Vision Battlesword [00:00:00]:
Hey, Jackson, how are you doing?

Jackson Sullivan [00:00:03]:
When I hear that question, what I usually think someone's asking me is, how are you feeling? Or what are you feeling? More specifically is what I think is being asked. We clarified the topic of this conversation and I'm feeling very excited. I'm feeling excited and eagerness and I feel actually like a happiness. I feel happiness knowing we're about to talk about this.

Vision Battlesword [00:00:24]:
Me too.

Jackson Sullivan [00:00:25]:
Pretty cool.

Vision Battlesword [00:00:26]:
Who are you? Jackson Sullivan.

Jackson Sullivan [00:00:30]:
I noticed I was going into like an intellectual mind to answer this question, but the most honest answer that feels true to me is, I do not know the answer to your question.

Vision Battlesword [00:00:40]:
Nice.

Jackson Sullivan [00:00:41]:
So if I'm gonna be honest, I'm starting to learn when I'm talking in life or when I'm thinking the difference between a resonant or a Dys resonant thought or like a striving energy versus just like an act. Like a relaxed energy. And my most relaxed, like, coherent answer is, I actually don't have an answer for you right now.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:01]:
I ask this particular question in that specific way because I really like the answers that I get. I find them to be very interesting and different than our scripted.

Jackson Sullivan [00:01:16]:
Yeah, I like that.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:17]:
And I also have a backup question, which is, what would you like for me to know about you?

Jackson Sullivan [00:01:22]:
It's interesting what's coming through feels very sincere. And I notice it feels vulnerable and a little scary to share with the recorder, with the people listening in with you. But I think I would like for you to know and for everyone to know that my deepest heart's intent is pure. And by pure I mean is coming from a place that I would consider to be extremely loving and like, extremely of a desire for heaven on earth, for everybody. And I think I'd want that to be known.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:52]:
Well, yeah.

Jackson Sullivan [00:01:53]:
About me.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:54]:
Let it be known.

Jackson Sullivan [00:01:55]:
Great. It is known.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:57]:
Yeah, I like that question because I sense that it builds intimacy. And you sense that immediately as well. Like, wow, that's a really vulnerable question. What would I like you to know about me?

Jackson Sullivan [00:02:09]:
Well, that's so specific, actually.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:10]:
Invitation to really like, know someone. To actually get to know someone. Instead of these superficial, perfunctory, scripted responses that we may exchange at parties or in casual social settings or something. But I would like for you to know that I share your sincerity, your purity of intention. And for me, I'm really trying, you know, I'm really trying my best to be good and to do good and to make the world a better place. That's what's important for me. To me, for you to know that's so powerful.

Jackson Sullivan [00:02:53]:
Thank you. I want you to know that I want to help the world. That's a desire that you have. Speaking of desire, it's really cool.

Vision Battlesword [00:03:01]:
This conversation is so us.

Jackson Sullivan [00:03:03]:
I know already.

Vision Battlesword [00:03:05]:
Well, I am Vision Battlesword. You are Jackson Sullivan. This is Sacred Conversations, and we are here to talk about support, which is the topic you brought up because it's very near and dear to your heart. It's on your heart right now, and it's extremely important to me as well, because it's one of our most core important values within the Sacred Light Community.

Jackson Sullivan [00:03:31]:
Oh.

Vision Battlesword [00:03:32]:
And it's also, I think, it's a really critical topic for us to engage with as a species, literally, at this kind of turning point. So I'm really happy that you brought it up, and I'm really excited to get into it with you.

Jackson Sullivan [00:03:49]:
Me, too.

Vision Battlesword [00:03:50]:
Would you like to begin?

Jackson Sullivan [00:03:51]:
I could give maybe a little bit of the short history of how this topic is alive.

Vision Battlesword [00:03:56]:
Go for it.

Jackson Sullivan [00:03:56]:
Because I noticed something right when we started recording is that I noticed that at first there was a part of me that wanted to keep it very philosophical or theoretical or professional and not go into my personal story, ever support. But then I was hit pretty quickly with, like, this will be so much more impactful to actually be personal about why this is near and dear to my heart. And this is so beautiful because I actually, in this moment, because there's so many people in this community that will hear this, that I've actually wondered, where is Jackson? So this feels, like, very personal right now. I think there's people who listen to this who, like, know me, who have wondered these things. And this, I want you to know, I'm realizing right now that this sacred conversations I'm seeing is so much more than a podcast. This is like a community conversation.

Vision Battlesword [00:04:39]:
That's exactly right.

Jackson Sullivan [00:04:39]:
It's very personal, and I'm really precisely.

Vision Battlesword [00:04:42]:
What this is like.

Jackson Sullivan [00:04:42]:
I'm realizing there's people in the community. I actually would like to hear this. And it's really. Thank you for the opportunity, actually. Yeah, it's really cool. And you're helping me see, like, at first, I was kind of like, oh, it's interesting. Like, is it podcasts? Is it conversation? I'm like, oh, this is like public broadcast conversation to a community. It's so beautiful.

Vision Battlesword [00:05:00]:
Yes. Well, it's the community having a conversation with itself. That's what this is about.

Jackson Sullivan [00:05:05]:
Real things.

Vision Battlesword [00:05:06]:
Yeah, that's what this is. Yeah.

Jackson Sullivan [00:05:08]:
And. But whenever I completely no longer paid rent on the house and my landlord's asked me to move out naturally. And I just had this hit of I need to like go and get my shit together, whatever that has to happen. And then for some reason I thought Guatemala is where I need to go. And I went and isolated myself for four months outside of the country because it was all important. But I'm like looking back at, like I went and then from Guatemala I had whatever healing is needed to happen there, went to Thailand, had whatever healing is needed to happen there. Ended up in England, whatever happened there. And I've come back feeling very different in terms of my state of being.

Vision Battlesword [00:05:53]:
You look different.

Jackson Sullivan [00:05:54]:
I know.

Vision Battlesword [00:05:54]:
You look like a young Simon Posford. A young, long-haired Simon Posford.

Jackson Sullivan [00:05:59]:
That's funny. And I went to Guatemala and for two months I was often just in complete and utter terror because there'd be some times where I'd have like $10 left in the bank. I wouldn't eat for a couple days and then I would get this next payment from one of my clients. Then I got the call to go to Thailand, which I thought was a little wild because the plane ticket was going to be there wasn't much money left, but I knew it was much cheaper than Guatemala. You can get a bullet pad tie for fifty cents and stay in hostels for $3. Compared to Guatemala, it's like dollar ten to dollar twelve for a hostel versus a couple dollars for a meal. It actually adds up when you're at those numbers. I went to Thailand and I had this deep, resolute decision that I was just like, I would no longer act from a place that is not peace.

Jackson Sullivan [00:06:51]:
And I felt so deep, I felt a deep decision that I would rather, on paper, let the car payment get bad, let it get repossessed and all this stuff than continue living in the hamster wheel because I had this deep inner knowing at the deepest level, it will be okay. So many parts of me were freaking out and I was like doing intentional healing work every single day as my bank account just continued to drop. And I wasn't trying to sell clients, but I just couldn't bring myself anymore to do it. And it felt like, I think honestly, in the traditional psychology they would probably say I was in a clinically depressed state. I was finding it nearly impossible to access motivation to take action. And I think that that state of being is something that I want to start to promote societal compassion for as not being just lazy or like, irresponsible.

Vision Battlesword [00:07:44]:
Did it ever occur to you that being in a state of difficulty, accessing motivation to do certain things could reveal a lack of actual desire.

Jackson Sullivan [00:07:58]:
That is what I started to fully uncover deep down. When I got into transformational work. The core original motivation was, oh, I need to make money so I can create the gift events. That was always what it was about.

Vision Battlesword [00:08:13]:
This is about to reveal what we've been talking about with money. I can see that.

Jackson Sullivan [00:08:16]:
Yeah, it literally was never. It was always like, I had this illusion that people aren't even gonna pay for the events or all this stuff, so I have to do this other thing. So I can't build a successful events company. Cause I didn't realize that's on the table as an option. And somewhere I got in that illusion, and I always had this story that, oh, the resistance to building a successful coaching company basically is just some part of me that's resisting, that needs to heal a trauma, when actually, maybe it was a part of me being like, this isn't aligned for you.

Vision Battlesword [00:08:49]:
I don't actually want to do this.

Jackson Sullivan [00:08:50]:
This is not my divine alignment. Or maybe it's not the divine alignment in this way, because I do have this gift of facilitation that's very powerful, that I really actually love, but not if I'm not doing the other thing. And so while I'm there in Thailand, it was like I was. Had this experience where every single day. So I've never used cannabis most of my life really did not resonate with it. But in Thailand, in Southeast Asia, it's, like, sacred in a lot of circles. And so I opened my heart and my mind to it after, like, seven years of not touching it through the use of edibles and after my, like, certain ceremonies of other substances, I've considered treating things like they have a consciousness. And so I interfaced with this like I had a consciousness, and it felt that it told me, or had the experience of being told, you are to do high dose edibles every single day for 30 days while you're here.

Jackson Sullivan [00:09:44]:
And that's exactly what I did.

Vision Battlesword [00:09:46]:
The weed told you to eat it, whatever it was.

Jackson Sullivan [00:09:50]:
And there were times where I was like, is this addictive? Is this? But I was just like, I'm going to do it for the 30 days. That was the thing. And being in high dose edible land for 30 days straight in a foreign country when you have no money is a very unique and interesting experience. And I started to get me down to, like, some of the. Because what that did is it was a constant surfacing of the money anxiety. And my resolution was basically, like, I concluded that healing this money anxiety is is now my prerequisite before I go and try to make money, because that's the hamster wheel. If I'm trying to make money from this fear instead of, I will find peace and then I will produce money. That was my decision.

Jackson Sullivan [00:10:28]:
And it eventually went so deep that, of course, it was about survival. And there were parts of me that were absolutely terrified of, like, dying, of being homeless, or even of, like, the future of the world and all of the stories of disaster and catastrophic annihilation of humanity that I had disassociated from because I was like, no, I'm a spiritual, positive thinking person who doesn't focus on those things. But my somatic nervous system, there was a part, like, an inner child that was terrified of nuclear annihilation, that was terrified of all of the things. And for days, I was just somatically focused on just feeling the feelings. And then it was like, after 30 days of this, I mean, there were some days where the whole day would just be me holding space for just, like, the feeling of terror, of annihilation, even spiritual going into, like, aliens gonna get me, the demons, the dark forces, all of it is gonna just. All these fears. And then toward the end of Thailand, it was two days before I left. I was in this cannabis lounge, and they were playing music, and they were playing music from the sixties and seventies and eighties.

Jackson Sullivan [00:11:31]:
Bob Marley, the Beatles, like the classics, and something like, hit me while I got reprogrammed by this music, because there was certain songs that were so positive and optimistic. There's a knocking on Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan was the big one. That kind of shifted everything because I'm sitting there in my terror of death, and these people were in the cold War being told every day to be terrified of nuclear annihilation, and yet were still singing songs of beauty about the idea of dying. Like, knocking on Heaven's door is a song about, I'm knocking on heaven's door, I'm about to die. And I just was so impressed that what level of, like, healed or nervous system chill or whatever you want to call it, does someone have to be at to be surrounded by people losing their minds and still be calm enough to make music and, like, create music that's not only positive, but is still being listened to, like, 50, 60 years later? And something about it just completely wiped clean a lot of my fear.

Vision Battlesword [00:12:33]:
Wow. Yeah, that's fascinating. I just want to presence that. Cannabis is a really powerful amplifier of music, or, let's say, musical appreciation. And also, it seems to me, creates a particular type of psychedelic state where you can make meaning from things. I can put myself in that position and see how being with that plant medicine in that environment and then receiving that specific music from that time period, totally, particularly in the state you are in, would be just the right place to fully appreciate that music, which is really interesting.

Jackson Sullivan [00:13:18]:
Totally. And it also made me fully appreciate a realization that one of my deepest desires is to make music of that caliber and beyond that is listened to 50 years from now and full ownership, that that's what I want to do. And then there's like a deep recognition of that that I accepted in that moment that I was like, oh, this is what I'm gonna do. And so I was reconnecting with that and sort of like the archetype of an artist.

Vision Battlesword [00:13:42]:
That's such a. But that's such a quintessential artist's experience, especially from a perspective of, you think of some of the rock and rollers from the sixties.

Jackson Sullivan [00:13:52]:
That's what I'm talking about.

Vision Battlesword [00:13:52]:
Like the Beatles, the doors, others who make that journey east at some point.

Jackson Sullivan [00:13:58]:
It's literally like a common thing.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:00]:
It's almost like a rite of passage. Totally. Make your pilgrimage to the east, bring.

Jackson Sullivan [00:14:06]:
Back the wisdom through sound.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:08]:
Also, you kind of make a pilgrimage through poverty. I think a lot of times it.

Jackson Sullivan [00:14:13]:
Seems that many of them do.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:14]:
And suffering a lot of times. I mean, you just look at where I. Some of the world's greatest art of all types, whether it's music, visual art, performance, literature, those three things. Sort of exposure to new environments, new ideas, particularly spiritual, spiritual places, concepts and environments. Poverty going into scarcity and facing that kind of existential fully. Yeah, you know, the existential triggers and demons, if you will. And then, you know, different. Different forms of suffering.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:59]:
You know, it could be. Could be loss, it could be, you know, could be related to love, betrayal, actual, you know, physical danger. But yeah, there's something quintessentially about the artist's journey in all of that, it seems to me.

Jackson Sullivan [00:15:14]:
Thank you. And that really helped me again. That's where I was able to appreciate these artists so much, because I also have, what I've learned about emotions now is that I feel that every emotion is a form of either desire or gratitude. And so, like, anger is a very strong, amplified desire for a change to happen. Fear is the same thing. You can always connect it back to a positive desire. Every emotion comes back to a positive, affirmative desire for safety or whatever it is, every single one of them. Or gratitude, where it's like happiness, love, peace.

Jackson Sullivan [00:15:51]:
It's like the emotional system is this mechanism for the attainment and the recognition of the fulfillment of desire.

Vision Battlesword [00:15:57]:
Wow, that's really interesting.

Jackson Sullivan [00:15:58]:
It's really all of them. You can't find one that doesn't fit into this matrix.

Vision Battlesword [00:16:02]:
That's a really cool framework. I've never encountered that before. And if you boil it down even further, what you really get to is either acceptance or denial of reality. The current state of affairs is either currently satisfying or dissatisfying. Well, is that right?

Jackson Sullivan [00:16:23]:
Sort of. I actually want to clarify. Cause I think that's often where we go, but I actually don't see desire as requiring a dissatisfaction.

Vision Battlesword [00:16:30]:
I see.

Jackson Sullivan [00:16:31]:
I think that's actually one of the most important awakenings that we can have, is that I think you can absolutely be in a state of contentment and still recognize the next desire. Right. Like you think we all have had those moments where we're quote unquote in our power. It's like I am so relaxed, and I feel a desire to go record a podcast. I love, it's okay if I don't record it, everything is fine. But what true contentment means is I accept all of reality, including my desire to change reality.

Vision Battlesword [00:17:03]:
Yeah, yeah, right.

Jackson Sullivan [00:17:04]:
That's part of the whole thing.

Vision Battlesword [00:17:06]:
I love that. I love that reframe, actually. And I'm glad. I'm glad I pushed on that and that you pushed back as well, because I think that gets us to an even better place where now going back into the realm of emotions from that perspective of it being totally possible to be in a state of acceptance of present moment reality, and yet also continue to have a motivation to evolve and interact with that reality, mixing our intentions with it to create something new. Bring that back now to anger, fear, shame, guilt, all of that sadness, pain. Let's just call them what are usually considered to be, and this isn't my frame of reference, but with the way people call them, the negative, quote unquote.

Jackson Sullivan [00:17:56]:
Calls them pain, which I actually think is a nice way.

Vision Battlesword [00:17:58]:
All forms of pain, okay, but the point is, to me, it seems like there's five pretty discrete emotional states there, but in each of those states, we can adopt a different way of looking at that. Instead of saying, this is an expression of a dissatisfaction with the state of reality and a desire to change it because it's uncomfortable or it's not something that we're enjoying, or looking at it even from maybe a more rudimentary perspective of these are bad and this is good, but we could probably reach a place of just, let's take guilt as an example, or anger. But we could get to a place where we say something along the lines of, this is the state of affairs of now, which I accept within this context. Let's call it guilt within this context, I judge that I have done something that I would like to do differently in the future.

Jackson Sullivan [00:19:06]:
If you can fast track to that. The guilt dissolves. That's what I've been learning. If I can identify the desire behind the quote unquote negative emotion, very quickly the emotion will dissolve and it just becomes desire. And that feels very nice. Wow. I desire to act differently in the future. And even communicating that I've learned is powerful.

Jackson Sullivan [00:19:24]:
Like, people, when they expect an apology, for example, or whatever, I've noticed people are satisfied once they know that you have a desire to act differently in the future. And that's. I think that's what they're looking for when they want to know, are you feeling bad about this? It's like their subconscious is trying to identify, like, do you desire to. To act in a way that is alignment with my values in the future?

Vision Battlesword [00:19:46]:
Right.

Jackson Sullivan [00:19:47]:
And so it's. So I bring this up because sitting there in that terror, right. I had the awareness of, well, this ultimately is a desire for a beautiful world, for a safe world, actually, at the core is there's a desire for safety, and that's what the fear is.

Vision Battlesword [00:20:06]:
This is really profound.

Jackson Sullivan [00:20:08]:
It's really cool.

Vision Battlesword [00:20:09]:
You know, this is. This is a really super. I feel like this is an evolution. Ultimately, you're making a contribution right now to the evolution of the sacred light philosophy overall in a really, really profound one, because I'll go at the core. I just want to speak one more time to desire. At the core of the sacred light philosophy is desire. That is correct. That is ultimately what it all comes back to.

Vision Battlesword [00:20:40]:
That's the. The hack that we discovered, ultimately, is that that desire is actually the source of our power. That's where it all originates.

Jackson Sullivan [00:20:48]:
That's what I believe as well.

Vision Battlesword [00:20:50]:
But to some people think it's like.

Jackson Sullivan [00:20:51]:
The power of God. Like, you don't even know where it comes from. It's just there. And it's this gift of movement that you're just like, I want it.

Vision Battlesword [00:20:59]:
That makes sense to me that it is actually the power of God, literally. Like, that's precisely what it is. But to bring that and integrate that into the system of thinking of how we relate with our emotions is new.

Jackson Sullivan [00:21:15]:
Oh, I want to give another layer of it, which is, I'm starting to see it as this whole emotional system is a mechanism for the fulfillment and attainment of desire, explicitly. And then it's actually very powerful. It's about the feeling of it. And so here's how I'll put that as, like, there's the fear. And then when we allow the fear to be experienced as desire, and let the feeling of desire for safety wash over us, and feel the desire for safety, in this instance, in real time, produces the sense that you have it. And this is like getting into law of attraction philosophy that they're often saying, feel the feeling of it. I feel like you already have it, but I think sometimes we're bypassing actually feeling the desire first. But my experience is, when I feel a desire fully, the desire feeling weirdly begins to convert into the feeling of gratitude for it when I'm feeling the desire fully.

Jackson Sullivan [00:22:11]:
You and I talked about this a year ago. In that conversation, you said that we might have recorded that the joy of your desire, that when you feel. Because what's happening is, I'm realizing is I'm starting to think almost all human suffering can be tracked down to the suppression of the flow of desiree.

Vision Battlesword [00:22:29]:
Wow.

Jackson Sullivan [00:22:29]:
Because when you suppress it now it's fear. Because there's this resistance. But if you just felt the desire for safety completely without any resistance, that's not going to be fear. That's going to very quickly alchemize what I think into intent. So we get there, like, it's like the desire comes up, and when felt fully, there's like, this relaxation into, like, the feeling of, ah, yeah, I desire safety. And, like, the more that I feel it, the safer I feel. I think this might be getting, like, pretty, like, primordial, metaphysical stuff. Meaning in the allowance of the desire, there's an allowance of its attainment.

Jackson Sullivan [00:23:09]:
There's not a gripping to the flow of this energy. And I'm still getting all these details worked out, but all I know is that it seems to me that the allowance of the flow of desire in the body almost makes its fulfillment inevitable. Because you're. Because then by doing so, you're shifting into the frequency of having it already, but not through just trying to, like, force your way into, like, okay, I'm gonna, like, think about what it would feel like, but it's like I am completely allowing the energy to flow through me that will bring it into being. And then there's, like, this confidence. So I'm still working it all out, but I'm basically just saying I see the path of manifestation, as it starts as desire in you. And if you allow the desire fully, it moves down this track to gratitude. And that as you're moving down that track internally, the external may just naturally reflect it.

Jackson Sullivan [00:23:55]:
And all you actually have to do is just feel it and stop resisting the feeling of desire, and it's all just gonna kind of happen.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:00]:
I like that. And also, I think it's the first step.

Jackson Sullivan [00:24:05]:
Yeah, there's more in here. There's another layer. Exactly. Exactly.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:10]:
You said it starts with desire. And then dot, dot, dot, gratitude. And I think that along that path, there's some other things that happened. I think that's what we do in sacred light.

Jackson Sullivan [00:24:23]:
I think intent is in there too. Like, that's what I said is that.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:26]:
Will is in there and intent is in there. At a minimum, those three things. Yeah.

Jackson Sullivan [00:24:30]:
And what I've concluded is that the emotions that we call negatives, like fear, sadness, anger, is that those are only there when there's an illusion of powerlessness. So this is important.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:40]:
Let me stop you there, sir. Let me stop you there because there's a couple we're going for. Yeah, there's a couple things that came up for me while you're talking. That, that, I mean, this is always how it works with us, right? It's rapid fire fireworks of epiphanies whenever we get on a roll like this. And what's coming up for me, the first thing that came up for me has to do with nonviolent communication. A reframe of in nonviolent communication. Cause the way you're speaking reminded me of the structure of NVC.

Jackson Sullivan [00:25:10]:
It's identical, except just one word change.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:12]:
What's that word?

Jackson Sullivan [00:25:13]:
From need to desire.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:14]:
Exactly.

Jackson Sullivan [00:25:15]:
Need is a belief. And I just actually don't believe in it.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:19]:
I think that's a major upgrade.

Jackson Sullivan [00:25:21]:
It's massive upgrade.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:22]:
That's a major upgrade.

Jackson Sullivan [00:25:23]:
It's a complete. I think this is even, like evolutionary upgrade. Like, we're shifting from a scarcity based program of getting what you want to. Like a. There's something about the feeling of desire, like, yeah, yes, it's an upgrade for sure.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:35]:
Yeah. So you already detected that, but I saw it in what you were saying. And that's a. That's so much better. You know, I need love.

Jackson Sullivan [00:25:43]:
How much more powerful to tell someone in your life, NDC style, hey, I'm desiring respect right now precisely. Versus my need for respect isn't being met. Doesn't hit me nearly as hard as it's. I want respect from you right now.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:56]:
It's a totally different energy. It's an energetic shift from something that feels like scarcity or feels like an obstacle into something that feels like abundance or that feels like joy. Yeah.

Jackson Sullivan [00:26:13]:
And I actually think that what I've concluded is that the word need for referring to our desires is a response to parents not validating our desires as children. So we want something and we express it. And so then they're like, you can't have it, or whatever. We're not going to get this. And that stimulates the desperation that wants to say, well, I need it, and then, like, maybe they'll listen, no, you don't understand. I really want it. That's what I hear when we say need, like, I really desire it, when really, it's just because our desires weren't validated. And so now we're, like, sitting here, like, needing things.

Jackson Sullivan [00:26:51]:
But really, if from the very beginning, parents celebrated what kids desired and said, oh, it's so beautiful that you desire that there'd be no. There'd be no utility for having to claim that you need it.

Vision Battlesword [00:27:01]:
Yeah.

Jackson Sullivan [00:27:02]:
Cause it's just great, great, Timmy. Happy. You want to be a space engineer or whatever? Like, yeah. We don't need to go into that whole belief illusion of need.

Vision Battlesword [00:27:10]:
And unless you're really, really practiced with NVC or nonjudgmental communication styles or, you know, you've done years and years of therapy or group work or whatever, for the average person, you know, for, like, let's say the more, like, typical person in the world using that word, need tends to set up a charge.

Jackson Sullivan [00:27:33]:
It does. It's just so antithetical to the purpose of NVC.

Vision Battlesword [00:27:37]:
Right. Whereas I feel that there's just something inherently, it's got a different man's respect.

Jackson Sullivan [00:27:44]:
When you say, I desire this, I.

Vision Battlesword [00:27:46]:
Want to say more like, it invites empathy to that. To me, that's what it feels like. It's, you know, if someone says to me, and I'm very practiced in NVC, and even I could still get triggered a little bit, hey, I really have a need right now for A or B or C, there's almost an immediate posturing of defense from that to say, well, you know, hey, that's your need.

Jackson Sullivan [00:28:09]:
But I'm not going to say that.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:10]:
I'm not obligated to meet your need, you know, but if you say something like, you know, I'm really desiring more intimacy in our communication right now, or I really. I would really desire healing in our relationship, or I desire. I desire to be respected, or I desire to receive more respect right now, it invites empathy. It's an invitation. It's an invitation. I know. Just to say I need something isn't inherently a demand, but that is kind of the polarity that gets set up in our consciousness because of the way that we're conditioned.

Jackson Sullivan [00:28:40]:
Yeah. And one might argue that if the other person feels an obligation when they hear that, that's on them. Right. Like, when I hear. But. I know, but it still does it.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:50]:
That's what I'm saying.

Jackson Sullivan [00:28:50]:
Still does it.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:51]:
Let's get real. Yeah.

Jackson Sullivan [00:28:52]:
It's not like when you look at someone and you're like, I need reciprocity. If you, like, loan them money, it's like. It just feels tense. It just feels versus, like, hey, I really desire to be paid back. It's a totally different.

Vision Battlesword [00:29:05]:
Or even. I desire for our relationship to feel energetically balanced at the deeper level.

Jackson Sullivan [00:29:11]:
And so that's where just, like NVC, you are right, that the deeper I go into desire, I find that there is this list of what we can call core desires, and it seems like the other desires are considered vehicles. So, like, I desire to build the gift, create beautiful community gatherings, parties, events, experiences. But it's only because I have concluded that that is a vehicle for fulfilling my desire for community, for happiness, for love. I've long, actually, I've kind of concluded that the. I'm often playing with, is there a core? Is there, like, a supreme desire that everything is feeding for everyone, or is there a couple big ones? And I've concluded for myself that there's this specific thing called happiness. That's this conceptual state of contentment with love, with other things, that almost everything's about that. Because even if I had, like, safety and community, but I was miserable, I was in a state of what we call unhappy, then I don't want it.

Vision Battlesword [00:30:12]:
Well, all these other things are means to an end toward happiness, right?

Jackson Sullivan [00:30:15]:
The happiness seems to be the bit, this concept that we call happiness. Because I've considered peace. I was into love, like, all these different things, but it's like, wait, I want to experience love a lot of the time because I get to feel. That helps me feel more happy. So this is something I've not decided on yet, like, what is the core motivator, if there is one or several? But I do feel that there does seem to be, like, some very core human desire motivators that everything is feeding. And so with that said, I'm sitting there, and I'm starting to feel that fear hold up.

Vision Battlesword [00:30:50]:
The second thing that came up for me while you were talking, prior to when I brought up the nonviolent communication piece. The second thing that came up for me that I noticed is around the word desire as it pertains to the philosophy of Buddhism.

Jackson Sullivan [00:31:05]:
There's a lot of distortion here. This is.

Vision Battlesword [00:31:07]:
I was just curious.

Jackson Sullivan [00:31:08]:
Confused?

Vision Battlesword [00:31:09]:
Yeah, I'm just curious if you had detected that.

Jackson Sullivan [00:31:11]:
Oh, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:31:12]:
Okay.

Jackson Sullivan [00:31:12]:
This is a big thing that I learned something about. So I am not a buddhist scholars, so I'm not going to claim, but from layman's Buddhism, a lot of people think that the Buddha, whoever he was, said desire is suffering. That's this common belief that I think might be like the supreme mind virus, actually. And I don't actually know if it's from true Buddhism, but that's something I just heard. I don't know where I got that, but somewhere along my spiritual journey, I just kind of agreed. Yeah, seems reasonable enough. Desire is suffering. Like, you want something, you don't have it.

Jackson Sullivan [00:31:42]:
You're mad about it. You're obviously unhappy. Like, that's the problem. So let go of all desire. But I was talking to some people who, like, know Sanskrit or, like, my friend Ram, or other people who shared that the actual thing that he was supposed to have taught is that there's actually distinction between craving and desire, and that craving is suffering. And it's actually the exact what we're talking about. It's the holding on to and the attachment to desire, rather than the allowance of desiree that creates suffering. And so there's this really, like, if I've noticed to myself, when I identify my desire for happiness and I feel it, I start to feel really happy.

Jackson Sullivan [00:32:23]:
Like, if I feel it. And then there's a book called letting go by Richard Dawkins that talks about this. Actually says, when you let go of the feeling of desire, let go doesn't mean get rid of it. Let go means let flow. When it's allowed to move, you're letting it go. So it's moving. You start to just feel like you already have it. It's an interesting, because you're letting go of that craving and so on.

Jackson Sullivan [00:32:43]:
The buddhist thing, the first thing that I hear is. And then going to Thailand as well, talking to my friend Ram, who is raised in South India and, like, is very educated, there is a lot of translational confusions happening from east to west that I think are more than we even imagined. Like, I was talking him and I had a conversation for, like, two and a half hours before we realized that. When I use the word God. It's a completely different concept. He had thought that when christians are saying God, they're referring to an all encompassing consciousness upon which we are all one, with the concept of separation of we are created by God as separate. Like, for him, God meant, like, the hindu idea of the all. And we actually concluded that for him, the word all was a more accurate translation of what he was talking about than the word personified dude named God.

Jackson Sullivan [00:33:31]:
And even just that is so significant but so easy to miss. We also learned that christians think that they're polytheists. But when I started telling them about angels and the idea of angels and saints and, like, people pray to angels, Archangel Michael, et cetera, he was like, yeah, like, in Hinduism, we believe in one creator, too. And then there's, like, these other dudes. There are other beings that you can pray to that are powerful. Just like Archangel Michael is, like, the angel of protection. Again, we have a God of protection, and we learned that actually, it seems that this is so massive, massive conflict between these eastern and western religions based on this, like, polytheism or monotheism. But we learned that what they call multiple gods, a Christian may as well just call an angel.

Jackson Sullivan [00:34:13]:
It's just a spiritual being associated with a certain concept. And then they also believe in a divine, infinite creator that made all of it. That's, like, the ultimate supreme consciousness, just like christians. And yet so many christians, like, oh, they're polytheists. So that can't be true. When really, you might as well just think, maybe there's, like, an elephant, maybe there's an angel that looks like an elephant, and that's Ganesh or whatever. I think that's not 100% accurate. I'm not here to claim that I'm, like a theologian of Hinduism and Christianity.

Jackson Sullivan [00:34:41]:
But the deeper point here on me in response to what you said about Buddhism is that I think that when we're studying religions of a different language or studying any wisdom of a different language, really considering there may be multiple interpretations of what was said, is a big thing. Yeah. And for sure, this particular concept of people thinking Buddhism is saying desire is suffering. I actually don't think that's necessarily true.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:04]:
Well, that's.

Jackson Sullivan [00:35:05]:
I'm not educated enough to actually say, I know what he meant.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:07]:
That's the totally what I learned in school. That's desire is suffering.

Jackson Sullivan [00:35:12]:
Right.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:12]:
Well, that's what that exact. The layman's definition. You know, the popular interpretation of Buddhism that you just laid out in 30 seconds is what certainly what I learned formally, as a formal education. And what I think the vast majority of western people, western acculturated people who even have any idea of what Buddhism is, think is true as well. Considered a core tenant, I felt that it's the core tenet. So I felt it was very necessary to bring that up and address it. But I agree with you when you say that desire feels. I think, don't we all know that intuitively? Isn't that obvious? And to me, that's why it seems so logical that when we tap into our desire, that we're tapping into a source of power, that we're tapping into a source of motivation, energy and motivation.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:10]:
And it's Eros. It's the creative force of the universe.

Jackson Sullivan [00:36:16]:
Now you're getting real.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:17]:
That's what I.

Jackson Sullivan [00:36:18]:
So that desire gratitude thing I was talking about could be like an aero sangape.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:22]:
Correct.

Jackson Sullivan [00:36:22]:
Gratitude is the relaxed state of receiving. You're like, ah, I have it. And the desire is the forward moving energy that I like that. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:30]:
But it seemed obvious to me that we've got to address that seeming contradiction or seeming conflict with Buddhism, because there's so much about Buddhism that seems good and that seems right and on target. And then finally, can we real quickly define each of the, let's say, seven basic emotions in terms of what they are a desire for? Wow. So let's start with perhaps guilt. Guilt is a desire for healing or repair. Does that make sense?

Jackson Sullivan [00:37:06]:
Let me think about it. Depends. I think I agree. But I think at the very deepest level, guilt might be a desire for me to act differently in the future. No, see, it's more complex. I think there's more than one desire in there. It's a desire for repair and a desire for there to be something different in the future. And I think both of those are alive when you're feeling guilt.

Jackson Sullivan [00:37:27]:
And so that's.

Vision Battlesword [00:37:28]:
How about. Could you summarize all of that as I wish for all to be healed now and in the future?

Jackson Sullivan [00:37:37]:
I still feel that healed is still, like. It's interesting. I still feel like there's something specific about. Just, I want to do this differently in the future, which is different than healing what has happened. When I hear heal, I think of what has happened, and in the future, I think of not the word heal, but more just also, where I do.

Vision Battlesword [00:37:52]:
I do different in the future to avoid injury. Correct.

Jackson Sullivan [00:37:56]:
So to me, to avoid an unpreferred.

Vision Battlesword [00:38:00]:
Result, I'm trying to skip a couple of steps down the path to the actual outcome. Like what you're talking about with the gift, which, again, this comes very much back to the sacred light philosophy and how we orchestrated our manifestation process. Because what I notice is that people have a tendency to focus on intervening steps toward the actual objective or outcome, the manifestation, that they want to create in their life or in the world. They get fixated on a part of the process of creating that, as if that is what they're desiring, but actually what they're desiring, like in your case.

Jackson Sullivan [00:38:35]:
With the gift you just said is so important.

Vision Battlesword [00:38:37]:
Actually, I know you're.

Jackson Sullivan [00:38:39]:
I have a belief this is how I'm gonna get it.

Vision Battlesword [00:38:41]:
You're desiring to have the experience of community and art, and beauty and joy and love, and a part of the process, part of your own personal strategy for achieving that is to create events, and therefore to create a company that produces events, and therefore to create beautiful.

Jackson Sullivan [00:39:03]:
Art that inspires people and so on. The word strategy is a really power, is it correct?

Vision Battlesword [00:39:07]:
So that's how I'm.

Jackson Sullivan [00:39:07]:
That our purpose is often our strategy for the attainment of our desire.

Vision Battlesword [00:39:10]:
So those are kind of the intervening that I'm assuming and skipping over when I'm talking about guilt, and I'm saying that that's my initial intuition as well. When I thought about it was, oh, what is guilt? A desire for? Guilt is a desire to have different behavior. But then I realized that that's not my actual desire. That's just a strategy toward accomplishing the thing that I want.

Jackson Sullivan [00:39:35]:
Well, excuse me, which is healing or which is. Which is which? Healing. Even the concept of healing, I think, is a strategy for a desire for peace and happiness and love and more of those core positive desires. Healing, even the concept of healing, is a vehicle to what I actually want.

Vision Battlesword [00:39:51]:
Okay, well, I think you and I.

Jackson Sullivan [00:39:52]:
Actually created the sacred. Like, some of that original philosophy was about, let's get out of the healing thing and focus on what do you actually want.

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

Jackson Sullivan [00:39:59]:
The healing will do, but just to get to. Just to get the thing you actually want.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:03]:
True. Well, that's why the first word I think I actually used was repair.

Jackson Sullivan [00:40:07]:
Yeah. A desire is. Repair is a vehicle of a desire for, I guess you could say, wholeness or whatever. The fix.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:14]:
Okay. If you wanna skip all the way down the path, then you could say every emotion expresses a desire for happiness.

Jackson Sullivan [00:40:21]:
That's really important, though. Like, that's really how I see it. And that's why when initially, let's go through the basic seven. What are they desire for? But, yeah, don't think it can. I don't like, categorize it somewhere, though.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:31]:
Let's get to something. Let's try to find something that is deep but still practical.

Jackson Sullivan [00:40:36]:
We can use anger as the next example.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:39]:
Go for it.

Jackson Sullivan [00:40:39]:
Because when you said, like, which are the seven for? I don't actually think that they're all for different desires.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:45]:
I see.

Jackson Sullivan [00:40:46]:
Meaning. I think it's about your relationship to the desire. That's why I said it's like, levels of powerlessness. So I think anger arises when there is, like, a subtle concern about powerlessness. Like, you don't feel angry about your desire to make toast in the morning. You don't need to stimulate the sympathetic nervous system to, like, have this, like, about it. But if it seems like it's something that there's, like, this urgency or this slight uncertainty, that we really gotta, like, stimulate this intense response. It's based ultimately on a subtle premise that I might not actually get this desire.

Jackson Sullivan [00:41:22]:
When you ask, what is it a desire for? I actually think it's relative to the context, just depending on the situation.

Vision Battlesword [00:41:28]:
I think you hit the nail on the head. I think anger expresses a desire for power. I think that's exactly what it is.

Jackson Sullivan [00:41:35]:
Whoa. That's another way to put it. I actually say it like that. That's perfectly it. Yeah. It's the desire to feel for power itself. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:41:43]:
I think shame expresses a desire for acceptance and belonging.

Jackson Sullivan [00:41:47]:
Correct. And that's what I heard. Enough is so getting into another layer here. I view every belief. Now, most beliefs are created in an attempt to fulfill a desiree. And what I've been learning, what I've been learning, my facility, which is a.

Vision Battlesword [00:42:01]:
More sophisticated way of saying meet a need. But now instead, we say fulfill a desire, which actually is better.

Jackson Sullivan [00:42:07]:
It feels more accurate, our language.

Vision Battlesword [00:42:08]:
So fear expresses a desire for safety. I agree with that.

Jackson Sullivan [00:42:12]:
No, I want to rewind on that, actually.

Vision Battlesword [00:42:13]:
Okay.

Jackson Sullivan [00:42:14]:
In my case, at that time, fear expressed a desire for safety. But I'm. Again, I think all these emotions could express a desire for different things.

Vision Battlesword [00:42:23]:
Oh, I see.

Jackson Sullivan [00:42:24]:
Like, I might feel a very subtle anxiety about not getting the video game I want for Christmas, but that's just a desire for fun and happiness. And yet there's still an anxiety, which I would call a form of fear. So I don't. I'm saying I'm hesitant to attach these different emotions to specific categorical desires. I'm more seeing that any desire, the fear is desire. So what I'm saying is any desire can express itself as fear, anger, shame, guilt or motivation, excitement, getting excited, about something. Oh, my God, I'm so excited to do this retreat. I have such an excited desire to do this retreat.

Jackson Sullivan [00:43:03]:
So I am more saying that any desire can express itself in different ways. And the illusion is that we're calling it fear or we're calling it guilt or we're calling it shame instead of just seeing it for what it is, which is desire expressing just in different ways. But they're all just desire. That's what I see. That is, they're all either desire or gratitude. But it's weird, even gratitude. Like, yeah, like I said, when you're in gratitude, you can still have desire. And to me, that's why you said Eros nagape, what some people call masculine and feminine.

Jackson Sullivan [00:43:33]:
I see it as it's almost like both of these are what we might call, like, divine love or like, the core principle of the universe. People say love is everything. What I've started to actually hear is love is desire and gratitude. So when I say I love you, oftentimes I'm saying, I'm so grateful for you, and I desire for you to be happy. So when someone's like, oh, thanks for the $100, man, I really need to eat this week, well, yeah, man, I love you. Well, yeah, man, I desire for you to be well and for you to be happy. Or if it's, oh, I love you so much. Thank you.

Jackson Sullivan [00:44:05]:
I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful. So when I heard it's almost, which.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:10]:
Can be an expression of I desire.

Jackson Sullivan [00:44:12]:
For more of the continued more that too.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:14]:
Yeah.

Jackson Sullivan [00:44:15]:
So even the gratitude can be. Well, see, now you just hit me with a new concept. Like, even gratitude might be an expression of I desire for what is happening to continue.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:22]:
Totally.

Jackson Sullivan [00:44:23]:
So it might not even be a spectrum of desire and gratitude. It's all kind of desire. That's what I'm thinking, in a way.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:28]:
That's what I'm thinking. Yeah.

Jackson Sullivan [00:44:30]:
So with that, I know we're going to keep expanding on this. Sitting there in that cannabis lounge in Thailand, I'm feeling fear about the world ending. I mean, it was deep. I was like, whoa, there's like, this is here. This fear is in me. And no wonder I've judged other people and called them sheep and muggles and all this stuff for being afraid. Because the core principle of projection in Yoongi, in psychology is when you deny and repress something in yourself, you're gonna be judgmental toward it in others.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:52]:
Wait, you judged people for being sheep and muggles? For being afraid of what?

Jackson Sullivan [00:44:56]:
Like, for being. Focusing on the news and seeing, like, oh, my God, Covid and all this stuff. People who are outright afraid of being killed.

Vision Battlesword [00:45:03]:
Yeah, yeah, sure.

Jackson Sullivan [00:45:03]:
People who are really sincerely afraid of COVID for example. Oh, my God, that's so dumb. Like, how could you?

Vision Battlesword [00:45:09]:
And that's not entirely irrational. People have died and are still dying in wars, and that's.

Jackson Sullivan [00:45:16]:
And then at least, so we're told, so from. Sure. But even still, the core is I had not fully loved and accepted the part of me that desires safety and was afraid that it might, I might not get it. And when I started to feel that love and acceptance to that part of me, I started to also open up all this compassion for other people who are afraid of nuclear annihilation or afraid of the government or afraid of whatever. And I'm able to relax out of my spiritual community bubble of just like, oh, there's actually a lot of people in the world that are really afraid. And if I'm judging that, I'm probably afraid and I haven't loved that myself. And so I'm in there, and I'm having this experience with this music, and I was like, oh, my God. I desire safety for myself and for the entire world ultimately, because I think I desire happiness for myself and the entire world.

Jackson Sullivan [00:45:58]:
And safety is sort of, that was another belief I actually completely eliminated was the idea that you need safety to feel happiness, which is a whole thing. The idea that safety is a prerequisite for happiness isn't actually true. Yeah, there's many people who are actually very happy. I think of, like, get on a.

Vision Battlesword [00:46:15]:
Rollercoaster and disprove that belief.

Jackson Sullivan [00:46:17]:
Yeah, exactly. And you think of, like, I'm thinking of, like, think of, like, in a movie where you have the world's ending is dystopian zombie apocalypse, for example. Sure. Almost everyone's dead, whatever. And it's a very unsafe environment. And there's the one character who's really afraid, and yet then they meet some, like, vagabond, confident hero who's like, all right, man, we got it. And they run out, and they're, like, running toward the zombies and hitting them with the machetes. And there's one character that seems so happy in this journey of many people, many stories of, like, despair have the character who still seems happy despite everything that's going on.

Vision Battlesword [00:46:53]:
Right.

Jackson Sullivan [00:46:54]:
They're objectively not safe. Yeah, but they're happy. So I started to realize, wait, if I really. And this is where we get into, like, the vehicles toward our desire. I'm like, what I really desire is happiness and contentment and gratitude. And I was under the illusion that I'm not going to let myself feel that until I feel safe. And this music showed me that that's not actually required, that you can be happy and creating art even if you think you're not safe. Now that different conversation on isn't an illusion, that we're not safe.

Jackson Sullivan [00:47:21]:
Is any of that shit actually worth worrying about? I actually think a lot of it's not worth worrying about, to be clear.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:26]:
Sure.

Jackson Sullivan [00:47:27]:
But the very core is, even if you're not safe, that doesn't actually mean you have to suddenly make yourself into an unhappy person.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:34]:
Well, let me just draw a comparison with that specific epiphany or realization about the relationship between safety and happiness that you just had. And then dialing back, I don't know how long it's been now, 45 minutes or something, to the same exact realization with regard to happiness and money.

Jackson Sullivan [00:47:53]:
And that's how I'm doing that. There's even limiting money that I use.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:56]:
There's these limiting beliefs that we have received from somewhere or created for ourself, which is that, well, first I have to do x or y or z, or I have to achieve x or y or z, and then I can be happy, which is, like, the ultimate fallacy of life.

Jackson Sullivan [00:48:15]:
It's what most of this entire planet is living under at all times. I need safe and not actually having happiness.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:20]:
First I need the safety. Then I need the money and a girlfriend.

Jackson Sullivan [00:48:24]:
Love.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:24]:
Then I need the.

Jackson Sullivan [00:48:25]:
It's the other big thing. We've been taught that romantic love is the key. We've been taught romantic love and money are the two gateways to happiness. And it appears that the pursuing of both of those things doesn't actually lead almost anyone to feeling happy.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:39]:
Yeah.

Jackson Sullivan [00:48:40]:
And so, like. And so it was so beautiful. When I was aware that I really just wanted happiness more than anything, and I felt that desire for it, I started to be able to let go of some of the fear, and somehow this music tapped me into that. It was like, because happiness is also timeless. Like, it's pretty deep, too. It's like, wait, if I'm content and happy, even if the world exploded, well, I'm content and happy. So I died peacefully. I'm good.

Jackson Sullivan [00:49:07]:
And there's something about that. It was like, ultimately comes back to fear of death, too, and fear of annihilation at the very core of everything. And it was like this desire to keep on experiencing reality. And this is coming through right now, actually. Maybe even more than a desire for happiness is we just have a desire to experience. And I think that's even, like, the desire of God. People talk about, like, if there is an omnipotent creator that created everything to experience through itself this oneness idea, then it's like the core desire is just to experience reality in all its forms and to not have that cease. But even feeling that desire fully and letting go of the fear version of it, then even if I did die, I'd be okay, because I'm not gripping and I'm still working through all of it.

Jackson Sullivan [00:49:49]:
But I just know something changed. And it really came down to this music, because I finally was humble enough to consider that maybe the ways that I said are how I'm going to get my desire aren't actually the way that I'm going to get my desire. Going all the way to questioning, am I going to even build the gift? Am I going to facilitate? Would I become a monk if I desire happiness is just sitting around and meditating going to get me there? And from a logic perspective, if what I want is happiness, am I living a lie by pursuing it in the external world instead of making the number one priority, unconditional happiness? And it's this really interesting thing of, like, I realize that there's a desire for happiness for everyone else, but even that's just to serve my own happiness, because I'll feel happy or everyone else is happy with me.

Vision Battlesword [00:50:34]:
I would call into question the reality of a meaningful distinction between the so called interior world and exterior world.

Jackson Sullivan [00:50:42]:
Hit it again.

Vision Battlesword [00:50:43]:
You said something about pursuing happiness through meditation versus the quote unquote exterior world.

Jackson Sullivan [00:50:51]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:50:51]:
And I'm putting a little pressure on that to.

Jackson Sullivan [00:50:54]:
I want that pressure because I think it's not quite there.

Vision Battlesword [00:50:56]:
I don't think that's a meaningful distinction. I think you can't separate the interior world and the exterior world. Sure, they're inextricably connected, sure.

Jackson Sullivan [00:51:05]:
But I think it's more just the awareness of, like, whoa, I could live my entire life trying to, quote, unquote, save the world, build heaven on earth. No nuclear annihilation, whatever. And then I'll be able to touch that happiness. I really think I want. Instead of, like, there might be a little more directive, a path here. Like, to be, like, cliche about even. It's like, wow, if I could just find gratitude for all things, I'd probably be happier if I could experience this reality as a beautiful gift and a beautiful opportunity of, like, what a cool story. It's like, oh, the world's gonna.

Jackson Sullivan [00:51:36]:
Are we gonna make it?

Vision Battlesword [00:51:37]:
Oh, my God.

Jackson Sullivan [00:51:37]:
It's like, there's so much fun in it. And sometimes that sounds cold because that's a privileged perspective compared to, like, oh, I'm a person from America who's kind of broke in Thailand. That's all a gift. And, oh, my God, the world might end. But at a deeper level, it's really, I think, a very deep truth of, like, I just was like, I can learn to be happy now. And it comes back. You said, I don't need safety, and then you said, the money. Thing is, I just had this deep understanding that I don't need to wait to make money in order to feel happy and peaceful.

Jackson Sullivan [00:52:08]:
It's just not true and correct. It's just not true. It's just simple, simply a false experience. And I was able to integrate that awareness not just consciously, but through feeling the fear or through feeling my desire for safety and then feeling my desire for happiness, I was able to start to feel happiness without necessarily feeling safe. And then that actually naturally started to create more of a sense of safety, because the safety is just a vehicle to happiness anyway. So I already have the supreme desiree, and then I can just chill. And then there's like, this. It's almost like there's like, now we're at a more abundant form of desire.

Jackson Sullivan [00:52:45]:
It's like, okay, if I'm mostly happy and peaceful, I still desire to create heaven on earth, but it's like, this more abundant form. It's not fear now. It's what we might call power as desire or love as desire. And I'm still working out the details there, but it's like, you can access a more fundamental form of desire that's more effective. I feel more able to produce heaven on earth now that I'm feeling more happy than when I felt afraid. Naturally, fully, I accepted most of my money. Anxiety was less about survival and was more about what people think, which does come back to survival in a way, indirectly, but not so clear as, like, oh, my God, I'm so afraid. It's like, I think most of us actually know deep down, we have enough people that love us.

Jackson Sullivan [00:53:30]:
We have enough community. We could sleep in our car if we really needed to. Like, the chance of outright death from running out of money is actually pretty low, but there's a deeper subconscious of, like, what if I get kicked out of the tribe where people are judging me in this society? And now I'm like, the dirty hippie who's, like, all that is a much deeper thing.

Vision Battlesword [00:53:48]:
Well, the weird thing about that is that there's a flip side of that, which is that in our society, money can be a substitute for the tribe, at least in terms of survival value. You can be all by yourself, no friends, no community, no family, no nothing. But if you got money, well, you can survive. Because until that created this, so long.

Jackson Sullivan [00:54:08]:
As that money system is in place.

Vision Battlesword [00:54:10]:
Yeah, well, that's the other conversation that we're not yet having. But at any rate, yeah, we've created this culture and this civilization, which is anonymous, which is totally different than our tribal, our tribal roots, where exile from the tribe, exile from the community, really was death. Because we are social animals. We're in a state of nature, in a state of true nature. Without technology, we can't really survive as a solo individual. Maybe it'd be real, real hard. Let's just say it's typically a death sentence if you get kicked out of the tribe. It's not that way.

Vision Battlesword [00:54:46]:
Now, because of our monetary system and because of the abstraction and anonymization that we've created from each other, you can go to a completely different place in the world where you don't know anyone, but if you got some tokens that everybody agrees have value, then you're going to be okay. Flip side of that is you got no tokens, but you do have some tribe, you're also going to be okay.

Jackson Sullivan [00:55:08]:
I think that's actually. You're more likely to be okay in that case than if you have tokens, but no tribe. In terms of. In the long term reality of what's going on is I just. I left that experience knowing I was coming home with, like, a completely different state of peace and happiness, because now I just recognize that that was my desire. And somehow in the process of feeling that desire, I was feeling more peace and happiness. And I then had a little pit stop in England on the way home. And it was just a continuing deepening of this newfound peace that I had and this newfound openness, you could say.

Jackson Sullivan [00:55:43]:
When I was there, I was in a state of complete openness of, like, I don't know how I'm going to fulfill my desire. I don't know if I'm going back and building the gift I was even considering. I don't even know if I'm going back. Like, I'm completely in a state of. I feel my desire, but I have no idea what the vehicle is. And that humility, I think, is something that I actually want to encourage to anybody in the world. Once you actually feel that core desire to really consider, like, is the path I've chosen, actually what I believe is the fastest, most effective way to get my desire fulfilled. Like, doing an adult audit of what I want and really sitting with is the way I'm living my life, is what I'm doing, actually getting me in the direction of what I truly, truly want.

Jackson Sullivan [00:56:25]:
Like, go to the deepest level of desire, which I do think, for whatever reason, lands back to this, like, state of happiness for a lot of us. It's really interesting to consider that. So I didn't know. And there's something about the freedom of that and being in that state of knowing one's desire, but not actually exactly knowing what to do. Because once I felt desire for happiness, it's like there's. It's weird. There is still this desire for heaven on earth, for happiness for everyone. Cause I think that'll help me feel even more happiness.

Jackson Sullivan [00:56:57]:
And there is, like, this. So that's still there. The desire for the continuation of a happy planet didn't just go away, but it's, like, more abundant now. It's more like. I'm not saying I'm, like, full blown enlightened, but the concept of bodhisattva is, like, someone who has hit a certain level. You could save enlightenment or whatever, and then they still desire to help, and I'm not to that level. I think I'm still integrating these awarenesses, and maybe for decades, but I felt what it means to be satisfied and still desire to help, if that makes sense. I had a deeper level, maybe not fully to bodhisattva, but I had a deeper level of contentment and satisfaction, and yet there's still a desire for happiness for everyone else.

Jackson Sullivan [00:57:39]:
I think that feels like love. That feels like love. Rather than, like, I need to save the world to be okay and survive. I'm feeling more of what we can call loving desire. Desire can have these, like, flags, and there's, like, fearful desire. Then there's, like, loving desire. It's like, wow, I really feel what it means to be in my heart and desire for all of the other humans to feel happiness and to be safe and to not be killed.

Vision Battlesword [00:58:05]:
I think this literally.

Jackson Sullivan [00:58:06]:
It's really like love. Sorry.

Vision Battlesword [00:58:08]:
It's okay. Yeah. I think this literally is enlightenment. Like, that's it. Or nirvana in the buddhist sense, if it's fully integrated.

Jackson Sullivan [00:58:16]:
I agree. Achieving that state of just absolute contentment. And I think the core, just getting back to that buddhist thing real quick is, like, it's actually quite obvious that if you're content with everything, that includes being content with the fact that you have desiree.

Vision Battlesword [00:58:31]:
Yeah.

Jackson Sullivan [00:58:31]:
Which. That's like that whole, like, illusion. Like, oh, desire is so suffering. It's like, well, if I'm in full acceptance of all things, I'm acceptance of my desires. It's so obvious that total peace would mean making peace with the fact that you have desires.

Vision Battlesword [00:58:45]:
Right? That's what I think.

Jackson Sullivan [00:58:46]:
So it's like, of course.

Vision Battlesword [00:58:47]:
Well, because the other thing is an obvious trap.

Jackson Sullivan [00:58:52]:
Or I'm desiring to not have desire, which is sanity.

Vision Battlesword [00:58:55]:
It's a set up for failure. Like, if that really is what Buddhism truly was all about. That's totally. That's unfair. It's like, okay, well, here's the deal. In order to achieve nirvana, which means true peace, you have to eradicate all.

Jackson Sullivan [00:59:09]:
Desire from your experience, including desire for nirvana.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:12]:
Good luck for that.

Jackson Sullivan [00:59:13]:
It's like, now I'm desiring to not have desire, which is insanity.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:16]:
That doesn't make sense. That couldn't be what it is. Like, we've been. We've been tricked.

Jackson Sullivan [00:59:22]:
And so then I was still kind of in certain states of money scarcity. And I flew to New York for a couple of days, and then I had about a week before the eclipse. I was like, I'm still getting back. And I used a pretty good percentage of my last money to change my flight to go to Miami and stayed there for a week. And I had $22 in the bank. And so I'm sitting there on this back porch looking at the ocean. It's like a house on the waterfront with dollar 22. No flight back to Austin.

Jackson Sullivan [00:59:53]:
Eclipse is happening in two or three days. And there was a lot of anxiety, which was the desire for money, but really it was the desire to go and watch the eclipse with my friends and family. And it was expressing itself as a lot of anger and anxiety. And I just sat there on the back porch. And at this point, I'd identified these things about emotions. So I was just feeling my desires. I was like, oh, my God, I have such a strong desire to make music. I have such a strong desire to see the eclipse with my friends and family.

Jackson Sullivan [01:00:18]:
I have a desire to feel love with them, like, everything. Desire to get back to Austin. And because I knew that maybe there'd be safety there, you know, something. But I was just like. I felt all of it. Eventually, it just kind of passed, and I was just sitting there with, again, no knowledge of how my desire will be fulfilled, and yet there's peace. And something about that last day in Miami, I think, was like one of the final legs of me releasing my fears around money because I was just done with it. It was like something in me was just like, okay, like, I'm not going to keep torturing myself.

Jackson Sullivan [01:00:50]:
And I felt it released a great deal of the last leg of the fear. And then, sure enough, we're hanging out with my friend and his homie. His homie hears what's going on, and he whips out his phone and just buys me a flight to Austin. Doesn't even say hardly anything. He's like, hey, can you some help? I'm just going to get this flight for you. And it was just like. But I getting into law of attraction stuff, I knew that was coming. I just knew I was going to make it back to Austin.

Jackson Sullivan [01:01:14]:
I didn't know how, I didn't know what was going to happen, but I was just like, I felt the desire, so here it is. It was like this weird knowing it gets into more mystical things, but I just had absolute confidence it was going to happen. And then it did. And then I made it to back to Austin. And the morning of the eclipse, I drive out to Texas Eclipse festival, and my desire the whole time was to be there for the unify meditation, which is what I said four months ago. I'm going to be there at Texas Eclipse for the unified meditation. Eclipse festival's already been going on. I have no ticket.

Jackson Sullivan [01:01:44]:
I have, like, $10. But I rolled up and I felt more peaceful I've ever felt. And I just walked in because they canceled the festival, so everyone's leaving. And I just had this unshakable conviction to get in, and then they cancelled it. And then I got in because there was no one guarding the gates. And then everything was canceled except for the unified meditation. And I rolled up, and my friend Aishra Fearne, she walks up and she's like, yo, we know. Even knew you were back.

Jackson Sullivan [01:02:12]:
I was like, is this thing still happening? They're like, yeah, we've been planning this for months. Like, we're not going to not do the meditation. And I sure enough was sitting in the group of 100 people that love me with this meditation. And I have a feeling that if I hadn't fully allowed my desire for that, it may not have happened. Just like a deep feeling of, like, through the act of feeling that desire, exactly what I said was going to happen happened, including that I returned with a healed relationship with money, even though it only happened a couple days before, like, the intention. I set to go to Guatemala for really completed in Miami two days before I flew home. And there were many times along the path where I was like, yeah, I don't know if I'm actually going to be healed with my relationship with money. I might be going back there kind of still in the same situation I was before.

Jackson Sullivan [01:02:54]:
And it feels important for me to be able to say and recognize that I still have. There's been times where I have a desire for support and I desire support for others, but not from this, like fearful, I need money, please help me place in being back now it's been about ten days and I was staying with a friend out in Taylor, Texas, but I realized I didn't desire to be in Taylor, Texas, but I didn't have money to start renting a place. And then I realized I have a car and I can sleep in my car, it turns out. And if I was disconnected from my desire, I would have been these illusions of like, okay, I need to stay at a place, the bedada, instead of just like, oh, set up my cardinal. And then I started going to Bart. I just started parking my car at Barton. I could just hanging out at Barton Springs and swimming in Barton Springs to shower. And it's really not a bad life, but that's a great place.

Jackson Sullivan [01:03:46]:
It's a great spot. People pay $10 million to have a house right there. And I'm closer than they are. Way closer. I wake up and I walk 30 seconds and I'm in the most beautiful healing waters, maybe of this entire planet. And it's so obvious when I'm connected to my actual desiree for happiness, for being innate, for being peaceful, I know I want to be in nature. I've known that for a long time. I want to spend a lot of time in nature.

Jackson Sullivan [01:04:06]:
Wow, it's right here. It's like here we are. And every day, the more I'm able to connect to, like how there's what it is, how obviously accessible my desire actually is. It's like, whoa. Ecstatic dance. There's all these parties of people's houses that were kind of post eclipse like festivities. People are just inviting me to cause they love me. Everything is there.

Jackson Sullivan [01:04:29]:
And what I'm learning is that that original commitment that I made to I'm done acting from anxiety has on paper made it look like my life has fallen. Like all these things have fallen away and all this stuff, that level of resolution, I believe, and I already can feel it, that as my clarity. The last couple of last weeks since I've been here is crystallizing. It's like I've had. It's like, in me being willing to release all of the fear around money, I'm now able to access a much deeper understanding of what I actually want to do. And so then all of this came around to this big thing for support, because when there was a time where this week where I bluehost, who runs my email, said, you're going to lose your email if you don't pay us dollar 111, that's actually really inconvenient. So I really like to produce, like, 100, $200 right now. So I reached out to a bunch of people saying, hey, I'd love to offer you super homey discount.

Jackson Sullivan [01:05:26]:
I told them exactly what's happening. I just need $100 to make sure I lose my accounts. I don't want to just be a leash. So I'd love to offer some kind of value. You know, my work people used to pay 15k for it, la da lada. And I think I messaged like ten to 15 people and one responded to me. I even got a message from one person that was kind of like a. I think the exact words were just kind of like, oh, it feels like you're.

Jackson Sullivan [01:05:49]:
I think this person said, it feels like you're only reaching out to get instead of to give. This was yesterday, and I had at first, just a lot of anger come up. So speaking of, what is anger? So because I had this new framework, I was able to process this pretty quickly, but it was, like, really upset. But because I had this new frame, I felt the anger. And I realized the anger was a desire to be supported when I'm in a time of, like, transition. And as I felt that anger as desire, I realized that the anger was actually just like this strong version of desire. But the anger was this part of me that felt powerless to get the support I was hoping I could receive and felt, like, really scared that I was losing all my accounts. And it was deeper than that.

Jackson Sullivan [01:06:35]:
The anger was like, I want to live in a world where this isn't how people respond when someone who's given so much and asked nothing now is asking for help. And the anger was like the powerlessness of, how can I enact the cultural change that in that circumstance, it's not fucking radio silence, or at best. And as I felt that desire, I was able to realize the powerlessness. I felt that. And the powerlessness was able to alchemize. And then underneath that was just a more sincere, self led desire for a culture that has sort of, like, an archetype of society and a systematic support for when a member of the tribe is going through a transition, specifically of, like, an internal transition, that there was a desire for that to be considered a valid thing, rather than like, oh, you broke your leg, so we'll support you, or, oh, someone died, so we'll support you. But even of, like, whoa, you are finding your way, and that's okay. And there's a desire to support each other in that.

Jackson Sullivan [01:07:32]:
And I, like, I felt that desire. And as I let the powerless alchemize, powerlessness alchemize, it turned into a, okay, I do desire to create that. I desire to create that cultural change again. It is desire at the very core. I feel a pure desire for there to be a change, that our hearts are open to each other when there's a need for support. The part of me that was just crying out was like, how have we let our hearts become so closed to those that are in need of support? And how can we reopen our hearts and create new ways to support each other?

Vision Battlesword [01:08:03]:
I'd like to offer you a reframe on that.

Jackson Sullivan [01:08:05]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:08:05]:
I've experienced over the past few years, sometimes I think, and sometimes I know something similar. And the way I interpret it is as a. I'm going to use the word misunderstanding of intent that comes from the fact that we in our society are bombarded with commercial solicitations, scams, frauds, and other attempts to extract our resources that we actually live. It's like the water that we swim in in american culture is almost like a law of the jungle, commercially speaking or economically speaking, where we have to kind of guard our wallets and our checkbooks and our bank accounts and our credit cards from these sharks and piranha and other predators that we're just swimming amongst, and there's like. And they outnumber us, like, 100,000 to one, and they're just always circling, looking to take a bite out of them.

Jackson Sullivan [01:09:09]:
You're saying that's the illusion. That's the belief system. Okay.

Vision Battlesword [01:09:12]:
That's how it feels to me.

Jackson Sullivan [01:09:13]:
Okay.

Vision Battlesword [01:09:13]:
I mean, I think that's how it feels to a lot of people.

Jackson Sullivan [01:09:15]:
Yeah. I agree with all of it, except I don't. I think that the. They actually don't outnumber us. That's the piece that I would. I would correct.

Vision Battlesword [01:09:21]:
Fair enough there. Fair enough. Fair enough.

Jackson Sullivan [01:09:22]:
It feels like there's a power differential, but the actual number of those people compared to, like, the common populace, is you're right.

Vision Battlesword [01:09:29]:
You're right. There's a perception that can be created through technology, meaning media, television, radio, most importantly, the Internet, cell phones, apps and so forth. There's a perception, because what we've actually. The piranha and the sharks are actually now robots. They're these technological automatons that we can mass produce off an assembly line. And I mean that in the terms of, like, these little programs and algorithms.

Jackson Sullivan [01:09:58]:
Sure, I understand that. What you mean. Okay, they're always just the people. But it feels like there's so much compared to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:05]:
Because how many pieces of spam do you get in your. In your mailbox every single day? And that's the ones that don't get caught by the spam filter. And, you know, how many pop up ads do you see every single day?

Jackson Sullivan [01:10:17]:
Okay, now I'm fully understanding what you're saying. You're not even just referring to, like, the government. You're referring to all these different things that we feel may take our resources.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:25]:
I make no mistake, the government's behind all of that. No, I'm kidding. No, but, yeah, that's the point. The point is that it's this specific type of capitalist society, I'll call it that we live in, which, again, as you know, and I would like everyone to know that I have no specific tension or charge against capitalism as a philosophy. And I think it's a pure form.

Jackson Sullivan [01:10:53]:
The pure form of free market economics.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:55]:
Yes, free market economics is a much better term for it, actually. But the point is, though, that whatever you want to call this system, this thing that we have now, is it free market economics? Correct.

Jackson Sullivan [01:11:10]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:11:10]:
But what it is, is it is a free for all in certain respects, one of which is that companies, organizations, individuals, government entities, and everyone wants a piece of your pocketbook. Everyone, everyone, everyone. You go through the world, and it's a non stop, infinite seeming buffet of opportunities to spend your money, some of which are disingenuous, dishonest, deceitful, some of which are, you know, go down any major street or highway in the city of Austin, Texas, and how many panhandlers will you see at an intersection holding up a cardboard sign with a very similar message on it asking for your money? How do you decide who's really in need? How do you decide who's dressing up in a costume and just living at other people's expense? And you can also look in our very, very own little conscious community and maybe sometimes ask yourself the same question of some of the individuals who do choose different housing situations or lifestyles, let's just call it, and you know, and who's really sincerely trying to put their life on a different track, or are going through a transition or a period of personal growth where they're minimalizing their lifestyle and getting more in touch with their desires, literally or whatever, versus who is just sort of taking resources out of the community and not really giving anything back.

Jackson Sullivan [01:12:51]:
But I want to get deeper on that because my belief is that those people, whoever you might say, is consuming without necessarily reciprocating. My belief is that that is actually who may need the most support. Because I believe at the very core of their heart, no one. I believe they actually do desire to be able to give back. You can say, et cetera. But when someone is under such a paradigm of scarcity, it's almost like their nervous system may not even know how to access that in that moment. And I have firsthand experience.

Vision Battlesword [01:13:22]:
It's incidental to the point that I'm making right now, although I think it's very relevant when we start to talk about societal sacred reciprocity, community support, sacred economics, any of the gift economy, any of these things that we might. That that might be where this is ultimately headed. But for right now, what I'm trying to. I'm trying to respond to your point about making a sincere offer or a sincere solicitation and how that's received and how that's responded to sometimes, and just reflect to you that I've experienced sometimes an energy back from. From certain people who I've reached out to, to make a sincere offer or a sincere invitation, or maybe even just offer information, or maybe even just reach out for a connection where my communication has been received as a solicitation, essentially, totally.

Jackson Sullivan [01:14:18]:
And I have the same.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:19]:
And so I just want to give people a little bit of empathy and the benefit of the doubt in terms of it being hard sometimes to differentiate, especially through different mediums of communication. Maybe it's a text message or an email or something like that. Hard to differentiate between sometimes. Is this some form of spam? Is this some form of a scam?

Jackson Sullivan [01:14:44]:
Is it like taking? Is it?

Vision Battlesword [01:14:45]:
Or is this a really, like an actual. Just a sincere invitation? Or is this a sincere offer? Is this even an expression of curiosity? Like that? Happens to me a lot. I reach out to people many times from an actual heartfelt place of curiosity of wanting to know. And also curiosity mixed with connection of wanting to say, hey, I sincerely would actually like to reconnect with you. I'm curious to know what's going on. In your life. How are you doing? And also, I'm curious to know if you are still interested in both can be true. Anything that I often.

Vision Battlesword [01:15:18]:
Right now? Yeah. Because there was a point in time when you said you were, and I'm curious if you still are. And it's a really, we're in this kind of transitional period, I sense where sometimes people are so immersed in that law of the jungle or shark filled ocean environment of everybody wants to get a piece of my money, everybody wants to get a piece of my resources. I have to be on guard. If somebody, you know, if a fish swims by too many times, I'm just going to assume they're a shark. And I don't want to know anything further than that.

Jackson Sullivan [01:15:58]:
That's that freeze out transition. The free people who you love, there's people just be like, nope, I don't wanna talk to you about money. Like, no, it's like this. And helped me find compassion for that.

Vision Battlesword [01:16:07]:
And I sense we're in a transitional period between that and the next thing. Where within certain communities or within certain containers, probably not at a global or even like, you know, a national level for quite some period of time, maybe not. I'm open minded to how fast things can change, but at least within certain containers or communities, that we can actually establish a sense of trust in each other's sincerity, in each other's intentions, in each other's humanity, that we can. We can create a new culture code where it's like, no, no, no, I promise you, I'm not treating you like that. I never would treat you like that. I'm actually being very vulnerable with you right now.

Jackson Sullivan [01:16:47]:
The peak vulnerability.

Vision Battlesword [01:16:49]:
I could have approached you in a completely different way, which would have been dishonest. But actually, instead, I approached you in a way which is totally honest. You may have judgment for me about my choices or my lifestyle, or where you perceive I am in my life right now, and that's fine, and that's okay, too. But please just don't misunderstand me, because what's in my heart actually is really pure.

Jackson Sullivan [01:17:10]:
That's how we opened up the conversation. I said, the thing I want you and anyone to know is that that's really my truth. But I would say in all these messages, do not worry about me. Do not at all feel sadness for me. I am at peace. I'm just trying to get some things handled.

Vision Battlesword [01:17:24]:
I think that's a super empowering realization, and that's my belief also. Or at least I tend very much to give everyone the benefit of the doubt that they're not a victim, that they're actually creating whatever reality makes the most sense to them. Now, maybe there are some people whose reality does involve struggling, and maybe there are some circumstances that are not directly the product of their choices or not obviously the product of their choices that they're dealing with situationally. And maybe they do actually desire support in a temporary situation to try and get themselves back on track toward the realization of. There may be higher level desires, or true desires, if you will, but I think it's really empowering, you know, for you to stand in the place of real realizing that not only are you all right, but, like, you've chosen to be here. Like, this is.

Jackson Sullivan [01:18:25]:
This is my.

Vision Battlesword [01:18:25]:
This is what you're doing right now.

Jackson Sullivan [01:18:26]:
This is what I'm doing. I'm living in my car. I am doing this. And so that's the bigger layer of, like, for me, letting go of what other people think is, because I've had to say, why don't you just go get a normal job where you figure your shit out of? And I'm like, I have the humility to say I'm not actually sure if the way I'm doing it is the most effective, but this is the path I've chosen right now. And that's the thing that I'm saying I desire to have a more compassionate culture around is, like, the grace. The grace of wow. I'm not sure if I agree with the way you're doing it, but I can respect that you're on your path and you're trying to figure it out just like the rest of us. And, like, even if I think I have some suggestions for you, ultimately, I wanna be able to respect everyone, to know that, like, there's a reason they're doing it the way they're doing it.

Jackson Sullivan [01:19:11]:
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to kind of like.

Vision Battlesword [01:19:13]:
Yeah, I like all this stuff you're saying. I think it's interesting. Are you open to getting a little. Getting our hands dirty? A little bit. And are you open to me challenging you a little bit?

Jackson Sullivan [01:19:25]:
I would like to.

Vision Battlesword [01:19:26]:
Pushing us.

Jackson Sullivan [01:19:26]:
Oh, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:19:27]:
Pushing on some. Good.

Jackson Sullivan [01:19:28]:
Oh, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:19:29]:
Good. Because to me, it really. This conversation really isn't about support, and this conversation really is about desire. That's what it seems to me. And support is kind of acting as a foil for desire in the same way that all of the different positive and negative manifestations of emotion, we discovered are all foils for desire and everything else. It is, we're talking about here, so. But I want to push on you a little bit, because I think there's something that feels important to me about what you're getting at with regard to grace and acceptance and non judgment of people's choices and people's lifestyle, especially not treating people as victims, ever, really. I mean, even if they have gone through a challenging situation or in some circumstances they didn't choose from themselves or whatever.

Vision Battlesword [01:20:15]:
I agree with all of that stuff. But then I think there's a flip side or an opposite, not opposite. There's a corollary to that.

Jackson Sullivan [01:20:23]:
Yeah, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:20:23]:
Which I want to get into, because what you've said a few times now is that you have some of these other desires. You certainly have had a desire for happiness and peace and contentment, and you've been pursuing all of that. And there's something related to minimalizing your lifestyle from a perspective of money and material things and the common sense or commonly believed pieces of a normal life that create that. So you've discovered that by letting actually some of those things go, you have found that this other thing, which is a deeper, internal thing that you've been seeking for a really long time, which I think is super cool. At the same time, though, you've said, I desire to pay my debts. I desire to create community and beautiful events and art and music. And you desire to also be generous with others when they're in need of support. So you have these other desires which, to a certain extent, the amount of time and resources that we have in life, ultimately being finite, we can kind of trade one type of experience for another in this balancing act between different types of ways that we might want to express our desired intent in life.

Vision Battlesword [01:21:45]:
I hope that wasn't too meta or theoretical. You understand what I'm saying? Okay, good. So there's a zero sum element to how much time do I spend meditating exactly. Versus how much time do I spend practicing music?

Jackson Sullivan [01:21:57]:
Yeah. Great, great.

Vision Battlesword [01:21:58]:
Get the idea. So where I'm challenging you through that actively. That's why I'm challenging you here, because what I would like to know is, how do you. And this is for everyone and everyone in the world, of course. How does one build off of a place of having achieved some level of contentment and acceptance and peace within any circumstances, and having that kind of satisfaction of desire, how does one build off of that to then go on to achieve higher or more complex desires? More complex desires, such as the types of things that we'd like to see.

Jackson Sullivan [01:22:37]:
In the world or creating heaven on earth, is a pretty complex desire.

Vision Battlesword [01:22:40]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But even the basic, the basic things of having energetically balanced relationships and community, and then creating heaven on earth and art and expressing myself totally in my unique, my evolutionary uniqueness, like you said.

Jackson Sullivan [01:22:56]:
When do you prioritize the other desires? I'm not sure yet, but I feel really, really clear that the more peaceful I become, I feel like I have an internal access to a lot more power. And I feel growing confidence in my ability to produce all of the other desires. And so for me, logically, it feels like a very logical decision of, like, okay, me continuing to prioritize, like, my clarity, my well being, and the ability to take decisive action that's going to produce money, even if that means there's not money today, but it means that in the long term, I'm, like, more empowered. That's kind of how I see it. If that makes sense, that I view, and that's going back to the support is it's being able to recognize, like, whoa. If that person just had a couple optimizations of their psychology and their emotional state, and they were able to, like, enter a container that supports that, everything else would be, would happen easier and faster. Like, I'm looking back, if when I ran out of money at that house, we had an automatic system in place in culture that was like, oh, person's out of their power. They're obviously super stressed and not connected to the, like, intuitive genius.

Jackson Sullivan [01:23:55]:
Well, good thing we have a fucking, like, cultural retreat center where we get up through a sum process, like, I'm.

Vision Battlesword [01:24:01]:
Gonna push back on that.

Jackson Sullivan [01:24:02]:
Go ahead.

Vision Battlesword [01:24:03]:
That sounds to me like you're treating someone like a victim instead of like an empowered creator who's autonomous and an agent in their own life. I see what you're saying. You're saying so and so person, community member, ran out of money, therefore they're out of their power. They're in a dysregulated state. They need help. In other words, what if they don't need help?

Jackson Sullivan [01:24:23]:
Then they don't.

Vision Battlesword [01:24:24]:
What if they're making choices?

Jackson Sullivan [01:24:25]:
Sure. That's where I feel like I'm at right now. And without using victim language, I do think it's true that there was a period of time, I think it's true for a lot of people where their nervous system is objectively not operating at its peak capacity and that they're and, like, getting their nerve.

Vision Battlesword [01:24:40]:
So, like, everybody, right? Like, literally everybody's not operating.

Jackson Sullivan [01:24:44]:
That's what I'm saying is that, like, I think I want to validate the prioritization of coming back into a regulated nervous system state as sometimes a higher priority than just like the immediate producing of money. That's kind of what I'm. I think the core of the support thing is it's like this recognition of, oh, I am not going to project it onto others. But I do believe it is true that there are times when someone is in an extremely stressed, dysregulated state based on their programming about money and desire and all this stuff, and sometimes creating the space for them to come back into regulation, which I think really could just take a couple of days. But in my case, I was convinced I had to go to Guatemala and be alone in the jungle for three months because I didn't feel those systems of support in place that were just an automatic no.

Vision Battlesword [01:25:28]:
That's where I'm pushing them back. You're.

Jackson Sullivan [01:25:30]:
That was my illusion. I think if I'd outright asked, I think if I had known to, like, communicate to my community, this is what I need. Can I be helped? I need someone to help. I really feel like I'm seeking a facilitation, like transformational facilitation. I'm seeking somewhere to feel safe, and I'm seeking to come back in contact with my clarity and my intuition and my ability to. And like, a clear sense of empowerment and motivation to make money. Can you all help me? May have been a very different reality than I'm thinking. I have to go and leave the country for four months.

Jackson Sullivan [01:26:00]:
And so maybe you are right. The support is there and it's about asking. That's also possible.

Vision Battlesword [01:26:05]:
What I'm pushing back on is when you said that there should be an automatic system in place to provide support to anyone when they reach a particular threshold of whatever criteria stress you may be. Who knows, right?

Jackson Sullivan [01:26:19]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:26:20]:
And also I'm pushing back on the assumption that because someone has reached a certain threshold of whatever life circumstances, that therefore means that they are somehow in a dysfunctional or dysregulated state. I'm pushing back on that.

Jackson Sullivan [01:26:36]:
The second part I actually agree.

Vision Battlesword [01:26:37]:
I don't believe in this victim narrative. This idea that people are victims is what our welfare state and our welfare system is basically totally. And I'm not saying I don't believe in charity, and I'm not saying that I don't believe in mutual support, supportive communities, supportive organizations or family structures, and all of the different ways that we as social animals have created to provide support for each other as we kind of ebb and flow naturally in our lives from more productive to more developmental stages or something like that. But, yeah, I'm really triggered by the idea that we automatically label people as needing in need.

Jackson Sullivan [01:27:24]:
Agreed.

Vision Battlesword [01:27:24]:
When they, for example, have difficulty paying their rent or something along those lines as compared to, again, coming back to your. The foundational point of this entire conversation, which I think is so powerful and profound, which is that what everyone is doing is always an expression of their desires.

Jackson Sullivan [01:27:42]:
Yes. And I think I want to clarify on that second piece of. I think we're actually in more agreement than I may have communicated that I don't actually want anyone to be seen as need or desire or whatever, but it's more that I desire for everyone that I love and pretty much everyone in the world to be able to express their. Whatever, their peak, their most. Actually, to put it literally, I desire for everyone to fulfill their desires, their deepest hearts, divine, whatever ordained desire, whatever that looks like for them. And without making someone into a victim, I do feel that it's logically correct that a great deal of the human population has received this programming that has them in this, like you said, this money matrix where they're so concerned with the next bill that they're not fulfilling their true desires. And so for me, when I say, like, I want to support them, it's not that they're a victim, but I recognize that seems to be happening. And so then I want to ask the question of how can the entire human community support people in exiting that matrix.

Vision Battlesword [01:28:45]:
Yeah.

Jackson Sullivan [01:28:46]:
And sometimes that might look like not paying rent or not paying bills and having your credit drop or whatever it looks like, sometimes not. But that's more what I mean of, like, I was not a victim. I was living under an illusion that I couldn't feel clarity and happiness about my next moves until I, like, made some money or something. It's an illusion. And so it wasn't like I was a victim. Like, I took on those beliefs and all of that.

Vision Battlesword [01:29:12]:
But we're in agreement about all of this. We're in agreement about the illusion of money. We're in agreement about sharing the vision of helping people to exit that illusion and come into a new relationship with community, resources, getting needs met, expressing desires, creating a more beautiful world, creating heaven on earth. We're in agreement on all of this. The challenge that I'm offering to you right now is, do you. Does it seem right to you that actually, in your entire story, all the way up to this point, from where you started to this point, that everything you were doing, every step along the way, was actually in fulfillment? Of your desires.

Jackson Sullivan [01:29:56]:
That's correct.

Vision Battlesword [01:29:57]:
Let's get to the point.

Jackson Sullivan [01:29:59]:
The point, I think, oh, that damn, dude. The desire thing always wins. It's so beautiful.

Vision Battlesword [01:30:06]:
Yeah.

Jackson Sullivan [01:30:07]:
It's like getting all this intellectual. What's actually true for me here is that I, without, like, I desire for myself and for others that when it feels that one has lost their way, even if that's an illusion, my desire is that a community's response is like a proactive, unconditional love and support and not a disapproval or a judgment or a shaming or a eye roll. That at the very core, I desire that if it seems that someone is, whatever you want to call it, even if it's an illusion, they're not a victim. If it seems that they're, put it frankly, if they're not fulfilling their desires, my desire is that the response is like a proactive, supportive response that helps, one that helps them to get back on track to the fulfillment of their desire.

Vision Battlesword [01:30:57]:
Well, you're assuming that they're off track, but, yeah, fair enough. Yeah, I'm totally on board with that. I think there's a balance to be struck here where there can be a loving, compassionate. No, right.

Jackson Sullivan [01:31:11]:
Oh, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:31:12]:
In terms of. And there doesn't, and there doesn't have to be. There's a few different ways that people. You describe that sometimes people respond when you tell them about what your current lifestyle is. Sometimes people respond with something that looks like pity or concern, for sure.

Jackson Sullivan [01:31:26]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:31:27]:
Sometimes people respond with something that looks like judgment or disapproval. We could not have either one of those things. We could just simply have acceptance. Oh, well, that's where you're at right now.

Jackson Sullivan [01:31:39]:
Maybe no story.

Vision Battlesword [01:31:41]:
Maybe in some cases there could be curiosity. Oh, how are you okay with that?

Jackson Sullivan [01:31:46]:
And that can be compassionate love?

Vision Battlesword [01:31:47]:
It can also be, do you feel that you need anything right now? Is there anything that you would change about your situation? It could be completely neutral curiosity. There doesn't have to be. This is my story right now. I'm speaking. There doesn't have to be an automatic response of, well, I have to offer something to you or even provide you some of my resources, even if you ask for it. That doesn't have to be automatic. Neither does it have to be something real harsh, you know, in some sort of, like, darwinian, you know, well, you've made your bed and now you have to lie in it. Pull yourself by.

Vision Battlesword [01:32:22]:
Up your bootstrap. How do you pull yourself up by bootstraps? I don't even get that. Anyway, it doesn't have to be any of these things.

Jackson Sullivan [01:32:29]:
Right.

Vision Battlesword [01:32:29]:
But it could be. It could just simply be acceptance, curiosity, as you say, kind of loving awareness, loving compassion, and then. Okay, well, what do you desire? What do I desire? Wow.

Jackson Sullivan [01:32:43]:
You see what I'm saying? And then it can be, well, if that aligns with my desire, maybe I can support you in that.

Vision Battlesword [01:32:49]:
Yeah. And your desires align with my desires.

Jackson Sullivan [01:32:52]:
And I think that's my deeper point, is that, like, here's what I mean, is that I think it actually aligns with people's desires sometimes to support each other.

Vision Battlesword [01:33:00]:
Sure it does. So what I want to say is that I'm detecting what I've been detecting, and not just in this conversation, but, like, this has been coming up for me over the past few weeks and months, is that there's a little bit of something that I think is a false program, and it's real convenient. You might even call it, like, a slippery snake or like a trick, like a little mind trick program. There's this idea of pursuing one's own personal peace and happiness and contentment and an acceptance of what is and living in the present moment, being in a quote unquote, state of flow and all of these different things. And then there's the realization that, oh, I can let a lot of things go in my life. A lot, a lot, a lot of things go in my life, and I can be in that state, and that's actually okay. And I actually need a lot less than I've been told or taught or conditioned to think that I actually need, whether it be, quote unquote, safety or resources, totally. Or even love and relationships and different things.

Vision Battlesword [01:34:07]:
I can let a lot of that go, and I can be in this other state. It's an avoidance of responsibility. There's a sneaky little trick in this program of I can be in this state of working on myself or personal development or being spiritual or being all of it meditative, all this different stuff. And it's a real convenient way of actually avoiding the responsibility for doing anything.

Jackson Sullivan [01:34:35]:
Meaningful or doing anything. Doing any other stuff.

Vision Battlesword [01:34:39]:
Doing stuff. Yeah.

Jackson Sullivan [01:34:39]:
And it can be a safe cushion of protection. And it's also, like, this safe zone.

Vision Battlesword [01:34:43]:
It's a safe zone. Right. It feels safe.

Jackson Sullivan [01:34:46]:
Speaking again, of safety. Not actually being that important.

Vision Battlesword [01:34:48]:
Yep. And it's also. There's something real, real tricky about it, because in our community, in the spiritual community, conscious community, transformational, whatever word you want to apply to this little container that we are creating, it's unimpeachable.

Jackson Sullivan [01:35:04]:
Oh. Because it's my healing journey.

Vision Battlesword [01:35:05]:
It's my healing journey.

Jackson Sullivan [01:35:06]:
How dare you question my desire to heal.

Vision Battlesword [01:35:08]:
I'm living my purpose, I'm, you know, I'm getting in touch with myself.

Jackson Sullivan [01:35:12]:
You're right, there is this sort of tonality of, it can't be questioned. It's like, yeah, in my question, my.

Vision Battlesword [01:35:18]:
Question I do question, you can get.

Jackson Sullivan [01:35:19]:
Personal with this too, by the way. Cause I'm in the active process of figuring this out for myself. Is that what I'm doing? I don't know.

Vision Battlesword [01:35:24]:
I'm not making it personal, but your personal story is bringing this up for me. And it's something, again, this is my stuff, whatever this is that I'm going through. But I also think that it's something that's valuable for people to hear the, and that's valuable for people just to witness. I'm basically calling it out, I'm calling attention to it, this thing, which is my question is, when do you get around to actually manifesting your desires that you express? And there's this undercurrent of, again, it's coming full circle back around to where we started the conversation that, well, I'll manifest sacred light, or I'll manifest iar. I'm speaking, I'll speak for myself, or I'll manifest sacred conversations, whatever. When A or B or C has been satisfied. Well, first I need to move, and then I need to get furniture, and then I need to, and then I need to, and, but then I need to work on my relationships, but then I need to get the right computer software, but then I need to. There's always something standing in the way and there's a trick that we can.

Jackson Sullivan [01:36:39]:
It'S a slippery slope, supreme procrastination.

Vision Battlesword [01:36:41]:
There's a slippery slope of a specific type of procrastination. That is the transformation trap, that is the self help trap, which is exactly.

Jackson Sullivan [01:36:50]:
What we wanted to fix with the sacred light model. Hello? That was the whole idea was we need to focus on what we actually want, right?

Vision Battlesword [01:36:57]:
And do it, and actually do what happens.

Jackson Sullivan [01:37:00]:
Make it happen.

Vision Battlesword [01:37:01]:
Yeah, do it, get started, create something. Even if it's something tiny, even if it's just the journey of a thousand miles and it's just the first step, or it's. I don't even know how I'm going to create the podcast. I don't know what software I'm going to use, but I do know that I can make a phone call and I can schedule an appointment with someone two weeks from now to say, I'm going to sit down and have a conversation with someone.

Jackson Sullivan [01:37:29]:
Totally.

Vision Battlesword [01:37:30]:
And even if I just record it on my phone, it's better than nothing. I'm just going to fire it up and I'm going to just do it. I'm just going to get started. That's what there's, there's something, there's a few, there's a few different things all coming together. You know, in my awareness right now that are all things that you've surfaced during the conversation. That's number one. This law of attraction thing, you and I both know. Remember when we went to Tipper and friends out in Suwannee, Florida, in Florida, on the way out there when we were at that Walmart and holy cow, that moment.

Vision Battlesword [01:38:01]:
Do you remember what I'm talking about? No. It's one in that Walmart that changed my awareness and my relationship with reality permanently to this day when we give.

Jackson Sullivan [01:38:12]:
A summary of the moment, because I remember the second you say it, but I just want to hear, yeah, I.

Vision Battlesword [01:38:16]:
Wanted colorful string lights to camp.

Jackson Sullivan [01:38:19]:
Yeah, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:38:20]:
And that moment we were there, we were standing, we stopped at Walmart because I lost my other lights at some other festival somewhere. And so we stopped at Walmart and we're looking for these lights and we're in the lighting aisle. And it really, like, it felt like it was the right aisle. It really should be here. But we're looking high, we're looking low. We can't find any kind of car.

Jackson Sullivan [01:38:39]:
For a good like 510 minutes.

Vision Battlesword [01:38:40]:
Oh, for sure.

Jackson Sullivan [01:38:40]:
It wasn't just like we missed it.

Vision Battlesword [01:38:42]:
I mean, yeah, we're scouring this aisle like high and low, backwards and forwards, up and down, looking behind stuff. We can't find this specific, like just a string of colorful leds. A very simple thing. Walmart should have it. We couldn't find it. And you stopped me in the middle of it and you said, okay, let's just get centered. Let's take a couple of breaths. Now tell me exactly what it is that you're looking for.

Vision Battlesword [01:39:04]:
Describe it very, very precisely. And I said, okay, well, it's a string of lights. Could be Edison bulbs or it could be Christmas lights, but it's about 10ft long. It's battery operated, it's got all rainbow colors, it's got a remote control, it's powered by USB.

Jackson Sullivan [01:39:22]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:39:23]:
And you said, okay. And then we both simultaneously turned in our place back to the shelf and within 1 second you said, wait, like this right here. And it was directly in front of us, like at eye level, directly there, right in the area that we'd just been searching.

Jackson Sullivan [01:39:41]:
We touched our true desire instead of this, like, scattered desire, and then there it was.

Vision Battlesword [01:39:45]:
And we realized in that moment, you and me, we realized that. We fucking manifested that with the power of the clarity of our intentions, totally the clarity of our intentions connected to that source of really true desiring. I really fucking want this. I'll trade money for it, but I want this. But what is it? What specifically is it? We realized that it changed my. Changed my whole fucking reality.

Jackson Sullivan [01:40:13]:
So.

Vision Battlesword [01:40:14]:
But that's only part of the equation. That's where I disagree with this law of attraction stuff. And that's right. And I'm not.

Jackson Sullivan [01:40:21]:
And I also am not 100% clear that that is what happened metaphysically. But it's. It is remarkable how we found it right after. It's pretty hard to deny that we looked in those spots before. You're saying I'm, like, always a skeptic, so I'm saying. I don't know for sure, but I'm like. It's really compelling to make me reconsider some of my principles.

Vision Battlesword [01:40:39]:
To me, the distinction is meaningless to me. Whether those colorful lights literally materialized, whether we jumped timelines, whether we clarified our own perception to be able to see something that was already also possible.

Jackson Sullivan [01:40:54]:
Yeah, it's all possible, but it doesn't actually matter because I don't care. Same. Cause we found it. We got what we wanted.

Vision Battlesword [01:40:59]:
I'm saying it worked. That's all that matters to me. I'm saying it worked. And ever since that moment, it continues to work for me. Over clarifying desire and intent, getting real, real, real specific about what exactly, specifically it is. It happens to me all the time now. All the time now. Is it a blue car phenomenon where it's always been happening?

Jackson Sullivan [01:41:21]:
It actually doesn't matter.

Vision Battlesword [01:41:22]:
Doesn't matter.

Jackson Sullivan [01:41:22]:
It's really powerful.

Vision Battlesword [01:41:23]:
Doesn't fucking matter.

Jackson Sullivan [01:41:25]:
It actually is irrelevant.

Vision Battlesword [01:41:26]:
Almost irrelevant. Irrelevant. But that, I believe that is half. I believe that's half of the equation. The other half is get up off your butt, go somewhere, or get up on your computer and start doing something.

Jackson Sullivan [01:41:43]:
You're right. We were still there. We were still at Walmart looking around.

Vision Battlesword [01:41:47]:
We went to Walmart.

Jackson Sullivan [01:41:47]:
Yeah, exactly.

Vision Battlesword [01:41:52]:
You did not sit in the lotus position and wish and pray really, really hard to be physically, bodily teleported to the unity meditation at the Texas eclipse.

Jackson Sullivan [01:42:03]:
You're right. I certainly did not.

Vision Battlesword [01:42:04]:
You walked yourself onto.

Jackson Sullivan [01:42:05]:
I even had you call me saying, don't go. Like, I mean, people I trust everything, right?

Vision Battlesword [01:42:09]:
Like, yeah, you walked yourself onto an airplane you got yourself in a car, you drove there. You chose to actually go in the face of stiff resistance from like hundreds of people, very stiff resistance. You chose to go the opposite direction of thousands, 6000 people who were clearly fleeing in emergency situation. They were scared, okay? That's not, you didn't attract that. You fucking went.

Jackson Sullivan [01:42:35]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:42:36]:
Into. And at the same point in time, you were real clear on what you wanted. That you wanted a unity meditation with all of your tribe and all of your family in a specific place where you could see a very clear view of the eclipse. And that's where it's a conversation with Goddesse. That's where it's a give and a take with the universe. That's sacred reciprocity right there. That's where you say, order up. This is what I want.

Vision Battlesword [01:43:06]:
This is my request. This is my desire. I'm going to be real, real specific about it because if I'm not, you don't know what the fuck it is. You don't know what I want. And then also, and then also I'm going to participate. I'm going to participate. And what I believe is that our participation by doing something to get the process started or doing something to continue the process or to make ourselves available for an opportunity, to capitalize on the opportunity when it does show up for us, that is us reaffirming to the universe to say, yes, more of this, please. More of this, please.

Vision Battlesword [01:43:44]:
I am serious about this and think, I'm not just going to sit around and wait for everything to be handed to me on a silver platter. Maybe that's possible. And maybe there's people who have that much potential energy that they can put into an attractive manifestation style that things actually do just like walk right up to their doorstep and then let themselves in. But I think that the majority of the time, the way it works is God helps us when we also choose to help ourselves.

Jackson Sullivan [01:44:15]:
Amen.

Vision Battlesword [01:44:17]:
And abracadabra.

Jackson Sullivan [01:44:19]:
Abracadabra. That's a good one. It's powerful. This has been pretty. This has been. All right.

Vision Battlesword [01:44:24]:
Thanks for the conversation, Jackson. Thank you. I think we made some progress here.

Jackson Sullivan [01:44:28]:
Did some pretty good stuff. I think this will be very helpful for me and I desire that it'll be helpful for anyone that listens to it.

Vision Battlesword [01:44:37]:
I'm really glad we finally did this. I thought, and I can't wait to do it again soon. Oh, yeah.

Jackson Sullivan [01:44:43]:
Sweet.

Vision Battlesword [01:44:44]:
Love you, man.

Jackson Sullivan [01:44:44]:
Love you, too. Love you, everyone. Thanks for listening.