not going to get any scarier. You become acclimated to it.

Michael Barr [00:57:04]:
By the time you get to the train depot where it pulls in and you do that giant last minute stop and you stop and you're like, oh, that was awesome. Let's do it again, you know, and, and the same, the same thing can be added is, okay, now you're doing this with people. We're all on the ride together. Maybe we're all on our own ride, you know, and we see each other ride and then we kind of give ourselves that little nod across the park and be like, all right, cool, you got this. Collectively, we're, we're in it. So, yeah, does that, does that. How wacky was that?

Vision Battlesword [00:57:34]:
I love that. That's so good. Yeah. The roller coaster analogy, I mean, we've used the roller coaster analogy a fair amount, I think, in our circles. But the way you just mapped the stages of the breakthrough journey to those points, it's like, so. It's so perfect. Yeah, it's a great. That's a great metaphor.

Vision Battlesword [00:57:54]:
There have been some times when someone has. Has said to me, yeah, I'm coming to an experience, and I'm really hoping for a breakthrough, or I'm really seeking a breakthrough. And a question that I like to ask when I hear that is, what do you think is on the other side? Like, what are you trying to break through to? Where you. Where are you trying to get to? And I'm often sort of amused by the reaction that I get to that, which is that people haven't actually considered that yet. Like, no, they. Wait, where am I trying to. What am I trying to break through to? Or where.

Michael Barr [00:58:37]:
You know, they just want to get. They just want to get out of town.

Vision Battlesword [00:58:39]:
Yeah.

Michael Barr [00:58:40]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:58:42]:
That's interesting, huh?

Michael Barr [00:58:43]:
I've definitely been in that. And, you know, that's in that expectation game too. Like, what are you expecting? Yeah. And then could the expectation be helpful? Could it be hurtful? You know, lots to unpack there? Yeah. I found myself in those moments just wanting to get out of town. Like, I just don't want to be in this state of being. I don't want to feel like I'm feeling. And it feels like this would be a good step forward, you know, just trusting myself that this is a good way through it, not around it.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:21]:
Yeah. There's an interesting parallel between personal development, let's say psychedelic or spiritual exploration, you know, consciousness development of different types and awareness and sort of drug addiction in a way, or any. Any form of escapism. Because to your point, when you say. When I say, well, where are you trying to break through to? And people haven't really even considered that yet. And then you say, well, they're just trying to get out of town. And. And I've been in that place too, where I just.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:58]:
Like, whatever else is out there would have to be preferable to this, whatever you write. But that. But that's a way of saying, I'm trying to escape from my current state or my state of being. And I think. I think that can. That's a. There's a fork in that road, right? When. When it's, you know, like, we have to be mindful of our intentions, of when we're seeking an experience, when we're seeking a breakthrough.

Vision Battlesword [01:00:25]:
Is. Are you trying to break through into something new and different, and sustainable, or are you just trying to break through into anything that's not this? Even if it turns out to be. I don't know, worse. Does that make sense?

Michael Barr [01:00:45]:
Yeah, it totally does. I go to the place where, as you're talking, I'm. I'm going back to some of my intentions along the way. And I think I've been on. I've been in both camps and I've found usefulness in both because sometimes it's like I don't know where I want to go. I don't really know who I am. That's why I'm here, to go discover. And I think what happens just naturally unfolds with that intention of I don't want to be here.

Michael Barr [01:01:17]:
And it's been interesting to challenge those intentions. It's like I like to have a positive intention rather than. I don't want to feel like this. I want to feel this way. But I think early on in my journey, I didn't even know what was on the buffet of options to choose from to know where I could go.

Vision Battlesword [01:01:37]:
Yeah, that's where exploration for the sake of. Just for the sake of curiosity, for the sake of expanding your scope of possibility can be helpful. And then you may find a breakthrough along the way.

Michael Barr [01:01:51]:
You may.

Vision Battlesword [01:01:53]:
Well, this was your topic and so I just want to give you some space to expand it or to say whatever was on your mind, whatever is on your mind about the whole idea of breakthrough. Breakthroughs, you know, your personal experience with breakthroughs. We've covered a lot of ground on, on your personal experience, I think. But is there just anything else that you wanted to explore with me while you have me on the line or expand in the thoughts that you've been having on this topic?

Michael Barr [01:02:22]:
Yeah, something that I've been curious about and maybe we can, we can tap into this is where is the ego's role in the identity, in the breakthrough process play out for you? You know, that's something I've been playing around with this. The ego's. Where does the ego fit within the breakthrough?

Vision Battlesword [01:02:45]:
Wow. It's a great question. I love it. How much time do you have? This is a great one.

Michael Barr [01:02:52]:
Yeah. Well, good.

Vision Battlesword [01:02:54]:
Yeah, I've got. I've got my thoughts on that. Yeah. This is a great. To me, this whole topic of the ego and its role and like how we. How we should think about it or what relationship maybe we. I should say we should have with it or do I say it or do I say me or do I say I or like what, you know, what are we talking about here? I think it's really interesting because I hear a lot of disparagement of the ego in this whole world of spirituality and consciousness and psychedelics, as if it's something that we are trying to kill. Like we're pursuing this idea of having an ego death.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:41]:
And yeah, it can be really scary and maybe even traumatic, but it's like what we're seeking. It's. That's the kind of breakthrough that we want to have or that we should want to have. I'm just paraphrasing things that I've heard people say. I'm not saying that I believe this, and I'm very skeptical of that. I'm very skeptical of that whole concept of like, taking some kind of a fundamental part of ourself and declaring it the problem and wrong and broken and something that we should try to eradicate or stamp out or put in its place or something. I don't even know what. But to me, you know, I've started to look into some of the fundamental psychology that comes from the work of Carl Jung and especially like his sort of breakdown diagram of the human psyche and, you know, the subconscious parts, the animus and the anima and the ego and the collective unconscious versus the personal unconscious and all these different things.

Vision Battlesword [01:04:48]:
So to me, that kind of a model makes sense in how I subjectively experience my own psychology and how I experience my own consciousness that I can sort of sense and detect that I have these kind of different discrete components of, let's say, my mental universe or something that are independent in certain ways, but they're giving rise to this collective experience emergently. And that the ego is one of those parts and that the ego is, you know, or we call it like that thing I'm open to attaching the label ego to.

Michael Barr [01:05:31]:
Sure.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:32]:
And that makes sense to me.

Michael Barr [01:05:33]:
Yes.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:34]:
That it's super, super useful piece of tech that we've been gifted through evolution and can also, like, kind of get out of hand as well. Yeah, that I'll just. That I said a lot. So I'll just call that a starting point and put it back to you and say, what do you think about it?

Michael Barr [01:05:52]:
Yeah, it has been something that I've been playing with. And I also find the usefulness of the ego and for my own personal experience and journey with that is freeing up the safety to find expression of self and authenticity and true self. You know, and it's almost like a kind of like more of like a blossoming of sorts. Right. If we go to nature there. I'm reading this book by Eckhart Tolle. It's called A New Earth. And one of the lines that he, that, that he said that really stuck out to me was awareness and the ego are incompatible.

Michael Barr [01:06:36]:
And it's just, it's been one of those heavy chewer thoughts that, that really resonated with me, but I'm not quite sure why it did. But I don't often want to put the label of the ego as the bad guy here. But like I said, there is a check and balance. Like you said that there is a balance and a healthy interplay between being in the present moment. Because I think if the ego can get out of check in a way where it's in the driver's seat more than the sum of all the other parts, then that the present moment's hard to find.

Vision Battlesword [01:07:15]:
I think sometimes we can get bogged down in semantics and, you know, definitions and terminology, you know, so like when Eckhart Tolle or Tolle says the aware awareness and the ego are incompatible, I would love to define those terms more clearly and it's quite possible that I would agree. But I'm not sure if what I mean by awareness is necessarily what Eckhart Tolle is referring to as awareness when he makes that statement. Or ego for that matter. But like, well, how about we start there real quick if you're open to it. Like, what does the ego even mean to you? What, what is, what do you, what concept do you attach that label to?

Michael Barr [01:08:00]:
Yeah, the, the ego. And this is, this is where I might be a little out of my experience right now, but what I'm playing with right now is as I do believe that the ego is a part, it's a part of me. I don't know if I would define myself or my identity as the ego. Yeah, this is really tricky. I don't really have a ready made answer that feels like it would, it would fit right now. Yeah, maybe we put a bookmark in this one and follow up.

Vision Battlesword [01:08:35]:
We can. Or I mean I'm, I'm like happy to explore it a little bit more right now. You know, I think that we use the word ego. So there's a derogatory way that we use the word ego to refer to someone who has a like an inflated sense of self importance. Does that make sense? So like, yeah, that's what we really mean when we say so and so. Oh, that guy's got a big ego or you know, she's kind of like an egomaniac or whatever. What we're really saying is that person thinks very highly of themselves and has a sense of self importance that's diminishing their capability for empathy or compassion or paying attention to other people. But then I think there's like a concept of the ego in a psychological sense which might refer to a number of different things.

Vision Battlesword [01:09:32]:
On the one hand, I think it might refer to in like maybe Jungian psychology, it might actually refer to a sort of analytical capability for executive function. Sort of like a real time perceptual processing system that is typically disconnected from emotion perhaps or sensation. And it's sort of like a analytical engine that operates in our consciousness. It's the center of our reason, maybe, or the center of our rational function of thought. But then I think there's also another sense in which we use the word ego to refer to our internal narrator. Kind of like our, our inner, our inner monologue that, like Chatty Patty or Chatty Cathy or whatever that just never shuts up. And it's like this language processing thing, this language processing function that just sits there and kind of tells us continuously the story of what's happening in the world. And maybe there's other things, I don't know.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:46]:
But I think normally when we are talking about the ego in a spiritual or a psychological sense, we're sort of drawing a distinction between that some sort of language based information processing, decision making, possibly self narrating, structure versus the witness. That that thing that maybe some people will call a capital S self or the true self, that thing that seems to not require language to function or even to think, but is capable of a pure form of witnessing, observation, sensation and experience of the real time moment. That when we go into certain states of meditation or peak experiences or psychedelic states, that other process gets sort of muted or turned off. And then this, this thing that we call the witness can come to the foreground and come online. And for some reason we tend to notice that that feels really good when that happens to me. One's not superior to the other. They're both just parts of our whole self. That's the way I look at it.

Vision Battlesword [01:12:08]:
What do you think about that? Just kind of deconstruction of the concept of the ego. Is that helpful to get our arms around what it is we're talking about?

Michael Barr [01:12:16]:
Yeah, I like the interconnectivity between the analytical and the more of the processor type of, of thinking and the connection point between there's an observer like some sort of. It's got, it has a perspective that's not necessarily tied to the, the label maker. The, the, the, the. The. The part that wants to make sense of everything and have everything figured out. You know, the one that wants to control. There seems to be a little more of allowance on the other side of the house versus the, the ego. You know, especially from my perspective early on with the safety aspect where I needed to control my environments, you know, and the, the ego did a good job of creating hypersensitivity with hearing and vision to, to accommodate for that.

Michael Barr [01:13:09]:
You know, it's like maladaptive in some ways, but, you know, because those, those systems and processes are not sustainable to like, you know, for me to constantly be on edge and be thinking, you know, feeling like I'm under attack. Whereas, you know, that other space where we can observe without the labels and the judgments and the opinions of the mind, there is a really beautiful connection point between those two. And I think if we didn't have that, it would be really challenging. And I think for a lot of my life I only knew of my ego and that was who I was and my identity was rooted in that and that I fell in that trap.

Vision Battlesword [01:13:54]:
Yeah, I think that's a really key insight, which is how do we define our identity? And I think in western civilization we are taught from a very early age that our ego is our identity and that these other parts of ourself, these non analytical, non rational, non verbal parts are either not real or they're like figments of our imagination, or that they are lesser. Like in a Freudian sense. You know, that's our id, which is kind of carries this connotation of a primal, primitive animal, unsafe, hedonistic, destructive. You know, these, these, this idea that like almost like a horse and rider analogy, that the ego is the, the rider, the intelligent one that can guide and steer and you know, set the course and decide, you know, where to go and keep the animal under control. Because without that rider it would just be as wild beast. We would just be beasts. You know, I think that's like kind of how this, this caricature cartoon of how we think of the non ego parts of ourself or how we're taught to do that in this culture. And I think that's part of what we're going, that's part of the breakthrough that we are collectively going through actually now is rediscovering all of these other types of experience that we can have and ways that we can perceive and ways that we can sense and feel that come from other parts of our psyche that have in some cases been maybe suppressed and in some cases been underdeveloped and in some cases just been undiscovered.

Michael Barr [01:15:51]:
That is Such a beautiful way to tie it back into the topic. And I knew there was a thread to pull back, and that's exactly. That fits so well for me. And, and the way you articulated it really provided more clarity. I love the wild beast part. That is such a, such a great framework for it because it's. Yeah, it's like learning how to ride right now in a really beautiful way. Breaking through into the unknown and experiencing something that is transcendent beyond my wildest dreams.

Michael Barr [01:16:25]:
And now it's like, okay, how do you ride here? How do you hit the ground? How do you land? How do you turn left? How do you go right? How do you flow? How do you allow the ego the space that it needs to be helpful but also not need to control? It feels like my ego has wanted to manage the expectations and do all sorts of stuff to be able to give it a new job or, hey, you got a new partner or teammate here that, you know, you play with now. And it's been really helpful. I love the way you frame that. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Vision Battlesword [01:17:07]:
Yeah. And I like it too. I like how our little, you know, co creation here, this exploration, has brought it back to the concept of the breakthrough. And now I think I'm prepared at least to try and offer an answer to your question, which as I recall was, what do I think the role is of the ego in these breakdown experiences? And so using that. Let's just keep on the horse and rider analogy. Let's go as if those are the only two parts which we, we both agree this is a massive oversimplification of the human consciousness. But let's just say that, you know, we've got these two parts and we can call them the conscious and the unconscious or, you know, the horse and the rider or whatever, whatever we want to say. If we say the ego is the rider, I guess first and foremost, my frame that I would put on this is one's not better than the other.

Vision Battlesword [01:18:00]:
So the rider's not superior to the horse, you know, just because it's just in the saddle. But the horse is not superior to the rider just because, you know, it's bigger and stronger and provides the motive energy. Let's say that the two are a team. That's my frame. That's the frame I put on it. But they're a team where at least for people who have been subjected to a certain kind of conditioning, like I would say those of us in this kind of western civilization, Western culture, and other cultures as well, you know, which have their own different types of conditioning. But we've been subjected to this kind of conditioning that does in fact glorify the rider, let's say, and does in fact subjugate the animal. And you know, that that animal has been kind of like abused in a certain way.

Vision Battlesword [01:18:54]:
And that animal has been, you know, made to do things and go places and not really been treated as a legitimate part of the team or even, you know, had had its, its preferences considered or its intuition acknowledged in terms of the contribution that it could make in making decisions of where we might go or how fast and so forth. So in the concept of a breakthrough or in a peak experience or maybe in a ceremony setting, I think this brings us full circle also back to the concept of the breakdown and this idea, quote unquote, as we call it, the ego death experience. And I think that there's like kind of we could do this the easy way or the hard way is the way I look at it a little bit. So like on the one hand, when we go into a peak experience, whether it's through somatic releasing or psychedelics or therapy or meditation or many different ways, we're empowering the horse. We're, we're, we're spooking the horse. Sometimes we're, or we're encouraging it to become its own, you know, have its own force. And so maybe it throws the rider off and we call that an ego death or we call that a breakdown. That's like the sort of the dramatic slash traumatic way of disconnecting the horse and rider team so that we can actually see what the horse see, that the horse is an independent entity that has, it has its own experience, its own personality and, and actually be able to get in touch with that.

Vision Battlesword [01:20:28]:
But it's probably not going to feel so great, you know, when the rider gets literally kicked off and thrown to the ground violently. Or we can go into that experience with a certain amount of intention, with a certain amount of consciousness, maybe having done a certain amount of preparation or personal development to get to a point where we can actually ask that rider to step off for a little while. Why don't we go ahead and dismount and let's see what this feels like as to different things, as to independent entities. Or maybe we can hold the ego and all of its capabilities and specific way of perceiving the world and we can hold a witness of pure awareness and intuition and non verbal consciousness and see what that's like. Maybe we can even ask the ego, the rider to go take a break, go Go for a walk, you know, or maybe we could go for a walk just with the ego. So that's kind of the way I think I would bring that analogy back to the breakthrough and breakdown conversation is I think it's about making friends with all of these parts. I think it's about not judging parts of ourselves as wrong or bad or the part that should be eliminated, but rather making friends with all of them and saying. Getting curious and saying, like, well, what it.

Vision Battlesword [01:21:59]:
What are you. Like, ego. What do you. What do you want? What do you have to share? What do you have to tell me? And how do you feel about taking a break for the next, you know, six hours and, you know, letting the horse, you know, go play in the field and run as fast as it wants and see what that's like. What do you think about on that?

Michael Barr [01:22:21]:
Yeah, I love the connection there. And you said something about curiosity that really sparked something for me, that the curiosity is a great way to be friendly to all those parts. The observer gets to go explore. Now, there's nothing wrong with being curious. You know, we're just exploring. You know, if. If. If we were judging or making.

Michael Barr [01:22:50]:
Making assertments on certain things and calling it the ego, like, this is how it is and this is how it's always going to be, then it's probably going to stay stuck. But giving. Giving that space for curiosity. Now, now the ego didn't. My ego in those moments needed to defend itself and feel like it needed to fight for its safety and space. And. And the curiosity was like a little cheat code around it. It was like, I didn't see that coming.

Michael Barr [01:23:18]:
So permission to be curious was a huge step for me. I didn't even know I can give myself permission. And so now that I do have permission, oh, man, I love great questions, and I can ask myself those. And I could start to find the balance between the rider and the horse, because sometimes it gets real beastly and sometimes it gets real controlly, you know, and. And it's like, wouldn't it be nice to just kind of flow?

Vision Battlesword [01:23:45]:
Yeah, yeah. I love that phrase, that curiosity is the cheat code, or curiosity is like the universal unlock. I think that is so true. I mean, for so many different situations, so many. Like you're having relationship tension with somebody, hey, try getting curious, you know, about their experience or what's true for them or what's true for yourself. And I say this many times in containers that I'm facilitating or with people I'm trying to help. You know, hey, if you're having a disappointing experience. Here's a good tip.

Vision Battlesword [01:24:19]:
Try getting curious about it and see what, see what that's like and more than likely your experience will change in some way. Or if you're having an experience that's overwhelming, try getting curious and see what it's like. And more than likely your experience will change. It's really magical that way.

Michael Barr [01:24:40]:
That is the traction point for me and my journey. It's been like when somebody told me to be curious, I got like, what? No, I'm not doing that. It felt offensive, but then at some point it shifted and it just became really useful. And I could see that usefulness now. And it's like the moment in the Temple of Doom where Indiana Jones is running through all the traps and those traps represent safety and peril and gotta go find the idol. And then once you get to the idol, you swap it out for just a weight, you know, and it's like when we, when we get to those, those observer moments where we're looking into those deep shadow parts of ourselves and we've got to make the swap for something or we, we can see it and, and, you know, basically what do we want to put in its place? And I think that's where the, the curiosity can now start to be the creator, can start to be the dreamer, can be the, the one that, that, that finds that, like, childlike play, you know, that, that full expression of freedom and that, that seems pretty, pretty magical.

Vision Battlesword [01:25:59]:
Yeah, that is so true. Wow. What another great analogy. We've, we've created some, some useful frameworks here, I think. I, I feel like I personally have had a breakthrough in this conversation.

Michael Barr [01:26:11]:
I love it.

Vision Battlesword [01:26:12]:
It's been amazing. Is there anything else that's on your mind or feels important that you want to make sure that we add on to what we've talked about here?

Michael Barr [01:26:20]:
Yeah, it feels complete to me. It feels like we can put a bow on it and continue because I know I've got a commute home and I'm going to be playing with a lot of these new little nuggets. So to me, that's a fun part of this chat and conversation is it's just brought me to more places to get curious and go explore. So I really greatly appreciate you and what you're doing here and the messages that you're pumping out to the community. Thank you for all of that.

Vision Battlesword [01:26:53]:
Thank you, Michael. Yeah, this is really nice and I'm glad we finally did it. And I look forward to round two. Whenever you're ready, let me know absolutely love it.

Michael Barr [01:27:03]:
Thank you, brother.

Vision Battlesword [01:27:03]:
All right, brother. Have a great day.

Michael Barr [01:27:05]:
You too.