Greg Voisen
Well to my listening audience, thanks for listening and supporting Inside Personal Growth. Thank you, Brad Wetzler for being on the show and joining us from hot Austin, Texas. Today, we're going to be talking to him about his book Into the Soul of the World: My Journey to Healing. And for all of my listeners who are on a journey or finding a spiritual path, trying to heal. This is a definite book you want to read. Good day to you. How are you doing, Brad?

Brad Wetzler
I'm doing great, Greg. It's great to be here.

Greg Voisen
Well, it's an honor to have you on and I always like to let my listeners know. Because yesterday, our referral source from Austin who actually is moving today, it did you know that he's leaving. Bruce Crier, right, the HeartMath Institute, put us together about a month ago. And Brad's appearing on the show as a result of that and shout out and kudos to Bruce, who is now headed off to Sarasota, Florida. So let me let our listeners know Brad a bit about you. Brad Wetzler is an author, journalist, editor, book writing and structure, instructor, memoir, coach, and mentor and yoga instructor. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, GQ, National Geographic, Newsweek, wired Men's Journal, travel, leisure, George Best American travel, writing and outside, where he was a senior editor and contributing editor. His prior book, I eat mosquitoes don't eat meat was a collection of columns he wrote for outside, Brad writes, teaches coaches and mentors from his home in Austin, Texas. And this memoir, so into the soul of the world is out and ready to be purchased, you can get it off of Amazon. And I want to direct my listeners also to a beautifully done website. More about Brad the book, the testimonials going into his writing classes joining his community writing or I should say reading his blogs, just go to bradwetzler.com. That's bradwetzler.com. That's where you can learn more about Brad and his heartfelt approach to coaching people and getting them to be able to get a book done.

Brad Wetzler
Well, thank you. Can we expect an introduction? To send off to Bruce too. Yeah.

Greg Voisen
This book is something that you know, once you start getting into it, you can hardly put it down. And it's got so much compelling, I want to say story weaved into it along with, you know what was really happening. So you've had this compelling story. You also have these insights from these journeys from around the world that where you traveled, you went to Jerusalem and you went to all these various places. Can you speak with the listeners why you wrote the book? And what are a few of the transformative experiences you had, that had a positive influence on your mental health and contributed to your healing as it is today. I think healing no matter what it is a bad experience with a father. I was just writing a memo before we got on here about a client who's the general manager of the company is not stepping up and being assertive and being making people be accountable. And usually that's because when people got hurt in their life and an earlier point, they avoided conflict. You know, and I know you know this really well. And there's somebody that knows it really well and you dealt with it with your father. So why did you write the book? And what do you want the readers to get out of this?

Brad Wetzler
Yeah, I wrote the book. Well, of course, I've been a writer for 30 years. I was an editor first and then then I became a travel and adventure writer. And then I began to I stumbled into a teaching job in Denver teaching memoir. Long before this is 10 years ago before I'd written a memoir and I learned so much to get ready to teach I'd written in first person before a lot so it wasn't totally foreign to me. But I knew at that time and I was still struggling a lot on I was fairly early on My recovery journey at that time and, and I just knew I was going to tell this story someday and I had tried a few times in the last 10 years and just wasn't ready kept finding myself circling and repeating stories, you know, trauma writing really how I saw it. So, so I knew I knew I would heal in writing it and I knew that my story had things to teach people about healing from not just PTSD and depression, which I've he struggled with, but you know, finding more ease and peace in their lives, you know, and I think that the answer for me turned out to be deeply spiritually connected. So that's the part about writing the book, you asked me about the things I discovered out in the world. And, you know, I, when I was traveling, I'd often be covering some story, but I would find myself gravitating towards sacred sites, I'd get the story done, I'd find myself hopping a plane or a train or taking a car to some temple or church and, and I, you know, those places made me feel whole and spiritual. And at the time, and at the time, I thought it was coming from those places. And, you know, there's some truth to that, I think India itself is a deeply the spirit is in the soil there.

Greg Voisen
You know, you start this book off. And most people listeners are going to know Jon Krakauer. And you got this phone call that you received from him while he was still in Katmandu. After this catastrophic climb Mount Everest, right. And you worked for Outside magazine at the time as the editor. But you go on to mention that our story is really about faith. And your truest beginnings, where this I say this journey began 12 years prior, but you were 12 years old in May of 1978. And you are on the sandy backs of the Arkansas White River, right? Yes. Can you tell the listeners a little about this story, your personal journey, and your relationship with your father, which seemed to be somewhat tumultuous, challenging, at best?

Brad Wetzler
Yeah. I was we were on a father son, canoe trip, but as part of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at that time, I was in a Bible study group in seventh grade. And that was sorry, I grew up in the Midwest, and that was sort of a common thing. And so we went on this canoe trip and it had rained heavily all spring long, and it rained really hard the previous week. And we were told that the river was dangerous right now to float but the father’s decided we were going to float anyway. And well, after lunch, we had to portage the canoes. And we when we put the canoe back in my father and I, you know, the canoe was going sideways, and it dumped over and tossed us out of the canoe. A little backstory there all morning. Long. You know, my father had been kind of barking at me to paddle harder. And, and I was and I later realized that, you know, he didn't really know how to steer a canoe. And so we're in this together at the time, and you know, and so I was tossing the canoe and I floated downstream, and I felt this strong jerk and then I was tugged under water, and after a few seconds, I was pulled under again and then I surfaced and I eventually felt this log next to my body and I could tell that my lifejacket had snagged on a submerged log. And so I was there, and I could see downstream and I watched my father float downstream, and, and crawl out onto the sandy bank. And, and I was there stuck and I was just I was sort of outside of time. And at this time, I knew nothing about trauma. But I was there for several minutes occasionally getting pulled under and then coming back up, I just kept seeing my father who seemed paralyzed on the beach and then and, you know, so this this, I was there for, I don't know how many minutes, several minutes eventually, a, another canoe slammed into me and set me free. And another father scooped me up and, and, you know, so that was a trauma. But then when I got home, I went to tell my mother about this, this experience in which I truly believed I was going to die. And, you know, my father basically stepped in front of me and said that it didn't happen that I was exaggerating, and that my shirt got snagged on a twig. And I knew this wasn't true, but I felt too intimidated, too scared to try to set the record straight. Well, I ended up spending, you know, the next weeks with a cut upside and Bruce side trying to process what had happened to me. And that became a metaphor, I think for what was also just a toxic dysfunctional childhood and a family that was struggling with alcoholism. And probably narcissism, too. And there was just a way that I was living in a reality, trying to point out, hey, can we heal what's going on here? You know, can we see what's going on here? At least? You know, this is, this is not right. And eventually, my, my, you know, so called truth telling, irritated everybody in the family until they essentially pushed me out. And there's something called Family scapegoating that, you know, your readers or listeners can research where, where, you know, a certain family member, usually the most sensitive one will end up kind of holding the shame for the entire family that can't, can't process it and feel their own shame and it gets put down onto a single person. Well, when I left childhood, I was deeply depressed. And that at that point, suffering from you know, already from PTSD, but I didn't know it and that eventually led me to my first encounter within the mental health field with a psych psychiatrist, and which later led to a misdiagnosis that kind of sets up the rest of the book.

Greg Voisen
I say I deal with a doctor, Dr. Brian Ullman. And Dr. Flaherty who actually did this came up with the A studies, adverse childhood experiences, and I'm sure you're very well aware of 147,000 people, and how this affects your health, cortisol levels, being overweight, abuse problems in the family, all the kinds of indicators that would say, hey, if you've scored real high on in a study where you would be, and you obviously were, we're being affected by all this tremendous emotionally and mentally. And you ultimately, as you said, the story goes on. You went to as you call him, Dr. Jerry, I'm sure his name wasn't Dr. Jerry, but Right, so would you call him in the book and it kind of took you to rock bottom. Also, you speak about even going deeper with the treatments with Dr. Winston in 2001. Where you gained way you felt numb, you're kind of totally out of your mind. Now. I don't personally relate but I relate to a family member that was bipolar and manic. And this was my next oldest brother, who's now deceased. And, and probably deceased, as a part due to those. He was on lithium. He was on all kinds of drugs trying and then he wouldn't be on the drugs and he was you know, depressed one day and manic the next day and so on. And, and mental health, I was reflecting on my wife. It's okay to be physically challenged. But when you've got mental health issues, it's quite a stigma in society. Speak with us if you would about this journey you took with these doctors who gave you all these medications that basically made you feel numb to the world.

Brad Wetzler
Yeah. Well, I think I was particularly vulnerable to add to getting kind of caught in the medicalized mental health industry. You know, I was, as we've talked about, there was a sort of father hunger this this desire to connect with, you know, especially older men and to have their empathy and so I think I came into that realm quite vulnerable to what was going to happen. I my first doctor was Dr. Jerry and after was set one hour session, he told some stories about my depression, which was my main symptoms. I also had some kind of mystical experiences, I was sort of a, you know, unusual kind of kid in that way. And he took those to signify mania. And so I walked out of there at the end of an hour with a diagnosis of bipolar and in a prescription for lithium, which I took earnestly for many years. And I eventually switched doctors, he retired, the next Doctor picked up where he left off, didn't ask too many questions about my childhood. And because the because I had PTSD and not bipolar, these meds weren't doing a thing to, to really heal anything or even treat the symptoms I was I was still struggling as much as ever Well, at the model at the time was to keep adding on more of the you know, this idea of a medical medication cocktail. Eventually, I took 12 or 13 different medications, 23 pills a day, everything ranging from Anna to depressed antidepressants to mood stabilizers, to anti-psychotics to stimulants, the stimulants were added because I was not getting out of bed. And then that allowed me to be a walking zombie essentially, will slowly this, this happened slowly. And so I was living as a travel writer at the time, which is sort of the unusual part of this story. And, but eventually the drugs took too much of a toll that depression as well. And I basically went to bed for five plus years. And so I'm sorry, I got off base about what the question was with?

Greg Voisen
No, it's really the fact that the question was around Dr. Winston and today, you gained weight, you gained a lot of weight as a result of medications. You weren't yourself, you were feeling out of your mind. And you were still a travel writer. Right. So it was pretty interesting. So you answered the question.

Brad Wetzler
Okay. Well, you know, part, one thing I'll add to that is just that drive to achieve, you know, especially in our younger years before, we're 40. And it just, I just kept going and going sort of like, you know, just as if I were heading cocaine or alcohol or both problem, it was my problem was pills and addiction to pills. And I kept pushing myself, which was also part of the problem.

Greg Voisen
So yeah, yeah. Oh, you know, and part of the biggest part of the problem lies in what you refer to as a therapist suggested that you had an internal father complex. What advice would you give to our listeners about trying to please their father, at the expense of their own happiness? Yeah, you know, look, it's, I think this happens in a lot of families, but people don't talk about it. Yeah, right. I have I have a buddy who's been trying to please his dad, forever and ever, and no matter what he does, he's never going to get the recognizing months.

Brad Wetzler
Yeah, you know, there's a there's a leader, he's deceased now. But in the men's movement back in the 90s, named Robert Moore, who talked about some men get blessed. And those men end up moving through life rather efficiently or more efficiently than then not and, and then there's people who don't get blessed. And that can be the type of scapegoat person that I was, but for whatever reason, their fathers never, never see them for who they are. And it does create, you know what, what I've seen Richard Rohr call father hunger and, you know, how do you deal with it? I think the first stage is, you've got to even see that it's happening. So much of this is unconscious in those in your 20s and 30s. And I guess that's one thing I would say to your listeners, if they're young is, you know, if you do feel like you didn't get blessed, you know, can you try to bring this to consciousness in some way and do some reading about this kind of thing. And also, then, when you arrive towards 40, though, I think, you know, when the classic kind of time for a midlife crisis is when, you know, we stop achieving so much to please our absent fathers, and you have a chance to try something new. So I guess the other thing I would say would be to encourage anyone who's approaching that age to see if you can't look back and see how you've been running automatic programs, trying to please an impossible father and see if you can't connect I in my opinion, the answer is to try to connect deeply with your deepest feelings because I think that's not just your emotions, but your deep values about what you really what really matters to you what you what you really should be doing with your time in life. And I think that's also in my you know, estimation also a portal to the to your soul. I mean, I think when you can tap deeply into your, your deepest self is when you can touch base with your life's purpose and maybe your soul.

Greg Voisen
Well, I think for our listeners, before I move on to the next question, the add on question to this should be, how did it end up with your father because they're going to want to know whether they had the book or not. And I think that's an important thing, because as you move on, you know, our parents predeceased us usually, right, a lot of people carry that after the parents have been deceased. Tell us where you are now?

Brad Wetzler
Yeah, well, I obviously I've done a lot of work and a lot of work in therapy. And even I think I do believe a lot of the work in yoga and has also helped but trying to get clear. You know, basically, every advisor in my life, whether a therapist or, or deep friend, has advised me not to be in contact with my family at all. And I know that's a very, that's a very, that's not what you hear a lot is maybe the path I've worked on, you know, I do believe forgiveness is important. And I think I've gotten there for the most part. I also know that, that I'm still rebuilding my life, this is still a process. And so I've got to be very careful.

Greg Voisen
Well, all I can say is, I wish you the best on this journey as you take this and hopefully mending it, and I hope that the two of you can come to some loving understanding before he dies, before you die. Yeah, that wouldn't be something that let's say you don't really want to take that to the grave with you. But you know, talking about a journey. You talk about this hike, you went on for 65 kilometers. It's the pilgrimage route and Galloway Reese region of Israel that traces throughout the Jesus may have walked the severity spiritual part kind of the book, you start, you stated in the book that you forged a path on this trip, you are seeking new ways of seeing yourself, other than as a bipolar former adventurer writer who had dropped out of society and spent five years in bed. You know, what realization did you take away from that pilgrimage? What did you What understanding? Did you come away from Brad?

Brad Wetzler
Yeah, you know, I think I went there, really wondering if I couldn't become a Christian like I was when I was a kid. And I soon learned that I that I couldn't. But it did it did. That type period of contemplation it did begin to open my heart and I did a lot of pondering of the spiritual texts. And it really began the longer spiritual journey that as you know, would lead me to more in eastern understanding. But you know, I guess one of the things it did, it helped me to understand why I was so fascinated as a kid with Jesus and, and I, you know, I know that there's, you know, in America, we've got a really, you know, kind of a delusional Christianity that has become the mainstream in my opinion. And so what I'm when I talk about this, I'm talking about what the, you know, what the myth of Jesus said, and it's essentially this, this was a powerful man who was, who stood up to authority who, who was compassionate, strong, you know, all the things that we would you would want to be in a man and I now see that that was part of this journey I was on and idealizing Jesus, so I came to understand that but I think the biggest thing, it did start to open my heart it just began to you know, I was a very intellectual journalist type and that was part of the problem. I was a probably a deeply spiritual person the whole time who wasn't living spiritual life. And so when I got back, you know, as I got to the airport in Tel Aviv, they ordered me to empty my bags out and they confiscated my computer. And I just had a moment there where I realized this was, this was a worthwhile trip, it didn't, didn't achieve what I thought it might, but it opened my heart and I was ready, ready to continue on this path of the heart, essentially, because that's what that's what Jesus was about. I searched for Jesus in, you know, in the, on the trails of Palestine, for the historical Jesus, but what ended up happening is opening my heart so

Greg Voisen
well, you know, whether it's a deity that you, I don't care if you're Hindu, Jew, Christian, Catholic, there's many paths to the top of the mountain, as they say. And all of them are filled with our own pain and suffering as a result of our own pain and suffering, right? So first, you have the realization, right? Yeah. And, you know, in this chapter door of faith, you stated you didn't think then adventure writer has much in common with a mist, mystical, Sufi poetry. And I actually asked you to cite this poem, not me, I could easily read it, but I think it needs to come from you, on page 163, and the things that you found in common, and why did these three lines as you say, in the book, slay you?

Brad Wetzler
Yeah, you know, I think I was reading this, this poem, I was reading a lot of Rumi, when I got back from Israel and Palestine. And I, you know, I realized that, that, you know, a Sufi mystic was longed for God, sort of in the same way that a mountaineer would longed to be on top of a mountain and, and you know, the things that tended to get in our way of both that adventure and to end a Sufi mystic or a spiritual person is our own human sort of fallible fallibility. So, you know, as I read, I stumbled upon this poem in a book of poetry by Rumi and I'll read it now the burning with longing fire, wanting to sleep with my head on your door, so my living is composed only of trying to live in your presence. I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons knocking on your door, it opens I've been knocking on the inside. And something about that just brought tears to my eyes. And all it really does, even as I read that now. And I think, you know, obviously the line about the insanity and insanity, I'd gone through my own insanity, my own version of it, the insanity of the medicalized, you know, mental health industry and the insanity of us all in our own suffering. And that really spoke to me in in that final line about I was knocking from the inside. Yeah, just finding that line, is the line and then it's her finally realized that what you're searching for out in the world is not there, and that you've got to make it an inner journey, inner adventure. And that's a shift that not everyone gets to make. And that's, that's where life changes and things get really wild and weird and good. And just the journey into the present moment and back into your heart. It's where, you know, it's where the healings finally can start to happen,

Greg Voisen
compassion for yourself and compassion for others. And at the same time understanding that the Guru is in the mirror. Yes, you know, it's facing to you every day. That's the next book, I'm writing, by the way, title. And I say this because, you know, after 18 years, almost doing these podcasts of a every Walker person to come across this who's written a book about personal growth and spirituality and whatever. And as I weave that tapestry together, unlike you, I see common themes that bounce around all the time, and this, and they don't really move too far from the meaning. Alright. Granted, the experiences can be more severe. But the thing that draws one back to this equilibrium to this homeostasis to this spot of happiness and peace is as I would say, it's 100% acceptance of self. Yeah. When you're always trying to be somebody else for someone else. That never works. I mean, you're perfectly example. And so that leads me to this, you know, let rom Das has been on the show. It's a way back, he passed away. But you had this infatuation with The Eastern spiritual philosophies rom das and Krishna Das, and how this influenced your spiritual awakening. And I would really like to know, what would you want the listeners to know about the positive influences that the Eastern cultures use, I should say Eastern spirituality has had?

Brad Wetzler
Yeah, definitely. And I would I want to start my answer with that by talking about just how the recordings of those men spoke to me again, on this father hunger level. So even underneath the Eastern spirituality, which they led me to, I just found a different breed of masculinity in them who were heart based who were exploring their inner worlds. And that that was the sort of the gateway drug for me into this. And then, you know, the other thing, I think, the way in the east, you know, that, that our sense of self I began to learn in the east is positive, essentially, as opposed to our Judeo Christian past which we have this original sin that kind of haunts us, even unconsciously, even if we're not that religious or aware of it. And I, one of the things that helped me I was in a yoga class, and this teacher just made this simple talk about how coming to a yoga class was sort of like polishing, you know, this light that's inside you. And it was a very beginner level spiritual talk. And yet it really helped me to see that this the Eastern path, you know, that I was a whole person already I was, you know, you talk about guru, they say that God guru himself or one in the Eastern traditions, and so our own souls are connected to the souls of the world and, and there's just a way that I found a connection to a way of seeing myself and my role in the world is in a more positive way. So there was twofold it was the men themselves, who the Americans who brought it back that first hooked me and then and then I just went deep into the philosophy of it, you know, the Bhagavad Gita and letting go of the need for outcomes, and again, the self-compassion part, the metta meditation became a huge part for me, Sharon Salzberg 's work and Kristin Neff and that crowd, so? Yeah,

Greg Voisen
well, meditation and of itself and yoga, one thing you already mentioned, are two things to center you and to make you much more focused on that whole compassion side of yourself. And I sense that in you. In other words, you've taken these steps toward not medicating and using these as your medication and weaning yourself off of those medications. And, uh, you mentioned in the book that one evening, you pulled off Hermann Hesse's, as off the bookshelf, and the story had this stunning effect on you. Can you tell the story of Sudha, Dre and Buddha, and why it was so important to you, because this is like one of the like, I don't know if I call it the quintessential kind of realizations for you. But it seemed to me a really important piece of your book. Yeah. And it actually is written in the book to Autobahn listeners, when you get it you actually paraphrased from that. So there's something that happened to you, it seemed like a turning point would, or would I be wrong?

Brad Wetzler
You'd be absolutely right. And I think, you know, there's that moment at the end of the first act of the first section of the book, where Siddhartha, who's been traveling all over India, trying to become a great yogi and sort of understand himself does meet the Buddha in a grove and he sees he recognized the greatness of the Buddha and realizes that he'd come up with really profound answers and a method to life and, and yet, he knew that he wasn't going to stay in the grove and become a Buddhist, he needed to keep, keep walking. And so he, thanks the Buddha and he literally walks away from the Buddha. And that's just another moment I just again, I almost am filled with tears in that moment, and I tried to understand what it what it means to me. And I think the essence of it for me is, is this need to, to find our own path in life? You know, I think lineages and these traditions are beautiful and if they work for you, great, stay in one but there's also you know, these, the Eastern methods teach us to trust our own inner selves to trust our own experience and I knew that I was walking away from a lot in my life at that moment, I was walking away from the drugs at the time for at least for the time being I was walking away from my family, I was walking away from entire old ways of being. And I just knew that that this was bold, new territory I was entering, and I didn't know how it was going to turn out, but that I had to TED to walk away. And, and it sounds drastic. And I did end up spending a lot of time alone in a very small apartment in Boulder, Colorado, kind of chewing on all of this. But I knew that I had to walk away from this high achieving past the, the ways I was seeing myself in the world. And I didn't know where I was going to end up. And I think that's part of the mystery of transformation is you really don't know where you're going to end up, you know, you can you think you're going to try to change in certain ways. And you know, you have no idea once you get into the process of how you're going to it's going to be better it's going to be, you know, it may be harder in some ways to but it's a, you know, there is a certain way that you can't plan your own transformation. So there's some of that was in that quote, too, I think,

Greg Voisen
well, I knew I was just not too many podcasts. Thomas Moore, the monk had been on here talking about the eloquence of silence. And it seems to be in our western culture here. Right, that it's so hard to deal with emptiness. We're always trying to fill something. Yeah. And my question for you be what did you find in the void? And the emptiness and solitude that gave you comfort? Because, you know, a lot of people would say, no, no, I run from that, because I got to fill it with something. If something you know, depletes, let's go back and fill it back up again. But there is this true healing that can occur when you allow that to happen. And my sense is, you allow it to happen. Not a lot of people do. And so my curiosity is for you. What, what did what occurred as a result of you allowing to empty?

Brad Wetzler
Yeah, it's a great question. And I would like to preface that by saying I had a real abandonment issue when it's a time that I ended up walking away from my old life and sitting with myself. And so I didn't know how to be with myself. And I think that was part of what I was trying to do was to slay that dragon, so to speak, and to learn to be with myself. And as you have already mentioned, meditation and yoga are practices that teach us to sit with our uncomfortableness and, and so, you know, one thing I did, I did learn to be with myself and, and so that's, that's part of it. And then I also then eventually learned, you know, began to see, you know, humility, I think is part of it, you know, part of all that we're talking about here to heal. You've got to find you've got to be able to see that you've got to heal first. And that's such an important thing I want to stress. And, you know, the guy that I've mentioned Richard Rohr, but he's this monk in Albuquerque, but he, he says he prays for one good humiliation a day, and what a way to think of your life and to think of the way to get back to your true self. And the final thing I'll add, you know, there is this idea in, in yoga of tapas and tapas, yeah, which is sitting in the fire of things. And, you know, there is a way I think, during those years, there was there's, you know, five plus years where I lived alone in this very tiny studio apartment, and, you know, the way of just burning stuff off burning off the dead wood. Because I, you know, and I think rom das used to talk about this, just the need for sacrifice, and, and not in the way that we think about in the West, but the, the way of burning off dead wood, the parts of us that don't serve us anymore.

Greg Voisen
And very well said, yeah, very well said. And I think, you know, sacrifice week most people connotates with sacrifice with giving up something. But actually, when you give up something, let's say you are, you have an opportunity to renew yourself, completely renew yourself as it as a as a new soul. And, you know, this book takes a lot of twists and turns. It's a great story about your journey to healing and we've covered a lot of it so far, but obviously not all of it. I'm going to tell my listeners, go to Amazon and get a copy. This is a hash a book. If you were to distill your life experiences down into a simple March mantra about how you live and your life, and what would that what would that be? That's part one of the quiz. Shouldn't it also, what sage advice with all the suffering you've been through? And all the pain you've been through? Would you have for people who are currently suffering with mental illness? And how might they find a way out from the suffering and the pain?

Brad Wetzler
Great questions. As far as the mantra you know, I think that one of the epigraphs of my book is from Bob Dylan's song and it you know, the quote is, how does it feel? And of course, that song is about a lot of different things. But I think, you know, we live in a time when we live in our heads, and we live very disconnected from our bodies and our hearts, we stare at computers all day long. Maybe you go to an office and you don't feel connected to your body and heart. And, you know, I guess, how does it feel that that term says more than what it says to me, it means connecting to your heart, and it means connecting to the deepest places within you that that can take you to, to your soul into your purpose, and all of these things. So there's something about that quote, that means a lot, even though it's just a popular song. Humility is another term that I'm constantly challenged by, and that brings me a lot of, you know, a deep understanding about myself. And then the final part, the advice to somebody struggling in a mental health journey. You know, I guess I would lean on that trusting your own intuition, trusting your own experience. I you know, I know that. That the thing about a mental health struggle is that unlike a physical struggle, which I know there's many that are horrible, your whole worldview gets tinted, your whole view of yourself gets tented, and in my case, it got tinted very negatively, a very negative view of myself that caused the depression. And, and, you know, I think, to circle back to this word face, I guess, is part of it, that if you can connect with yourself, if you can find faith, not though not the belief in a god, but have faith that if you get knocked down again, you can get back up and, and that you can find your center, as you said, and, you know, this is a bit of a rambling answer. But the last thing, the thing that I wanted to add to that previous question about all those years, and in that single room apartment, I eventually learned that I needed to find community. And so this is a key thing. I did not know how to be in a relationship, my upbringing had damaged my own nervous system, and didn't really know how to be in relationship, even though I'd been married a couple of times, and all this, so I had to find community again. So find community, the healing happens, you know, you can take yourself so far in the emptiness and then you got to go back to community and have your heart opened by being around people. So you know, as much as you want to isolate, find, find a way to get around people even in the physical world to I mean, if, if all you can manage right now is zoom calls great, but try to be in the presence of other humans who you feel the resonance of the heart, you feel the connection we all have. So that's my message.

Greg Voisen
Well, I'm going to conclude this with something that Buddha said, all teaching is suffering and the end of suffering. Suffering is his teachings, and does not necessarily mean grave physical pain, but rather the mental suffering we undergo when our tendency to hold on to pleasure encounters the fleeting nature of life, and our experiences become unsatisfying. And I think you know, when you look at the four noble truths, and you look at tea, non-Han, and you look at the Buddha's teachings, there's a lot that can be said, for Eastern philosophy, no matter who's out there, whether you're a Christian, and you think that you know, the true origins or that of the teachings. There's so much that's interconnected between the Bible and all of these other texts that have been written in eastern philosophy. And I just want to say that your book actually kind of went both sides, right? It's like it was looking from the Christian standpoint and being brought up that way and then go in and find the Eastern philosophy and, and I think for somebody, it's not a confusing book to read at all. It's a book that actually talks about the transformation that occurs to a soul like yourself, as A result of being curious and exploring. And most of this and Buddha would always say is always question anything that he said. And I would say that is true. You know, if you really want to find the deep answers, question, if it's not resonating for you, then don't read any further go on and find something else but keep seeking. And that would be my answer is continue to seek until you find the answer. And most often, you'll find that answer as a result of all the things you've read all the experiences, you've had all the loves, you've had all the loves, you've lost, and all you've let go of. And in the end, that's really not a formula. It's just kind of a path. Maybe that's a way you can go around the path.

Brad Wetzler
Yeah. I love what you just said, and I appreciate your scale in this entire interview. And I think you're right, there's everyone who has their own path. There are some tried and true things that I would recommend therapy, yoga, those kinds of things. But man, there's so many things I tried that, that I my intuition told me, they would help heal me somehow and I just went down there and they did you know, yeah, so I love I love what you said. And thank you.

Greg Voisen
Well, little by little right and other Yes. Okay. So you tried Ayahuasca or maybe you're in micro dosing LSD or you tried. It doesn't matter what those things were mushrooms, it doesn't matter. They all gave you the sum total of the experience of who Brad Wetzler is today. And somebody who could write a book and weave it all together. In, in what I call is a great story, a great memoir, but also great lessons of learning. So for my listeners, and for me, too, you Namaste, my friend. Thanks. Thanks for being on inside personal growth sharing into the soul world, we'll put a link to the book at amazon. We'll also put a link to the website which I'll mention one more time before we truncate this. It's Brad Wetzler w-e-t-z-l-e-r.com. There, you can learn more about him, also about his writing classes and the community that he's teaching. If you're interested, he's got such a background as a writer, and as someone who spent years in this industry, and he's using that now to support himself. So please support Brett. If you're thinking about it, go out, reach out to Brad send him an email. It's easy to hook up with him. He's got a memoir class. But you can work with Brad and a lot of different ways. So Thanks, Brad, for being on. I hope it cools down a little bit in Austin, Texas. And you and you get a breather from that he

Brad Wetzler
Thank you, Greg, and many, many thanks for this opportunity. It's great to get to know you.

Greg Voisen
Likewise.