Ep. 3 (Part 1 of 2) | In this riveting, mind opening (and bending) conversation, philosopher and peak performance expert Jamie Wheal takes our existential metacrisis head on, asking and often answering the biggest questions we, the human race, face today. “How do we do this human thing with our heads up and our hearts open and not get crushed by the tragedies and absurdities of it all?” “How can we tune into the wisdom, the transpersonal heights?” More than inspirational, this conversation is like an infusion of the energetic, coherent, transpersonal potential of human beings. Guaranteed, you won’t see things the same way after listening. Recorded on September 15, 2021.

Jamie Wheal is the author of Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex and Death In a World That's Lost Its Mind and the global bestseller Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work. He’s also the founder of the Flow Genome Project, an international organization dedicated to the research and training of human performance. Jamie’s work and ideas have been covered in The New York Times, Financial Times, Wired, Entrepreneur, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Inc., and TED. Jamie has spoken at Stanford University, MIT, the Harvard Club, Imperial College, Singularity University, the U.S. Naval War College and Special Operations Command, Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, the Bohemian Club, and the United Nations.

Topics & Timestamps - Part 1

• Getting off the grid not to survive but to thrive (01:52)
• Facing the challenges of our time is a cycle: remaining open, learning to fall gracefully, maintaining center (03:25)
• Jamie’s practices, the 4 M’s: Music, Mountains, Mushrooms, Marriage (09:02)
• The beautiful American, antinomian, mystical tradition (10:32)
• Who throughout history really got “into the pudding”? (13:55)
• Jamie’s dark night of the soul (16:52) 
• The psychedelic renaissance, reconciling repeat transformations, and the question “How much do we change, really?” (20:20)
• Our mythic lives vs our biographic lives (22:24) 
• The universal agenda and Chris Bache’s LSD and the Mind of the Universe (24:06)
• The “information layer” that comes from Source; baffling precision along with evidence of the trickster (27:25) 
• Wrestling with the existential situation using the mountaineer’s “risk triangle” (30:30) 
• The only question we should be addressing: Can we get onto an S curve of a renewable, sustainable, and equitable economy? (32:05) 
• How can we use peak experiences? How can we tune into our highest, best life? Hedonic engineering (36:48)
• How to create a flywheel effect: practice daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, annually (40:36) 
• The Ten Suggestions (vs The Ten Commandments): An update (43:15)
• The false certainty of the newly converted (46:46)
• Recultivating the elements of mystery and the trickster of the divine (47:41)
• The weak link: after opening consistently to mystical states...what do you do Monday morning? (Stabilization of states to traits) (48:19)

Resources & References - Part 1

• Jamie Wheal, Stealing Fire*
• Jamie Wheal, Recapture the Rapture*
• George Leonard, Mastery, The Way of Aikido*
• Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now*
• Jamie Wheal’s The Flow Genome Project
• Howard Thurman, The Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman*
• Jerry Garcia, Robert Hunter, The Merry Pranksters, Tom Wolfe
• Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish theologian, scientist, philosopher & mystic
• William Blake, poet, painter, mystic
• The Book of Enoch, ancient Hebrew text
• The angel Metatron
• Kurt Fisher, author, neuroscience and education researcher at Harvard
• The Constructive Developmental approach, Kegan and Kohlberg
• Chris Bache, LSD and the Mind of the Universe*
• Ed Viesturs, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World’s 14 Highest Peaks*
• The Bhagavad Gita
• Rober Anton Wilson, hedonic engineering
• Suzuki Roshi, “Each of you is perfect the way you are…”
• Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy*
• Susanne Cook-Greuter’s ego development stages*
• Ramakrishna, Hindu mystic and spiritual leader
• John Lilly, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, psychonaut, philosopher, writer, and inventor

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos

Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell