A Pastor Finds Freedom In Mexico From PTSD Ep. 20

Treatment Website:

https://ambio.life/

Documentary: https://www.inwavesandwarfilm.com/

A lot of people talk about PTSD like it’s only flashbacks and bad dreams. Bill describes something darker and quieter: sitting in church, worshiping, and still getting hit with suicidal ideation so loud it feels like a command. He’s a professional counselor who works mostly with veterans, and he’s also a pastor, which makes his story even harder to ignore. He knows the clinical language, the coping patterns, and the church expectations and he admits what it’s like to keep it together at work while falling apart at home. 

The conversation turns when Bill sees a friend return from Mexico after a medically supervised psychedelic-assisted treatment for PTSD and substance use. That friend looks different: sober, steadier, and more alive. Bill takes us through the questions Christians ask about mind-altering substances, the scriptures he wrestles with, and why “controlled treatment” isn’t the same thing as self-medicating. He also talks about spiritual preparation, prayer, and staying grounded in faith inside a space that often mixes New Age ceremony, breathwork, and alternative healing language. 

From screening, EKGs, and medication restrictions to sweat lodges, ibogaine, and 5-MeO-DMT, Bill breaks down what the process actually looks like and what it cost him emotionally. He shares the trauma that surfaced, the way control kept showing up as the real battle, and the moment he felt God push him to stop hiding who he is. On the other side, he reports concrete changes: no suicidal ideation, better sleep, fewer intrusive images, less anger, and a renewed daily routine that protects his marriage and his mind. 

If this story challenges you, share it with someone who needs hope, and check the links in the description for the resources we mention. Subscribe, leave a review, and send this to a friend: who in your life needs freedom more than quick relief?

Transcript

Welcome And Channel Support

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Before we get into today's video, I just wanted to say thank you to all of the new subscribers. If you haven't yet, consider subscribing. Hit that bell notification so that you can see every time I put out a new video. A major portion of you that watch my videos haven't subscribed yet, so why not? It's free. You can also find a PayPal link below if you want to give a one time or give a monthly to support the channel. Anything, great or small, is appreciated. Now let's get into the video.

A Gift And Two-Year Catch Up

SPEAKER_02 0:33

Hey, before we start, you know, I've been watching a lot of podcasts. Yeah. And usually when they show up, the guest always brings a gift.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Because this protects me from unwanted questions. So this is just a little token of something I know you've been without since you sat baby. Um boom.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

And uh I don't expect you to share that with anyone, and I won't. So you know, my wife buys these all the time when my stepdad comes into town. Well, she's the one who told me what you drank. Can you remember it was that or Dr. Pepper? She literally never buys so she has this last time when he came and and and they left, and she actually it ran out and she bought more, but it was for me that tough. I'm like, wow, wow, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Yeah, you know, I'm I figured that's like a protection, so you don't ask any of those deep questions or explaining. Well, too bad. Too bad. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

So where do you want to start? What do you want to know? Well, I want to a little bit, I want to kind of because it's been what two years since we did our last two years, yeah. So on the YouTube channel, your video is at the top of the list because I had such good response. Sure. And not necessarily on YouTube. I had people texting me, emailing me, telling me how much they they really needed because it was about relationships uh right up your alley. So if you will just kind of walk us through kind of who you are, what you do in life, and I guess you can throw into what you started doing extra on uh the beginning of this year, where I made you maybe.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

I can tell you this. I am not who I was two years ago.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

Okay. Uh uh, you caught me coming off a bad, you know that, uh going up on a good. And since then, I've really been blessed in my business. But as you know, when you're blessed in your business, what's happening in your personal life? Okay, the more you focus on business, the less you focus on everything else. Something's got to be sacrificed. Something's got to be sacrificed. And uh sacrificed a lot, I've learned. I learned that this over the last year. Um, so what I've been doing is I shifted focus in my business. I see probably 99% veterans. I'm a professional counselor, like you know. Uh 99% of who I see is veterans. So I sort of went back because I retired from the VA. And so I went back to serving that population. It's fulfilling. The difference between the VA and private practice is I get to throw God in in private practice. The worst thing you can do is walk out. Yeah. I still get paid, I already seen you. So, you know, I get to I get to throw some scripture, I get to throw some so um some absolute truth into it, and I get to see the uh the work that God does is is a cool thing to say.

Counseling Veterans With Faith

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Um, obviously, so let's pause for a second. You talk about your private practice. Obviously, not everyone you see, if majority of people that you see are not Christians, but you being a Christian and you throw it in God in the mix, how do people receive that? Or is it kind of like they have to process and then like the next section or next thing?

SPEAKER_02 3:49

So I had one guy tell me that he doesn't he used to believe in God, but now he doesn't believe in God because if God existed, and this is a common thing. If God existed, I once see what I seen when I was overseas.

SPEAKER_03 3:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Okay, it's always God's fault. So here's the catch. I can tell you Jesus loves you without reading scripture. Yeah. You know, I told you before that I can tell my wife the worst thing in the world without using any bad words. It's all up on you know perception. It's also on how you carry yourself, yeah. Um so a lot of them will receive it in truth. Uh, if I do marriage counseling, I I say, you know, you guys got to walk along beside each other, be in the same book, same page, you know. Um in the Bible it says you have to be committed to each other. It's the same thing, yeah. But it's just a choice of words, yeah. Um and it's the the weirdest part is um, you know, I I think I shared I still I preached on Sunday. Um and I looked out, one of my clients was sitting there. I was like, huh. Cool. I guess I better live what I preach, huh? And accountability. Did you know they were coming?

SPEAKER_00 5:02

I didn't know they were coming that time. What? So were you in the middle of speaking, or did you go with it? I've seen it before. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Well, I put my iPad down, I looked up, I was like, okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Um, but I I've just started putting a disclosure out. If you show up in my church, I'm not gonna know you. Yeah, it's an ethics thing. Yeah. Um what else have I been doing? My wife and I have been, um, thanks to you in the church, uh, we started as we start pursuing our licensure again. As you know, when we came over here, there was a lot of hurt. Um, and when you hit us up with the opportunity to pursue licensure, it was something I I really and honestly almost didn't do because of fear of not succeeding, and that would just reinforce the fact that um the last church I was at was right. Yeah. So, you know, we we did that. We went through the class. Um, in December, you asked me to come on as an associate pastor. Um, I did that. So I'm picking up a little bit more there. Um but all in all, it's life was normal until November of last year, I think. I'd say November. Why why do you say it November though?

Suicidal Ideation And Isolation

SPEAKER_02 6:22

November is when a friend of mine went to Mexico for treatment for PTSD. Okay, so that's when I seen the result of him. I've seen the podcast and stuff ahead of time, but you're not gonna fire me, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:36

I don't think so. We'll find out. No promises until he finishes in the sequence.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

So you knew I opened up to you a while back. I suffered with mental health issues. Um real high suicidal ideation. I would actually be in church worshiping and and hear something, someone, whatever you want to call it.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Now, uh, when you say things like this, like you give things labels, if you will, describe it. The reason I say that is because some people may not have a medical term for something they may be experiencing themselves. So what is that?

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Suicidal ideation is a constant thought that you'd be better off dead. Sometimes it consists of uh there's three aspects on it. So you have ideation, then you have uh plan, intent, and means. So I always say if you're a man and you have ideation, you got the other three. Okay, because I don't plan to do something unless I have means and possible intent to do it. Um so I would I would sit there and just these thoughts of literally sitting in church worshiping God, and all of a sudden this overwhelmed feeling says walk out to your gun and put a walk out to your truck and put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Randomly. Randomly, randomly. Um, I was uh the biggest, I guess you'd say, uh imposter. Yeah. Because I'd keep it together at work, and I'd come home and I'd sit in my recliner and I'd isolate from the ones I love. Uh my grandkids would fear coming to ask me questions because they didn't know the reaction I was gonna have. Um and it just it just increased and increased. It was gone for a little bit. Um for probably about a year at one time. I didn't have any, but then it came back. So then you get the thing, oh the you know, I don't pay to label it. The legalism of obviously you're not praying enough anymore if it's back, yeah, because God healed you and now he's not gonna heal you. Was there something specific that it started up again or just kind of eased its way back into the room? Eased its way back in the room. I think looking back was probably stress, the amount of work that I did. Um, exhaustion. Because when you get tired, your brain can't monitor, keep better yet, your brain can't keep everything in this little storage keeper. Yeah, and it starts leaking over.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

That makes sense. So the Mexico thing, you mentioned that. Um what was the the the stuff, the process, or the whatever that the guy you knew, your friend, what was he struggling with? Was his PTSD as well? Well, there was a PTSD as well. And he was how was he dealing with the PTSD? He was coping through substance use. Okay. And he when he came back from this trip, he was what nine day? Nine uh beyond nine day.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

Really? Does not drink, does not nothing. Um, you know, and when I seen it and I seen the result, and I seen the difference, even the difference in uh how he acted, um he lived out his faith more. He said he had a new encounter with God. I'm like, okay. Um so you know, I did more research into it. I did uh some more stuff with it because it's uh it's controversial, yeah. Especially in our line of work, it's Christians, yeah. Uh because um you raised assembly of gods, so you know as well as I do. This is do not be drunk, do not do anything mind-altering, do not be hypnotized, do not be, do not be, do not be.

Why Mexico Became The Option

SPEAKER_02 10:20

So uh I'm volunteering to go down to Mexico and use psychedelic medication to uh hopefully get over PTSD and more more so suicide ideation reclaim my life. And some people I talked to are not really in favor of it. Yeah. Before or after, before. I haven't there's one I haven't told yet. I'm sure you're gonna find out today if this is your podcast. Uh okay, but it was, you know, you're opening up the door for Satan.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Yeah. For the demons of Satan to come in, which is a big reason why it's frowned upon. It is, it's it's huge why it's frowned upon.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

But when I started praying, I started looking. There's a movie out there called uh In Waves in War. It's a documentary about I went to a place called Ambial Life Science. It's a documentary there, actually done by Sanford University, and I watched it, and the first time I watched it, I was like, Man, I can get relief. I watched it again, and when I watched it the second time, the only thing that came into my mind was freedom. And every time I thought of it, I thought, freedom, freedom. So I started thinking, I started going back, I can't already read here, you know, and I go back to Genesis 129 where it said uh Then God said, Look, I've given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. I've given you every green plant as food for all the uh wild animals, the birds of the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground. Everything that has life, and that is what happened. So if he gave us everything, he corrupted it. The devil and us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

See, God gave us food to eat, but he didn't give us He didn't give the guy that's like severely obese, say you can't talk about weight. That's not a lot to be talking about.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Oh, you know, we you I didn't think I didn't say the overweight password, okay? I just said the guy that was severely obese. Um sitting down at the buffet eating 50 pounds of chicken weight.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Yeah. It's substance. So if if I go down there and I do medically controlled, what's the difference? Or better yet, what's the difference if I don't know if they put Jesse completely that when she had the baby or not? But no, but they did the spinal tech thing. So what's the difference if you go in and you have surgery and you have sedation? They use fentanyl for sedation.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

But they also use fentanyl for recreation.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Yeah. I think it's ketamine and all, yeah, there's a lot of things that they use in the medical field.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

And that's that's what I came up with is the fact that um is that if it's in a controlled substance in a controlled setting, what's the difference of it? And then I continued and I read all that I actually I dug so griping this. You know, in 1 Corinthians 10 23 it says, You say I'm allowed to do anything, but not everything is good for you. You say I'm allowed to do everything, do anything, but not everything is beneficial. So is there a benefit to this? I've seen the benefits.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

So why not job? And if you so if you didn't, and you may not have the answer to this, but it did get you curious, if you would not have seen firsthand somebody you knew go through the process knowing what they were doing, you probably wouldn't have even thought of or not have actually went yourself. I researched it, I looked at it, but I would have never done it.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Yeah. Because I'm still that skeptic. It's a big question mark. A big skeptic of uh, okay, great, all these guys have done it, but show me the these are all special forces operators that are on these videos. So show them show me somebody that's quote unquote common.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

So they were specific to like they went through it? They yeah, so they were specific to PTSD, PTSD and substance use with suicide ideation. Because a lot of military people cope with such disease. Yeah, that's a big it's uh a massive thing, it's an overlooked thing. And um, I think is there a company or are they how are they marketing? You said you saw a podcast.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

What are they calling Sean Lyon had a podcast because he went through it? Um Ambient Life Science is a company.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Okay. Uh because I've heard Joe Rogan talk about Joe Rogan did it, and uh I think he talked about or he talked to the president about getting it FDA's in the were there at now. Let me back up up.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

There's an organization called Vets, um veterans exploring treatment, psychedelics, or something like that, right? And it's special forces operators, and they actually bought a house in Mexico for this company so they could send their their operators out. Okay. Joe Rogan did do it. Joe Rogan was one of the pushes, and Trump signed a um uh a bill saying that not if not a bill, proclamation, whatever, uh presidential something or anything, saying that they'll research it more. But if you go one step further, Greg Abbott in Texas signed one and they're running trials right now in Austin. They're the same stuff, but once again, it's restricted to special forces operators. So I'm like, how do you how do you not go? How do you not, especially if you if you if you knew the guy I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_00 16:16

And if you say you are like, no, if you're on the other side of the fence, like you're like, no, there's no way because they're doing this, this is whatever. Like you said, it it opens doors for blah blah blah, you know, X, Y, and Z. That's their argument. But the alternative is someone drinking themselves to death doing.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

My alternative was um, at one point in my life, I didn't have a gun that I had access to. Really? Yeah, it was that bad. Yeah, because my alternative was at the point of um laying in bed and saying, Okay, I'm not gonna get up because I gotta walk by my pistol. Um so when you look at the alternative of taking my own life, worse than that, I'm I'm not afraid to die. But what if I miss? I'm paralyzed. You know, that that was my fear, okay? Yeah. Oh yeah, it's fair. So um that compared to this. And I was like, okay, so the more research I did, the more I got about it. The more I and what is the Good Samaritan? He walked up, the guy was laying there, he said, use wine. They've always used, even in back in the biblical time, wine or something. And the other one that kept on coming back to me was um old men, I'm not old by the way, old men will dream and young men will have visions. Yeah. So what this did is it just allowed me to tear every wall down. I think I told you one day it was like men's brains are like waffles, and when you take your pancake, you take your syrup, you pour a little bit in each corner, right? Yeah, and nothing flows over into the other squares. Imagine taking that waffle and putting it in a gallon tea jar and just flipping it upside down, that syrup. And it just flows over. You can't control it. That's what I compare this to.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

So what was the um obviously you had somebody which is a big part of why you went, somebody sponsored you to to do all this. Oh what was the the process?

Ibogaine And 5-MeO-DMT Overview

SPEAKER_00 18:36

I know you had a hiccup with some medication or things like that, but I'm gonna back up real quick.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

What they use two substances they use ibogaine, which is a um a natural psychic uh psychoactive um comes from a tree or a root of a tree in Africa.

SPEAKER_03 18:52

Really?

SPEAKER_02 18:53

Okay, and it treats hallucinations. The other thing they use is called 5 Me O DMT. And this is the one that got me. That is a poison off of a toad. Oh, yeah, and it's actually in Colorado. So um and what the what the American made. Yeah, what the um Ibogain does is it roughs everything up. So if you did woodworking or something like that, it'd be like hitting it with 80 crit. You just really rough it up, get the stuff to come to the surface. And what the DMT does is it attacks your eagle. So when you come out of the DMT, it's like glass, it was like a lake, it's just a early morning lake. And the two substances create the psychedelic effect, and you can't control it. So one thing I'd say is if you're gonna do it, and I had my wife, I had my kids, I had my church, I had I had everyone train for me. Um, the night that I actually did the treatment, you do it at night. Lori stayed up and fasted and prayed with me for for the day and then the night of so that I was under protection. Uh, when I walked into the room before I did the treatment, um, I had a bottle of oil that I carry on my keychain. I anointed, if I had a super sober, man, I would have sprayed the whole room guy. Sam's Chris. You betcha, man. I'd I I anointed my mattress, I anointed every aspect there was because I wanted to make sure that when I walked into this place, that it was surrounded by the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

And we prayed over a blanket for you that I did not bring back for covery. Didn't you give it to somebody else? There's the lady that gave me the treatment. Okay. Now talking about praying and covering things in oil, besides it being kind of a not a kind of a psychedelic event. Uh, what was a lot of the reason that you felt you need to do that? Because a lot of the push that's there is not Christian, it's kind of a new age, kind of it is new age. Is it Hindu or is it just kind of everything is good to go? Or an African tribe in Mexico.

SPEAKER_02 21:03

You know, it's an African tribe in Africa that found this stuff and they brought it into Mexico. So you listen to Bindi music um for part of it. You go through his ceremonial stuff, but the stuff I learned was I pray to my own God. Yeah. Doesn't matter where I am, I still pray to my God. Yeah. Um, your question about the process you have to do an interview, you have to do blood work, you have to do an EKG. Um, the guy that sponsored me, I have I've talked to him three times. It was a gift. How did he find you though? To this friend, because the friend I went that that went, he was in the same treatment that he was. Oh. So this guy met the other guy. The other guy said, if you know someone deserving to go, let me know. That's awesome. So I was like, Yeah. Let's do it. Thank God for broken friends, right? I know I know. I know. Then meet rich people when you're there. So wealthy, we'll say. Um, so you go through all that stuff, and then they look at all your medication, and you have to be off any mental health medication for um 14 days before you go. And you have to be off certain medication that affect your heart because Ibogaine affects the heart. So they want to make sure that you're safe. Like speeding it up or slows it down, slows it down. Drastically slows it down. So um, you know, you go through the process. I went through the process in December and was accepted, and I didn't get in till May. That's how long the wait was. Yeah. And I got jumped up because the guy that sponsored me had a little bit of poll. That was the interesting part. So you go through everything. Um, you fly out. Uh I flew out. My birthday was the 30th of April, and I flew out the 3rd of May. This was part of my called this year. Was it your vacation or we have a sexy at 60 trip? Um because I honestly I got to the point that I was tired. Yeah. I was tired, no matter how much I read, how much I prayed, how much I I was just constantly exhausted. Something was missing. Something was, you know, I'd be excited. I'd I'd go to class and be excited at cams, and by the time class was over, I'd find something skeptical about it. I was like, I don't want this.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

So it even helped you in that area to kind of not be in a negative headspace. I guess if you're constantly fighting up here and it's always negative, it's hard to be positive anywhere, I guess. Like somebody in pain that is constantly a jerk. Yeah, but and then you find out they're in pain constantly, like, oh, that kind of makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

So it's you know, and everything is you, everything is structured. So you asked about um like the ceremonial aspect. So I want to read you a schedule, okay? So on day one, we get in San Diego, they pick us up, we go down to Mexico, we arrive, settle in, we do a welcome circle. It's just where you introduce yourself, yeah, pretty much. Then you get lunch, and by the way, the food is good, it's all chef made. It's delicious, yeah. I'd go back for food long. Then you do EKG and intake, and then you leave for the Tasma Call, which is a sweat lodge. Native American tradition.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Um it's usually about an hour that you're in there, an hour and a half. So, what what exactly you mentioned sweat lodge. What exactly is a sweat lodge? It's not like a one of those things you sit there in the steam room, right? It depends which one you go to.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

We went to the Lakota one first, which is a dome-shaped thing with um with blankets on it, and in the middle of it is a hole. You all get in, and they have these lava rocks that have been simmering in burning coals for I don't know how long. They put it in, then they pull water on it, and you pray. Okay, and you do four rounds. So they just steaming the oak. Oh man, it's all they got you go and get. But the other one breathed in there. I wonder if I can follow. Hold on a minute. One of them is um so this is what one looks like. Looks like a great big pizza oven. Okay. Show it to the kids. So that's that's one that I did. I did that the second time. The first one I did was So you get down in a hole in there. Yeah, you crawl. I can't stand up.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

So that's not that's not a tall doorway.

SPEAKER_02 26:02

You're like crawling down the mirror and um the other one was I'm sorry. The other one was blankets and it was thrown over stuff, but it was um the one that Lakutas use. And you pray four rounds when you're in there.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

So you pray four rounds? Pray four rounds. Oh, they're like timing this and saying you gotta do this for this amount of time for every person. It's songs.

SPEAKER_02 26:33

So they sing like two songs and then you do another one, then they sing like two songs, and then you're raising grace, and every yeah, and every time in between each round, they bring in more rocks to make it hotter, yeah. So by the time you're done, there's like 20 rocks in there, about like that. So the bending music is that's been bending music, yeah. Oh, well, what's this? This is Lakota music at the one. Made of American.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

It's like yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

Oh, okay. Yeah, there you go. A lot more drum now. Okay. So at that, then the second day you do lab Jeep, breakfast, then you do breath work. You learn how to breathe properly with your stomach.

SPEAKER_03 27:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Um, another group circle. Uh, then you watch a documentary, then you do IVs again, then you do the fire circle. The fire circle is where you you throw your burn list in. You watch a documentary. You watch a documentary on what you're gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Oh, to kind of give you a heads up, prepare your mind for it.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

Okay, yep, that way they're not freaking out too much. Um, then the next day you do rehydration, breakfast, rest, lunch, reiki massage, which is another trip. Um, yoga meditation. Now, what's a reiki massage for that? Reiki massage is I have no idea because it didn't work. It's a very little you literally, you literally lay on this massage table and somebody doesn't touch you, and they move all the energy out of your hands and feet. Which is weird. Could you feel it? Like I'll I'll I'll I'll tell you that story when we get there, okay? I got nothing. Absolutely. That that's not true. I got very irritated. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

So it they were lightly touching, or they white touching. Lightly touching you. That tickles me. And it'd be like from your shoulder, you put a hand on your shoulder and your elbow, and the negative energy would flow from there to there, and then the shoulder to the the elbow to the knee, the egg of what is that, your wrist.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

And he touched every joint. It was just annoying. So it's like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

So then after you do that, then you have uh you do the DMT on that day, and then you have tacos.

unknown 28:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

But it's naturally you're in Mexico. After DMT, they always need tacos. And this whole thing is like four days is all.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

But it's so structured and uniform that if you're not aware of what's going on, and that's that's one of the things I thought is I've done sweat lodges, I worked on the reservations. So it's a it's a normal reservation thing. Yeah. So I knew that they were going to do sweats. Okay. I struggled when I worked on the reservations, and I had a um a pastor on the reservation said, Bill, just go in there to pray. They don't know what you're praying about. Yeah. Said, really? He goes, Yeah. Because you're filled with spirit, right? He said, Yeah. He goes, pray in tongues. We'll think you're doing something. Cool. So I remembered that when I went in. So you already have been like I've been here before. I'm ready. I've been here. I'm I'm except for the guy. There's a guy in the first, I did two sweats. The guy in the first sweat was a special forces operator from Britain. Oh, yeah. And I I sort of moved closer to the door because there was like a demon was coming at them or something. And I'm like, you know what? There's no pigs here. I make sure he's coming to me. So there's gotta be something. Yeah, there's gotta be something here.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

But yeah, you do you do all of that, and it's all so scheduled. So that means but you mean we you may not know this information, but if they're so scheduled and they have processes down and all these things lined up, and they like they got it down. They've been doing this for a while. They they have been doing it, I think, since 2016. Really? Yeah. And and you've never you're in this space. You have you ever heard of this before?

SPEAKER_02 30:24

No, this is this has really been big in like the last five or six years. That's when it started going. It was more of a uh under no, I don't want to say underground. Um, a lot of shaman use it. Yeah. A lot of spiritual, you know, type things.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

So something a Christian probably wouldn't be knowing much about. Yeah. Except for that's the mind type dude. Yeah. So we've it it was to me that makes sense. It like what that guy said to you about like praying, and then they're not gonna know, like, pray in the spirit. Like, if you are a child of God and you are covered by the blood, it doesn't matter where you are, you are gods. Yeah, you are covered, and uh that's pretty that's pretty powerful. Because that to me, not just where you went, and especially kind of in the belly of the beast a little bit to where it's like kind of new age, it's you know, Indian traditions and all these things, like the same applies in everyday life. Like it doesn't matter what we go into, we belong to God. So nothing unless the Lord permits can touch me. And if there's enemies around me, I can rebuke and I can stay as strong in what I believe and what I know, and it will protect, just like it. Philippians 413.

SPEAKER_02 31:45

I can do the all things through him, empower me. Yeah, you know, I'm going.

Travel Stress And A Medication Hiccup

SPEAKER_02 31:50

It's something that I I had to learn because he prayed over me Sunday. So this was a lowdown. Sunday, all my kids were in town. Uh came out, prayed over me, went out to uh my favorite place to eat. Do you know where that is? Your favorite place? Our favorite place we always eat. Well, I you and me have been probably the cotton patch. There you go. So I take all my kids and everyone out of the cotton patch, and the check comes and I'm already stressed. Lori doesn't even want me to look at it. She just gets and gives the guy a tip. And I'm like, so Carl and I get in the truck and take off. Carl's my middleson. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

And uh we're driving to Dallas to get on the plane. I saw you, by the way. When I texted you, y'all went right in front of me. I was heading the talk, yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's that I sent your message. Uh, I don't know what I said, probably just y'all be careful, whatever, but y'all just went in front of me. I'm like, oh, there we are. Yeah, we we get he said, uh, I remember and say, You good?

SPEAKER_02 32:53

Listen, uh, I'll get through this. And um, sorry. Been hanging around you too long. He reached over and touched my arm and said, uh, you got this, dad. Because I was leaving everything. Yeah. I had no idea what the reaction was gonna be. I had no idea what what if my wife didn't like me when I come back? Yeah. What if something does get inside me? What if what if what and you start all these things that Satan starts throwing at you. That are real cons I mean they're real things. But all my confidence that I had walking out of church that day just started going down.

SPEAKER_03 33:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

Get on a plane, I fly to San Diego and check in, and then everything started kicking in. And I'm like, I should eat. So I walked down, I sat down, I I ate. I don't drink. You know that. I don't drink. The only place to eat in the motel is at a bar. I sit down and I look, and the first thing that happens is I'm like, I should just have a drink and relax. I should shut this menu, let me walk over here, grab a banana from the store, and go to the room. And I'm like, why am I thinking this stuff? Yeah. It's old copying mechanisms that are returning. Yeah. So I'm like, okay, I'm not. So I get up the next morning. Um, we're on this group chat thing. One of the guys says, if anyone's at the motel, why don't you uh come on down, go have breakfast. So I went down, I was talking to him, and uh asked what I did. I asked him what he did. He was retired. I asked what I did, told him, and I told him I was a pastor. And you know, I was a Christian. He just sort of leaned back, and conversation was pretty much over. Not really, yeah. Not interest at all. Not really well respected. So I uh got up and went to find my fix, which is a monster, and they didn't have any monsters in Michelle, but they had Red Bull, so I killed a Red Bull. Um, and I decided when I left to get on the bus that I don't want to hinder anyone else's progress, so I'm not gonna say anything about that. Not being a pastor, not being a Christian, not being anyway.

SPEAKER_03 35:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

I'm just gonna be, you know, another one of these guys that they come down here for treatment. So you stand there and and all of a sudden this creepy black suburban pulls up with tinted windows, and uh seven, nine of us get in it, I think, uh however many they see. It was bench bench, so that's six, seven. Oh, yeah. Seven of us get in it and head off across the border. Across the border and we pull into Tijuana. Uh, mind you, this is the first time I've left the U.S. since I got back from the Gulf. Really? Yes. Wow. Since '93. So we pull across Tijuana and somebody rolls down the window in the back of the spur. I don't know if you ever heard the you've heard when the window's down, right? Yeah. That noise, that waff wop. Yeah. You know what that sounds like? A helicopter? So when you're already stressed and you're a little bit on edge, and you hear that helicopter, and you look out over the window, and you're in the bad part of Tijuana, and you see all these huts, then pretty quick, the Marine, Mexican Marine Corps comes in and they're running these little uh Nissan Titans and stuff with full-mounted machine guns in the back. Really? Yeah, I'm like, my heart starts racing.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

I start having little triggerers back back to being in the golf. Yeah, I remember when we were shooting that video for your business that one time in the uh the softbox, it kind of unsnapped and it kind of popped, made a pop real quick. And you just kind of and I was I was making light of it. I didn't think anything about it. I said, You okay? He's like, Yeah, kind of sounded like a gun went off. And I'm like, it didn't even cross my mind that that would be an issue. Because I mean, if you never experienced it, it just doesn't cross your mind.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

So I'm like, and they're all back there talking to getting over and I'm just up here to be all in your head, yeah. I should have grabbed my AR before I left, so I'm thinking, you know, I can I can stick my head out the sunroof or something. Um but yeah, we we come across, we we do just like the schedule says, they give me a room, it's a gorgeous place, overlooking the beach. First one was. And uh they give me my room, we come in, we do all this stuff, uh sit down, we eat breakfast. And the cool thing is they asked me, Do you have any diet restrictions? I'm not stupid. I said, Yeah, I don't eat vegetables. So everyone gets all these veggies and stuff, right? These salads, they come out with this great big steak, and was like, What'd you put on your diet card? I said, high protein, no vegetables. Oh, we're gonna change ours. So we eat, I do my EKG, not problem. Go through my maths, and I take a medication called Merebetric. And Merebetric's for an overactive bladder, because I'm old. Uh now you said to before I said it. Right. Okay. So so um they asked me when the last time I took it, and I said today. And the lady said, uh, I think we've got a problem. You're supposed to be off this. So I wasn't told. She said, Well, these are your options. You can either uh go back home, come back, or you can go to the detox house and detox and think the difference. I said, you know, my wife, sorry, Lord, my wife um was diagnosed with cancer in April. I said, She has a doctor's appointment. I said, I'm not missing a doctor's appointment, so we gotta figure this out. And uh I called Lori, and Lori said, No, you're not gonna. Um, you go ahead and stay. It's just a mammogram and another ultrasound. We're good.

SPEAKER_03 39:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

Um, so you're staying. I'm like, okay. So we're trying to figure out if they're gonna let me stay and how much it's gonna cost. Because this I'll go I don't I don't know what my sponsor paid, but I know for a veteran to go down to $7,300. For a non-veteran to go down to $8,300 for the whole stay and everything. For the five days. Now, if you go to detox, it's more because you gotta stay there longer, yeah, which is detox.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

It's actually I I was in my head was thinking it was probably more expensive. But but you gotta do you got to count for plane rides, the motel. That's not included.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

That's not included. Oh, okay. That's 30. Yeah, okay. Okay. So we're waiting to find out. And they said, We're going to sweat lodge, Bill. You got to go to sweat lodge, you got to go to sweat lodge. I'm like, all right, let's go sweat. If I change, get in the truck, go to get in the suburban, go to sweat. There's a little coat of sweat, so I'm like, yeah, I'm good with this one. Um, the other thing is if you ever do a sweat lodge, you want to be the first one in or the last one in. Wow. Because you come in and you go this way. And if you're the first one in, you sit by the door. And if you're the last one in you sit by the door. So you get a little bit of breeze. You get a little no the door shut, but they got they gotta open it to get a rock. So you get a you get a no quick breezer. So um I go in, I'm the last one in the sweat.

Sweat Lodge And Owning His Faith

SPEAKER_02 40:32

And uh they start and they they do their they do their thing. Um, trying to remember where it is. They start doing their their sweat stuff, and I'm praying in spirit. I'm rocking back and forth. Uh, and I hear God say, if you deny me on earth, I will deny you in heaven. And I'm I'm talking. I heard God say, not felt, yeah. To the point that I'm at. Obvious, obviously, you must be talking to the guy next to me, man. You know, I'm a pastor, so so I'm sitting there and I'm still going and I hear it again. If you deny me now, I'll deny you later. This is me. So they start thinking, okay, I didn't deny God. I didn't ever said I don't believe in God. And that's you know, like when I said on Sunday. That's when I realized denying God isn't saying I don't believe in God. It's not professing God. It's the same thing. So we're sitting in the sweat lobs, they go around, and he says, Um, he said that uh the the lady that was leaving the sweat said, What do you want to get out of this? And the only thing that came in my mind was freedom. I want freel. I want God to tell me what to do and give me freedom. Should I say, should I go? So you do you do the rounds. Um, you pray every one of them. The second one, uh, the second round I prayed louder. I figured I felt the Holy Spirit more, and pretty quick, and I'm getting these words for people. I'm like, all right, you're really gonna try me now, aren't you? First, I won't even say that I'm a Christian, and now you want me to go over to this lady that I met less than four hours ago and tell her that I don't know if you believe in God or not, but you're supposed to go back and look on your book and remember what he told Jeremiah. That's all I said. Came back and uh told her that and she started crying. She said, That's what I was reading before I left. Like, alright, now you're playing games, gosh. Bro, now now you're just playing with me. So after the second round, that was it. The third round, which is the life-giving round, where you're supposed to broke focus on the giver of life, break self-inhibitions. Well, everyone, according to the Lakota culture, the giver of life is water. According to my culture, the giver of life is the guy that created water.

SPEAKER_03 43:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:23

Okay. So you just pray more intensely. And I keep going, you know, and that's that's the other funny thing. During this round is where they throw water at you because it's so hot. Oh, really? So imagine sitting in a totally dark room sweating, and all of a sudden ice water hits you in the face. Really? Yeah. Because they're literally throwing water at you. But that shocks the body. It does, it shocks the body. So I'm sitting there and I'm praying and stuff, right? I I'm becoming um this feeling like the things that were stored up inside of me are. Becoming more and more loose.

SPEAKER_03 44:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:02

And as I as I sit there and I'm praying, I heard God say, I had to write this stuff down. I heard God say this was in his control, and I needed to trust him and his plan. He said that my journey was not about PTSD, it was about life and the things that are inside of me. This is going to be a journey that I do not take as a group, but one that I take on my own with him.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

Oh no. Because the whole mapped out process is going through as a group. It's a group process, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

So I felt him telling me that he was removing from this quiet class because there was toxicity in the class. I don't know if I was a toxicity or they were the toxicity. That I needed to focus on him and I need to prepare to hear his voice to see what he asked to reveal to me. I'm like, whoa. It was at that point that I realized it wasn't a setback. I felt God tell me that I was supposed to use this time to till my soil so that when the seed is planted, the roots will be buried deep within it. So right then, you know. I I wish, I don't, I don't know why. I I need to learn, not I wish, I need to learn how to stay in that state of mind consistently. Because when he says that, what comes to your your mind? Mine was the verse about, you know, I scattered my seeds and some of them landed on rocks on the, you know. Yeah. The soil that's tilled and fertile is the stuff that grows. Yeah. So in Texas, the wind blows and oak trees fall over. Because the soil is so fertile up top. In Montana, the wind blows, oak trees don't fall over. Because you gotta go down so deep to get water. Yeah. And that's what I compared it to. I gotta go deep to get the water. Okay. So we do that. We go back from the sweat, and I'm told after the meal, I was gonna be transported to the other house. And that was the cartel house. I think I sent you a video.

SPEAKER_01 46:41

Oh, yeah, where you're walking to an indoor pool, marble. By the way, if you ever build a house, don't make the whole thing out of white marble.

SPEAKER_02 46:49

Because it's hard to walk down stairs. Because you can't the stairs were marble? Yeah, everything was. Oh, that seems dangerous. Yeah, because it all looks like one flat surface.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

It's best to me to do psychedelics. So you know can't really tell the difference.

SPEAKER_02 47:04

But when you pull up to the house, the the verse, in my father's house, there's many mansions, pops up. Yeah. I'm like, man. This is just everything is just falling alive. I walk in and they do introductions again. But this time I say, My name's Bill, I'm a pastor and a counselor. They say, Is there anything else? I said the door shut. These all knock because I'm already reading my Bible. And that's how I started the treat. This is the time I had to wait five days before I could even start the process because I'd wait for those men to go. So for five days, I read the Bible. I prayed, and I you can't fast fast, because you got to eat. Uh you gotta have something. So I had um fruit smoothies, so basically Dan and fast. Um and plugged through that, did another sweat lodge. Um, there's three people in the house. My first night there, there's a guy. Um, his name's Josh. He's probably gonna watch this. Young kid. He was there for um for substance use. He did his idogain, and he was in there for 20 allegs. The joke is that mine wasn't that long, so I'm gonna ask for a refund because once we figured out what he paid, he was paying so much an hour, I didn't use all my money, so I want some back. Somebody's gonna, you know. Um, but I seen him the next day and he looked so rough.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

After his 20 hours, after his 20 hours. I bet it was exhausting. And uh well, do you know why it took like why was it 20 hours? Or was that normal? Well, the joke was just he was more messed up than me, but that's what I'm wondering. Like, is it I think it goes until you get it figured out? I think it is. If I think it is. I I think it's it's as long as you process, you know, it's uh that's that's why you look like crap. Yeah, I mean, if you're working things out for 20 straight hours, so you come down, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

I come downstairs and he's sitting there, and uh I look at him, I said, Can I pray for you? The only thing he said was, please. And when he wrapped his arms around me, and um I started praying, I had to shift my feet because the weight of the Holy Spirit was so much. I was like, Man, is this what it is what it feels like to walk in this at all times? It's a whole new discovery. You know, I don't get me wrong, I I feel the Holy Spirit church, I feel the Holy Spirit when I pray, but just to be in that surrounding, I knew that God uh had me covered. You know, they they say, um I I'm baptized with the Holy Spirit, I'm filled with the Holy Spirit. I was immersed in the Holy Spirit, really. And to get that is is a is a feeling of just security. I I felt like I had power to do anything, so he he did his. Um, and when I sat there, I was like, man, I can't wait to see what happens. Because I'm excited now. I am really excited. Thursday, Lori sent me a message about reading psalms. Um, so I read Psalms for a while, then we did another sweat lodge, and that was a pizza oven one I showed you, right? Um, got in there, and it was just me and Josh. And there was another guy named Josh, but he only lasted three minutes, and then he bailed. Yeah, he bailed. I told Josh, I said, dude, you were the doorkeeper. I said, You didn't do a very good job.

Forgiveness Work And The Burn List

SPEAKER_02 50:50

And uh it was during this one that I started praying so loud in the spirit and rocking, and the lady was walking through forgiveness with us. So, you know, my dad died when I was young. So I had to walk through that forgiveness. I walked through forgiveness of uh uh towards my mother because I I I was angry at my mom because she let my dad die. She's a nurse. Come on, save her. What are you doing? Do your job. Okay, and then my kids and the expectations that I held for them. So I had to walk through all of that stuff, and then I started praying again. And I got a glimpse of something. God gave me a glimpse of something that threw me back, and it was a glimpse of me being sexually assaulted as a child. That was it. It was like, I think I was sexually assaulted.

SPEAKER_00 51:54

Like you didn't, you've never remembered this before? No. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 52:00

I was like, Well, that can't be right. So praying spirit singing, did so well the lady asked me to pray and sing out loud. Felt pretty honored. I don't know how to interpret my worship leader.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

Look how you didn't.

SPEAKER_02 52:17

I have no idea how the interpreter interpreted back because we had a guy that spoke English that interpreted it back to Spanish. Oh, so I don't know how he interpreted it, but you know, maybe that was no to me, yeah. Um, maybe that's his new gift. That one. Um yeah earlier when stuff wasn't working. So you sit down and you look at it, and I'm I'm reading this chapter that Lori sent me. And in between it, I I hear God, I feel God say, you need to let me protect you. Provide your security. This is not something you can or need to control. The recurring word draw, everything I did there was a word control. Give up control. I'm going, man, I can't. But if I give up control, then I can worship in every aspect of God. Because when you give up control, guess what else you could put? Caring what other people think. Yeah. So I sat down, I did that, prayed through it. And then I also remembered that God's discipline the Lord disciplines um the ones he loves and it's worrying. His discipline is worry. You know how many years I sat there resisting that? I haven't even done any psychedelics yet, and this stuff's coming. I'm like, man, I should get a big refund. So that afternoon I went for a walk. Um, went for a long walk with someone, and that's where I got the verse that reminded me that everything's perissible again. So it's how I approach it and how I do it. The cool thing about Mexico was is that everyone is so caring. They talk about third world countries and not being developed, not being you know it takes five years to be a nurse in Mexico in our end. Really? Yeah. Well takes two in the United States. Yeah. So not knocking any nurses, okay, but maybe they're just slower down there. Maybe they're slower. Um so let me jump up here. So I get ready, and uh the day comes to do my treatment. When you do your treatment, they could they bring another guy in that's going to do um that's going to administer it. He talks you through it. Um his name, I gotta find his name here. And then he'd go back. I'm sorry. The day before I did the treatment, I sat down and I prayed through generational curses. My oldest son has depression as well, suffers from depression. He was trying to figure out if there's a generational curse or not. Because Dan had depression. Yeah. So pray through that, look through that and stuff. Um then we get ready to do the treatment. We sit down for breakfast. We come in, the guy comes in and he says, You're Bill? I'm like, Yep. And he goes, uh, we're doing we're doing a new treatment, I'm telling you how it's gonna work today. And and then he said, You're a pastor, right? Like, yeah. Right then he started calling me pastor. I was no longer Bill. He explained to me that um he used to be an assembly of God pastor, and they revoked his license because he administered the medication. Um but he still you know still believed in God and and still believed and practiced as much as he could, and you know, walked through it, explained to him about my journal, explained to him everything. And he said, you know, when you get done with this, you should almost figure out how to write a book. Or I'd like to talk to you and interview you. Because a lot of people get here and get to this point not to it. Really? And they'll get a refund, right? Internal conflict. So they just they just stop doing it. Like, okay. We go through it, we do all this stuff. I go up and I do the breathing work. Um, doing doing the breathing work. They're sitting there, I'm going, okay, am I supposed to do this? Am I not supposed to do this? Am I supposed to and I tried to pray for everything, you know, going back to is this is permittable, but is it good to me? So I I tried to pray for everything and the breath word stuff. I'm sitting there and I'm breathing, and I'm like, okay, okay, here we go, here we go. And then all of a sudden, I I feel, yeah. Who how was man formed? God breathed life into him. Yeah. So God is the breath of life. So let's do the breath work, learn how to breathe. And then the sound breath of heaven comes into my brain. Like, all right. So we do breath work, and halfway through breath work, she lights these incense. Yes, every and I I look up, I look up, and she's got these incense, and she's doing this stuff, and her crystals are out. And I look, and I told Josh, because the other Josh was there too, right? And Josh was by the door again. I said, Josh, you're the gatekeeper. And he's like, Okay, the other Josh left early again. Yeah, um, that's a recurring theme. So as soon as those are lit, I'm like, I'm out. So I get up and I leave, leaving Josh being the only one in there. He comes out, he said, I thought I was the gatekeeper. I said, You were, you weren't very good at it. So, you know, so we do that. We do the the yoga, um, which is another taboo thing. So I'm I'm doing yoga, I'm stretching, doing the stuff I'm supposed to do, and and uh I'm getting ready to leave, and that's when I heard God say, you know, your body's uh uh mine is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Just don't pray and let the lady stretch. You destroyed it. Let me fix it. So I laid there and went through that stuff. I think a lot of what we get hung up on so much so much, Stephen, is the fact that it's done this way, so we must do it that way. Yep. You know what I mean? So if you're Catholic and you say the Lord's prayer, you never say it as it is in heaven, then it stops, right? Protestant, they say the next verse, too. For thine is the kingdom, clarity, and glory of God forever and ever. So which one's right? Well, do you know why they stop? I have no idea why they stop because that's where we get Catholic boy, some Catholic person in it. Well, I stopped. Okay, I stopped. So it's it's one of those, you know, where do you go with it?

SPEAKER_03 59:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:57

And that that's what I decided. I'm not gonna get hung up on it. Um so after that, that's when I went into um, we started to do the to prepare the road for me. And I went in and anointed it. I wrote my burn list, I rewrote my burn list. And what was the burn list? Like, what do you mean, burn list? What does that mean? Burn list after one to get rid of burn list is what you say. So I'm gonna attempt to read it. You know my reading's great. I rewrote mine into a prayer. 1 Peter 5, 6 says, Humble yourself under the mighty power of God. At the right time, he will lift you up in honor, give you all your worries and cares, for he cares about you. Father, I come, I humbly come to you tonight, thanking you for your grace, your mercy, and your love, confessing my sins and those of my family. I cast these cares and worries to you. Through the burning, nonetheless, I relinquish the control of them. Father, take my addictions to work, my greed for money and lust. Father, remove my desire for porn, and I gotta clarify, I have not looked at porn in years, but you when when you're addicted to something, yeah, trials to get you. Okay, my desire for porn and unhealthy eating, remove my old self that was filled with self-criticism, lies, and anger. Remove all the foul language and judgment. Father, take me from me my desire to be someone, remove the judgment against myself of not being good enough. Above all, remove the characteristics that do not assemble, do not resemble you. No more depression, anxiety, ADHD, suicidal ideation, fear of living, or the guilt I carry from my past. Mong, for many years I've held resentment toward you. Resentment for not choosing me as a baby, for choosing Rocky over me. I ask that this be taken from me. I no longer have control over whether others love me. I cast it into the fire of dead, I release you from blame blame for dying. You are free from the guilt that I project towards you. Lori, I've released my resentment regarding having more children in your desire to have them. I gotta skip a couple because I don't think my kids will read it. And I went Matthew uh 11, 29 and 30. It says, Take my yoke upon you, let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart. And you will find rest for your soul, for my yoke is easy, it bear, and my burden, and the burden I give you is light. As you take my take and burn my yoke, I leave all my burdens at your feet. May the Holy Spirit guide me through this journey, grant me visions and dreams. As you promised in your words. That's the first time I read it since I'm praying to that. Afterwards, Isaac, the guy that that gave me the meds, um, shared the stories from 2 Kings 1 through 6 about the accent that falls off. And he said, Bill, I see Ibogaine as raising all this stuff to the surface. And he gave me the first dose of four doses. Uh 45 minutes they gave me another dose. And then by 10 minutes, he gave me another dose, and then he gave another dose. I went in the the treatment room, brought my blanket from the hole. I had a mattress and the blanket that we prayed over, a picture of my family that he took a couple days before, without my mother-in-law.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:52

Okay, he took a couple days a couple days before.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:58

And uh up by the head of my bed, I had my Bible that was laid there, that I winked and prayed over before I took it in there. Um laying by the head of my bed. Satin. I sat and looked in the mirror. And you just look at the mirror pretty quick. Uh it was like nothing was happening. So I laid down, nothing was happening. I asked, I said, uh, after a while, I said, can we go for a walk? Because you you move around and you get everything generated. And uh the doctor said, uh I need to back up and I'm sorry. So when I went in to get everything done and prepare, one of the nurses said, Pastor, we usually listen to uh like a Buddhist music. Um, do you care if we switch it to a hymns without words? No, I don't care. And this place has got a cardiologist, nurse practitioner, and two nurses in there the whole time you're there. Oh okay. So just in case anything, yeah, in case anything up, jump you covered. Um and I I sat down there and nothing happened. I asked Doc if I could get up, he said, not yet. And then he came back, he said, Okay, let's go for a walk. And I went to get up. When I went to stand up, it had me.

Ibogaine Visions And Trauma Processing

SPEAKER_02 1:05:28

I mean, it it hit. Um, I don't know how many people out there drank, but you ever sit at the bar and drink all these shots, and then all of a sudden you stand up to the bath and you feel the wall. Yeah, that's it. I uh I sit back down, I start looking at this mirror, and my face starts morphing from a four-year-old kit up to a hundred and some year old old man, and then it would poof and fall into dust. And then it would gather up all the dust and then turn into a kit again. And it just started doing this on a loop. As it did it on a loop, um, I started looking because I didn't believe it. So I started going like this, you know, trying to see around the mirror, seeing what was going on, and nothing changed. Um the significance of that I I found out, I figured out later was remember when I when I when we've talked before, I told you that when I came back from the military, they didn't think I was gonna live long enough to see my kids graduate.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:28

That was re-confirmation that I'm gonna live long enough to fulfill what I'm supposed to fill. So then I put this eye covering on and I lay down. And um I'm just laying there. I'm like, oh, this is this great. Um all of a sudden, out of my corner of my eye on the left, I see uh Mario from Donkey Kong jumping on those little green flower pots. Remember the flower jumping? Yeah, jump on and die, the plants come out. Yeah, so he's jumping on them, but they're not plants, it's profanity. And it's like, okay. I shared with you before when I get around vets and I'm talking to vets, every once in a while, I slip back into that mode, and it was something I want to get rid of. So he's jumping pretty quick. I I don't know if I'm actually doing it or psychologically doing it or what, but I'm just throwing out cuss words to watch the Mario jump all over the screen. And it's like, okay. And then on the other side, I see a dollar bill gun, right? It's shooting out every dollar I've ever made in my life. Like, well, that's weird. And then all of a sudden it hit me right in the middle, like a drive-in theater. Anything nudity I ever seen, all the porn, every everything, we'll just leave it at that. Everything I've ever seen, except for my ex-wife and my wife, started scrolling on a screen, on a reel, over and over, vivid, uh, too vivid. And I was so bad, over we'll use the word over sexualized, yeah, that I could close my eyes and see nudity of people other than my wife, and it bothered me for years. Yeah. Um, I'll went in the navy. There we go. Um, and behind that, it was a river, and the river was made out of uh crown royal and Michelabalter, because that's what I used to drink. It was just partying. Behind the river was um trucks, cars, Harleys, anything that was a status symbol in my life. And then over the right were strippers on a pole. And this thing was set up like a boardwalk of a carnival. It was just entertainment. I sat there in awe. Um it wasn't the it was more of an awe of disgust. And then all of a sudden, I poofed into the other realm of camp. And I was a four-year-old kid. And I was getting in trouble. I played with one of my dad's guns, and I got disciplined for um disciplined in the 70s equal abuse in the 90s and 2000s. So uh whooped. I got I got whooped hard in 2000. But right before I got whooped, uh I morphed back into that carnival. I wasn't four, I was 60. I just sat there and I emotionally got my uh emotions under check, regulated everything out, and calmed down. And then I went back to another incident. And this was I got in trouble at school, and right before I got disciplined again, I went back there at 60. The third one is when I went back and it was revealed to me the sexual assault. I never seen a face who did it, but I heard the name. I processed that.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:26

Did you recognize like did in your brain, did you you heard the name and you knew who it was, or you used it? Oh, really?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:36

Yeah, I I they said the name it was one of two people, but then I heard the people around me ridiculing me, and they were his friends, so I narrowed it down real quick who it was. And um, but I processed the whole thing, and then I went right back to that carnival. I bounced back and forth. Josh was 20 hours, remember? Yeah, I bounced back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Everything that ever happened in my life, I bounced. The thing that I realized as I was bouncing, stuff was disappearing. So I bounced back, and the alcohol was gone. The strippers were gone. On the boardwalk, on the boardwalk. I think the carnivals, the games were gone, they're disappearing. Every time I bounced back, everything I processed, I bounced back, I bounced back. Pretty quick, I bounced back, and the only thing that was there was my wife laying on her bed naked, not provocative, just laying there naked. How does that work? What do you mean? Laying there naked and not provocative.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:56

Not not not in not trying to entice not in the form of every other nude image that was flipping through that screen.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:04

It was different, it was different. Yeah. And she looked at me and smiled and said, remember, I love you. It was over. They say you know it's over because you got to get up and go to the bathroom. Like poop, poop. Really? I got up and I couldn't walk because it affects all the muscles. I went to the bathroom and sorry for the graphic. It was pure liquid for probably 20 minutes. I believe it was God cleansing all the toxicity out of my system. And that's just for memory hours. Imagine Josh's Josh, I've got the Josh.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:41

That's my God. So Josh said, Josh, I took such a massive one. I've never taken that massive one since then. I, you know. So I get done, and when I get done, I literally stand up and start walking. You straight to the bath. Yeah. I couldn't even pull down my old pants when I went into the bathroom. Okay. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:01

So I walk back and I asked the doctor, I said, Hey, can I lay on my side? He said, Yeah. Laid on my side and I went to sleep. And throughout the night, God gave me little glimpses of me and Lori walking on the beach, me and Lori on the bike, me and Lori doing this. And what I realized, it was everything I promised her. That I've never done. I slept like a rock. Next morning I get up, they bring me, excuse me, they bring me a smoothie. I drink my smoothie. Um they give me an IV, they always rehydrate, yeah. They give me an IV and I go to my bed. And I walk in there and I say a very simple prayer. Lord show me who I am now. And I go to sleep, and the last vivid memory I had was I was standing there and I was made out of those plastic topperware drawers that are see-through. And I was empty from the neck down to the waist. I said, God, what is that? He goes, That's everything I removed from you. I said, And what am I supposed to do now? And he said, fill it. You know, Bill. With what? Me. You know, oh, you know, so I do that, I go downstairs, I that that's when I learned it's hard to walk on because it's still in your system. Okay, I actually held the rail like two-handed side-shuffled down. Uh Josh was gone though. Because Josh left that one. Because he was done, or was he an he was down? And I was sort of upset because I actually bonded with this kid. Yeah. Uh I bonded with him because he later told me, he told me a couple weeks, yeah, last week, I think when I talked, that he lost his father at a young age. And that the boldness that I showed in the prayer room when we were praying in the sweat lodge and stuff, is you know, he said he told his uh his girlfriend that I think I found someone that could be like a dad. Well, unlike who doesn't ask for money.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:23

So it seems like, yeah. So I'm gonna go to his hour time.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:26

You know, but so he was gone, and I I was a little bit you know, taken back, but um But you did get well, you say you spoke to him last week, so I've I speak to him all the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:37

Okay, um, you know, so I I do that, I come back, I go back upstairs. I don't have a phone, I haven't talked to my wife in forever, like 24 hours. Um I felt like yeah, they did because I I talked to Lori so much that the nurses started talking to her when she came in. You know, when they came in, they're like, I miss Lori. So, you know, so I haven't talked to her. I went back up, somebody said, if you want to do something, go sit in the hot tub. It'll help you out. So I went and sat in the hot tub. Um, went up, slept the night. Next morning I get up and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna fast again because today is day three, which means I'm gonna do DNT. I go up, I do uh I get up, I go downstairs and I have my strawberry smoothie. And I go back up and I'm watching church online. Now you're doing smoothie because I've done your fasting. Okay, okay. So that's not something they I had I had to eat the day after I did Ibuca. I had to eat one meal. Yeah. And they made this gormy. Oh, it had uh oysters and tuna and swordfish. It was all raw. Really? It was all raw tasting like uh. I said I can't eat this. And Alex, who's actually from Montana where I'm from, said, Yeah, I don't know why they gave it. Let me give you some scrambled eggs. I'm like, yeah, give me some eggs.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:59

So I eat some scrambled eggs, and um that's kind of like exotic stuff, but they gave it to you raw. It was obviously it's edible, but yeah, it was I had swordfish tacos.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:10

Yeah, that was good though. So um, so I drink my smoothie, I'm upstairs, I'm watching uh church online, waiting for you to preach, but you ducked out because you had a baby or something that weekend. Yeah. Um so you know I that was Jim. It was Jeff. I watched Jim. Jim's in the middle of a message, and this girl named Ruby comes up. I met Ruby a few nights before because she does the DMT, and she shared a little bit. I was talking to her about my faith, and she shared that um she was a Christian and she took the job not knowing what it was. So for the first eight or nine times they did it, she didn't know she's an RN. She didn't know what to do, so she just walked around and prayed for everyone. She said, because they had this music in the background, so I just prayed for everyone. Yeah, like hey, that's a good thing to do. So Ruby comes up and she goes, Did you eat? I said, No, I did not. She goes, Good, we're doing DMT now. I said, No, we're doing it tonight. She goes, No, we're doing it now. Control. I'm like, okay. So Alex comes over, I saw my releases and everything. And she said, When you're ready, just grab your blanket and your pillow and come on in. So I grabbed my blanket that was prayed over. I walked in there. We talked about the blanket now where I got it because she does a lot of batteries work.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:29

And she wanted one.

DMT Encounter And Putting God First

SPEAKER_02 1:18:31

And she tells me, she said, okay, what you're going to do is you're going to sit down and I'm going to ask you to inhale, exhale, inhale slowly. And when I do that, I'm going to bring this pipe up to your mouth, and you're going to inhale what it is. You're going to clinch up every muscle in your body and hold it for 10 seconds. As I count backward, I'm going to put a mask over your eyes. You're going to lay down and say, let it go. You let everything out and relax. Go up to this moment where you're about to do it. Were you a little nervous? Well, yeah. What you just went through with the other thing. No, I was looking forward to it. Because everyone said that this is the one that was supposed to put the glass on the finish. Okay. Okay, this was supposed to be the finish. But they lied.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:12

They lied. Because because I thought it was like polishing the coat. Yeah, it's gonna be something smooth, kind of nice.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:19

But how do you refine gold? You gotta keep on heating it up, turning it over.

unknown 1:19:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:24

But that's not how they describe it. No, the did not reflect that. So um, so I'm sitting there and she pulls out, and I'm just, you know, when I get nervous, I'm sarcasticating. Yeah. So when I get nervous, I get really she pulls out this stainless steel uh pipe. Yeah. That you screw a thing on the end, a vial on the end that they said, man, that's the fanciest crack pipe I've ever seen. You see a few of them? I said, Yeah, I've worked in treatment centers. So we do it, and uh I inhale slowly and it burns. The devil tells you it burns, it burns going down. I got bad lungs anyway. So it burns going down. Tighten everything up. She's like 10, 9, 8, 7. She gets down to one, she puts the mouse gun, she lays me back, she goes, let go. I exhale and just my whole body relaxes. And first reaction is great, this doesn't work. And then all of a sudden, these stars start coming at me. Okay, I've just seen that. Uncle figure that. He was watching the podcast one time, and said, I got a gift for you. So I uh I see these stars coming at me, and then I see Lori's face smiling, coming in and morphing back up. Every time she goes out, she goes further away. Well, they said you can have two doses, so if you want more, just you know, sign language more. Pretty quick. I'm slapping. I can remember my fingers hurting them hitting them so hard because she's going further away. I don't want to lose her. All of a sudden, Ruby grabs me by the back and lifts me up. I don't know if you remember me telling you this story, but I had a dream once where I knocked on the door, on a door, and when it opened at the end of a hall, and when it opened, there was a cesspool sitting there. Okay, it was a septic tank filled with all septic. Everything was float. And God said, Jump, I will catch you. And when I jumped, I went under. I landed in his hand, I went under, and I came back up, and I went under and came back up. I bounced. And I thought it was a calling on my life because I'm counseling what I was gonna do. So this is everybody else's duty. So when I when I got lifted up, I seen God's hand lift me, clean me off, open that door again, and it's a white hallway with radiant light. Sets me down, and I turn around and I look. I said, What is this? He said, This is your life if you choose it. I said, wait, what about my calling? Said that wasn't your calling, that was a warning, and that's what you lived in because you didn't listen to my warning. This is you, but choose me first. Or she, and he pointed at Lori, will no longer be with you. Steven, I'll tell you what. It was like somebody opened the biggest floodgate of emotions, and I bawled. It says in the Bible that, you know, uh wailing and trembling, I was shaky. Snot, noise, everything was involved. I don't know how long I did it. If you ask me, I had probably four hours, but I know it wasn't. Got all done and it took my mask off. No one gives you a clean. You know, in church, you start crying, everyone gives you Kleenex. Yes, no one gives you a Kleenex. You got snot running, you're wiping it on your arm, you know. Get all done. I take my mask off. I look at Ruby. And she says, You want to hug? I just washed it again. Cried again, got done. I folded up my blanket and I said, This is yours. No matter what anyone ever tells you. What you do here in this context is a blessing. I'm in sure I said in this context. Can't be drug. And she said, uh she said, I want you to know something, Bill. What I admire most about you is that your faith never wavered through this. Got up, I went in my room, I sat and continued to try. Alex walked in because you have no electronics. About a half hour later while you're walking in, he said, I want to hear what happened. But when you're ready, call Lori. Lori's now on her way to Dallas with the same friend that went to AMU. Uh they were taking her out for a doctor. She was going up on Sunday because she had that doctor's point on Monday. And um I get enough composure and I call her. I FaceTime her. I see her face and I start crying. She can't see mine because I didn't turn my camera in them. I was part of that. And I start with I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for the way I treated you. I'm so sorry for not being the man of God I'm supposed to be. I'm so sorry for this, and I'm so sorry for this. I just apology after apology after apology. And my loving wife said, Want you to know something when we met? You're a little bit psychologically abusive. I was, I wasn't a butthead. I think that's a nice way to take that time about 40. She said, but you've never abused me physically or sexually or made me do anything that I did not willingly participate in. So knock it off. Because I love you. Give me a minute. Yeah, I can read it.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:30

So I turned my camera on just, how long have you been crying?

Coming Home With Lasting Change

SPEAKER_01 1:25:38

Yeah, I mean, well, I'll I'll tell you, since coming back, I'd read the word different.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:47

Yeah. I read, you know, I just finished First Chronicles. And I sit there and I look at the lineage stuff. I'm going, King Solomon. He wasn't first in line. How'd I miss that? Why did he inherit everything? David laid out everything for him. He had everything to build the temple. That's what a dad's supposed to do. Little things like that. Solomon was rich. He wasn't rich because he asked for money. He asked for wisdom.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:25

I'm not asking for money anymore. Wisdom. That's not for home. So it's it's little things like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:32

Um, so I I read uh, you know, I I read first and second chronicles and I don't know if it's four days, five days. Um with all those names. No, I just say big name, keep going. God knows what I'm talking about. Okay. So so then I'm, you know, I'm getting ready to figure out somewhere else. I want to stay in the old testament. I want to find something in the old testament because I've all whenever I've read, I've always read New Testament type stuff. It's like, show me some of this stuff. I don't want Genesis. I don't want, I want, you know, I think it may be Joshua, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:11

I was reading uh this actually what's today. Today's Thursday, last couple days, maybe three days, since Monday. Uh I told you I started walking to the neighborhood two miles every more every morning. And uh I'm in uh Zechariah. There's some pronounce that word crazy stuff in there. Is there? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:32

You know, when you start reading the Bible, it really is. People think it's, you know, oh one of these things let me read. You know, you read the Bible, you start reading, and you look at the the wars, the the everything that goes on in there. If they were to make a movie out of the Bible, it'd almost be X rated.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:52

Was it Zechariah or was it Ezekiel? Oh no, it was Zachariah. Yeah, chapter five. Talking about a flying scroll, four chariots, uh, call of justice and mercy. And it I mean, it's got some uh and as I was reading it or listening to it, I read, it was just kind of like some of the things he was describing. You know, there's so many UFO things coming out right now. Like he was describing things in the context of how what his worldview was or what he had available to him to describe things. I think a lot of this UFO stuff, and some of it maybe just propaganda, but the other stuff, like the earth, the spiritual realm, I think it senses when God's moving and doing spiritual things. Like how the like when somebody when something happens in a room, you can feel the tension of the air shifts, you can sense something. And I'm like, oh, this is uh uh the Lord is gonna return very soon. But you know, the this is the cruelty.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:04

Since I've been back, okay, even with the client that that usually gets me to say the words, I I have I have not said one word at all. And you've seen what I was like without my meds, yeah. Okay, I I have not used any form of profanity, and you're off your your eyes. I'm off all my meds, okay. All my mental health, and when he says that, it's a good thing. Okay, yeah. All all my mental health met. So I have not used any profanity. I said before when I closed my eyes, I used to see nude women that were my wife. I see I close my eyes now, so you know what I see. I see my wife laying on a bed saying I love her. That is so freeing. Yeah. Okay. I used to shake. I have no shake anymore. Okay. I have had no suicidal ideation. I have no depression. I sleep like a rock. I go to bed and I sleep like a rock. I take some stuff called uh um amio relax, and all it is is like magnesium, things like that. There's no no drugs in it. Yeah. Um, I take that, I sleep like a rock. Um, one of my kids asked me if I really cared anymore because I I don't get upset. Yeah, so I don't care because I don't get upset. Okay, you're not angry as much anymore.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:28

Do you love me?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:29

Yeah, that's that's crazy. Yeah, yeah. I still get frustrated, but I don't. Yeah. I've cut all secular music out. I told God, if you don't want me to listen to secular music, give me something like ACDC.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:41

I'll go make it Christian. And I found it. Telling you AI is pretty awesome. Uh it it is so and and and something that's not AI. Yeah, but some people are they don't understand, and it's not that I try to prescribe it for everybody. I usually don't talk about it. I don't listen to anything with Christian music ever. Why would you? And it's been that way for years. Now I hate the radio because it's always the same. I could turn it on five years later, it's the same song that was on five years ago. But like it anything I listen to music-wise, and on my stance, is because it truly affects you in a way that people aren't that they're not paying attention to. Why would why would you why would you want to tempt yourself with stuff like that? But I stopped listening, like I used to listen to rap music, especially a lot when I was a youth pastor, and I quit listening to rap music, not because the and and I would listen to stuff that was actually like biblically sound. Like they weren't just like uh there's one guy, Andy Menio, he would do some stuff and his beats are really good. But most of the time it was like actual Christian music, not just a Christian artist by label, but didn't never say anything about God or their music at all or Jesus. I mean if you're gonna be a Christian, it should come out of you with every facet. But I stopped listening to it because it would the beat and the feel that I got reminded me of who I used to be when I was womanized because RB and rap was what I would listen to, and it got my mind going in that direction, and so I stopped listening to that too. Now it's just it's almost 100% or Lori.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:18

Um, I don't know if you remember the song Shaggy, it wasn't me. Oh yeah. When that first came out, we lived in South Dakota, and Lori used to walk around cleaning the house singing that song out loud, right? Yeah, and finally one of the kids said, Mom, you're here listening to the words. She goes, There ain't nothing wrong with it. And then all of a sudden she's listening to it, and she's like, Oh, on the counter, on the floor? It's just like, okay, I need to change this. But I that that was the thing that I decided is that so I no longer watch hardly any TV. Um, why would I why would I want to?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:00

Yeah. You know, um, I watched a lot of Angel Network. Everything is sexualized. It is, it drives me nuts. Like, I I've I think I've used this example before, but I would be working out uh in the living room maybe four four years ago, something like that. We just moved over here, and there was some I I don't know why, but like superpowers and like vampires and werewolf movies or shows or whatever, they always caught my attention, they were interesting to me. But I kept like having an issue with like porn trying to grab me, like seemingly almost every day. I'm like, why? I was talking about why because we're very open about it. To me, the more people you include in your struggle at sin, exactly, instead of hiding it. You try to hide it, you're gonna have a problem, a big stumble block. So I was talking to her, I was like, I don't know what is going on, and she walked past the you know the doorway in there and looked because I have something on the TV when I was working out of the living room, and I'm working out, not paying attention. But she's like, That show is a vampire diary, I don't know what it was, just something that I had on. But she was like, It's so sexualized, and I started paying attention, and I'm like, Oh, maybe that's my problem. And I changed, I stopped watching it and watched some action stuff like Hawaii 5-0 or whatever, something like that. It's like action and blow stuff up. It stopped. But it was like something that I was just on pilot or a co-pilot, like just not even paying attention to. And of course, to my my wife to be like, hey, this show's kind of sexual. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I looked. Oh, it's almost soft core porn.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:45

And any more, you know, um what was it that was Yellowstone? Yellowstone showed nudity. That's where I'd ever watched it. I agree with a lot of them show nudity, and it's like it's it's entertainment.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:02

Well, even the you're talking about the profanity thing that uh that show Sil Team. Have you ever seen it? Yeah. I we love that movie. That was what part of that show we would watch that like uh if I was home for lunch or at night time, we we always like kind of wind down and watch something together. And then it was season three or four or something like that, where they switched from being on TV to then just nothing but streaming and the language, yeah. We couldn't make it to an episode. I'm like, what in the world happened? We had to look it up, and it was because they were trying to be more realistic, and I'm like, so you need to watch Pressure Luck on Game Show Network.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:37

Pressure Luck? Yeah, no whammy, no whammy. It's like the we've we actually we did I got Angel Networks, and I watch a lot of movies on Angel. Is it cheesy?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:49

Uh no, no, they're actually stuff it that's in the theater. Oh, really? Yeah. Um, there's one thing called I have a mess with it recently called Vid Angel, where some of it you can take you watch, you watch some of those shows you're gonna get uh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So or that like there'll be like 30 minutes of missing in the in the show, you won't even know what happened. But I haven't I haven't which is terrible.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:13

I haven't watched TV, haven't done, you know. I don't do any caffeine, no sugar, no none of that anymore. Um but it's like everything that was on my list. What's your energy level like since you don't do caffeine stuff? Is it can you tell the difference? I'm not in AHD meds. I used to take 40 milligrams of methamphetate, drink three monsters and a seven Drew energy drink a day. When they brought me off caffeine, they had to give me caffeine pills. I was detoxing to bring it down. Yeah. Slowly. My energy is probably more than it is now. Now, granted, it's 8:30, I'll be in bed probably an hour. Yeah. Hour and a half. But before, I wouldn't go to bed until 11, 12 o'clock at night.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:57

I here recently, of course, I'd sit 40, but it's like having issues with feeling like I don't have enough energy. No G. No. Probably. Who knows? But it's like whether it's I'm having too much of it, so I keep having, you know, you get a tolerance or you keep having the and I kind of think that's what it is, honestly.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:19

But I have no God answered every prayer while I was there. And right now, the more I dig, the more He reveals. Um, we're getting ready to take our exhorters test. And it's like the retent the memory retention is the other thing because I put it on on Quizlet. Yeah. And I just every time in between clients or something, I'll answer questions and answer questions. And the memory retention is better. The every aspect about is better. But I um I'll reiterate, I would not go down. Um, if you're a Christian, I would not go down unless you prayed up and stayed up. And if you can't afford it, so we're talking right now about, you know, Lori's got trauma from childhood. Yeah. Uh she's got a lot of trauma going on right now with breast cancer. So we're talking about maybe having her go down.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:15

When you uh tell me about breast cancer, when you uh were doing the DMT, and uh he said, if you don't make me first, you're gonna lose her. Did it cross your mind about the news you just got? I knew what that meant. Y'all know what my morning routine is now?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:31

What? Pee first.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:33

I know how much I beat up and I go pee.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:36

I take my mats, I brush my teeth, I don't even I have my underword on. I walk right back to my bed, I grab my Bible off the dresser, shut the fan off because it always blows the pages. I sit down and I read the Bible. She'll bring me in a cup of coffee, decaf coffee. But I think she puts collagen in it, something supposed to be my hair grow back. I don't know. She told me about that. I'm like, I'm getting I'm growing the hair back. I said, Look, so she gives me, she brings me a cup of coffee, and then she leaves me alone. At first she she talk. I'm like, Lori, I'm reading. I know, but and then I said, or she will no longer be with you. And I think she understood what I was saying. Yeah. So it's like, and sometimes sometimes I'll read a chapter and I'll read it and I'll read it, same chapter. Yeah, sometimes I'll just plow through three or four, depending on what it is. You know, so but the the interest is there, the the routine is there. You said before you gotta make it a priority. Yeah, right? Five, five, and five. Five five five. That's sure, sure, right there. All right. So so when you when you make it a priority and you make it routine, as long as you don't break the routine, it's there.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:53

Yeah. You know? It's incredibly hard to get started, but it's incredibly easy to stop it.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:00

And the other thing I do is I highlight every word I weak read. Not so if you ever look at my Bible, the whole thing's highlighted yellow. And then you'll see dark inklines under important things. Yeah. Because what I said was this I'm gonna continue to read until every page of that Bible is highlighted, and then I'm gonna buy another one.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:21

When I got my uh the new one I got, the official church Bible that I got. Yeah, I started not every single line, but uh if I read in that area, I would, you know, the subs have stuck out, and that way I would know if uh if I had read it yet or not.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:39

Yeah, just to kind of so my goal is just to continue.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:42

I don't want to do it, you know, 365 days through the Bible. I just want to continue to read until I have an age rep. Yeah. And then I'll be with your phone.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:53

It's really hard for not really hard, it's because of my spastic personality to like listen or read and not be distracted. So for me, going on these walks, there are no distractions. Like I put, I will usually put my phone on do not disturb. Right. And the only person like I have you on there are I think Vernon, D, Jesse, uh, people that can actually get through that without having to hit it two or three times. But you know, 7, 30, 8 o'clock in the morning, usually nobody really needs me. So it's been not only exercise, even though I feel like I'm getting fatter. I'm like, I'm walking every day. Why am I getting fatter? And I'm not saying muscle was better for that. Yeah, that's what I was saying. But it's like it it just I had to shift from doing nighttime because the baby and one of us has to have the other one. So she's got Fletcher, I've got Cora, and trying to wrestle them, and then make the teenager make sure that he's going to bed and doing what he's supposed to do. But it's like um uh a big a big deal for me to actually be able to go and just get out of the house and walk. So I don't know if you know this, but I I heard the exercise can actually help like retain what you're studying as well. I I believe it.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:12

You know, the um I went I went down for PKSD and that stuff, and I came back. Somebody said, Oh, you look like you got peace. But I don't I don't want peace. People sign peace treaties all the time and they vow it, and I got freedom. Yeah. And I went down to relieve mental health and I met God. I've been to men retreats, I've been to, you know, whatever you want to call them. And I have never encountered God in the way that I encountered God this time. Um I think I I told you. It was like I had a 10-day conversation, ongoing conversation. And the one thing I learned, so if you're out there and you're trying to figure out what God's voice sounds like, God's voice does not sound the same to me as it does Stephen, part of Vernon, part of whoever. God speaks to you in a language that you understand. So with me, guess what that is? Sarcasm. Not as blight in his mind, but um there's sarcasm in it. You know, you already destroyed your body, let me fix it. So that's what that's one thing I took away from. So now it's like, you know, in in the study, it says, look what God's doing, the Bible study we're doing, and then parallel with him instead of asking to do what you want.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:46

Which still, this study, I know we've been doing it for a while now, but it the concept is just so profound to me that I've never it and it confuses me that I've never thought like that before. You know what I mean? Like everybody does things in life. You have a plan, you you know, you just start church, I'm gonna do this, and then you're like, we're praying for God's blessing on what we're doing. But we never stop to think like, is that what God wants? Maybe that's why you're not being successful. Because if God's already doing something to you, you just kind of come alongside him, he's gonna make it work because it's his plan. Yeah, it just the concept I uh And as soon as you can you can figure out what his voice sounds like to you, and you can hear his voice, makes that a lot easier.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:31

Yeah, you know, the hit I cut my work schedule way back, okay. I went from working from nine to six every day to ten to three. Oh well, that's a big cut. Yeah, I cut down to 24 clients a week, and I got my first check at 24 clients a week. Are you like Laura? Are you sure? Yeah, I went, and Lori, you know, you know, Lori's my biggest Charlie. She said, Bill, don't worry. I said it was only, she said, you only worked one week that month. In April, you took three weeks off and you still made. And then I heard God say, What I'll I work in Mexico? Like, what? Oh, you're in Mexico? You only trust me in Mexico.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:21

I'm like, You're either all in or you're not. He is in the United States, too. He does have a visa, you know, you can travel anywhere. Uh you're either in or you're not. That's what I love. One of the things, speaking of that Bible study, that got me last week was the uh the making the budget for the church, and you budget for what you feel God's leading you to instead of just what you have and maintaining. Because I mean, we're we're called to be good stewards. But do you hide the talents? Do you you know that the parable? And I'm like, that's that is so true. How have I never thought of it? And and I am a I'm a I try not pride myself, I am a person of faith. Like, I'm a big thinker. I'm like, let's go far beyond, and then Jesse pulls me back in. But it's like, how have I never thought of this? So I'm just like, okay, Lord. Because I mean you haven't thought of it because it's not practical.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:21

Yeah, it's true. What God asks us to do is not practical in the human eyes. Does Earl watch this? Yeah, I hadn't over here once. What yeah, that's right. Well, they were here last. You know, I I got it saying, Don't let it go to your head, Earl. I appreciate when he comes out, yeah. Because what what he has told me has been so accurate. Um, and he's so not being negative, comment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:51

He's not, you know, he's not the prophet prior O F I T. Unassuming, like he's not out to get anything, he's just being himself. That's why I love one of the reasons I love him. Here is Waffo. But but it it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:05

I I think I I see number number one, I see I see the stuff that's going on when they when they bring this. I do want to write a book. So when they bring this to the states, I see it opening a lot of doors for people that are hurting hard if it's done in the right capacity. Yeah. There's so much church hurt out there. One of my magazines for CEUs comes in and it actually deals with church hurt, spiritual abuse and church hurt.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:34

This would tear down that wall if it's done it an appropriate way. And when that happens, then people align again. And there's so much movement and so much desperation in the United States. I don't know if you've seen it that the uh the other day I seen on one of the scrolls that I was looking through that Pride Month does not have the same response as it did five years ago. No, it doesn't. They're actually rejecting it. Yeah. So there's a move here. But it goes back to what I said on Sunday. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray. We're not all that. And that's coming from a guy that served in the military. The United States is not all that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:27

Big Tom. So I guess we can uh wrap it

Let Someone In And Keep Digging

SPEAKER_00 1:48:31

up. Do you have any closing thoughts or uh or maybe words of encouragement? Because you said yourself, you know, you had the the the suicidal thoughts and number one. If you got the suicidal shots, you gotta share them.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:45

Um so let somebody in. You gotta let somebody in. And you know, I think when I told you that, you sort of had a look of what? You know, um, because I had to let you in. It was it was that bad.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:59

I I burdened Laurie with enough of my problems. Well, I honestly, just because you know we joke around so much and uh I I would never have guessed that, but the same would be said about Robin Williams. Yeah, you know, I mean, I guess it may be a defense mechanism how you can't try to cover it up where nobody can truly see it it is a struggle. It is because you know, I'm a mental health professional. I'm supposed to have all my stuff together. Yeah, just like I'm a pastor, I'm supposed to never. Yeah, never, you know. I'm not putting a hole in the wall to set that still up tonight. You you get mad and you say, Oh, let me pray for you, you know?

SPEAKER_02 1:49:34

Yeah, yes, yes. Um, so that's first thing I'd say is if you're struggling, you gotta let it out there. Uh sins like mushrooms, it grows real good and darkening crap. Put a little bit of light to mushrooms and some good fertilizer for some good soil, yeah, they die. Yeah. That's a sin. You get around good soil, put it in the light, it dies. Surround yourself with people that aren't going to judge you and they're going to love you. Yeah. Yeah. Be very picky of who you let in. I said Jesus had 12 disciples, but he relied on three.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:11

So find yourself three people that aren't going to judge you. And then make sure that they're the ones that are going to call you on your stuff before they side with you. That's what I like about you. Because I think I could call and say, you know what? I am so mad at Lori. She did this, she did this, she did this. And your response is going to be something along the line of and did you love her like Christ did? What? So you know what you got to do, right? Do you like them? Do you like them? Yeah. I mean, and that's that's the thing. You want to surround yourself with people who's going to call you on your side, your stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:48

Not just side with you, Rika. You're my friend. Like I can go to the bar and find someone to side with me. All I gotta do is buy them a beer.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:54

Nobody does any good for you if you if they're for you with everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:57

And don't be afraid to try it. If if you think you need to go down and and talk to someone at Ambio, reach out. I'll talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:04

I I told someone the other day I'll go talk to anyone about my experience. And they have a uh a website that you can put it in the down in the notes. Ambiole Life Science is the name of it. I think it's Ambiolife.com.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:18

Okay, we'll get it for sure and we'll put it down below in the description. I'll make sure you and a lot of the people that work there are Christians. You know, so it's it's sort of weird, but a lot of them work there are Christians. Mexican Christian, however that means. Is it can it be there for not American? I don't know. So you know, but yeah, it's I think that's my biggest thing. And dig. Yeah, if anything I'd learn, dig. Dig deeper to God because He'll give you anything and everything. May not be in your timing, may not be how you see fit. Yeah. But usually not. Sometimes, you know, would Garth Brooks say, thank God for unanswered prayers. You know, yes, yeah, it's the smartest thing, the only smart thing that I said. I need but um and that's that's what it is. Because at the end of the day, it's all his will. That's what it hit me up. You know, we're going through this cancer thing. My wife's gonna be healed. She's either gonna go in Tuesday, no, Friday, next Friday, and they're gonna say, you know what, everything's gone. We're not gonna do anything. She's gonna go in and have surgery, and they're gonna do a bilateral misceptomy, and it's gonna be gone. And she's gonna need to be healed, or she's gonna die. I pray it's not the last one. But that's a form of healing. And it's up to me to trust God's judgment on it. Am I I still have my backup plan of selling everything by a fifth will put my R in it and bail it as she dies. But I don't think God's gonna do that. Because as long as we walk in the faith and glory that he gives us, this is gonna be a testimony to his goodness. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:22

And honestly, it made me cry. Huh? Three times troubles may like when talking about, you know, if if our life truly belongs to God, whatever he decides, whether it's hard or whether it's not, it's his business. Like when we ended up going in, you know, kind of accepting the call of ministry, and my first thought was, what about my son? He lives two hours away from me now. Ministry can move you anywhere. Like, I'm every time my dad moved churches, it was to a different state. That was only three times when I was growing up, but still, it's a big move for a little kid. And the uh sixth grader going to the seventh grade was the last move to Texas. And so I'm thinking in my head, like, okay, if we're gonna start going through our exhorters and and get ordained and all this stuff, like who knows where we're gonna go, and I won't get to see my son grow up, even more than I already ruined, you know, when he was real little. But I told God, I said, you know, whatever whatever you required me, I'll do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:29

The one I had to learn was pray for healing, pray for peace, honor. But to end it with and your will be done. Yeah, it's a hard statement to make. Yeah. But I know ultimately God's will will prevail.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:50

I just wish you'd get an email and tell me what it is. Like a whole list of stuff in the past five years or something, though. So what to expect? What's coming up in your new year? That'd be nice, but that's that's that's what I I got out of the Bubble Mexico thing was him.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:07

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:08

I appreciate you coming on and share. No problem. Enjoy your Reese's, don't share them. Hey, nobody don't know I have them in this house. I got the vanilla ice cream. I'm gonna wait.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:19

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:21

Thank you.

Resources And Final Convictions

SPEAKER_00 1:55:22

And if you're watching right now, you made it to the end. Uh, you can look down in the description. You can see uh any so we list everywhere we you can listen to podcasts, whether it's Spotify or Apple podcast, and then the website that Bill mentioned that you can go research and find out. Maybe this is right up your alley, and you need to uh dive deep and kind of research it on your own and seeing what the stuff is about. But stick to your I say this to everybody, stick to your convictions. If you feel you shouldn't do it, don't do it. Nope. If you feel you should, do it. Dive in at first and know that just like Bill said, that the Lord has you and He will protect you uh and He will keep you. If you belong to Him, you will be protected. Thank y'all, and we will see you on the next one.