The HighExistence Podcast

East Forest is a man of many talents. Composer, explorer, facilitator, innovator, digital shaman — the list goes on. Many of us know him through the music he produces, the experiences he’s crafted, or for the meditations and retreats that he hosts. He recently burst back into the spotlight with his latest album release ‘Ram Dass’ — a collaboration project he did with the renowned spiritual teacher...

Watch the video of this interview here . Patrick McKeown is the author of the acclaimed The Oxygen Advantage . I was first recommended this book by my friend and mentor Justin Noppé to help with my breathing during Brazilian jiu-jitsu. The book blew my mind. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about topics like health, fitness, anxiety, and stress... But there was so much highly useful informat...

“We appear to be heading for a level of existence that is beyond our ability to even imagine: the universe is being recalled; we are going home.” — Bob Frissell Bob Frissell came into my reality in quite a fitting fashion: By synchronicity. I was in a bookstore called Myopic Books in Chicago, perusing the esoteric and occult section. A book caught my eye. It was called, Nothing in This Book is Tru...

Important note: The HighExistence dialogues are where the three creators Jon Brooks, Eric Brown, and Mike Slavin come together to discuss life, the universe, and everything in between. But if you'd like to follow up with us individually, be sure to subscribe to our new YouTube channels. Here are some places you can find out more... Mike Slavin's beautiful video on how to navigate loss Jo...

Do you hear the call right now? The call to rise up, to step into your power, to be the hero. To take actions for yourself, your community, and your world. These are the tests that we've been waiting for. This is the call to be a Hero. This is where you can demonstrate the fruits of your inner work. In times of uncertainty, the best things you can do are often the smallest steps. Take care of...

The world is currently experiencing an unprecedented historical experience. Many of us find ourselves somewhere amidst the confusion and seeming chaos, looking for a way to orient ourselves, to be of service to our families and our communities, and for the opportunity hidden somewhere within the fog of emergent confusion. If you have been doing the work in your life, now is a chance to put this al...

I get faced with the question, "Why would you do more than one plant medicine retreat or ceremony? What is the value?" And really, fundamentally, after doing one, you're a different person. Really. Completely. Particularly if you dive super deep into process, you can fundamentally transform. And with that brings a whole different life; a whole different set of goals; a whole differe...

“Here’s the thing. You are not responsible for other people’s feelings. They’re not incompetent children. They’re adults who can handle their own feelings. They can work through disappointment, hurt, anger, sadness, and upset. In fact, doing so will make them stronger and healthier in the long run. You cannot stop others from feeling all discomfort, or all pain. It is an impossible task, a fool’s...

In today’s episode of the HighExistence podcast I sit down for a wild and wide-ranging discussion with Eric James. Eric is a serial entrepreneur, award-winning photographer, magician, app developer, and all-around polymath who has discovered principles that help him engineer his own luck. It just so happens that I met Eric in a stroke of luck 5 years ago at a dinner party. He walked in and I insta...

Mike Gilliland and Euvie Ivanova sort of remind me of a Sagacious Power Couple from another dimension. Their Future Thinkers Podcast—focused on evolving technology, society, and consciousness—has garnered 3.5 million downloads since its genesis in 2014. They've interviewed Titans of Insight such as Daniel Schmachtenberger, Ken Wilber, Jordan Peterson, Charles Eisenstein, Jordan Hall, and Nora...

“Epigenetics can be passed down inter-generationally. Indigenous traditions have the idea that what you do in your lifetime will impact 7 generations down from you. There’s actually good scientific backing for this idea now.” — David Krantz, HEx Podcast #29 It took me nearly an hour to pick my jaw up off the floor after speaking with David. He's just THAT GUY. Charismatic and approachable. Ab...

It has to be sustainable. You could have a productivity system of working 72 hours straight at the beginning of the week and get everything done. Cool, you can do that but you're probably going to last two weeks, tops. This is a long marathon. I think the best way to conceptualize it is as a marathon of sprints. So you sprint—you work really hard on something—you stop, you rest, you reassess,...

"A lot of people talk about art and creativity being as being a spontaneous thing. I don't have those views. For me art is a developed practice as well. You can be truly artistic but have zero developed skill. And you can be not artistic and have a developed skill. There are multiple examples if you go and research it of whoever you think is the most creative painter you can imagine, you...

"To me a visionary is someone who really knows that we create our reality from the inside out and has the courage and the willingness to actually go within and create a vision, an image, from within the inner realms of our own mind that we can really hold to and picture on a daily basis and really connect to that vision. And literally from a neuroscience perspective, our mind doesn't kno...

“The Stoics can teach you how to find a sense of purpose in life, how to face adversity, how to conquer anger within yourself, moderate your desires, experience healthy sources of joy, endure pain and illness patiently and with dignity, exhibit courage in the face of your anxieties, cope with loss, and perhaps even confront your own mortality while remaining as unperturbed as Socrates.” ―  Donald...

Most people have heard of Stoicism. It's a philosophy dense with practical wisdom. But how many Stoics do you know? I don’t mean people who have read Meditations or Letters from a Stoic , I mean actual Stoics… Individuals who are comparable to the authors of these books in their tranquility, wisdom, self-discipline, and joy. This was a question I kept asking myself as I embarked on my study o...

"In the last couple years there's seemed to be a... decided shift [in my mind] in the direction of dethroning rationality as... the primary tool that I use to parse reality, and putting it in its proper place... And through deep listening and deep internal experiences and even mystical experiences, arriving at a sense of a felt at-home-ness in reality and in the present moment, in which...

In May 2019, Jordan Bates and I (Jon Brooks) met up in London to attend the Rebel Wisdom summit. Having not seen each other in the flesh for 6 months, we thought we'd celebrate our reunion by recording our first ever podcast together. Jordan and I have always had incredible, dizzying, profound conversations about topics that frequently come up on HighExistence, and we've been intending t...

Akira is something of a musical-philosophical wizard. He's been called the DJ of the Intellectual Dark Web and is the innovator of a new genre of music called Meaningwave. He samples Terence McKenna, Alan Watts, Jordan Peterson, Hunter S. Thompson, David Foster Wallace, Elon Musk, Jock Willink, David Goggins, and a variety of other philosophers, thinkers, artists, and inspiring figures. And h...

You may be having the most extraordinary psychedelic experiences. You may be communicating with DMT-entities. Mamma Ayahuasca might be visiting you nightly. But if it's not making you a kinder person. Then it's just a holiday. It's just a thrill. You might as well just be watching a movie. You might as well be watching Disney's Fantasia because it's not making you kinder p...

"If someone says, “I’m a fucking loser,” that’s a form of dishonesty. What you actually are is a collection of atoms talking to each other. To say that you’re a loser isn’t accurately describing yourself. To say, “right now I’m having a thought that I’m a loser and engaging in some self-pity around that,” that’s more accurate." — Dan Munro, from HEx Podcast “When I say I was working with...

Donald Robertson is the expert of experts when it comes to Stoicism—the ancient blueprint for living the good life.   Donald spends his days now residing in Canada writing books and creating online courses on how Roman and Greek philosophy can help us live more wisely. Prior to this, Donald spent over 20 years working in London as a psychotherapist.   What's so amazing about Donald is that he...

"For those who would say that sugar is addictive, if that was truly at the root of the addictive nature that people have with some foods, you wouldn't see them seeking out cookies, you'd see them seeking out sugar packets. You'd want that raw cut at its most basic form. Heroin addicts don't want things cut with their heroin. So I think we need to think about it in a broade...

Sometimes I don't really like the word enlightenment because it suggests something final. It suggests an end point, and I don't think there is an end point. You can think in terms of a landscape of expansive experience which different traditions or different individuals view in different ways. They may just be sitting or standing on different parts of the landscape so they obviously inte...

Paul Austin ( @PaulAustin3W ) is the founder of  The Third Wave , a website designed to improve psychedelic literacy so these powerful tools with great potential can be used in a safe, structured, and responsible way. Paul is also co-founder of  Synthesis , the world’s first legal psilocybin truffle retreat in Amsterdam. This interview was conducted fresh after Paul returned from Burning Man, so h...