Slides from Modern Enlightenment at CES 2023 speech

Transcription:

One of the formative memories for me as a child was being with my mother as she was broken down on the floor crying. I remember singing to her an improvised song. I didn't know why she was grieving. I just knew she was suffering, and I had to do something to release her from that. At that moment, something was born inside of me—a savior complex in the shadows. And I didn't know it, but that would be the first moment of many moments on my journey to the path of service.

My name is Austin Mao. I'm the co-founder of a nonprofit psychedelic church located just 30 minutes from here called Ceremonia. Over the past four years, I've worked with and guided more than 400 founders on what 96% of them share as the most transformative experience of their lives. And that includes some of the people in this room.

Now, I had a successful career in tech and real estate. And in 2020, my dear friend Keith Ferrazzi invited me to an Ayahuasca retreat for founders. I didn't even know at that time that I was suffering. I had houses, I had cars, I had the freedom to travel anywhere. And yet, when I went there, I had all of this pride that I knew it all. I had nothing to learn. I thought I was going to a networking opportunity.

On the second night ceremony, drinking this thick liquor, I sought to explore my memories. That morning, Keith asked a question. He said, "Share with the group some distinct memories as a kid." And I couldn't even pick out one. My entire childhood was blank. And even a few years, even a few months back was foggy. I had no idea why.

As I went into that experience, I started to relive my life in reverse, in vivid detail in Technicolor. I could remember the travels that I did, I could remember the loves that I've had, I could remember dialing my locker combination in high school—all the way back in time until I was a child again in sheets. And then, for a moment, it was just completely dark. I felt horny, and it came out. I was like, "How is this possible that a child could feel horny?" And when I went back in, it hit me. I was touched in a way that no boy should ever be at four years old.

I said, "Oh my god." I started going forward in time, seeing the reverberations of that one traumatic memory and the repression of all of my memories having on my life. I was bullied as a kid. I had sexual confusion as a teenager. I was addicted to porn as an adult. And then, I had no ability to look back at my memories. I couldn't remember that extraordinary love that my mom had for me. And so, my relationship with her was separate. I couldn't remember how much I enjoyed my hobby, so I would jump from hobby to hobby. I couldn't remember the relationships that I've had. And so, my ex-girlfriends, who I shared so much love with, were no longer my friends.

This moment heralded the renaissance of my life. I woke from that experience. I shared with the shaman what happened. She said, "Oh my God." I said, "No, no, no, you don't understand. I feel like I was cured of Alzheimer's. This was the most transformative experience of my life at that time."

Over the next four years, I've sat in ceremony more than 100 times, and yet, I still had suffering in my life. I brought my marriage to the precipice of divorce a few times. I lost some of the closest relationships to me. And so, I sought a way to discover a pathway of healing towards enlightenment. That meant that I would have to minimize the suffering that I was experiencing.

You see, sitting in ceremony after ceremony, listening to spiritual teacher after spiritual teacher, they all say, "Just choose love, just feel grateful." But what does it mean to feel self-love? What does it mean to choose it? I would feel a feeling like anger or grief or guilt and immediately choose love. But what I was doing is I was subtly avoiding the actual feeling itself. I was spiritually bypassing.

I created this process that we now facilitate in Ceremonia. Over the past year, we've had over 100 alumni come through this process called Modern Enlightenment. It is an integration of the mind, body, and spirit. The first recorded record of enlightenment comes from Siddhartha Gautama in 1500 BC, becoming Buddha under the Bodhi tree.

Now, at that time, to become enlightened, you had to renounce everything. You had to go shave your head and go to a temple. The average life expectancy was 25 to 35 years. Okay, so you got to commit to a life of just being a horny monk. Now, anybody and everybody in this room can free themselves from suffering, can free themselves to experience levels of love, of peace, of joy, of purpose that few could imagine. I certainly did not.

The advent and proliferation of psychedelics is a fascinating science, and it's truly a gift. The way that psychedelics work on the mind is that there are two centers of the brain called the default mode network. That, when in conjunction, are the patterning areas of the brain. So, a pattern might be "don't touch the top ends because it's hot and I'll get burned." I might learn that as a kid, and I won't do it again as an adult. But another pattern might be "don't give my heart to someone because they might leave me like my parents did." And we have thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe infinite numbers of these patterns.

In 2016, the Imperial College of London Center for Psychedelic Studies put advanced meditators clocking over 30,000 hours and those on psychedelics into functional MRI scans and found that the default mode network was temporarily quieted, just as it is with children. In other words, we revert to a childlike mindset where the protective layers that we've grown over time to protect us from these imagined fears are loosened. So, we can penetrate deeper and deeper and deeper into our true selves.

What this does is it has the profound capability of creating neuroplasticity. This is a diagram also from the Imperial College of London in 2017, showing neural connections before and after placebo and psilocybin. I can't even count how many more neural connections there are in this graphic. This is what happens to the brain after working with psychedelics.

But here's the issue. Just like I sat in ceremony and still continued to experience suffering, I was looking for a toolset, a process to relieve myself. It shouldn't be this painful. Spiritual teacher Ram Dass had the same experience. He said, "I had an insatiable desire to find a way to stay high. I wanted to find a state of consciousness that I had glimpsed briefly while under the influence of psychedelics. I realized that the substances could only offer temporary glimpses, and I wanted a more lasting experience of that expanded state of awareness."

Now, Ram Dass was previously Dr. Richard Alpert, a Harvard professor of psychology. Then, he went to India and studied under a guru called Maharajji for 30 years. We don't need to do that. The way that I think about modern enlightenment is content versus process. If you go to a therapist or you go to a psychedelic ceremony, there are experts there to help you hold your content—your stories, your beliefs, your emotions that come forth. It's such a valuable practice.

But process is the tools by which you can hold your own content—the tools of psychology, of somatic work, of psycho-spirituality. The journey of life is fundamentally about an orientation towards safety. Life seeks to create life. The psychedelic experience is exactly the same, right? In the default mode network, those are all the patterns that we've created to keep us safe. So, what is the most profound way of getting safety? It's to feel empowered. It's to feel safe with our own content.

The process begins by converting the question "Why is this happening to me?" as a victim, as life perpetrating against us, to "Why is this happening for me?" Life, the universe, God is my ally. Now, this is a very important question because as soon as you start asking yourself at every moment, "If I am not in a state of Buddha, why is this happening for me?" Then we can find the pathway to the mind, body, and spirit.

Now, the path of the mind provides us a map. These are the tools of psychology and psychotherapy. This map can show us where we are and give us a process to examine where we can be. The body provides us a compass. The body is how we feel. When you feel something, there's an emotion and there's a bodily sensation. Okay. The compass, and especially under the psychedelic experience, of how good we can feel if we're in a state of joy or love coming from acceptance. That orients us to that feeling. And the spirit is the flashlight. It shows us what's possible.

In the psychedelic experience, it's like taking a helicopter ride to the peak of human experience—enlightenment, which is often described as a state of infinite bliss. Sounds good to me. One of the great inventions of the last 30 years is this diagram—the map of consciousness by David Hawkins. David Hawkins had a verifiable scientific method that charted energies from shame all the way up to enlightenment.

At one point, Hawkins had the largest psychiatry practice in the United States. Then he became a hermit and then came up with this. What he says is that any energy, if I'm in a state of apathy, which is the formation of depression, right, it's represented by the statement, "I can't. I can't forgive, I can't love, I can't achieve." I can convert that through the pathway of courage, which is "I can," to the pathway of willingness, which is "I will." This pathway of love, joy, and peace, which is "I am." "I am love, I am peace, I am powerful." That can all be transmuted from the same beginning place.

The body is our vessel for the spirit. When we feel something, there is a correlated feeling in the body. This is a chart of a survey of energy and where it's at in the body. When I feel anger, for example, I feel it in my chest or rising up. When I feel love, I feel it spread all around me. But when I feel depressed, I feel like I just want to sink down. I'm sure some of you have felt that way too. It's like an exit of energy in my body. Learning the vocabulary of the body gives us the ability to be with what is, to separate that feeling from the story that we hold in our mind.

And then finally, the spirit. This is your mind on placebo and psychedelics. Now, you've probably heard we use only 10% of our brain. Look at what is possible here. What could you experience when your brain is so fired up, connecting with your spirit? We can't even imagine it. I can't even convey it to you. You can only feel it, you can only experience it.

When I was a kid, I inherited the shadow from my mother of being a savior. I inherited from my father being a master manipulator. Those actually really served me in business. I was a great marketer. But people really didn't like being manipulated to change. They didn't like that at all. But in the light, I found empathy and intuition for my parents.

One of the most beautiful memories that I've had was this past Saturday, where I was sitting in an Ayahuasca ceremony. And for the first time in my life, I was playing a handpan, this beautiful instrument, and singing, singing in ceremony and improvising a song just like I did with my mother as a child. And I had this click in here. Wow, I've come full circle. That I did that as a kid to save my mom from suffering. But now, I can do this from a place of service, from a place of surrender, from a place of allowing, from a place of giving. And it was filled with joy at the recognition of how far I've come.

Thank you so much. I know they said no promotion, but Alex asked me to do this. Alex has been such a supporter. He's come on two of our journeys. And he asked me to create a journey just for this group. So please take a photo of this if you're at all interested. At the end of this month, we're going to host a special mini-version of our eight-week program and five-day immersion. That's going to be a four-week program and a three-day Friday to Sunday immersion with two ceremonies. Following our program, there are workshops from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. There's preparation, there's integration, Zoom calls, there's online coursework—that's a whole thing. We're discounting it for this group here. If you want to look into this, you can visit our website at ceremoniacircle.org/ces. I hope that you could join us. And if you'd like my contact, if you'd like to ask me any questions, you can shoot this on your phone. This will take you to a website where you can fill in your information. We'll exchange our contacts. Anything at all, any questions, I am of service to you.

Thank you so much. And now I have the incredible pleasure to introduce the very man that introduced me to this pathway that I'm speaking and sharing with you now, my dear friend Keith Ferrazzi. He was the CMO of Deloitte, the CMO of Starwood Hotels, the youngest CMO of any Fortune 500 company. He's also a number one New York Times bestselling author, author of "Never Eat Alone" and countless other books. His company, Ferrazzi Greenlight, coaches top teams at some of the biggest companies in the world, including General Motors, T-Mobile, and more. My dear friend, I love you so much. Everybody, Keith Ferrazzi.