[00:00:01] Luke: What's it like being a spiritual teacher who's on Gaia and has a popular social media following in terms of negativity coming your way, trolls, and things like that? How do you approach that within yourself and in the real world?

[00:00:21] Sarah: I've learned to really value my quality of life above all else, so that when I'm working, all of my energy goes into my work. And then when I'm not working, then all of my boundaries come up. Because when you expose the dark, when you enhance light, it does not matter how good you're being. It doesn't matter about anything else.

[00:00:50] You're straight up pointing a sword at the dark. So that is going to try to throw you off kilter in small to very large ways. And so what I do now is really practice presence through looking for the joys in even the mundane parts. Anything that just enhances overall quality of life that's become so important to me.

[00:01:17] Luke: What do you do to not take praise or criticism personally?

[00:01:26] Sarah: Well, I'm a double Leo, so I will always take criticism personally.

[00:01:34] Luke: Oh, okay. It's part of that archetype?

[00:01:38] Sarah: Yeah. The praise, it just depends on how powerful a person is. The more powerful a person is internally, the more they can handle praise. The less powerful a person is internally, praise can devour you. It can deteriorate you. Praise deteriorates those that are not worthy of it. That's one of my lines in one of my poetry books.

[00:02:03] Luke: I like it. I've heard the phrase, if you take the credit, you've got to take the blame.

[00:02:08] Sarah: I love that.

[00:02:11] Luke: It's like a simple farmer way of saying the same thing. But I think about that. I think, for me, in my experience of either of those, it's like a matter of ego identification. It's really easy if you're very ego-identified to let things go to your head, and you start taking credit for your talents and abilities that God gave you.

[00:02:35] And then when people attack you, it really hurts because the ego takes it as such a threat and so personally. So I'm always working on ways to take myself less seriously. So if I get praised, it's like, oh, cool. Thanks. You can just give it directly to God because God made me. It's like, say, you're innately an amazing singer, right?

[00:02:56] It's like, yeah, you put in some work to cultivate that skill, but it's like God's the one that gave it to you. So who really gets the credit? I think we really deserve such a small amount of credit for the work we put in because so much of it is grace.

[00:03:15] Sarah: I completely agree with you. And then on the other hand, also, I see now God being an infinity symbol of reciprocity between creator and creation. And so because of that, we also have to see-- and I'm not even talking about me. I'm actually using right now in my mind a singer as the example. And me, no, please give it all to spirit because if it comes with the blame and criticism, like I said--

[00:03:40] Luke: Yeah.

[00:03:40] Sarah: But that singer probably took lifetimes to be able to develop that level of subtleness, to have that level of certain resilience inside their energy centers for that beautiful gift that we see. And so I'm not trying to take anything away from Spirit. I just also see where the credit does need to be acknowledged in the creation.

[00:04:15] Luke: That's a good point. That's a good point. I was talking to Alyson about this the other day and we were speaking of, in terms of commerce, acknowledging and owning your worth, how we were just a few moments ago talking about, how much people charge and then they get attacked for charging too much.

[00:04:32] They charge too little, they attract the wrong type of clients, all that stuff. The way she's always framed that is in alignment with what you just said. It's like, I've spent X amount of years on a devotional path that's required a lot of self-sacrifice, surrender, a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, a lot of open-mindedness, open-heartedness, all the things.

[00:04:55] And there's a value in that. Sure, God gets the credit, but there's also, to your point, the human who's maybe higher will or higher self-motivated them to take the steps to create the value within themselves. So I think that's an important point. That one's a little tough for me to grasp sometimes for myself.

[00:05:18] What about this phenomenon for people on the spiritual path that I've experienced wherein you get stuck in looking at the things that you need to work on still. I'm always applying self-inquiry, honesty, inventory. Where am I off? Where am I out of alignment, out of integrity?

[00:05:37] Where am I falling short, etc.? Which is great because most people, I think on the planet don't do that. They're just blind NPCs. Just like, oh, I'm fine. It's everyone else. The projectors. But do you see a possible trap in that from the standpoint of not acknowledging your value and the work you put in? Where do you think the balance is of going, "Okay, yeah, I've got some things to work on, but let's not ignore what I overcame?"

[00:06:07] Sarah: That's a beautiful question. So first of all, the way that you are taking inventory is sounding like a leader, which when people step into that leadership role in whatever capacity-- because there's so many different ways that a leader can lead. It's vital to be even more than most people.

[00:06:30] It's even more important to be able to take that inventory and go, "Okay, where can I correct better?" When it comes to self-examination and self-awareness in general, for anyone who's just wanting to be more conscious, what happens is that they have a higher level of sincerity than most. That higher level of sincerity can accidentally tilt too much into becoming neurotic.

[00:06:59] And so that is more to your point, it's that when does self-healing and self-awareness become a new ego trap and neurotic? And you could always tell because the fruits of anyone, the fruits of what work they've done is displayed. Everything is naked. So you could always tell if somebody's still in the process, but maybe overly excited that they're in the process.

[00:07:25] And so their ego likes to really self-identify with either their pain parts or self-identify and even constantly being in a perpetual process. Or if somebody can actually just be normal. Just talk about anything. Allow a person to present themselves in front of you however they're presenting themselves, and meet them there.

[00:07:51] Luke: I dig it. What began your spiritual path? Did you come from a place of pain and unconsciousness like most of us that have pursued that path?

[00:08:02] Sarah: Yeah. But to be even more on point with it, I came from the conspiracy land.

[00:08:13] Luke: Ah, me too.

[00:08:15] Sarah: I don't even like calling it conspiracy, so I'm just meeting everyone in the middle with that term.

[00:08:19] Luke: We need a better word. I made t-shirt that says conspiracy theorist and a theorist is crossed out and it says analyst, which is more accurate. Because the world is full of conspiracies, and you can theorize about them, or you can actually look into them and figure out if they're true or not. So carry on. That's an interesting entry point that leads one to spirit because it can also, as you well know, I'm sure, lead one into hopelessness and darkness and complete apathy.

[00:08:50] Sarah: Yeah. If they get their pipes clogged, totally. I've done a few videos on that. One of them is black-pilled. Another one is the second wave of ascension. One of the trials and tribulations of the second wave of ascension is getting stuck. So it's always external. Everything's external. And it comes from a very beautiful place, is what I see.

[00:09:16] And I see that it even serves a very large purpose because you'll notice that people in that second wave of ascension are the ones that will grapple more with others. The people who've done enough internal work on themselves usually just understand that if somebody comes their way and they're meant to have a connection with them and learn from them, then that's going to be serving both of them in some way, but that they just don't output energy for the sake of outputting energy.

[00:09:47] But yeah, when I first got into everything, it was already with this willingness that I had subconsciously. I always was very off-put by reality, but I never had the actual script of, this is why you're put off with reality. So one day inside a sociology class, it was the last day of school, and my sociology professor said, "Okay, I'm going to show you guys a documentary, and don't tell the dean or else I will flunk you."

[00:10:21] Luke: Sounds like my kind of professor.

[00:10:24] Sarah: And so he showed us a documentary on a conspiracy, and was--

[00:10:30] Luke: Which one was it? Zeitgeist? Loose Change? Do you remember the name?

[00:10:35] Sarah: It was the second one you said.

[00:10:36] Luke: Loose Change?

[00:10:37] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:10:37] Luke: I like how you won't say it. Yeah, that one, that was a rude awakening. That was my awakening, was 9/11. Not that I ever was like into the establishment and like you always felt like I got-- wait, I'm going to put words in your mouth. Like I got dropped off on the wrong planet just from the time I was born. Just like, what is happening here? I don't fit. But in terms of piercing the veil on perception, 9/11 was a huge one for me.

[00:11:07] The Pentagon specifically, that's the one that got me. Someone showed me a video of that, and that was an eight-minute video early YouTube, and said, "Did you see the plane they said hit the Pentagon." I'm like, "Well, yeah, it's right there." And he goes, "Watch the video again." I'm like, "Oh my God, there's no plane."

[00:11:22] It was like zero evidence of a plane and that was the end. I was just like, "Okay, it's over. I'll never trust any of these bastards." So back to your professor. You guys don't say anything about this. On the down low, we're going to watch this film.

[00:11:35] Sarah: Yeah. And so then I just was constantly attracted to topics about the core nature of reality. What is this thing we're in, where the powers that were are even called that and that they are doing this? So I had grappled a lot with things that I see a lot of people moving through now, which is like, why do they hate us?

[00:12:01] So yeah, I came from that and I was afraid at the time, but it was also really fun. So it was passion project, call it that. And that led to another path and that led to another path. I think one of the core ways that people are awakening now is actually through health. Because the health system has nothing to do with health, and that's getting more and more apparent, and people are getting more and more sick. And so it's forcing people to wake up.

[00:12:32] Luke: Yeah, it is. So you had something within you, it sounds like, that wanted to know the foundational truth about our reality. The entry point to that was finding things that were not true, that we've been force fed. And then I'm assuming beyond that you started uncovering deeper levels of truth that led into the spiritual realm.

[00:12:57] Because something like 9/11, just for example, is a gross material physical psyop. But beyond that, the way I see it, there are forces in the spiritual realm that are behind those things. Whether they're of light or not. In that case, definitely seems like they were not of the light.

[00:13:18] And that was a similar path for me. Although I got into spirituality first. It definitely merged at some point and then was difficult to parse apart because I started seeing the spiritual tone behind the events that I found to be problematic.

[00:13:40] Sarah: Yeah. And that's what's so interesting because everything at its core is esoteric. And so it's interesting to see how people run you through their own projections. Esotericism is the very structure of our reality and yet it's portrayed as this disembodied, disassociative state of spiritual elitism or egoism. But actually what you'll find is that souls that have been around this rodeo long enough are all gravitating straight to the esoteric.

[00:14:15] Luke: Right. It's like the parasitic class, I've always thought of, because they seem to be so anti-life, anti-human, anti-good, anti-love, or devoid of that, I would've thought-- well, did probably think for a long time-- that they're atheists. It's like they're just godless. But it's clear because they attack spirituality from so many angles, whether it's religion or new age or whatever-- maybe they're working through new age, even in some cases to mislead people-- but they definitely have a theology.

[00:14:48] There's a theology behind what we just commonly call the matrix. It's like they definitely believe in something. I don't think it's what those of us that are seeking a path of light believe in. But if they didn't believe in these forces, then they wouldn't be doing what they're doing. That's what they use through their kind of magic.

[00:15:09] Sarah: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And then all of the different ways that something can be distorted to look like, let's say, an actually aligned path. Because remember, these are masters at a specific thing, and it's not compassion. These are masters at manipulation. So you have to have some of the poison within you to act as the medicine.

[00:15:37] You can't just go, "I'm good." And those people manipulate-- that is not how alchemy even works. So just like how alchemy is the divine chemistry that's used to create through light and darkness or just how in homeopathy you need some of the hair of the dog that bit you in order to keep your body, mind, spirit, and immune system strong and resilient enough to deal with that poison, we have to be understanding of manipulation and masters of it as well. Not to manipulate others, but to actually just become sovereign.

[00:16:24] Luke: How does one protect themselves from limbic system hijacking in the face of so much trauma-based mind control?

[00:16:33] Sarah: Beautiful question.

[00:16:37] Luke: The psyops, you can't even keep up with them nowadays. It's just like one after another after another. It's just like constant barrage of smoke and mirrors and falsehood. It's wild. Maybe it's always been that way and I'm just more aware of it now. But I think a lot of this is really that they have a very deep and complex understanding of the human psyche, and we don't. We don't have the emotional intelligence, most of us.

[00:17:06] We have to develop it if we so choose, but I think that that seems to be their weapon of choice on the subtle levels, which makes it harder to defend yourself. So how do you see that?

[00:17:21] Sarah: I've heard this displayed by one mystic before as the dilemma is you have Bruce Lee fighting a baby in a high chair eating peas. The level that they know, our body, mind, spirit versus us knowing ourselves, which is why knowing thyself is the most important, is that ratio according to some mystics.

[00:17:46] And so this is the heart of the question then, of how to become even spiritually sovereign, how to win the matrix. And so how I see it first is really being able to go within and understand to the best of our ability our own blind spots and weaknesses because those are going to be magnified in front of us to be used against us. I said one time in one of my videos, and I love this, "Anything you are not aware of will be used against you in the court of the universe."

[00:18:24] Luke: Ooh, that's good.

[00:18:26] Sarah: And so I love how you opened up this talk by saying how you've just learned how to not take praise or blame so serious. Because actually, if a person always feels, for instance, like they have a core wound where they need to explain themselves, then they're just going to attract a bunch of different psyops that are demanding their energy.

[00:18:51] And so they'll have to feed their energy into that. I see that happen so much, and I call that friendly fire where a person is not a part of some engineered or synthetic movement, but they literally have core wounds within them that are allowing them to now become the puppets, the arms and the hands of these engineered movements. And so being aware of the organicness of people aren't just [Inaudible], not everyone is in on an agenda.

[00:19:24] Luke: Yeah.

[00:19:25] Sarah: There's so many different layers of that, even. There's so many different layers. So I could get into that if you want, but basically, there's organic aspects and there's synthetic, and sometimes they're blended so much together that it's just a matter of calling a situation through personal context. Because it won't even be able to be separated, cleared out, organized the same way in each context.

[00:19:56] And so what I see a lot of times is that when people have these core wounds, then they're going to flock down any pipeline that has the most momentum down it. That's the opposite of spiritual sovereignty. So that's one of the first tests that the matrix uses. It's how strong is your will.

[00:20:18] But guess what? Another psyops is against the will. Oh, you're too strong-willed. You won't surrender to God. So you see how it comes from all these different angles, and the best thing to do is actually understand the esoteric?

[00:20:36] Luke: Totally. Yeah. You can really see that core wound thing playing out culturally, especially in the 2020 till now era, which some people call a pandemic, which is hilarious. But with social justice movements and things like that, you could see how compassion has been so weaponized.

[00:21:00] Especially, I noticed with the boomer demographic of spiritual types just bought into the whole major psyop hook, line, and sinker for the most part. And I was like, what? These are the ones that were taking acid in the '60s, hanging out with Ram Dass, fighting the man. And now they're all the man.

[00:21:18] And I got that that wound is like a misaligned compassion. It's like, don't kill grandma. Wear your mask. But without the discernment to be able to see, wait, hold on. Let's just ask some questions here and really define what's actually happening. And then the people on the streets and the protesting and the riots and all that, I'm just like, "You guys go heal the shit with your parents." You know what I'm saying?

[00:21:48] It's like, who have you not forgiven? What childhood wounds are you just running from and glomming onto this cause, I'm sure well-intentioned in many cases. So I agree 100% with what you're saying, because it's a lot easier to go out and try to change the world than to really go within and change yourself.

[00:22:07] Sarah: Yeah, it's far easier to just try to change others until you realize it's not easy at all. They say that enlightenment is just when you're exhausted. You're exhausted of everything that the ego does. You're just tired of it. And then once you're exhausted, then you just start allowing that flow, and then that flow will eventually lead to enlightenment.

[00:22:32] Luke: When you speak of spiritual sovereignty, it leads me into what I think is one of our core limitations as a species. And that is, a, outsourcing our power to fake authority, believing that we need an authority other than ourselves and God. And also that I think we have, and this is speaking for myself at different times, an unrealistic appraisal of how powerful they are.

[00:23:09] We see these authorities as these powers, and I know me. I'm like, "I get nervous. They're going to come to my house because I didn't take the shot or whatever." And there's a part of me that's like, "Dude, you're the one with the power." The people actually possess the power, but we just don't know it. And so we don't use it and exercise it. What's your perspective on both or either of those?

[00:23:32] Sarah: That's actually why me and Gaia partnered for Mystery Teachings. It's exactly that question. Because what we see is that if there was a core wound when it comes to how to genuinely start at the roots of what's going on with this reality, what it would be is that there's an ultimate fear that everything is so inevitable, so perfectly organized and designed against a person that everything is almost like the battlefield of the mind first.

[00:24:10] The psychology of the mind needs to be defeated first because then once a person starts thinking that everything is inevitably too powerful and overwhelming against them, that at that point now their spiritual sovereignty has been handed over, even if physically nothing has even taken place yet first.

[00:24:34] And so honing in on that, there's this smoke and mirrors to make everything look like it's far more powerful than it actually is. And that's why taking the power away in all of the different ways that a person can is the first step to being able to have enough energy even to go down that spiritual awakening path.

[00:25:00] Because the spiritual awakening journey, as I'm sure you already know it, it requires a lot of energy. And so pulling that away from whatever sources that we thought were in authority is the number one way. And then from there, questioning everything and being able to-- it's overwhelming.

[00:25:16] To me, it's fun now, so I have to actually tap into when it was overwhelming because it was. So I have to tap into that time period to really then help guide and speak to people from there. Because if I'm speaking to people from here today, it's just not going to help. I'm going to be like, "What? It's fun. It's fun to find out about that." So I speak from when it wasn't fun so that it could be helpful.

[00:25:41] Luke: Yeah. That's hilarious that you just reminded me of something that I say to Alyson a lot when something which we perceive to suck happens. I just go, "It's fun. It's fun." Which is actually the truth, but it just doesn't seem true in the moment. You stub your toe. Someone's late. Your check doesn't come, whatever.

[00:26:03] And I'm always just like, "It's fun. It's fun." She's like, "Yeah, it's fun." So now she uses it on me when I'm bitching about something. Remember, honey. It's fun. It's fun. I go, "Oh yeah, you're right. It is fun." If you make it fun, how much of the game, from your point of view is perception?

[00:26:21] Because that's really the lever of control, of this thing, this force that seems to be against all that is good. It seems to really use perception as its main lever. And I think in my life, well, I know in my life, the more I've been able to have mastery over my perception and really mean it when I say, "This is fun."

[00:26:45] A shitty thing just happened. It's fun. I'm going to grow from this. This is amazing. But the more I can skew my perception toward that, the more positive experiences I seem to run into, and there's less strife and struggle. It's like that creating your own reality thing seems to be based on one's ability to really have mastery over perception.

[00:27:09] What's your perception of perception? What role does that play? How is it used against us? How can we empower ourselves to have agency over how we view and experience life?

[00:27:23] Sarah: It's 100% important. It's not 90%. It's not 95%. Perception is the tool of an alchemist, not me. So a person is being an alchemist in the archetype. When they now are 100% understanding that everything is perception based, everything's done for that perception, and then on top of that, being able to alchemize, transmute their perception.

[00:27:57] Even now we know-- mystics have known this all along, but even now we know that speaking to your body is what literally can modulate your body even quicker than supplements.

[00:28:12] Luke: Why? You just saved me a lot of money.

[00:28:15] Sarah: I saved myself a lot of money.

[00:28:17] Luke: Yeah, totally.

[00:28:19] Sarah: Because supplements are my hobby.

[00:28:21] Luke: Yeah, same.

[00:28:23] Sarah: So perception modulates the body. We know that because the body mind has been around for a long time, those teachings. But now even the mainstream is understanding that because they need doctors and white coats to tell them that, and now they're doing that.

[00:28:42] And so what's happening is that even the perception that people are having to battle even today is not as complex and arduous as it was 10 years ago. We've already been building and building and building that momentum, and so now there's more resources. Now there's spiritual awakening hotlines. Not really, but how many different available outlets are there?

[00:29:06] And so because of that, it is a less isolating experience. I don't want to demean or invalidate the fact that isolation itself is a problem for the human species right now, but there's going to be isolation as a problem and health as a problem, and this as a problem if the spiritual awakening issue isn't addressed.

[00:29:32] So what I'm saying is, is that all the problems we see here are because a person has not gone through a spiritual awakening, and all of the problem solutions are on the other side of a person's spiritual awakening.

[00:29:44] Luke: Going back to my prior question about our inaccurate appraisal of power and who has it, even that is perception. When I think about, oh, the government, wherever they are, all forms of government, if I'm really honest, I'm still afraid of them. And then I'll see a video of one of these ghouls and I'm like, "If this person was not--" If I didn't attribute an identity and an authority to them, and I just met them at the grocery store, I would see a really weak and feeble and disempowered succubus.

[00:30:25] I wouldn't be afraid of that person in real life because they lack power. They're vampiric and parasitic and just gross. I would feel compassion for them more than I would feel intimidated or afraid by them. But give them a title and set them in the White House or a police station or whatever, and then I'm like, "I hope they don't get me. You know what I mean?"

[00:30:45] It's totally a game of perception. And I think that's how these systems have managed to enslave us on so many levels, is just using our perception to super impose this false authority that we actually have. But it's so hard to see that.

[00:31:02] It's difficult to embody that because it's hard to break through your own programming and everything that you've been indoctrinated into from the moment you're born in public school and the media. It's just like the brainwashing is so deep and so ingrained. It's difficult to get over that, I think, for some people.

[00:31:27] Sarah: Yeah. And so when I tune into that, for me, the hardest part to get over was that I was almost wearing too much armor when I was learning about that stuff. Because I don't-- I go deep.

[00:31:43] Luke: Yeah.

[00:31:44] Sarah: I don't stop.

[00:31:44] Luke: Many people that listen to this show are very well versed in depths of the rabbit holes.

[00:31:50] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:31:51] Luke: You get past the rabbits and then it's like rat farms. It's like the rabbits cute. You keep going. There's something much darker beneath that. Yeah.

[00:31:58] Sarah: Yeah. There is just WTF land. So there was parts of my spiritual awakening journey that were so dark that I was like, "Oh, this psychopathy is the core teaching in mysticism because it goes with reality." So if anyone talks about ontology, the experience of reality, what is reality, you'll have to include an understanding of psychopathy because nothing else-- understanding reality without understanding psychopathy, there's non-existence. You don't have a full equation.

[00:32:15] So when I started really learning the others mind and how much different it is, the way that my thought process is, the way that I would think, the way that anyone I know that thinks, this is what I meant earlier about becoming a master manipulator, or it's just a master alchemist, is by understanding how they think.

[00:33:03] You have to have some of that poison within you. But not once again to harm anyone. It is because a person has to have that awareness of how this person that looks like a human has no psychology within them that is comparable to yours. And that this isn't meant to disempower anyone or to scare them.

[00:33:27] But when I went deep into this and everything they do behind the scenes with this, that scared me proper. Because then at that point you just think becoming aware of these things makes you a target. And it does to a certain extent.

[00:33:43] Luke: Totally. Yeah. Like moths to a flame.

[00:33:47] Sarah: Yeah, yeah. What's that beautiful quote? When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you. Yeah, so I started having these nightmares of Ursula-type figures that are aware of your awareness and whatnot.

[00:34:02] And it's scary because once again, it's one thing looking at somebody who doesn't look very fit on the outside, that's in a powerful position and they hold some certain power, but it's another to understand just how deep their lifestyle goes beyond that and almost go, "Oh, am I crazy for believing that?"

[00:34:25] So there's so many different things that a person has to be willing to say, okay, I agree that they're like this. There's so many different checkpoints. So it makes you question your sanity at a certain point. I understand why the term conspiracy theory was used to just push everything that sounds bizarre into this little category, because you could just be called insane then.

[00:34:56] And so what I was told by my shaman at that time when I was really going down this rabbit hole, never going to stop, but just in the most haunted house version of it, she showed me a picture of that my spirit was showing her.

[00:35:12] She said, "Okay, you have on a fire suit, like a fireman wears into a house. You could take off three or four layers of that suit. You have an overly fireman suit on-- I don't know what they're called-- because you're going into the dark and you feel you need all of that to do it because of what you're learning, but it's not helping you.

[00:35:43] It's not to take off all your armor. That's not the solution for anything. It was, you could take off like four layers of that armor because it's too heavy and it's just freaking you out. And I feel like that's already encoded in these new waves of people awakening. It's almost like that morphic field of people who've been through overwhelming terror by the things that they were learning and almost broadcasting how they transmuted that. So it's almost easier now. I think it's easier now for people to go through a spiritual awakening journey.

[00:36:22] Luke: I wish I would've started now then.

[00:36:26] Sarah: You're a veteran.

[00:36:27] Luke: A lot of pain in the past 30 years to work through. Do you think that, just as an awakening species, one of our biggest vulnerabilities is our lack of ability to imagine what it's like or acknowledge that there are people walking around that look like humans, and you alluded to this, that are completely devoid of empathy?

[00:36:54] Sarah: Yeah. I think that that's the hardest thing for the human species to grapple with more than anything else. I think that that's the heart of it. And so another poetry line of mine is you have to strike at the roots while the branches swing at you. Because so much of my job, I'm sure your job, of people's purpose in general, if a person feels called to something enough to call it a purpose, then I think they would land in this category.

[00:37:25] So whoever's listening, they're dealing with so much friendly fire. They're dealing with so much of just people who cannot go to the depths of what they're currently or have gone through, because it's a lot to ask that. And there's, once again, as you mentioned, the compassion gets weaponized. And I always lean more towards compassion.

[00:37:48] Some people lean more towards the mind. Some people lean more towards the heart. And that's fine. It's never going to be 50-50 perfect. Sometimes it is. But you shouldn't expect that. So you're looking at ratios at that point. Even if it's 4%, how much more is the person more heart-inclined or mind-inclined?

[00:38:10] And that's how I actually speak to people. I almost feel into what's their ratios and then speak from there. But mine is, I'm always just more heart-inclined. And that's why I see with people who are almost asleep in that, it's a detriment.

[00:38:32] Why? if you talk about NPCs or if you talk about there's this demonic spirits working through dark triads, narcissism, these things, how their reflex reaction is to make you feel like you're doing something bad and wrong. And that actually it's you. All these different ways that it comes at you.

[00:38:54] Luke: Yeah. I think for many of us, it's hard to acknowledge some of the realities in the world just because we can't imagine what it's like to be that way. It's like when you look at what I would call organized crime, some people call the government. It's like, look at the moon landing or 9/11.

[00:39:16] Some of these big conspiracies, you think, "They couldn't all be in on it." Part of that can be attributed to compartmentalization. It's like everyone's on a need-to-know basis. And when you get to the higher levels of authority in any institution, only the people at the top are directing and actually know what's going on.

[00:39:35] The worker bees are just following orders and they don't know the reasons or the repercussions of what they're doing. They're just fulfilling their role unknowingly. So the compartmentalization is one thing, but if you're not a psychopath, it's very difficult to think like one.

[00:39:53] If your modus operandi is not to knowingly harm people, or even worse to actually derive pleasure from harming other people, you literally can't transpose yourself into that experience. So it makes it hard to believe that there are such vast-- well, they're actually probably not vast numbers-- small numbers of people that have wrestled control of society and culture, and all these institutions, that the people really are that evil and that bad. Because you just can't imagine being that way.

[00:40:25] If you're a relatively integrous, kind person, it's like you can't imagine why anyone would act like that or think like that. To me, that's one of our biggest blind spots. It's like a naivete. It's like, I'm not a bad person, therefore no one else is. I've suffered from that a lot.

[00:40:45] Just giving people too much trust too soon, lacking discernment, because I think I'm a good person, so why would anyone mess with me? It's like, dude, you're the one they're going to mess with the most because you're so gullible. Right?

[00:40:56] Sarah: No, absolutely.

[00:40:59] Luke: So talk to me about discernment, about how we can cultivate that within ourselves, that inner wisdom that allows us to acknowledge things in the world that we find abhorrent, but also navigate ourselves toward what we want and the world that we want.

[00:41:18] Sarah: I actually see that happening beautifully right now. Like for instance, this might come as a surprise you, but a decade ago I was talking about the nervous system and somatic work because at that point, through my own esoteric studies, the things that I was learning and experiencing at that time, I saw that as being like, well, we need the capacity first.

[00:41:41] So that's why. If people just don't open themselves up, if people are different from me, if they need certain factors or resources to sweeten the deal of going through a spiritual awakening, then it would be that they don't have the somatic resilience. And I just didn't have the passion for that anymore.

[00:42:03] I moved on to the next thing. I've gone through many different things to say the weird things I do now. To be this weird, it took such a path. That's why people only see the end product. They go, "Oh, you're weird. You don't know anything." It's like, actually, I went through all of the milestones and rites of passage to be this weird.

[00:42:22] And so what I see now is that it's actually a perfect symphony. I see now you get rewarded the most on social media for talking about the nervous system. And I'm happy about that, and I don't even talk about that. And it's like, don't cry for me, Argentina. Just because my niche is personally being completely suppressed and I'm getting punished does not mean that I don't see the good in all of these things that are now mainstream trends.

[00:42:53] So it's almost like everyone's doing their role and we're all needed. We're all needed for that holistic tapestry of awakening. And so I see the value the most, even more than dare I say, my niche.

[00:43:09] And understanding that nervous system resilience, understanding that nervous system response because, as we talked about earlier, that's what's going to make the baby in the highchair that's eating peas grow up and be able to understand that, hey, you're dealing with an enormously advanced predator that is dressed as Bruce Lee, but do not be fooled because there's an absolute emptiness behind that face or that human that we would feel bad and guilty and wrong about admitting or understanding.

[00:43:49] And so it's really coming back to my specialty, at least, because I think I talked about all these other things. But to answer your question, I think that once we can understand that psychopathy is enjoying being evil, there's no reasoning with it. Even if you were to look anatomically at a person's biology who's a psychopath, they don't have the same restraint with stance within their neurobiology.

[00:44:28] So they're different on all levels. And the part of me, because I'm more heart-based, I go, "Maybe if we just fix this thing biologically." But it's not because that's just reflecting something far, far deeper about reality. And at a very metaphysical level, we could call it a choice to be a psychopath.

[00:44:56] But really if we want to go even deeper, we could see that there was free will at a certain point, but there was a continuous use of the free will to make those choices that now have almost left them in a choiceless choice.

[00:45:12] And I say that as a highly strong proponent of free will. But just because I believe strongly in free will, and I'm a huge advocate of free will, does not mean that I'm going around saying everyone has the same amount of free will. Everyone does not have the same amount of free will.

[00:45:30] Luke: That's a scary thought.

[00:45:33] Sarah: It could be fun.

[00:45:35] Luke: Yeah, it's fun. It's fun. Psychopaths, yay. Looking at my own journey, when I've been less conscious and caused harm to myself and to other people, it was always rooted in ignorance, unaddressed PTSD, trauma, wounding, addiction, and so on. And it was always based in, I'm not letting myself off the hook.

[00:46:03] I'm fully available for accountability on all levels. But it's like it was done out of survival instinct or just unconsciousness. It's like I didn't know that I was the way I was. I was just trying to get by and was selfish and self-centered and things like that. But I don't ever recall having the thought that it feels good to be bad. You know what I mean?

[00:46:31] So that lion in the sand there where someone is like, ha ha ha. This feels good to be evil. It's hard to imagine that if you're not that way. But to your point, it's like a forgive them for they know not what they do. It's like on one level, do you think, and this isn't-- I have to phrase this right so I don't put you on the hook for something.

[00:46:54] It sounds really bad, but it's almost like every human being is literally doing the very best they can do, even psychopaths. It's like if they could be different, they would be different. You see what I'm saying? It's not like to condone that kind of behavior, condone evil, but it's like if they were meant to be different or they could be different, I think they would be.

[00:47:20] And the fact that they're that way means they're supposed to be that way and maybe they can't be any other way because they're not resourced with the capacity to be objective about themselves or to have some moral impetus. So it's like, what do we do with those people? Just avoid them at all costs?

[00:47:39] Don't empower them with our fear. Don't let our limbic system get hijacked by them, or nervous system. Be aware of it. But is there any hope for someone from your opinion, who's unable to see the way they are and help themselves and to evolve out of that?

[00:47:58] Sarah: I love this because this is actually what I see at the core, each of these questions. But this particularly has been my own, as I'm teaching these different things-- the closest inside one of my episodes of mystery teachings that this comes to is the NPC episode where I talk about how Gnostics had three categories of soul groups.

[00:48:23] And the lowest category is what we're calling in this modern age NPCs. So I talk about a lot of these topics, but then there's some that it's like, do you really want to hear about that from a girl of black hair who is an energy healer?

[00:48:40] Luke: I do.

[00:48:41] Sarah: Yeah, yeah. It was good because you're not scared. But sometimes people are just scared at the fact that a person is intelligent and knows things. But one of my own personal things that I always grapple with, I might make videos about certain things that I think are helpful for others, but sometimes I want to make videos that are helpful for me.

[00:49:06] And so one of the things I'm constantly grappling with is like, do they want to be helped? Can they stop being evil? Because the core thing, why I do anything that I do literally is because human trafficking exists. And I know that sounds crazy because it's like, girl, you talk about timelines. Calm down.

[00:49:28] But actually I talk about timelines because all of my different paths and spirituality that were fueled by why does human trafficking exist, have led me to where I'm at, talking about timelines actually as like, "Oh, okay. There's the structure for why evil exists and there's this--" But beyond these structures, because I always question any structures is do they want to be evil?

[00:49:57] Is there always going to be evil in this realm? Is it a matter of graduating this realm and not necessarily about ever changing this realm? Because when I am thinking about these things, I start going into my own gnosis, my own metaphysical experiences of it. And as I see it, it's almost like a good depiction would be an angel that's forcing a demon on the floor and can take away its pain if the demon wanted it to be.

[00:50:32] And there's always in that illustration, do you want to be taken away? I've come to my own conclusions, but I think just holding that question, for everyone who's watching, is a great activator. So I won't.

[00:50:51] Luke: The point you just raised is one thing that I contemplate a lot just in terms of-- and I mean this in a positive sense because I think that I chose to come here and have this experience. Could have been duped somewhere in the bardo. Like, oh, there's your grandma come back into another body.

[00:51:11] But I think I probably knew what I was signing up for. And I think the more I learn about the nature of this reality, it really is a purgatorial situation. Because the duality is so polarized. We have such a capacity for just unfathomable love and connection to source.

[00:51:32] And at the same time, we have the things on the opposite end of the spectrum we speak of. So it's like, if this was meant to be a celestial utopia, then that's how it would be. You know what I mean? So it's like, oh, maybe my job is to just get as high as you can possibly get in this realm and just accept that it is the way it is, and try to contribute to the evolution of consciousness through my own experience and willingness.

[00:52:00] But maybe the world doesn't need to be changed. Maybe we don't need to eradicate evil because a, it's impossible. B, it has a purpose. And that's some of the value that we find in the human experience, is that we get to make choices in this realm, which direction we want ahead.

[00:52:17] It seems to me that based on just intuition, that if we work really hard here and make the right choices, that there is some graduation into other realms of reality where perhaps in some cases maybe there is no duality at all. And you just merge into the totality of consciousness and there's no you anymore to even experience it.

[00:52:43] But maybe there are higher realms where evil is you didn't give someone back a dollar and change. You know what I mean? It's like, are there realms where the polarity is less extreme and someone who's super evil is just someone that tells a white lie versus someone who traffics kids? It's like this place is just so fucking extreme to me that it's a lot to take.

[00:53:08] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:53:08] Luke: I guess the question in that is, do you see in this realm a place where-- because it seems like we're in a hyperspace evolution of consciousness to me right now, because all the shit and the shadows is coming to light and people are going, "What the fuck?"

[00:53:23] But do you see in this realm a place where, sure, we still have the duality and people are still doing bad things and people are doing good things, and there's left and right and up and down and black and white, but where it's less extreme in terms of when the pendulum swings into the realm of darkness, it's not as bad as it is right now?

[00:53:45] Sarah: Absolutely. 1000%. And I'm almost not even worried about that timeline. That is so. And so what I almost see is like, if, as you said, the tricked [Inaudible]-- I love that because that's so my niche.

[00:54:07] Luke: Actually, I think my deepest fear is that when I leave my body, I somehow won't have the discernment to know where to go, and then I'll be tricked back into samsara, the recycling system of paying taxes to pedophiles.

[00:54:19] Sarah: Oh, don't even worry then, because actually I did not mean to plug this, but season 2 of mystery teachings is all about that.

[00:54:26] Luke: Really?

[00:54:27] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:54:27] Luke: Great.

[00:54:28] Sarah: I'm like, "Oh my God, what if the tricksters are going to pretend there's your favorite cat that you've had this lifetime?" And so yeah, that's the whole genre. The whole genre of like, is the bardo real? It's a huge niche. It just so happens to be really hot right now.

[00:54:49] Luke: Okay, good. I'm going to study up on it. I did have the thought though. The first thing is it's so difficult to have discernment between truth and falsehood when you're in a body.

[00:55:01] Sarah: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:02] Luke: Does that get better when you leave a body? Do you have a higher level of discernment or is it even harder? Because everything's so wonky when you're in the spirit realm. So that's the thing that concerns me a little. But then on the positive note, I think the fact that I even have an awareness that all of those options are potentially available tells me I might just know what to do when I'm there.

[00:55:26] Because people that aren't asking that question, of course will have zero discernment on the other side because they never even thought about it. They never contemplated, "Okay, I need to be aware when I leave the body that there's going to be choices to make there." Just like there are choices to make here. And I want to make the optimal choice for my soul's evolution.

[00:55:44] Sarah: This is my passion.

[00:55:46] Luke: Cool. I don't want to give away everything that's on your program, but what's your perspective on all that? Where have you arrived?

[00:55:55] Sarah: Oh, no. And I've done a few videos on this. Yeah. You want to get attacked the most? Do a video on this.

[00:56:03] Luke: Really?

[00:56:04] Sarah: Oh, yeah.

[00:56:04] Luke: Super triggering?

[00:56:06] Sarah: One of the hardest topics on my nervous system. It got a huge backlash without me even knowing it. I thought it would at least be like philosophical backlash. No, it got real hard backlash. So I was like-- but then that's also toxic too-- does being attacked feel good?

[00:56:32] Luke: Right, right.

[00:56:33] Sarah: You have to develop discernment with even that, because then we don't want to, as you already said earlier, just develop shields against being able to examine oneself and just say everything's an attack. But yeah, it's pretty much an attack. It's an attack, and we still need to work on ourselves about that.

[00:56:53] So how I will have really come to terms with this is that there are different layers available depending on your frequency. One way that this was said back in the day, I believe, it was Terence McKenna who said that all of esotericism is just a practice for death. That was his conclusion after all of his [Inaudible] too hard. Yeah.

[00:57:19] Luke: I like that. That's like that-- I think it's from a Greek philosopher or something. To paraphrase, speaking of psychedelics and Terrance McKenna, if you die before you die, when you die, you don't die.

[00:57:32] Sarah: Who said that?

[00:57:34] Luke: I think it's a Greek philosopher. Don't quote me on that. Jarrod, maybe you could look it up.

[00:57:38] Sarah: Oh, it's okay. I'm not going to--

[00:57:39] Luke: And I'm paraphrasing it, but it's one of those things I heard once and it was just locked in. Although I probably have the verbiage off, but that's the idea. And I thought, "Wow, God, that's good news." Because I've had so many goddamn deaths, and now it's like I almost invite them, deaths to the parts of myself that aren't true and authentic.

[00:57:57] So maybe to your point, or to his point, this is training grounds for when you're not in a body anymore and there's a lot of work you can do here that helps you navigate where you're going. But anyway, carry on.

[00:58:10] Sarah: No, absolutely. That if you die before you die, you won't have to die. What's really popular is the Christian concept of being born again. This is an esotericism in any different direction, but one of the most popular would be like the judgment card in the tarot, which means many things, but that's one of its meanings.

[00:58:33] It's that coming to life again, becoming born again, going through a spiritual awakening, making a person reborn. And so that is a vital component if a person cares about their spirit. There's people here that care and value different things, obviously.

[00:58:55] And so what I care about and what people who like my content and topics care about are what I would consider people that are on one of their last lives here. And so it might look disembodied to people who-- it was like, okay, more smear campaign for the matrix.

[00:59:15] Luke: Right, right.

[00:59:17] Sarah: But it's really not. When a person starts waking up from the dream, there's already this-- imagine the horn, once again, from the judgment tarot. There's this horn. Imagine that a person can hear while they're inside the dream. And that horn might take a few lifetimes to actually wake up, like inception from one layer of the dream to the other, to when they even get to a point where they start going, "Psychopaths are bad?"

[00:59:48] And they're not like other humans, but saying bad is not PC, and non-duality exists? So what is bad? All of that takes place in somebody who's, I would say, graduating the earth arena.

[01:00:05] Luke: Well said. I hope that I am. I'm sure working my ass off in this lifetime.

[01:00:12] Sarah: Oh yeah. And like I said, it back to frequency.

[01:00:14] Luke: Yeah. But when you hear mystics and sages, saints, etc., that have reached a certain level of consciousness where they have a choice even while they're here, I've heard many spiritual teachers say, "Yeah, I could just leave right now." And some do. You hear about some of the Indian mystics just evaporating and things like that.

[01:00:36] And then there are others who leave the body and then for reasons of their own volition and love and service, choose to come back into this mess in order to serve. So it seems like that's a good place to be, where like you actually have a choice of whether you want to participate in this realm at this level again.

[01:01:00] And if you're driven maybe by your spiritual will to go back behind enemy lines, so to speak, and help some other people awaken, it seems there are very few that choose to do that because the ones that do are so easily recognizable and revered. We know the names or 20 of them in history that most people on a spiritual path could cite.

[01:01:22] Why aren't there more? Because most of us probably get to a certain point. We're like, "I'm good. Okay. We completed our school. What's next?" And we're not choosing to hang around or come back. Where you are right now in your life, do you think you want to come back and do this again? Or do you feel like you're ready to graduate? I don't mean graduate from a arrogant point of view, but I just mean in terms of what lessons you feel you want to learn.

[01:01:51] Sarah: When a being does come back, it's called the great work. So it is, I don't want to say an adjective from the ego. It's the highest calling, the highest form of activism you could do here, put it that way. And so much so that, like in alchemy, the whole point is the great work, but the great work pertaining to the individual.

[01:02:16] Beyond the individual, there's still another layer of what we call the great work. And when it's specifically regarding what you're talking about, when you do have free will, at that point, you have liberated yourself fully from this realm, but you have so much free will that you can choose to come back to help others. That's literally called the great work.

[01:02:42] And so at a personal level, I'm too much of the mindset at this point that everything is perfect. I know that that's not a great thing to say, but I've just seen how there's so much curriculum here for people that is not in control. It is at a certain point, a choice to come to the earth realm, even if a person forgot that choice and is deeply lost in spiritual amnesia.

[01:03:23] But at a higher level, I have absolute surrender to that answer to my higher self. I don't want to leave really bad and I don't want to stay really bad. That's up to my higher self.

[01:03:37] Luke: Yeah. That's good. Neutrality. You'll know when you know.

[01:03:41] Sarah: Yeah.

[01:03:43] Luke: Let's talk about fallen guru syndrome and how some spiritual teachers seem to be susceptible to going dark, even those that have authentic ability and power. This is a phenomenon that I find very fascinating.

[01:04:10] And it's also like really useful for building one's discernment, which has been true for me to acknowledge that that phenomenon exists and it's something you want to be mindful of, whether you're a spiritual teacher or one that learns from others. But it was a hard learning curve for me to understand that someone can have true gifts, but also be corrupt.

[01:04:35] Sarah: Yeah. So I like going dark because I recently discovered, I don't know if this is a Gen Z phrase or not, but dark mode. Have you heard that?

[01:04:45] Luke: No. I like it. I'm going to use it.

[01:04:46] Sarah: Man, sometimes Gen Z has the best phrases. So one of them is dark mode. So now I've been nonstop going like, "Dark mode. It's going dark mode."

[01:04:55] Luke: That's funny.

[01:04:56] Sarah: I was like, "Those dogs barking go in dark mode." So to me I look at it a little differently. I don't see it as going dark. I see it as like an uncovering of what was always there, so it's exposed to the light. But beyond that, what is really good to know about the spiritual temperature right now is that we're in a huge push towards exposing predator behaviors with spiritual gurus, which was not really the case ever.

[01:05:30] In the East, they had a lot of abuse. Every form of abuse you could imagine, there was, for spirituality. And so having that the West-- well, now it's switching places, but at the time the West got their spirituality from the East. That's why yoga became cool, because the East yoga is.

[01:05:53] And so that trend of moving from spiritual gurus, which came from the East was whether East or West, it doesn't really matter. Even though that was created in the East, that was always, in my opinion, a faulty template of guru because I'm about sovereignty. So when there's too much disparage, what do you expect?

[01:06:19] You would have to be somebody highly in spiritual integrity to handle a disparage. So the idea of guru, I do want to give credit. I don't want to invalidate that concept. In certain traditions, I hear that, yeah, that's how the tradition operates. It operates through that specific from guru to student dynamic, and that, yeah, it can happen correctly sometimes.

[01:06:47] I don't really know times it's gone correctly, but I'll take the traditions word on it. But that is actually more of a parasitic template than anything else. So that is already a faulty template. So it's easy for people to just, if they're already in some form of dark triad-- because when I look into people's fields now, now I don't really even see that much of distinguished psychopathy, psychopathy, narcissism.

[01:07:16] Now the new phenomenon is dark triad in general is on the rise. But regardless, if a person is in a dark triad life, then it's not really about falling. It's about being exposed. And I don't see any spiritual teachers who have fallen, who weren't already fallen and that they started the gig fallen.

[01:07:45] Luke: Oh, interesting. I never thought about that. That makes a lot of sense.

[01:07:49] Sarah: Now the ego can always corrupt. So it's not that like, "Oh wow, people who aren't dark triad, they're fine." No, the ego can always corrupt, but it's just usually-- once again, we're at a specific lifetime, and the specific lifetimes are just enhancing what we already are. And so because of that, if people have already an advanced understanding of this earth arena and have already made a sole decision to help in a more service to others way, meaning teaching sovereignty, watch out for this, watch whatever for that, but don't come to my compound.

[01:08:29] The longest interaction a person gets with me is four days at my Alchemy retreat. I don't even offer online membership groups just because I've come from my own, let's say esoteric circles, where I've been jaded even before I became a teacher. So I don't even want the strings attached of anything, even if it's online.

[01:08:51] It's like, watch my videos or don't, but come to my retreat or not. So because of that, what I see is that, yes, ego can always corrupt. If a person cannot handle praise, it will act like salt on a snail. It'll just evaporate, foam at the mouth. And so it really comes undone. It comes unhinged very quickly because it was never put together intact. It's how we started with the conspiracy theories.

[01:09:16] It's like, wow, that had Swiss cheese plot holes everywhere. So things can come apart that easily when they never were strongly structured from within. Versus what you have is the ego of spiritual teachers who maybe aren't dark triad, but they've got an ego because they're receiving a lot of praise and they're able to use more of their power and those things.

[01:09:43] And so that's really a test at that point. It's a test of if the person is going to use that power, that now their spiritual status or leadership has given them for increasing the ego, appraising the avatar. The stock of the avatar went up.

[01:10:07] Luke: Right, right.

[01:10:09] Sarah: Or if it's just going to be used to show, hey, I'm a human too. This is what I've overcome. This was what was hard for me. This is what's not hard for me. This is what I mastered. This is what I'm still learning.

[01:10:22] Luke: One of the ways that I rate spiritual teachers is by the degree of humor that is accessible to them. I find the spiritual teachers that are always serious and never laugh or smile are very difficult for me to trust.

[01:10:42] Sarah: That'd be a good indicator.

[01:10:43] Luke: Because it's a sign to me that there's more ego identification there, because the ego is very serious. Everything is so serious, if you're really invested in that. Yeah, I think that your perspective on that is really interesting, the part of that darkness that we're seeing was always there. It was just being suppressed or hidden or whatever.

[01:11:06] But the ego part to me also makes a lot of sense because in my own experience, at different stages of my development, the ego has just assigned itself to my new role, to a new identity, whether that be someone that's spiritual or someone that's plays in a rock and roll band or whatever.

[01:11:25] It's like, before I really knew the uniqueness and, as you said, weirdness of just who I am beneath all of that, it's like the ego's waiting in the wings, like, "Ha, wait till they kind of identify with something that's not really them and I'll just move in and start to empower that role and really ingrain that in them."

[01:11:47] I once went to India on a spiritual pilgrimage early in the journey and went over there to really evolve past ego, like silent retreat, a lot of meditating, the whole thing. When I was there, I bought these Indian robes and beads and things, and then I came back and I was like, Namaste-ing everyone.

[01:12:07] And thankfully I had a friend at the time that called me out and was like, "Who are you, dude?" It's like the ego co-opted something that looks acceptable and presentable and I didn't even know it was happening to me. It was like a possession. I wasn't doing anything bad or wrong per se, but it still lacked authenticity because it was like a costume that I put on and this whole persona, the Namaste persona that might be authentic for someone else but wasn't truly authentic for me.

[01:12:34] It was like a really great learning experience to see. It's like, wow, the ego doesn't just take on arrogance and grandiosity and flashiness and all of that. It can also just co-opt whatever identity it thinks that it can secure itself in.

[01:12:50] Sarah: Oh, absolutely. That's even what I would consider the strongest, like, beware of that psyop when it comes to the false light. What you described as perfectly the largest challenge with the false light, it's not the one that's obviously dark. It's the one that is presenting itself like an angel. And then once you get closer to that aberration, then it's actually sorts of darkness behind it.

[01:13:19] And so we can look at that as like the psychological war that is projected onto religion, that which is dark within us is now outcasted as like, oh, this archetypal evil, and heaven is our conscious mind. And that's happening on one level. That's not the whole deal.

[01:13:38] But I was very grateful for Carl Jung for making that beautiful distinction. But then at a deeper level beyond our personal psychology, we have this metaphysical collective psychology. And one of the key things that people will be more deceived by than things that are of darkness are things that look like they are of light.

[01:14:06] And they'll have that speech of it, or they'll have some signs of it. And so I love calling it the false light. That was a gnostic term. But how I describe it is as a fluorescent light, because once you start getting into lights, you have to start becoming very careful with speech, at least in my field.

[01:14:33] Because there's the diamond light and there's the diamond light body, which is totally positive. And the diamond light body is when all of your aura has been completed. So it radiates this diamond light. But then imagine that for everything that has an organic, let's call it expression like a diamond light, but then there would be some inverted projection of that in duality.

[01:15:04] So it would be like a fluorescent light. So this fluorescent light wants to look really bright so it overcompensates in its radiation. And that overcompensation is the false light. So you'll see that in beings, non-physical beings, but you'll see that in the human form when people are what I call running that energy because it's not really them. So they're running that energy. So a PC way of calling possession, if you ever want one, is, oh, they're running that energy.

[01:15:37] Luke: I like that. That makes sense.

[01:15:40] Sarah: Yeah. So it's like, oh, how will that ego structure run the false light energy? And that will even be subtle, but one of the largest, most classical ways is, as you said, it will want to overcompensate and appear that way. And by the way, that's just cute. You went to India, you wanted to show people that you're growing. You probably went through that phase and then got made fun of for that.

[01:16:06] Luke: Yeah. It was a great learning experience because, as I said, it was just another way to just build awareness around mechanisms of ego. And that was one that I wasn't aware of. I had spotted it in other false identities and projections over the years on the journey, but up until that point, I didn't know it could become spiritual, Namaste guy. Shape shifted into something that was positive.

[01:16:35] I didn't go to India to become holier than thou. I went there to humble myself, if anything. So it was a great learning experience and very entertaining for the couple of my friends that could see it. Just like, dude, take the robe off. Stop saying Namaste. This is not you.

[01:16:51] But there was, I think, the roots of authenticity in it because I am a spiritually motivated person. It's so innate to me in terms of my value system. But yeah, it was really taking on the costume in place of just going more deeply into the authentic embodiment of that.

[01:17:15] You don't need to be wearing robes and beads to be tremendously devotional. And I thought, well, I'm devotional inside, so I have to have the costume that conveys to people that that's what I'm about. But I found that now I don't need that. I wear all kinds of weird stuff and no one has to know I'm sitting here praying all day and doing the things I do. Just like, that's my little secret life inside.

[01:17:38] There's so many things I want to explore with you. Okay, so on this thread that you were just on, I've noticed over the years that when it comes to spiritual teachers and just modalities and things, I tend to gravitate toward those that are extremely simple and just bare bones, just spiritual principles. Follow these natural laws and life is a lot better.

[01:18:09] rAnd I think that's because the origins of my awakening were in the 12 steps as a former addict. And so when I got into spirituality and had a very pronounced surrender to God and was very humbled, God did something for me that I absolutely could not do for myself.

[01:18:29] And I was aware of that, so I thought, "Hmm, I want more of that. What's the path?" And the path for me is like, here's about 20 core principles. If you learn what they are and how to use them, and you put some effort into applying them to your life, life becomes much easier and you do a lot less harm to yourself and others.

[01:18:49] And so I think I subconsciously vet spiritual teachings and teachers from a place of like, if it's not simple, it doesn't hold the same allure or value to me. So the question is, I've observed that many people in the space of spirituality, more on the new age astral circus, that a lot of people seem to be misled by totally far-out, esoteric stuff that pulls them away from the core truths that are actually going to help them, alien, ET stuff.

[01:19:26] Just the super mystical-- the stuff that would be alluring to a little kid fairytale spirituality is how it maybe. And I'm not trying to be holier than that. I'm just saying what works for me and what I've observed, but all the, I don't know, other worldly, ET shit, Atlantis, I don't even know-- I don't even know what it is. It doesn't draw me in if it's just too far out.

[01:19:53] Do you think that the forces that we've been speaking of sometimes work through counterfeit spiritual paths or teaching as a way to draw people out of the core truths that will actually work for them? Is there an Aramaic deception going on in some of the new ageism? That might be a more concise way to ask the question.

[01:20:19] Sarah: So if we're talking new age proper, that would be more Luciferian.

[01:20:26] Luke: Okay.

[01:20:29] Sarah: Now, the funny thing is that, since you said Araman-- so I'm just going to go off of that template. The funny thing is that Luciferian energy does this weird infinity symbol with Araman, [Inaudible]. It goes far this way and then falls or collapses in on itself this way.

[01:20:59] So if we're going to talk about the new age, we could look at the new age as far all the way to the Luciferian point that is almost about-- let's say it's a collapse into its extreme opposite. And that will be the setting of where you asked that question since you didn't ask it about the other things.

[01:21:21] That particular space right there is easy for a certain type of co-op. Now, there's many different kinds that could come through that, but just like every spectrum of a rainbow, it has certain dominant types of energies running through that cusp of Luciferian energy.

[01:21:46] I'm just going off of that. I don't think that Lucifer was a great word, but I'm going to run with it. So that energy right there that gets hyper into galactic themes, and then we could even call it rites of passage that lead to more rites of passage for the sake of the mystical that are empty, really.

[01:22:11] When you look back on some of these secret societies, what you're talking about, about how things got over mysticalized, whatever it is, the people who were setting up these structures were setting up the structures first and then recruiting people. And then as they were recruiting people, they were saying, "Okay, so make something up for that stage. Okay, what do you want for the 33rd stage? Okay, for the 33rd stage, let's make it the secret of the secrets of the dragon."

[01:22:46] Really, true story. So then they'd go, "Okay, what's the curriculum for that stage?" And then they'd go, "I don't know. Make it up. I'm too busy recruiting people." True story. So these are what I would call the over mysticalized. It's when people wanted to belong and they had daddy issues or mommy issues. But daddy issues or mommy issues for usually this flavor, it's daddy issues. And so they wanted to belong.

[01:23:18] And then there's this brethren and then it's whatever. And so they take you down these mazes and they call it all these things at certain check-ins. And once again, mysticism itself is a very large category, so I'm not saying all of it is interested in going circular in semantics and getting all of this mystical knowledge for the sake of nonsense.

[01:23:43] I wouldn't be in mysticism if I thought that. I respect mysticism greatly. But I understand exactly what you're talking about because I see it as being a really esoteric problem. Every field has their problems, and I see this being the large problem in esotericism. It's like, don't fix your daddy issues or mommy issues, and then you'll end up in some over mystical secret society.

[01:24:08] Luke: I think that's at the core of the question that I'm trying to play with with you, is like, yeah, so going from my own experience, you could just say following natural law to the best of my ability. Even that only took me so far until I started working intentionally with plant medicines and then saw like, oh wow, I bypassed all kinds of childhood trauma that I thought I'd talked through in therapy and worked out. You know what I mean?

[01:24:40] I wasn't holding anything that I hadn't talked about or faced or looked at, but I was never able to face or look at it with the depth necessary to really move past it and clear it until I started going into those really gnarly core wounds and things like that.

[01:24:58] So in this thing that we're talking about, these different galactic paths and stuff, it's very enticing because it seems like to some people, it's probably a way to bypass having to do the really gnarly work of going within and forgiving people that have harmed them and sorting stuff out with their family and their lineage-- the more grounded work that, in my experience, is much scarier and much more difficult than talking and [Inaudible] channeling and whatever.

[01:25:34] It seems like it just easier to go the love and light and fairies and angels than dig in and sit here and journal your darkest secrets and then do something about them. You know what I mean? It's like the psychological work, I think, is a lot harder in some ways than just getting super far out and I'm going to graduate into the 5D stuff.

[01:25:56] Sarah: Oh, I completely understand. I've lost a lot of respect over the years just being in a field that I resonated a lot stronger with when I was younger. But I see how with everything, it really depends on context, like a case-by-case thing almost. Because there's some things that are like straight shooter. You could tell. It's like, by their fruit you should know them. That's a standalone quote. It is a timeless quote for a reason. I don't think that will ever go out of style.

[01:26:33] Luke: I love that.

[01:26:34] Sarah: By their fruits you shall know them.

[01:26:35] Luke: Maybe that's my thing with a sense of humor. It's like, why would I want to learn from someone who's super serious? I'm trying to be less serious. You know what I mean? That would be an example of their fruits. It's like, how are they feeling in their body? What does it feel like to be around someone? Do I feel more relaxed and free, or do I feel awkward and tense and have less access to joy?

[01:27:00] Sarah: Oh, totally. Yeah. And so what I see is, is that it's pretty much one of those things where you could tell if a person's in their body. Because even the term embodiment is ridiculous. It doesn't even mean anything anymore. Embodiment has to do directly with alchemy.

[01:27:22] That is what we see as circling the square, what we see as the Vitruvian man from Da Vinci. All of that is really what now we call embodiment, but we just don't know it. So we've lost context for that. And now we just say like, Shakti sex stuff is embodiment. It is like, in a ratios of that, from the East, yes. But not in its proper context of what embodiment even means. So when I'm talking about embodiment, I'm not talking about it as how normal can you be? What is normal?

[01:28:02] Luke: Whatever it is, it sounds boring.

[01:28:03] Sarah: Yeah. So embodiment to me is very important, but at the same time, I'm just enhancing how we have to even be careful with that word because it's easy to say words. I could say 20 buzz words right now because it would feel good, because what's the pipeline trend this year?

[01:28:24] The pipeline trends determine what correct buzzwords you said, and then your virtue points go up and then the stock goes up for your avatar. And I'm sorry, but I'm a pricker. I'm a high priestess in the public, so I'm not going to just say words and not have them mean something.

[01:28:46] They have to be held accountable. So embodiment is an alchemy term. Sorry, I went on a tangent there about alchemy. By their fruits you should know them is basically saying that if a person is talking about those galactic things, should that automatically mean that they're coming from daddy issues or mommy issues? No, but you'll be able to tell. By their fruits you'll know them.

[01:29:09] So if a person is carrying themselves in a very dissociative way or just a way where you could tell that there's really no mastery of the earth experience, but an overcompensation of not even, I would say, a spiritual experience, a galactic experience--

[01:29:32] Luke: Right, right.

[01:29:33] Sarah: Then that's a perfect example of resistance towards the physical, resistance towards the earth realm in favor of this other thing, this mental thing. Now it's not even the actual spiritual realms. Now it's an elemental. It is a mental picture of those realms. It's not even the real thing. And so from there you can have fun with your imagination, all of these different things. And so if that's specifically what you're speaking to, then yeah, by their fruits you'll know them.

[01:30:03] Luke: Yeah. That would be it. I think the word that comes to mind is fantasy, is like getting lost in the fantasy realm of spirituality as one way to avoid the reality that we're in. It's like, if we came here, there must be a point to just like, oh yeah, I'm in a body. Here I am in a physical world.

[01:30:26] It's like to try to deny or suppress that reality, I don't feel, for me, is healthy. It's like, how can I be in the world but not of it? That's what I'm always leaning toward, is like, "Okay, let me be in my body, not embodied, but just accept that I'm a flesh and blood person, but also keep the awareness that all of this shit is a simulation." And that it's like nothing I think is real is actually-- well, it's not that it's not real, but it's not the way I perceive it to be.

[01:30:57] It's like you go out of body in a near-death experience or smoking DMT, however people do it, and it's like you realize real quick that you're still alive in this other realm. There's still a you there, and like when we're in a dream, when we're sleeping, that world is just as real as this world when we're aware of it in there. So it's like to get lost there in those other realms by losing ourselves here seems that we're missing a major piece of value in the human experience.

[01:31:35] Sarah: Oh, absolutely. But I think everyone lands in different places. For instance, I love the earth experience now. I've at least come to a place with my own personal journey where I love it. I think it's fun.

[01:31:50] Luke: It's fun.

[01:31:51] Sarah: But because of a lot of things that weren't fun, because of just my path, even before conspiracy theories or as conspiracy theories was happening, I was in fourth way work from [Inaudible]. If that's master intensity and embodiment or being of the body, it's actually a humiliation ritual for the ego.

[01:32:12] Quite frankly, when I look back on it, it's literally going through each process of the different ways that a person had developed in past lives. So let's say one way a person developed was through only body work. Those are things where there was heavy tantra, heavy practice in the yogic field on using your body as an instrument for connecting with your higher self or pulling in energies of spirit, combined with the mental world or the path of the yogi, combined with the emotional world.

[01:32:52] So there's these different paths that got integrated in fourth way work, which is why it's called fourth way, because there was these different ways, and then the fourth way was birthed from all these different ways that--

[01:33:03] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[01:33:03] Sarah: Yeah, weren't integrated together. And so what I also see is, if there's one way, which is this path of figuring out the body as the instrument and how to work with your body, then there's this other path of doing the same with the mind and then another path, doing the same with the emotions and so forth, that these are different dharmas.

[01:33:27] Once again, discernment will save us. We have to understand the difference between if we're seeing a person's dharma or if we're seeing a person's trauma, or if we're seeing even both. So the new age has a massive core wound, which is why when I came into the field, I could have called myself many things.

[01:33:53] My [Inaudible] herself said, "You're a mystic." It's generic. It's to the point. It's true, most of all. It's not like-- a mystic. And it's like, yeah, I got the name the Alchemist, but anyone who would've gotten that name would've gotten that name. So it's fine. But mystic. Why? Because I came from mysticism, so I'm a mystic.

[01:34:15] But to me, it's general. I don't know. Maybe someone else might find it very exotic, but to me it's almost like if you're wearing a name tag in the field, it's going by a generic name tag. So how I view the new age has always been with this, okay, I'm a mystic in this field.

[01:34:37] And my role in the field that I've assigned myself just because it's fun is showing how much of the new age is actually not new. Now, there's a lot of new components. The largest thing about the new age that's new is channeling. Channeling was always done in mysticism, but the way it's done now, I would say, I don't know I've ever seen it before.

[01:34:59] So the way that channeling presents itself and how there's channel material from these aliens and stuff like that, I would say that that is the core thing that I could find that could be called new age. There's so many other things thrown into that category that I wouldn't even call new age.

[01:35:17] Luke: I'm glad you brought up channeling because that's something that I didn't touch on at depth and would like to. I find that particular topic really confusing. A, going back to the discernment and how difficult that can be when you're just here on earth, the human mind is not designed to be able to tell what's true and what's not, period.

[01:35:44] I think that's our main issue. And we're also in a culture that is so heavily emphasized the intellect and that it is the almighty scientism and all that. We can't tell who's a bad guy from a good guy here. How the hell are you going to tell if you're calling in some disembodied souls and you're going to run your life or encourage other people to run their lives by the information you're getting? How do you trust that world?

[01:36:13] So that's my critique of it. And also I've seen people or been around people doing said channeling, and my vibe check is just, they're literally faking it. It's just bullshit. They're speaking some googly, gobbly, light language. It's bullshit. And some of them I think know it and they're doing it as a grift.

[01:36:34] Yet you've got the Course in Miracles. You've got The Law of One. There are so many authentic teachings. Even Paul Selig, a guy I interviewed years ago who's a channel, that's a subjective experience, not even a book that was downloaded.

[01:36:54] And it has stood the test of time as being useful, like A Course in Miracles, for example. Sitting with Paul Selig, nothing he said ran as untrue when he's doing his channeling. When he writes his book or channels his books, according to him, there's zero editing. It's a word for word. No human being could speak with that much articulation and artful perfection.

[01:37:23] So it's like it's coming from somewhere else. And information that he shared with me from his channels checked out on all levels. So it's an interesting phenomenon because there seems to be authenticity in it, but I think the authenticity is probably much more rare than the fallacious nature of it and potentially dangerous nature of it.

[01:37:46] I'm not trying to talk to any entities personally. I'll talk to my wife, my friends. My dad died recently. I try to talk to him, but I know his nature and I know his character. So if I'm able to reach him and channel my dad, I know the source is trustworthy because I experienced him here in this realm.

[01:38:05] I'm not just reaching out to some random disembodied being that's going to start giving me information that may or may not even be helpful or valid. So what's your take on the ratio-- you mentioned ratio earlier-- of the authentic phenomenon of non-physical beings communicating through humans versus the grift or the false nature of that.

[01:38:34] Sarah: That would actually be false light. Yeah, yeah. When there is deception, whether the person who's channeling has that intention of deception or egoic grandeur, or whether the being who is being channeled has that deception for their intention. Because sometimes a person honestly wants to channel, so it's not like they're trying to deceive.

[01:39:01] So it can go so many different ways. And so I did a video on this. I forget. It was called like how to channel. And it's so funny because every time I do anything, I get shown the complete opposite of whatever my stance is. It's a great way of evolving. It just sucks, if you want to have a strong stance on anything.

[01:39:24] Luke: Yeah. I was like, put out something controversial and just wait for the vultures to come. Yeah.

[01:39:30] Sarah: It's actually because I get shown completely the opposite side of whatever I believe. And I go, "Oh man." So for this, the jig was I did this channeling video on how you basically have to be so aware. That's where that line came from that I said. Anything you are not aware of can be used against you in the court of the universe. It came from that video.

[01:39:54] Talking all about how important it is that you're not just channeling your own ego basically. And then of course life showed me the complete opposite side. And it was this documentary literally on channeling. And this documentary that I saw on channeling was where some of the best sources of channel material I've ever seen came from and what they would do to get into the channeling state.

[01:40:22] And it was the complete opposite of what I said. I was laughing because I'm like, "I don't even channel." To me, I'm just clear cognizant. So I don't call that channeling. I don't need to channel. Channeling would be if I need to connect with something that is not necessarily me. I just get my information from my higher self.

[01:40:41] I actually don't even like saying that. I don't say it anywhere where I get my information from because then people are focused on wherever. So I'd rather just have them say, "Oh, I believe her because it resonates within or I don't. She's crazy." But for people who channel, clearly, that's the point of the word.

[01:41:00] It's like it's to show that they're channeling something. And so for me, I don't even channel something. And I made this video and then I saw how the best channelers got into their channel and it was not how I said the video. It was like, "Yeah, she used to drink a beer so that she wouldn't be inhibited."

[01:41:21] And so in my head I'm going, "That's going to attract this entity." Because if you don't have this cleared, if you-- because then my healer comes out and I go, "If you don't--" but it's great information. And so it's really case by case. To your point exactly, I'll just tell you straight. I feel like a lot more of the channeling that is in this age is crap than I see as genuine, like they're channeling a good information. I think the ratio is huge. But the ones who are genuinely, in my opinion, channeling, you could tell by the greatness and richness of the information.

[01:42:03] Luke: Yeah, that's been my observation too, which is the thing that has allowed me to lend a bit more credence to it. You just listen to some things and then you look at the person who's being channeled through and you're like, "There's no way that's them." No one can be that articulate and on point. You know what I mean?

[01:42:21] Because you'll hear them talking when they're not channeling. They're just a regular person. They might be intelligent and insightful, but they're not brilliant in terms of being an [Inaudible].

[01:42:33] Sarah: Have seen the Bouchard documentary where they put electrode on his brain and you see how he goes into a completely different brain state?

[01:42:43] Luke: Really?

[01:42:44] Sarah: Yeah.

[01:42:44] Luke: That's cool.

[01:42:46] Sarah: Because he's so a channeler. He was like, "Yeah, sure. Do whatever." So they just put [Inaudible] and just went into it.

[01:42:52] Luke: So they did a QEEG and looked at his brainwaves or something?

[01:42:55] Sarah: Yeah. I think this is either a documentary or I don't know what things--

[01:43:00] Luke: Interesting. I'd like to see that. Yeah, I've seen bits and pieces of his stuff around people mostly reposting his clips and things, but I've not paid all that much attention just because generally I'm like, "Eh, channeling. Eh."

[01:43:14] Sarah: Yeah. And sometimes it's a person's calling, and what you'll see is that it's something so innate, something so innate that even my video was showing me this other side of like, yeah, but the people who do it, it's almost like they can't get it wrong and they just have their own way that they get prepared.

[01:43:34] Versus people where, like I said, a disparage amount that are almost, as Eckhart Tolle said, channeling their ego. And it's clear. I was just having this talk with my mom last week. I was using this one example. I don't want to throw anyone under the bus. I'm not going to.

[01:43:52] But it was this one person who was going, in a galactic voice, "You must get in the hot." And I was like, "I could say that without any theatrics." I could say that at the kitchen table. I could say that anywhere. So there's just some collective things that are known that I feel like becomes more mystical and magical if you say that in a very theatrical tone, versus really vetted out channels that by their fruits you'll know them. Because the information, it's like, how would you even know that information, like you said.

[01:44:32] Luke: Totally. And that said, I think most people that have done public speaking or writing or different ways of expressing themselves and communicating ideas to people, there is definitely something to be said for a flow state. I know I've given talks, and the best talks I've ever done in terms of public speaking are ones where I make no plan.

[01:44:54] If I make a PowerPoint and stuff, it never feels authentic and it's not even fun. So I just try to not think of anything except maybe a very vague intention. Oh, I think a general topic would be this thing. And I'll sit there and watch myself talking. I'm like, "Who is saying that? This is really good."

[01:45:13] It's not me per se, but I'm also not channeling an entity. Maybe you mentioned channeling your higher self or something. It's like tapping into a strata of wisdom that I don't know I have access to until it just happens. And this has happened a lot with me with writing too. Sit down and like, what am I going to say? I don't know. Where am I going to start?

[01:45:36] And you get the vibe going, the muse enters the room, and next thing you know, you write something. You read it back and go, "Shit, that's really good. Who did that?" So I think there's a version of channeling that's maybe just tapping into consciousness, tapping into the field of information and wisdom that doesn't necessarily need any theatrics.

[01:45:57] And you might not even know you're doing it. Maybe all great art is coming from that place of inspiration, and you could say on one level as being channeled, because it's involuntary. You're just opening yourself to potentiality as a channel and beautiful or wise things move through you almost of their own volition because you're willing to be present and allow them to manifest.

[01:46:24] Sarah: Oh, totally. I don't have an issue with the term channeling, but just so you know, in the spiritual community right now, we like to be mad at terms and examine them. And that's good. I think that that's why the spiritual community has evolved so quickly, because the pendulum swing that is our curriculum to learn is faster.

[01:46:46] Usually what you'll see is that there's a lot of stagnation when people are just stuck in dogma. So spiritual communities, you'll probably see a bunch of videos where they're like, "I was this and now I'm this." It's because this spiritual community can oscillate. It can pendulum swing. It can be wrong, and then it can be right, and then it can adjust.

[01:47:06] And then some things just can't. They calcify into dogma. That's it. And so with the spiritual community, one of the things is like, no channeling is outside of us. So don't say channeling anymore because channeling is bad because it's outside. So that means like we're connecting with something.

[01:47:25] And I get that because that's what it's traditionally meant, but I've never meant it that way. We're channels. Everything is channeled. We're channeling ourselves right now into this reality. So when I see it that way, it's silly to be scared of our own inherent nature. And so I see everyone's as channels. Maybe there's different capacities. I don't want to make everything sound like everyone has that ability or whatever.

[01:47:53] But as much as I feel like, yeah, there's dark triad going on, I also don't think that channeling or other psychic abilities are so elite that they're only for another specific group. I see clairsentience, and I see channeling both as being something that are just belonging to the intuition and everyone who's properly human has an intuition.

[01:48:19] Luke: Yeah. I'm all for more people, especially males because I think we're-- based on being one and being close to a lot of males throughout my life, intuition is much harder for us to develop a relationship with than I think females. Because the most I've improved my intuition is from being married to someone who's highly tapped in and intuitive.

[01:48:45] She models what living your life based on intuition looks like. And I go, "Wow, that's cool. How did you know that?" She's like, "I just know, dude." It's like, don't you feel it? I go, "No, I'm thinking too much." I want to encourage people the power of intuition can't be overstated. We know so much more than we think we know and believe we know.

[01:49:06] Sarah: Oh, totally. And I don't think I need to tell you. You seem very intelligent that men have been wounded in places and women have been wounded in places, and then there's an overlap, the shared experience. But then also unique challenges to each. And so one of them has literally been disconnecting men intentionally from their intuition.

[01:49:28] Luke: Bastards. It's so hard to get it back. When you've ignored it your whole life and then you get a couple of wins, you're like, "Oh, I want to do this more." But there's a lot of catching up to do when you've been following other directives. I think for me it's been a lot of overcoming my blind trust in thought and just not believing anything that this thing produces without evidence and proof.

[01:49:56] Which intuition doesn't work like that. The evidence is that you followed the gut feeling and it proved itself to be correct whether you avoided something or were attracted to something positive. It's like a couple of those wins starts to build a relationship of trust. Whereas how many times I think, not just for me, I'm sure for many people listening-- well, probably everyone listening, if they're honest-- have you had a really great idea about something that you were so convinced was real and true and right, listen to the mind, and it led you down a path that ended up causing you or other people harm.

[01:50:29] It's like the mind is such a tricky one because it seems real because it's inside our head. It's like, oh yeah, if I think something-- I made another shirt that says, don't believe everything you think. Because I make a judgment or a projection. I think, well, I thought it, therefore it's true. It's like, how can Byron Katie? Can you really know that's true? Yeah, it's true. For sure? Maybe not.

[01:50:56] I love the practice of just questioning thoughts of just like, okay, I have a very strong emotional charge behind this belief or thought. Let me double check it, triple check it, quadruple check it. You know what? I could be wrong. There's so much power in that. But man, the heart and the gut are never wrong if I learn how to listen. What role does karma play in your worldview?

[01:51:19] Sarah: Oh, everything. Oh, yeah.

[01:51:23] Luke: You're like, that's all there is in my worldview.

[01:51:25] Sarah: Yeah, almost. Seriously now. Because it's funny, 10 years ago I was giving a talk about how like, oh, we're being released from our karma. And then I got a massive nervous system injury that I thought was darkness at the time. It ended up not being that.

[01:51:48] Dark forces and light forces at a certain point, you won't be able to tell the difference. That's how much alchemy is a part of everyone's spiritual process. But I remember I was talking about karma, and I look back now vividly because after such a devastating injury, you can't help but then start looking at what did I do?

[01:52:11] That's at least where I went. Like, what was I thinking at the time? What were my belief systems? All those things to see what I could point the finger at or anything like that. And so what I did see, and this wasn't the cause of it at all, but was that I was being very flippant about karma at the time and not in a meaningful, disrespectful way. I wasn't meaning to. I wasn't scoffing at it. I wasn't mocking it. I was looking at it too lightly.

[01:52:41] Luke: Ah.

[01:52:41] Sarah: And I've learned so deeply now the ins and out of this cosmic force, and it's different aspects and that's almost why I said earlier that I'm like, I don't know if I would need to come back because everything just has a very beautiful order to it all the way up to the inception of this universe designed that way.

[01:53:04] And so we could call it karma. It's also called cause and effect, love correspondence. There's so many different names that we have for this, and it's really just being able to do unto others as you would have done unto you. It's like almost the key. If you're lost in the forest and you need a breadcrumb to go mark where you are, the strongest breadcrumb, the strongest key would be do unto others as you would have done unto you.

[01:53:32] That's literally what we call the law of attraction now. There's other parts of the law of attraction, but if we had to reduce it to its bare bones, it would be that. It'd also be the law of mirroring many other things.

[01:53:45] Luke: Do you think of karma as something that is instantaneous or requires what we perceive to be time to have its effect? Meaning I think many of us, myself included, have thought about, if I screw someone over on Wednesday, then a year from now, the same thing might happen to me. Or moving in the timeline further from that, in the next lifetime, maybe I'll be murdered if I murdered someone.

[01:54:13] But I'm sure we probably share somewhat of a unified view on time as that there is no time. That it's just one eternal everything all the time. That's how I view it. So if karma is so impactful and meaningful, as you indicated it is, the way I'm seeing it now is that it's like karma is just doing itself right now.

[01:54:46] Anything I do, that cause and effect is just instantaneous. It's not that the thing's going to happen later, per se, because there is no later. There is only one eternity. So it's like for me to go out in the street and get in road rage and punch someone in the face, I'm instantaneously punching myself in the face, is basically what I'm saying. Do you think there's a time to lay on it, or do you think that it's just this living, breathing instantaneous reaction?

[01:55:16] Sarah: Great question. I've actually been studying this too, because I had that question. It's timed differently. Like how different astrological cycles happen. So there can be, let's say, the daily cycle of the moon and the sun, but then there's these larger events that happen. And they only come around, let's say, once every 15 years or something like that.

[01:55:41] And then there's these larger ones that only come around once in a lifetime and things like that. And that's how I have my own personal gnosis on karma. That it really serves this larger, I hate to say the term, but algorithm. There's this larger wisdom. I like that better. There's this larger wisdom to it in these different cycles.

[01:56:05] And so it's not as simple as instantaneous. I think that instantaneous works a lot for if there is a sincerity behind it. For instance, I get what I would consider instant karma, but I think it's not because it's trying to punish me. If something needs a slow release, if something had a delay on it, it was probably a way stronger offense that was with the free will, consciously chosen, consciously chosen, again and again and again.

[01:56:40] So that then it never meant-- there wasn't like a universal God, source that was enjoying building up that debt. It was because of how karma is designed. Karma's not designed as punishment. It punishes. It's not designed only as that. So with course correction, things can still be experienced, but it could go like, does this want to go down on a graceful fall, or does this want to go down hard?

[01:57:09] And so because of that, there can be actually a very large karmic toll. I'm talking like a pile up so bad and it wasn't, once again, because they were trying to be punished, a pile up so bad because of so many really strong vicious offenses that never got course corrected each time that there was a free will choice point, let's say, to course correct and then to course correct.

[01:57:36] So for those, those I see repercussions that could take literally lifetimes to pay off versus something where-- I'll give a very funny, hopefully relatable story in my life. I was bashing chemo, cancer. I'm very holistic. So years ago I was bashing the choice that somebody would make to go into chemotherapy for that. I'm so sorry.

[01:58:07] I know that that's awful because so many people have family members or people that are on that or something. But I'm just sharing because I think this might be helpful. And then literally the next day, the neck pain that I was trying to solve, I was trying to solve why my autoimmunity had escalated to the neck pain.

[01:58:28] And I thought, oh, this isn't autoimmunity. This is cancer. And so I started in my own head thinking that I had cancer, and I started thinking of all of my options. And I, in my own options, would not have done chemo because I'm privileged, I guess you could say, in a weird sense to have knowledge of alternative means.

[01:58:56] Even if I didn't have Uber resources financially, I had the knowledge, and knowledge is power. And so I was placed squarely inside a person's scenario of what they would do if they had cancer. Now, I wasn't inside a doctor's office, and so I'm sure it's far more scary when somebody who's a professional comes in and shows you this thing and you really have it, not you're guessing it.

[01:59:20] And I'm sure it's far more even scary because if a person does not have alternative knowledge, then of course they're in such a fierce state that they're going to go and defer to whoever is the authority and what they're saying the route is, and then they give percentages.

[01:59:34] They go, "This is the way and stuff." And so of course you're on that point if you don't have the resources, whether financially or just mentally, or spiritually, whatever. I understood the pipeline of almost like what that experience would be like if fear is your dominant vibration at that time, and you're listening to somebody who doesn't have cancer and they're telling you, "Oh no, this is survival and all that stuff."

[02:00:05] And so, to me, I would call that an instantaneous karma, not to punish me, but to show me the other side of what now I consider such innocently ignorant thing, which is that like people who take that route are a part of the problem in some abstract way.

[02:00:32] Luke: So it's like the instantaneous karma in that case is more about a perception shift, of more reality, more perspective becoming available in that moment in a humbling way where you realize like, "Wow, I was just able to put myself in someone else's shoes." And that was the learning, rather than having to be punished and actually get cancer and then be in the situation where the only option is chemo and you're sitting there going, "Ah." Right?

[02:01:04] Sarah: Right. Yeah. I feel like it was an opportunity of compassion. Sometimes it operates differently for me. I'll just be honest. It operates where I was over giving in one sense and I got an instant karmic mirror of that, and it showed me to not be so over giving and not be so flippant with whatever I was doing at that time that probably was overly compassionate.

[02:01:32] Luke: Yeah, totally. What's your perspective on addiction? Causes, things that make it better, worse, why some people recover, some don't. Most don't.

[02:01:49] Sarah: I love this topic.

[02:01:51] Luke: Speaking of drug addiction, substance abuse addiction, I would say I'm pretty addicted to my phone, but it doesn't cause me to lose my house and wife. You know what I mean? And end up in jail.

[02:02:02] Sarah: Your addiction's highly productive.

[02:02:05] Luke: I'm a functioning addict. Okay, I admit it.

[02:02:07] Sarah: I think everyone on earth is a functioning addict. I said that addiction is another word for samsara. I would call samsara a very elaborate system that is fueled by addiction. And so I think if you're in an earth suit, you're a nanny. And so to be more precisely, you talked more about drug addicts, which would be different and not so abstract like I was making it.

[02:02:36] So drug addicts, yeah, I definitely feel like at that level of addiction, the very literal kind, not the abstract metaphysical kind, that that would be some internal void that is not being repaired at the deepest level where that void exist.

[02:02:57] What I've seen really from-- I love Dr. Gabor Mate's work. I love how he has seen that with grief, for instance, mutating into addiction. There's so many different things that-- he wouldn't call it that, but that's how I see it, like a mutation. And that adaptation or mutation is now what we see as addiction.

[02:03:22] And so it's very sobering, not to use a pun, because if you look at a balloon that has air in it, we could look at that as like the ego and its stimulation. All these different things need to stimulate it. And then when something doesn't go addressed, it needs extra stimulation and extra stimulation until it gets into this vibration that's addiction.

[02:03:49] And so it's highly unstimulating to deflate the ego. Then the ego thinks it's dying because it's not being stimulated. So in a very real way, addiction is like the resistance to ego deaths because it's not like the ego will stay dead. And it's not supposed to stay dead, but the ego death is that whole matrix husk, that whole matrix shell of that person.

[02:04:21] And so there is also a mourning of whatever is encompassed within that shell, within that information. I love this one. It's this praying mantis that was backwards that this one person on Instagram posted. He has a bunch of praying mantises, and he takes these time lapse videos of them. I keep sharing one of this praying mantis backwards that's shedding out of its skin.

[02:04:52] Because you literally see-- sometimes I've just zoomed in to look at the actual shell, and that's the matrix of it. And I'm like, "Within that matrix there's like this blueprint of that version." Because what makes a matrix? All of these different information systems. And so I saw this shell of a praying mantis and I'm thinking like, "Wow, that's literally a visual of an ego death."

[02:05:19] It's this shell of this blueprint of who you were. And it doesn't normally feel good. After time, it's fine. It's flow. But addiction is that resistance to that ego death. And so with there comes all this compassion. There's all these reasons why I'm not saying it in a mean way, like they refuse to go into an ego death.

[02:05:42] There's all these things, but really if you look at the core of addiction, there is some resistance to grief. And then I would even say from a shamanic perspective, now that I've sounded normal, I don't think it's that at all. I think it's soul loss. I think addiction is directly connected to soul loss. I do an episode on this in season 2 of Mystery Teachings.

[02:06:06] Luke: When does that come out?

[02:06:08] Sarah: It comes out February.

[02:06:10] Luke: And this is on Gaia?

[02:06:12] Sarah: Yeah. Because I made this really gnarly connection between Robert Monroe's work-- are you familiar with Robert Monroe?

[02:06:19] Luke: Yeah. I was talking about it with my guest, Adam, the DMT psychonaut. Yeah. He went there and did the gateway process and stuff. Interesting. Yeah.

[02:06:29] Sarah: Okay, cool. So I'm a huge fan of Robert Monroe's work, and so a lot of that has fueled my neo-Gnosticism. I would consider myself like a hermetic or neo-Gnostic. And Robert Monroe's work, he wasn't even trying to be Gnostic. He didn't care about any of that stuff. And everything verbatim is a modern way, his own discoveries of being a neo-Gnostic.

[02:06:54] So he had this work about what earth is. He had these own ways of expressing what this realm means in a larger sense. And then he said that people just keep coming back here. And this is still another theme from Gnosticism. It doesn't go away because there's something to it.

[02:07:15] And that's like, why do people seem to just be looping? And there's always a spiral, so they could be gaining a notch each time, but why is it some people appear to just be looping? Some people are evolving, they're spiraling, but some are looping. And so then I came in with my shaman background and I went, "Oh no, they're looping because of the soul loss. "So I see addiction as actually an expression of soul loss.

[02:07:46] Luke: Can you elaborate on that?

[02:07:48] Sarah: Yeah. Soul loss is done almost like we could think of it over anything that's subjective. It would be easy to say like, "Oh, that definitely caused soul loss in a person, but we wouldn't know because it really depends on their own bandwidth." If a person has a lot of resources, let's say, they might not experience something to a state to where they go into soul loss.

[02:08:15] But if another person doesn't have that same bandwidth, that might be fragmenting towards them. This is also expressed in that beautiful quote from Joseph Campbell, the mystic swims in the same waters that the psychotic drowns.

[02:08:32] Luke: Oh, that's cool.

[02:08:33] Sarah: Actually, no, there's an important part. It's the mystic swims with delight in the same waters that the psychotic drowns. Delight is important because it's not just swimming. You're in delight.

[02:08:44] Luke: Yeah, yeah. That's heavy. Yeah, both of those really track for me as someone who's had that life experience, thankfully, in the past, very long time ago. But you mentioned Carl Jung earlier, and there was this really, within recovery circles, quite famous interaction that Carl Jung had with the co-founder of AA, Bill Wilson.

[02:09:06] They wrote a couple of letters back and forth, and the short version of the story is that there was this wealthy guy who went to see Carl Jung and was under his care for a period of time who was a really bad alcoholic. And Carl Jung was unable to help the guy. Every time he'd come and get treatment for a period of time, he'd get drunk on the way home.

[02:09:24] I think he was going to Austria and lived in the UK or something. And so Carl Jung just hit this point of frustration. He's like, "Nothing I know works on this guy. Why?" And he wrote to Bill Wilson. The guy ended up getting sober through spiritual realms eventually. And so that was the basis of their interaction.

[02:09:43] But Carl Jung wrote a letter to Bill Wilson where he said that what he learned with his inability to help this guy is that the disease that he had, the alcoholism he had was a thirst for God. It's like you mentioned that void. It's like that's why the psychiatric or psychological approach is usually totally useless for alcoholics, because it's not happening at that level.

[02:10:13] It's soul loss, as you said. I know I lost my soul many, many times. But I think that the word spirits is really telling too. It's like, us addicts, we're reaching for a connection to something that just seems beyond our grasp, and we don't even know what it is. We just know that there's an emptiness there and it seems to be temporarily filled.

[02:10:37] So I really like that perspective. And also your analogy about the balloon and the ego. That tracks because anyone that's recovered knows that what is required is a deflation of the ego. And when you see someone on the show Intervention and you're just like, "God, why won't this guy get sober?" It's just the ego won't let them. It's just like they cannot humble themselves to any program or to God, let alone. So I think those are both really great insights.

[02:11:07] Sarah: Yeah. I see pride as being the glue of all of the deadly sins now.

[02:11:12] Luke: Hmm.

[02:11:13] Sarah: I see it's just pride. And it's just pride, but in different spectrums of a color wavelength. So it's like the same thing, but it's just like at a lower level, it expresses glue. I see it as just like pride now. So that tracks to what you said. And there's a show called Intervention?

[02:11:33] Luke: Oh, my God. Yeah. I haven't watched it in a while, but I used to watch it.

[02:11:37] Sarah: So you get to see people crack?

[02:11:39] Luke: It's amazing. Yeah. I think just because I relate to it so deeply, but it's quite hardcore and tragic obviously, most of the time. But yeah, they'll follow an addict in the death spiral, at the end of sometimes their life.

[02:11:55] And then the family who's-- it's fascinating to watch because you really get to see codependency in action. You see how-- that's an interesting thing about addiction, is that, I don't know that I classify it as a disease in the medical sense, but it definitely is a dis-ease. It's a dysfunction.

[02:12:14] But unlike something like cancer, wherein there might be sympathy, compassion, empathy, love, care from the family unit that's orbiting around that person, but the cancer doesn't infect the entire family, which is really interesting about addiction. If people stay in the lives of an addict that they love, they'll all get sick.

[02:12:37] So that's a really interesting thing to observe on that show because you see like, dude, they need to send the mom to rehab. It's like the family, they go nuts from just the insanity of that tornado. But yeah, the show follows a family or friends around an addict. And then the peak moment of the show is they do an intervention where they meet them in a hotel room and they read letters to the addict.

[02:12:58] I really love you. We used to be best friends and now you stole my car, or whatever. But the thing that I like watching is not the suffering of the addict, which is really hard to watch in some cases. But I would like to detect and try to predict if they were going to surrender. And was pretty good at it because I know what that feels like when you're at that point where you're just throwing your hands up and you're done. I could tell when they're done and when they're not done.

[02:13:26] And usually the ones that are done are done because something's happening within themselves that has very little to do with the external pressure of, we're going to cut off your credit card. I'm going to divorce you. You're going to get fired.

[02:13:39] The surrender usually comes when you just know you're beat. It's not because of your family sitting around in a room. But yeah, for anyone interested in addiction and watching God work through dynamics, it's really beautiful and fascinating. And I would cry every time. Every time they would surrender and they'd be like, "Okay, I'll go to rehab."

[02:14:00] I be sitting there crying because I remember that moment so well. It's the most pivotal moment of my life, apart from being born again. Yeah, that moment when you're just like, the white flag, man. It's just like, okay, I'm done. I can't fix this shit. It's really fascinating to watch that from a spiritual and psychological perspective, just to see a human being hit the brick wall. It's like--

[02:14:27] Sarah: Yeah.

[02:14:28] Luke: Are you going to keep trying to push through the wall, man? Are you just going to lay down and let yourself be helped? So there is a show called Intervention. I'm happy I was able to teach you something today too. But it's pretty gnarly because you see people really at the bitter end of addiction, which is really sad.

[02:14:46] Sarah: My sister was an addict.

[02:14:47] Luke: Really?

[02:14:47] Sarah: She went to 12 steps.

[02:14:49] Luke: Oh wow. Did she make it?

[02:14:51] Sarah: Yeah.

[02:14:52] Luke: Oh, great.

[02:14:52] Sarah: She made it. She's actually one of the most responsible, best human beings that I can point to now. And before then, I did not know humans could change that vastly.

[02:15:03] Luke: Wow.

[02:15:04] Sarah: Yeah. I got one of those letters.

[02:15:05] Luke: That's amazing.

[02:15:06] Sarah: But I didn't know the whole course of it. I wasn't there when the intervention part happened and stuff like that. But yeah, she's even like the board of her local region for House of Hope.

[02:15:16] Luke: Oh, cool. Isn't that amazing? I just think it's so fascinating. Speaking of spiritual principles, it's like that's usually the only thing that is happening between someone is about to die, wreck their whole life, hurt everyone they love, end up in prison, mental hospital, etc. The dividing line for that is like, here are some natural laws.

[02:15:37] Here's how they work. If you follow them, that hole within you starts to get filled with God, and then you become an upstanding member of society and a great sister, brother, boss, employee. It's insane to me--

[02:15:49] Sarah: Oh yeah.

[02:15:49] Luke: --the transformation that's possible.

[02:15:52] Sarah: Amazing human being.

[02:15:54] Luke: Yeah. So cool. Well, that's a really positive note to end on. I'm going to have one final three-part question for you. But before that, I would be remiss if I did not mention the show notes can be found at lukestorey.com/alchemist, wherein we'll of course link to your social media websites and so on so people can interact with you and learn more from you.

[02:16:16] Do you have anything going on that you want to speak to that people-- where would you like to direct people? Is it your Gaia show, your site? What programs you got going on? How can people get more of you?

[02:16:27] Sarah: Yeah. Mystery Teachings is where all of my current passion and focus is on. You could also find me on YouTube. That's where my teachings also come out on. But really the greatest energy and focus on pouring into is mystery teachings on Gaia. Social media, you could find me on YouTube.

[02:16:47] Luke: Okay, great. So last question is, who are three teachers or teachings in general that have made you who you are today?

[02:16:58] Sarah: Carl Jung. There's so many teachers. So I'm going to try to just-- because later I'll be like, "You didn't say this person."

[02:17:09] Luke: It happens a lot. Don't worry.

[02:17:11] Sarah: Okay. Carl Jung. One of his most profound teachings rocked my world because I saw everything in trinities until I had learned from him the hidden fourth. So if you want to look up anything fun, Carl Jung esoteric, the hidden fourth. Man, there's so many.

[02:17:32] George Gurdjieff, he's the one who created the fourth way. That's the system that I have the strongest affinity with. George Gurdjieff is known as being the sly man. He was a trickster archetype teacher. Yeah, he's a mystic. I won't worry about it. I won't think of-- so then I'll just say oh, to Helena Blavatsky.

[02:18:03] Helena Blavatsky was the founder of the Theosophical Society, and she did an amazing job on preserving the perennial wisdom. So she took the Eastern teachings and then really created a way to preserve them for the West. Of course, it wasn't perfect with its translations, but still it was the basis now of where we get the new age, and it's the basis now of where we get mysticism in the West.

[02:18:30] Luke: Amazing. Cool. Well, we'll put all those in the show notes. And I know it's difficult to pick three. That's why I ask people. It's been nine and a half coming up on 10 years of asking, I don't know, hundreds of people that question. And sometimes people really surprised me.

[02:18:46] Two of yours I wasn't familiar with, but it'll be anything from like, oh, my grandmother, my first-grade teacher that really believed in me, to Jesus Christ, the whole spectrum. Sometimes they're super far out and they're totally unrelated anything we talked about. So that's one of my little pet joys in having these conversations. I'm like, "Ooh, I wonder who they're going to pick at the end. Well, thank you--

[02:19:11] Sarah: Thanks for having me.

[02:19:12] Luke: Thanks for joining me. It's been a blast. I always love talking about all things spiritual and metaphysical. It's probably my favorite topic here on the show. And the show isn't completely dedicated to that because we talk about alternative healing and all kinds of different crazy stuff. But when the questions are coming from a place of genuine curiosity for me, I find it's really fun. Expands the way I look at things. And you did that today, so thank you.

[02:19:42] Sarah: Thank you.