Finding Inner Calm in a Chaotic World with Matt Diggity

In this Episode

• [03:49]Matt Diggity discusses his use of psychedelics from a young age, losing both parents in his early 20s, and how creeping anxiety pushed him to seek real change.
• [05:27]Matt shares his first experience with LSD at 14 and how he revisited it during college parties.
• [07:20]Matt explains the role of therapy, particularly IFS parts work, in helping him rewrite the emotional impact of past events.
• [12:41]Matt recounts a recent shared visionary experience with a friend during a psychedelic retreat, where they hallucinated the same visions simultaneously.
• [20:13]Matt talks about his skepticism about non-psychedelic awakening experiences and his ongoing exploration of spirituality and quantum theory.
• [27:48]Matt reflects on his decision to move to Thailand for a better quality of life and the evolution of his online business.
• [42:26]Matt emphasizes the importance of maintaining analog activities and face-to-face community interactions.
• [49:52]Matt imparts his philosophy that every painful experience is a lesson and that everything that has happened needed to happen for him to be where he is today.

Jump to Links and Resources

Matt, it’s so great to have you on the show. Thanks for coming.

Thanks for inviting me.

You were on my other show, Marketing Speak, a while back, and we geeked out about SEO, marketing, and all that. But I was inspired, nudged really, to invite you on this show to talk about personal development, spirituality, growth and evolution because of something you posted on Facebook, and I happened to see, and I believe there are no coincidences, I was meant to see that. I don’t spend much time on Facebook, yet I saw your post. If you want to share, maybe a little bit of background on why you posted that, what you posted, and your intention in sharing with a wider audience might set a really nice stage for our conversation today.

If I have it right, you reached out to me after I posted a podcast interview about psychedelic use. We all have our personal lives. I’ve never really hidden the fact that I’m interested in inner exploration and psychedelic spirituality, but I’ve also never really done a podcast, getting deep into it, and kind of opening doors and not holding anything back. I guess you saw that, and why did I in the first place? Why not? I kind of look at it as, for whatever reason, I ended up with an audience through business, SEO, or whatever. While I still have it, while I’m still on the search, maybe I can give some messages that aren’t just about making money.

What was the main message that you wanted to get out through that podcast interview that you did on psychedelics and your inner exploration?

There were a few different states in my psychedelic journey that showed me there’s a different way of living. I think the more important thing is the feeling of acceptance.

I would say the main one is that there’s a message I was trying to get across: the inner world exploration starts with wanting to change or learn more. That takes awareness. I think, at least for me, in my experience of this whole exploration, it took a kind of wake-up call to realize that there was something wrong. Like in my former was anxiety. Anxiety is really hard to put a finger on when it crept up on you because it’s not like you, it’s not like a step function. It’s not like one day you’re just anxious. 

You go from zero to a hundred. It’s just a little creep up over time with habits and somatic accumulation. I kind of just wanted to maybe encourage people to get a second opinion, talk to other people, maybe ask themselves, is the way I’m feeling, is the fact that I’m not sleeping well every night, or the fact that I wake up and I feel like it’s a race to get all things done, is that normal? Then give them some options for what I can do as a second step to explore these things.

Good stuff. This idea of psychedelics as perhaps a pathway to spiritual growth and maybe to dealing with anxiety or other forms of strife or mental spiritual issues is something that you came across. How did you come across this? Where did you get inspired to explore this path?

I’ve been doing psychedelics for a while. The first time I did LSD, I was 14 years old, and I just told someone that recently they’re like, “What the hell?” That was a bit early. I revisited it in like my college days. We were going to warehouse parties. Southern California raves and that kind of thing. Then it took a long break. In that period of my break, my parents had passed away at 20 and 22 years old, went through some mental health instability around there and just thought, “Okay, psychedelics probably aren’t safe anymore. I’m probably gonna have a bad trip or wig out or something.” 

Then kind of came back in my life maybe five or six years ago. There were a few different states that I would feel in my psychedelic journeys that showed me that there’s a different way of living, a different mindset to have. One of them would just be bliss, these periods of bliss during the journey. I think the more important thing is the feeling of acceptance. An acceptance of just knowing in my bones that everything is all right. I have everything I need already. I’m not even talking about like financial material stuff. 

I’m looking around, I’m seeing my family and my friends, and we have food. Knowledge sinking into my bones of acceptance, and we have everything already. I knew that was in me, but I didn’t like it when you did the psychedelics; that didn’t come from me. Didn’t come from the drugs. It came from me. It came from me. This is a feeling that deepens in me. It led me down the path of just, “All right, how do I turn the state into a trait? What kind of habits do I have to integrate into my life in order to have these temporary psychedelic feelings become my normal MO?”

What were some of those traits that you established or discovered that help you to stay in that beautiful state instead of a suffering state?

It wasn’t that easy. I would say therapy was part of it. Looking at past events, doing some trauma work, and rewriting. You can’t rewrite history, but rewriting the emotional impact that historical things have had on me was a big part of it. I actually tried tons of different stuff, but I’d say the two biggest ones were therapy, particularly IFS parts work therapy, which was huge for me. The second thing was only kind of recently somatic stuff. Getting my body to realize, all right. At this point, my inner talk, my head was getting pretty clear, calmer, less anxious, and happier. 

The states were becoming mental traits, but my body was still holding something back. I knew that because my sleep was super fragmented. I’d wake up like three to five times per night in my Oura Ring scores, for example, my sleep scores, and my HRV was pretty low. I started to get into the somatic stuff, and that was mostly through breath work and not the Wim Hof activating breath work, more like calming, resonance breathing breath work that really did the trick for me. I’d say those were the two main levers for turning states into traits.

Let’s dive deeper into those. Semantic work and breath work. I was just listening to an interview Vishen Lakhiani did with Dr. Peter Levine, the creator of Somatic Experiencing. That was just yesterday, as part of a Mindvalley spirituality summit. Amazing guy, amazing guy. There’s this idea that The Body Keeps the Score, it’s a book by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, it’s a really important book because if you have a trauma, you keep that trauma in a part of your body, and if you don’t handle that, process that, accept it, then you’re going to potentially carry that for maybe your whole life. Somatic experiencing is one way to address these traumas and the ways they are stored in the body. I’m curious whether there are certain parts of your body that have been storing trauma, and how you specifically release them through breathwork or other somatic exercises.

Good question. In terms of release from stored emotions in the body, first off, if we were at this conversation three years ago, I thought all this stuff was BS. I think I was just pretty detached from my body. I lived in my head so much. I thought I felt anxiety in my gut, I feel my feel fear in my back, like that was just not my world. I think the fact that I was so skeptical of it and then converted to it shows its validity. Had to be proven that this stuff really means something. 

It took a while to figure out where each emotion is held, and I’m still fuzzy on it. It’s kind of like almost every negative emotion is in my gut and my arms, and sometimes a tight chest, for some reason. There’s no distinguishment. But in terms of the release of these things, big, I would say like big macro release levers have been TRE, trauma release exercises, which is another super woo woo thing that I was like, there’s no chance that this stuff works. Once you kick off, I encourage readers or viewers to look into this.

I actually had the creator of TRE, Dr. David Berceli on this podcast. He worked with my wife, Orion, and me in a private Zoom session afterwards because he wanted me to experience the modality, and it was really profound. 

Awesome. Did you give a live demo?

Yeah, he’s amazing.

It’s wild. It is quite amazing. The fact that you can get into a state and start shaking out physical traumas from your body. It’s kind of like your body’s on autopilot, it’s doing some weird stuff that you’re definitely not doing. That was a big one. More recently, I got into a book, I think that was recommended by Tim Ferriss, and maybe one of his emails or some YouTube short or something like that. But it’s called Heart Breath Mind by Leah Lagos. That’s on resonant breathing. It’s basically timing your inhales and exhales at a specific pace that’s unique to each person, where their barrel reflex, your heart’s ability to adapt, is in line with the pace of your breathing. 

It increases your HRV. But as you get further into the program, you can do visualizations like breathing in calm and exhaling stress. After working with that a little bit, I can feel like at a pretty quick cadence. Like when I’m starting to feel any anxiety or tension or something, let’s say something’s happening in my chest, I can breathe it out, and it’s just the feeling’s gone within four or five breaths. I think it’s quite powerful.

Did you have any kind of psychedelic-type experiences while doing breathing exercises?

My boys and I, my friends in the entrepreneurial community here in Chiang Mai, where I live, we’re pretty close, and we do this quarterly psychedelic retreat. It’s private, keep it between us and go rent a place in nature, a nice Airbnb, and we do two days of psychedelics. On the second one, we get into bringing in third-party facilitators to teach us new things,  breathwork or TRE. Breathwork plus psychedelics, it’s like you’re playing with fire, in a good way. I don’t think it’s too dangerous. But there’s always someone in the room having a huge emotional release, bawling their eyes out or something. Me 80% of the time, for sure. But that’s like two nuclear weapons coming together, psychedelics and breath.

Have you ever had an experience without psychedelics, with breathwork that gave you a kind of psychedelic or an awakening experience?

Not to the psychedelic degree. I’ve heard many people report that it’s just as good. I get close, like after a long Wim Hof session, and you just have that clarity, effortless meditation, and a feeling of bliss and calm. I’ve gotten that before, I mean, psychedelics are psychedelics. Feel like it’s hard to reach that trippin’ state, for example.

Breathwork plus psychedelics is like playing with fire, but in a good way.

I wanna share with you something, get your take on it. A couple of experiences that I had. One was where I had a psychedelic trip, I don’t know how else to describe it, without any kind of substance. I just got a blessing from a monk. This was in India, and he was in a super state of consciousness. His face was unrecognizable from how he looks when he’s not in the super state. 

He touched my head and blessed me. I saw everything in Technicolor. I could see the energy in the trees, the plants, and everything. Everything was just so vibrant and brilliant. It was the most colorful colors I’d ever seen in my life. I felt this deep sense of peace and connection. In that moment, I went from being agnostic my whole life to being connected to the oneness and a believer. 

Another experience I had, involving breathwork, was over Zoom. Kurtis Thomas, he’s a past guest, he’s a breathwork expert. I attended a session, my wife and I both attended this session over Zoom, and he had a group of people; he was facilitating this, and I definitely had an experience then of oneness. I’m curious about your take on this and how this relates to your experiences.

Let me dig real quick. I don’t think I’ve really had any non-psychedelic awakening-type experiences. It sounds like you really got a blessing. You were set up for something, and certain circumstances happened, and the universe served up evidence that there’s more going on. I can’t say that I’ve experienced anything like that, but through psychedelics, I surely have the colors that you’re talking about, that’s like a very mushroom-type thing. 

I don’t get it on LSD, I only get it on mushrooms. It crosses my mind: ‘What am I seeing? Am I seeing hallucinations in my brain because it’s just making neuroplasticity kick off, and I’m not able to filter things out? Or am I really looking at waves and energy and nature that really exists that was just unavailable to my eyes without the medicine?’ I think it’s amazing that you’ve experienced that without it. I’m also curious to know why that woke you up spiritually. It seems to have woken you up spiritually. Of course, that was a mystical experience, but what connected that seeing energy and stuff like that to the idea that there’s something more to this world than just matter?

The feeling of connectedness to God was the overarching theme. That was prominent. Seeing all the colors and the visual experience were just a small part of it. It certainly was remarkable, but it wasn’t the main theme of it. It wasn’t the thing that changed me. It was just like, “Wow, that’s really cool. That’s a great story.” But what shifted me was feeling like I was finally plugged into the power grid.

That’s fantastic. I did have an experience quite recently, maybe about two weeks ago, very recently, where I feel like I almost got my proof of, not even gonna say almost, I got my proof that there’s something beyond like what we’re just seeing right here. This was psychedelically involved as well, and I was on a little mini retreat after we did the Chang Mai SEO conference. That was also a couple of weeks ago. Typically, I like to reground and shake off all the hecticness of a huge conference. 

I was with one of my buddies sitting on a patio, kind of overlooking nature. We had taken some psychedelics, and we were just kind of chatting right next to each other. We started hallucinating at the same time. This was almost at the tail end of our psychedelic trip, and we started hallucinating visions, so to speak, but we were seeing the same thing. It’s like we started flying over this little valley. If we just had this experience that we were flying over what we were seeing in nature that we were overlooking, almost like on a magic carpet or something like that. 

I would point out, “Hey, did you see that thing down there?” He would say, “Yes, I saw the apple or whatever it was.” “I didn’t tell you I saw an apple.” It was like we were sharing; it was like a hive mind experience, and we were sharing the same consciousness, tapping into the same source, and sharing the same vision. We came out of it, and I was literally bawling. So was he. It just seemed like, coincidentally, both me and I were on this path of exploring, like what else is there beyond what we normally see. I think it was just like the universe served us up some evidence that we’re on the right path. I still think about that almost daily. I didn’t really want to explore what actually happened.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Paul Stamets. The expert on mushrooms and psychedelics is psilocybin. He shared a story with Joe Rogan on his podcast about having a vision while on psilocybin. This vision included dead cows in the field and widespread devastation that looked like an end-of-the-world sort of scene. It was like a vision, not just a dream. Fast forward, I don’t know how many weeks or whatever it was afterwards, but there was some sort of natural disaster. I think it was a big forest fire. He had a cabin in the woods. He was forced to evacuate. He forgot a manuscript or something. He went back to get it, which was very dangerous. On his way, escaping from this with his manuscript, he saw that exact scene.

I think it’s at least important to me to try to figure out what’s beyond the obvious.

How do you explain these things? There’s more than meets the eye. I’m just curious, like, “How do you get to the bottom of it?” I don’t really know. I’m reading a lot. But there’s a lot out there. What is the source of truth? Because this all feels like theory land. Everyone’s got a different theory. But I think it’s at least important to me to try to figure out what’s beyond the obvious.

How do you discern what’s real, what’s legit, what is from the light versus what is meant to mislead you?

A healthy dose of skepticism, reading multiple sources, and comparing different theories. I’m not trying to knock religion or anything, but religion does have prerogative. Knowing what, if I’m reading something from a source, like, “Is there an agenda behind any of this, and to take it from that perspective?” That said, “I’m mostly if there’s any kind of religious study I’m doing, I would see it say it’s mostly Buddhism.” Hasn’t been much of a control narrative in Buddhism; not too many wars have been fought over it. I think that’s a decent place for me to start. Then I’m also like digging into the quantum theory side of the explanation, and trying to go at it from a scientific point of view as well, and see if this is all kind of scientifically explainable through quantum physics.

When I started my journey, I was drawn to, or connected with, the study of Kabbalah. This was after the first awakening experience, when the monk gave me the blessing. This was in 2012. In 2013, I was studying oneness in India. I was studying Kabbalah shortly thereafter, and I really resonated with Kabbalah, which is mystical Judaism. I’ve been studying it ever since, but the second awakening, which wasn’t a breathwork thing, was just an experience. But by the way, I love this quote from the monks in India who gave me these deekshas, these oneness blessings. 

It’s this that “The divine is an experience, not a belief.” You’re trying to learn about God, you’re trying to learn about the universe, about the oneness, all that is. I encourage that, and a lot of people encourage that. There’s no problem with that, but if that’s where you end, you miss the whole experience part of it, which is the thing that changes you. When I had that experience in India, it changed me. I’m forever transformed because of it. It’s not from reading about it in a book. It’s the direct experience of the divine. 

When I had a second awakening experience in January of 2021, that was also from a desire. Because my soul and my heart desired that connection. I just didn’t realize it. At the time, I didn’t realize I’d basically manifested a monk giving me the blessing that woke me up. But the second time it was actually from a prayer, and I was inspired by a pretty famous psychic I had on the podcast who had a near-death experience and shared how she was praying to God for a job. 

Spontaneously, a few months later, I prayed for a job in the middle of the night, like fervently. I’m shown the matrix. That was the most important moment in my life up until that point. Changed everything because this whole thing is an illusion. We’re living in an illusion, we’re living in a simulation, and it’s just not tangible and real; it’s just hyper-realistic. We get lost in the game, in the movie, in this play we’re acting out. 

I get where you’re going with this. In my experience, I just haven’t had non-psychedelic awakening-type experiences yet. The logical part of my brain is just like, it was the psychedelics. I think that’s why I’m sticking to the knowledge part, too. The second, and let me just tell the universe right now. I’m completely open to non-psychedelic experiences. Also want to stiffen the Stephan Spencer-type awakening. But in addition, I was in one of our retreats, the last retreat about a month ago and a facilitator came there, and I could see in his bones that he truly believed that there’s no difference between you and me. 

There’s an infinite amount of time to do all the things you need to do. It wasn’t a theory for him. I could see that he truly, truly means it. That really inspired me. If I could just know these things and be able to explain them, and never be able to logically talk myself out of them, wouldn’t that alleviate almost all my problems, if I’m the same as everyone else, and there’s no rush to get anything done because it all gets done and it’s already set up to get done, and there’s an infinite amount of time. That’s another part of my knowledge-accumulation phase: just really, I wanna know it like that guy.

My understanding of time is that it is part of the illusion. Time, space and motion are all illusions. That if you operate outside of time, you said earlier, I can’t really change what happened in the past. Actually, you can. If there are multiple timelines and this is all an illusion, you can reprogram your past and other people’s past through prayer, asking that it be rewritten, that it be changed. 

Take it and do with it what you will. If that resonates, great. If it doesn’t, then feel free to discard it. But if time is an illusion and this whole thing is a simulation of sorts, then why can’t you change the past just like you change the future by making requests and having faith and trust and certainty and so forth, a way to think about life in a different way. 

That was pretty interesting. Have you ever seen it on YouTube? I think it started as a short story. It’s called The Egg. That one’s pretty interesting. The theory behind it is that reincarnation happens. When you die between lives, you go through this recap, and then you’re sent into your next life. But the next life could be in 500 BC. It’s not necessarily linear in time. I guess the theory is that this is kind of like a school, so to speak, a learning ground for whatever you want to call it, our souls or consciousness, whatever it needs to learn lessons to ascend to the next level or something like that. I thought that was quite interesting. 

Soul refinement. What inspired you to live in Thailand, and how did that unfold?

I think it was more just that it wasn’t working for me as an American anymore. Not knocking any Americans listening to this. My situation was I was an electrical engineer, and that life was really hard. Sitting in a cubicle, working 60 hours a week, sometimes 80 hours a week, living for the weekend, just praying for Friday and then having two days to just soothe myself basically with alcohol. Just saw this pattern of, “This isn’t gonna work out for me.” 

It was kind of like I was giving up on the whole financial part of life and just conceding to living in Thailand, which is much cheaper. Maybe I’ll figure out how to make a couple of thousand dollars a month online and then get by. At least I’ll have more free time. That was part of the move. Also, just traveling here, I always felt like this was home whenever I came. It was more like that. About 13, maybe 14 years ago.

When was this? All, was your last name Diggity back then, or how did that come about and when?

It still isn’t diggity. It’s just a moniker. Do you know Alex Becker?

I have an audience at this time. I’m not going to have it forever, so I might as well get in some things that I think are healthy for people to understand or to look at while I’m at it.

I know Alex Becker.

He used to have this SEO forum back in the day, and my username was Matt (my last name). I tried to log in one day, but I didn’t have my password. I just made a new account and couldn’t decide on a screen name. I was just listening to “No Diggity.” It just stuck. It just stuck.

That’s funny. How did you decide that that would be your moniker? Like that’s fine for a username, like that’s how you’re known now.

I didn’t decide it. It was kind of like the people on the forum were just like, “Hey, that actually kind of works. You should just go with that.” I think my thought process in this whole SEO world, especially that one, was pretty black hat. I just kind of wanted a little bit of privacy between me and myself. ‘Who knows who’s out there? Was hacking ability or whatnot.’ That was my idea. It turns out that’s, that’s not uncommon in the SEO space. Quite a few people use nicknames.

What are you doing to help evolve and elevate the SEO industry? Because it’s kind of an unusual situation where somebody is spiritually awakened and very technically endowed, geeky, and able to navigate all the SEO stuff, and somebody in, we’re kind of like kindred spirits in that regard. I wanna bring more spirituality into an industry that doesn’t really seem very spiritual. I do that through shows like the Marketing Speak podcast, where I share some of the principles I learned in other modalities, things that we’ve been talking about in this episode, for example. How do you bring that elevation into the SEO industry?

Good question. I go back and forth a bit. As we discussed earlier, I have an audience at this time. I’m not going to have it forever, so might as well get in some things that I think are healthy for people to understand or to look at while I’m at it. The SEO audience is not quite the wrong audience for this kind of stuff. No one really gets into SEO because it’s not their passion, or because their grandma taught it to them. It’s just like this flash in a pan of this way to make money right now on the internet, off of Google and other search engines and stuff like that. 

But most people just get in it for the money. That said, “Most people who get into it are entrepreneurial-minded.” There is a dash of ‘I make my own destiny’ and ‘I can do things another way.’ I’ve taken the red pill, at least from the typical nine-to-five type lifestyle. I think I’ll try to get it in there where I can, but I also have my conference, and I know people traveled all the way across the world to see SEO. Like maybe I can dash in a talk or two about life coaching or stuff like that. 

The life we’re experiencing right now was planned. You designed it, you picked out how it’s going to go in its entirety.

I can have a little workshop. In town for meditation. I’ve had my meditation coach teach a workshop at the conference. I toss it in there, and then maybe every once in a while, social media posts from me, a video, a podcast like this, or some kind of video that talks about the things I’m interested in. I try to get in when I can, but it’s not the perfect audience for it, but it’s not totally rejecting it.

You calibrate, you find out, or you feel it, how much you can inject into the conversation or into the presentation or whatever, into the agenda and see how it goes. But a lot of it relies on intuition. Sometimes I’ll do a little breathing exercise at the beginning of the session. Let’s say it’s after lunch and everybody’s kind of zoned out from a food coma. I’ll wake people up, and I’ll say, “All right, humor me for a minute. We’re just going to do a quick exercise.” 

I learned this from my wife, who learned it from Naam Yoga: how to revitalize and invigorate yourself in just 30 seconds with a breathwork exercise. Who’s willing to experiment with this for a minute? People will humor me on that, and they’ll actually feel better, more vital, alive, and awake for the session. That’s just a way to sneak in a little awareness of the unseen world.

That’s nice. You can correct me if I got this wrong. You got the Marketing Speak podcast, where you’re probably going pretty heavy into marketing, and then you got this one, where you can crank up the woo-woo dial to 10 if you want to. I feel like, “Okay, good. That’s fine.” I’ve also mentioned that psychedelic podcast I did that was talking about psychedelics, but no one’s really hit upon the spiritual stuff that we’re talking about now. I appreciate this conversation.

That’s all meant to be. Did you ever read The Alchemist?

A long time ago, long time ago.

This is your nudge from above to reread it or listen to it. The audiobook is amazing. Jeremy Irons is an incredible narrator, a mean, credible actor. The narration is incredible. In this book, there’s the concept of Maktoub, which is Arabic for it is written. If everything is already written, then this conversation was already written. What happened to you two weeks ago with that shared experience? By the way, this might be something you want to look up afterwards. 

There’s something called a shared death experience. There’s a near-death experience, but there’s also the shared death experience, where somebody who’s passing will share their experience with you telepathically, and you’ll seize and experience some of what they’re seeing and experiencing as they’re traversing to other dimensions. When you’re sharing an experience with somebody, and it’s like, “Hey, do you see that apple there?” “Yeah, I do.” That’s not unheard of. 

Wow. Interesting, that reminds me of something I’ve heard about Dolores Cannon.

I’ve listened to a number of her audiobooks. Great stuff.

Seems pretty good. She is also a psychotherapist. She learned hypnosis. She learned how to take people back into their former lives and then into their past lives. She also learned how to take people back right in the middle. What happens in between, and kind of building on what Stephan was saying, is that she says many people report that the life we’re experiencing right now was planned. You designed it, you picked out how it’s going to go in its entirety. Even the hard things that you signed up for, you signed up for them because you wanted to learn the lessons that they were going to teach. I find that really interesting.

I’ve had some past-life regressionists on this podcast, like Bettye Binder, who’s written books on Past Life Regression hypnosis, and a pretty miraculous story about how I found out about her. I’d never heard of her before. I was just learning. After I prayed for a job and was shown the matrix, this illusion, and everything, it also awakened my psychic abilities. I started playing around with learning things like remote viewing, psychometry, medical intuition, and all the things. 

I was taking workshops and receiving private mentoring. One thing I was playing with was automatic writing. At one point, I let my pen, which I was using on a remarkable tablet, do its thing. I had a question in my mind about a past-life regressionist to work with, because the one I don’t want to talk ill of is anybody. It wasn’t a fit, the person that we were seeing. 

I needed a replacement. I needed another past life regressionist. I had that question in my mind, and in cursive, the name Bettye looked like Linder, but with a cursive L. After I wrote that or whatever wrote through me, I then went online, and I typed in past life regression and then Bettye, I wrote Bettye, then started typing this before I even started typing the second.

The last name: Google autocomplete showed the first result, Bender. I was like, “Mind blown.” I ended up having her on the podcast. I did multiple regression sessions with her, really some profound experiences. I also feel like she was in past lives with me, too, that this was not just, of course, a coincidence; it’s not a coincidence, there are no coincidences, but that’s how I ended up connecting with her was through an automatic writing exercise.

That’s interesting. I’m actually signed up for my first regression-type experience on Wednesday. I’ll let you know how that goes. 

The more powerful your intention, the more powerful your experience. 

Better work on that. Intention is curiosity. I should journal.

Here’s an example. I didn’t have this intention. I was just gifted with this experience. The person that I got my first regression experience with, who we found another, found Bettye afterwards, I had a really good first experience. At the beginning of that experience, she had me regress to a safe place, or not regress, but just like go to a safe place. It turned out to be a beach, it was really beautiful and so forth. She asked me if I wanted to bring in any of my pets from my childhood or earlier. 

Even the hard things that you signed up for, you signed up for them because you wanted to learn the lessons that they were going to teach.

I’m like, “Yeah, I do.” I brought in three or four animals, dogs and cats, and that was so real. That felt so real. It really was the most special part of the whole session. There are really cool things I learned and so forth, but just reconnecting with my pets. Just think about, like, “What I want out of this session.” Ask your guidance to pop into your head different things.

I could go for some of that. Let me say hi to old content.

Might want to consider.

Nice, we’ll do. Thanks for that.

What’s next for you? What are you trying to build? What is your mission? What is your purpose? What’s your soul here to express? 

I’m trying to define that, and I’m not rushing it. Even when I found SEO or entrepreneurship, it was a five- to eight-year process of figuring out what to do while I was an engineer. I’m glad I took my time because it opened me up to a very rich life, and I’ve experienced a lot of things that I think were really fun and amazing. I’m taking my time with this, and I know it falls into the category of helping people. I am probably in the category of mental health. 

I have no idea what scale it’s going to be at. I think because of my entrepreneurial experience, maybe it’s my ego, or maybe it’s just my pattern, like, “Well, it should be something big. It should be this online platform. It should be like a resort or something, a mental health facility.” But I also see the possibility of helping people one-on-one. I don’t really know, but I’m keeping my exploration open. 

I’m simultaneously studying a lot of things, not just the spiritual books and the esoteric, but I’m working on a counseling degree. I’m considering a therapy degree and learning about coaching as well. I’ve done coaching in the past, but I was ad hoc, winging it. I’m trying to learn the nuances of actual coaching. Who knows what I’ll use? I have no clue what it’ll be, but my North Star is just to help others. I also wrote down and just left the place happier than I came.

Leave everybody you meet better off than when you met. Where do you see the world heading? Things are changing, not just in the SEO world with AI and so forth and LLMs, like it’s only a matter of time before molecular nanotechnology exists, where nano-sized machines will be making more of those, more themselves. That’ll change the game even more than AI will. If we can, imagine what life will be like in 10 years. It’s just going to be so fantastical and outside what we can possibly Grok. I’m just curious where you see things heading, and whether you see it in a utopian or dystopian scenario.

I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like 10 years from now, let alone five. But what I do worry about is having two kids. I have a five-year-old and a one-year-old. I saw your kid in the camera, too.  All good. But like I think about you, ‘What kind of world are they coming into?’ I didn’t grow up with TikTok and all that kind of stuff. You read the reports about what that’s doing to the youth. I can only imagine that those platforms and these technologies are going to get even more powerful, more addictive. There’s going to be more confusion in the world. We won’t know what’s real and what’s not. I’m kind of taking the approach that, at least for my family and me, I want to get more analog. 

I want to try to get off these devices as much as possible and do more face-to-face community stuff. Hopefully, there’s a good chunk of the world that will go that direction, too. I believe that will happen. I’m just kind of like, not helicopter parenting. I don’t want to do that, but I do. I am skeptical of, like, “What kind of exposure my kids are going to have experiencing and just trying to build their own skills to be able to discern and be just as close to real people and nature as much as I can.”

That’s great.

Your thoughts? Where are you going with this?

Try to get off these devices as much as possible and do more face-to-face community stuff. Hopefully, there’s a good chunk of the world that will go that direction, too.

My understanding of the nature of the universe is that everything is ultimately for our highest good and that the creator, all that is, is benevolent and all benevolent, only benevolent. If we’re experiencing duality, darkness, a challenge, or evil, it’s only an illusion, meant to refine our souls. I just lean into that. Sometimes it’s hard, living in Tel Aviv, it can be very hard, very challenging to experience the challenges and have that frame of reference that it’s all for the good. 

Sirens going off in the background or whatever, and trusting that the divine hand is guiding all of this, and ultimately for our highest good. That’s something that I really work on. The trust and the faith, the certainty that it’s all for our highest good, so that I don’t get freaked out about power and control structures that are trying to take over the world or whatever it is. It’s just this is a little bit of a bumpy road at the moment, but it’s all; this too will pass. That’s how I see it.

That’s a good approach. It helps you sleep better, that’s for sure. I have a question for you, and this is one I’ve been stewing on. Perhaps, eventually, if Bryan Johnson gets his way and biomed advances with AI, people could live forever. How does that fit into the whole reincarnation cycle and the process of working through multiple lives to shed karma? Like, “What if you’re stuck in a computer game?”

We’re not stuck. I love this idea, this analogy from Tony Robbins that nobody’s stuck, that there are these few workers who fell into the Hoover Dam as it was being built, and their bodies couldn’t be retrieved. It’s kind of dark, now that I’m talking about this. But they ended up on the concrete. They’re stuck, but we’re not stuck. We believe that we are stuck, and then we kind of put ourselves into a predicament, but there are no dilemmas. 

There are always more options than we think. It’s all temporary. I like that way of thinking. As far as longevity stuff, a lot of episodes of this podcast have been dedicated to longevity and biohacking. I’ve had Dave Asprey, Dr. Daniel Amen, and Dr. Aubrey de Grey, a lot of big names in the longevity and health space. Biohacking space. I was very fixated on that for a long time. As my spirituality evolved, I realized it’s not about living an extended period of time, like an overextended one. 

It’s about the people you touch, the way you live, and how your relationship with your higher power and these lives we have are actually simultaneous. They’re not in the past. They’re not in the future because time’s an illusion, so it’s all an eternal now. You can just relax, trust, and not worry about it. This is not my only shot at this. I don’t have to live to 150 because this is all I get. I’ve seen some of my past lives. I’ve seen scenes from other lifetimes, and I know that they’re real. I know it in my heart. I don’t need to live to 150.

If it became available, someone showed up at your door and was like, “We gotta turn a life pill. I got you if you want it.” You’d opt out.

Of course, anything that is godless, I would opt out of. Because an internal life pill is its idolatry. It’s not putting the Creator at the forefront. A false god isn’t just some. I’m not even going to name any of these names from the Bible of these false gods, but it’s not just this thing that you bow down to, hopefully not. Hopefully, you recognize that we all have false idols we put above our higher power at times in our lives, and then we make the mistake and course-correct. It could be our job, our career, our business, it could be a relationship, it could be the pursuit of wealth or honor. These are all false idols, too. The pursuit of eternal life is incongruent with putting God first, I think.

Give me that. Most entrepreneurs that I know make either money or wealth, their God at the front half of life. They kind of snap up, and their heart knocks on your door. NASA, what about me?

I know we’re at a time here, but I guess what would be the wisdom nugget that you want to leave our listener or viewer with that will help them kind of deal with this existential angst or fear that things are maybe not always going to work out for their highest good or that maybe there isn’t an all-knowing, beneficent, benevolent creator and they’re struggling with their faith or they’re struggling with their spiritual path or their raison d’etre, their reason for living. What do you tell them?

The first thing that comes to mind is the idea that I can look back on my own life and know that the sources of the biggest pain were also the biggest lessons from my teachers. In fact, everything that’s happened needed to happen for me to be here. Almost any little micro decision or any macro decision in the past would have changed where you are right now. If you’re going through it, you’re probably just going through a learning lesson, and it’s gonna be better on the other side, I’m assuming. That kind of mindset works well for me.

Matt, this was a fabulous conversation. Thank you for being open and vulnerable and just real with not just me, but with our listeners as well. If they wanted to explore, I don’t know, let’s say working with your agency or learning from you, getting coaching from you, since you’re interested in pursuing that as well. Where should we send them?

For digital marketing-type stuff, go to diggitymarketing.com for my coaching. You can go to diggitymarketing.com forward slash free dash coaching and sign up on a list to just have a half an hour session with me and see if we are a good fit to work together. The coaching thing is an experiment for me. I’m learning from you as much as you’re learning from me. I’d appreciate the opportunity to practice that new aspect of my life as well.

Matt, thank you so much. And thank you, listener. Thank you for being part of this journey. We’re all taking together, as Ram Dass famously said, “We’re all just walking each other home.” Catch you in the next episode. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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