God, Source, or The Force: Coaching Spirituality Regardless of Religion

 Most men have a complicated relationship with God, whether religion was rammed down their throat as a kid, they walked away and never looked back, or they're still out there searching for something they can't quite name. 

None of that matters here.

Dennis Procopio (The Bro Coach®) and fellow coach Charles Ledbetter open up about their own wild spiritual backgrounds: Catholic altars, Black churches, ashrams, and 12-step rooms. All of it points to the same truth: you were never actually separated from source to begin with.

This episode gets into how Dennis coaches men of every belief system (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, agnostic, and everything in between) without stepping on anyone's toes. The goal isn't to validate your religion or tear it down. 

It's to keep you from having an existential crisis when something in you says, "I think there's more than this." Because there is. And it's already inside you.

Also: Schrödinger's cat, the Tower of Babel, pizza slices, and why "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" might be the most profound piece of spiritual wisdom ever written.

TIMESTAMPS 

0:00 - What Is Spirituality? Setting the Frame 

1:24 - Charles: Growing Up With No Religion 

7:00 - Dennis: From Catholic Altar Boy to Ashrams 

13:00 - Turning Inward to Survive Chaos 

20:47 - Science Is a Belief System Too 

26:43 - Schrödinger's Cat and the Observer Effect 

30:13 - Speaking Every Man's Spiritual Language 

36:16 - God, Allah, Hashem, Source: Same Thing 

47:22 - Thermostats vs. Thermometers 

51:22 - We Are All Slices of the Same Pizza 

55:10 - Believing You're Separated From Source Is Hell 

58:31 - Row Your Boat: The Nursery Rhyme That Explains Everything

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Why Dennis coaches men of every faith without pushing his own
• How science and spirituality describe the same thing in different languages
• What it means to feel disconnected from source, and why you can never permanently be
• How to find the spiritual common ground beneath any man's belief system
• Why the most devout men are also the least threatened by other beliefs

THIS HITS IF YOU'RE

• Spiritually curious but burned by religion
• An agnostic or atheist who still senses there's something more
• A man of faith who wants to grow without abandoning what you believe
• Done with dogma but not done with the search

TAKE ACTION Free 30-minute strategy session: https://www.manuplifecoaching.com/application

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ABOUT THE SHOW The Bro Coach® Podcast with Dennis Procopio. Not red-pill garbage. Not therapy. Real coaching for guys who achieved success but missed the point. Dennis has 25,000+ hours working with high-earning men ($150K to $3M+) who look successful but feel stuck.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Most men want more, more clarity, more respect, more control over their lives, but few know how to get it. Welcome to the Bro Coach Podcast with Dennis Procopio, the founder of Man Up Life Coaching and the man behind thousands of transformed lives. Not red pill, not therapy, just the evolved man's blueprint for strength, presence, and purpose.

SPEAKER_04 0:23

Good morning. You are here with the BroCoach. I am Dennis Procopio. I'm here with my friend and fellow coach Charles Ledbetter. And today on the Bro Coach Podcast, we are going to be discussing spirituality. What is it? Now, as you know, there are lots of different guys out there in the world who uh practice all different belief systems ranging from uh Christianity, uh Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, uh, you name it, there's a lot of different paths to uh to the source, right? Sure. And uh today we're gonna be talking about how to coach uh when all those different guys are coming in with uh different belief systems and how to do it without stepping on anybody's toes.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Charles, uh, welcome to the show, man. Hey, glad to see you, man. Excited to be here today. This is a great topic, yes, sir.

SPEAKER_04 1:30

So, Charles, in your experience, uh, first of all, just out of curiosity, what traditions were you raised with?

SPEAKER_02 1:37

So I was not raised in any particular tradition. I remember being, I think I was maybe around 11 years old, 11 or 12 years old, where I heard kids talking about God at school. And I was like, what's God? Like I didn't even have a concept, right? So I came home and I remember asking my mom, I was like, I heard kids talking about like God. What do we believe? And she was like, Hell, I don't know. I just figured you'd figure it out on your shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't uh grow up particularly churt or really influence it. Just kind of I took information from the world and learned what I could. Uh, today I follow a path because I'm from Buminat, Alabama, that tends to be, you know, more of a Dixie fan uh Christian uh follower of Jesus kind of focus. That's my vernacular and what makes sense, and and I have my own experiences for why I love that. But the irony is my first life coach ever uh was Faisal, who you love dearly, uh who we both love dearly. Um he follows a little Muslim faith, right? And he was able to communicate to a while uh forward in my life to draw me inward, connect uh with God and with source in a way that didn't violate my conscience or my beliefs at all, right? That's why I thought today was such a powerful thing to talk to with God because I think lots of guys have been programmed a certain way, and they have certain beliefs that might be helping them about spirituality and certain ones that are probably limiting them as well.

SPEAKER_04 3:28

Sure, that's uh that's a good point. Um I uh I like the piece where you say that so where were you? So you're originally from Birmingham, Alabama, or that's where you landed?

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Well, so I'm from Alabama, I'm from further south originally, you know, the shores, Alabama, Mobile, that whole area.

SPEAKER_04 3:49

Oh yeah, I know that whole area. I I spent plenty of time in New Orleans, and uh y'all were always on the on the on the on the list for getting hit when the hurricane was coming in. So we were always we had the Sisters of Mercy over there praying that the hurricane would go your way. Um send it to Pensacola band. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Yeah. Mardi Gras and a whole bunch of them. Yeah, we're gonna, you know.

SPEAKER_04 4:21

Yes, sir. There's a whole uh there's a whole, you know, there's a whole there's a whole uh conversation there um about how you know Catholicism um came to the area and affected uh the culture. That's why that Mardi Gras thing is there. Fat you know, fat Tuesday is the day of you know, doing all the stuff you're not supposed to do, so that when Ash Wednesday comes, uh you're all holy and pious. That's right. So so you grew up there, but your mom didn't have necessarily a uh didn't take a direction with you spiritually.

SPEAKER_02 5:05

No, I they were typically liberal leaning, right? And and from a much more uh we're just kind of open to everything vibes, right? Which I learned seen brilliant viewpoints from that. There's also some things that, like, man, I wish that I kind of I wish they'd steered me in some direction, you know, and giving me some type of boundaries within to play because to me I found do we wall with boundary, right? Structure, structure, architecture of some sort. Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, so so yeah, it was an interesting experience. Like I said, really great parts to it, but there were certain parts that um that I'm learning now to to value some guidance and to I used to be in these super reserve and judgmental over religious people, period, right? I don't care who you were, Christian, Muslim, whatever, you know, I I thought you were all hypocrites, and I don't want to hear shit you had to say. That was part of my I become so hyper open-minded that I was actually entirely closed off uh to thousands of years of affected tradition and and teaching, right? And I just judged other people for that. What happened though as I got older, I learned um to accept wisdom in all its forms, right? And not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

SPEAKER_04 6:46

Yeah, that's that's that's good stuff. Um, so I'll share a little bit about my my uh you know experience coming up to sort of balance out you know what I'm bringing to the table in terms of spirituality. So when I was a kid, uh first of all, I was born um ethnically Jewish on the mother's side, and uh that's a real complicated conversation because I um I I have a hard time taking any sort of ownership of anything uh Jewish since I wasn't raised in that tradition. It's just a it's a fact, like being, you know, born with blue eyes or blonde hair or something. I was my mom was ethnically Jewish. Um, she, however, was um sort of abandoned her Jewish family and its traditions and was raised by her mother to be Catholic. Um this wasn't by accident, this was an absolute um renouncement of the real of the cultural practices and religious practices of the my Jewish family by my grandmother, um, which then was uh those sentiments were passed on to my mom. So there was some uh hostility toward the Jewish family and Judaism. My father was a Roman Catholic, um, you know, South Philly Italian. Right. And so you know yeah, so I get that bad. Yeah, so so we um so I was baptized Catholic, um confirmation, I was an older boy, went to Catholic school, all that, and as a kid I would you know try to ask questions about what this whole father, son, holy spirit stuff is and all that. Now my mom would go on to become quite the seeker. She was super young, she had me at like 19, so people thought we were brother and sister more than um mother and son. And uh so it was the it was the 70s, so she's dragging me to every ashram, you know, learning about you know, we're with you know, we were at the Hare Krishna's for a minute, we were um learning about you know Islam, learning about uh Zoroastrianism, all this stuff. Then we somehow landed in um Church of God in Christ. Now, Church of God in Christ is a is a black church, yeah. Um and in the 70s that's quite a story art.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

That's hard. Yeah, fact.

SPEAKER_04 10:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so my mom, I guess I now's the time to introduce the idea that my mother and my grandmother both had some severe clinical conditions, including, you know, bipolarism and uh uh schizophrenia and autism and all kinds of like there was a laundry list of clinical conditions. Sure. And it it tends to be a symptom of um, you know, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia or some of these others to become uh super hyperfixated on religious ideologies and thinking that you're the you're the one and that God's just talking to you and that you're on some special mission on earth. Who else? And uh and so a big part of my of my experience learning about religion was watching my mom kind of whack out and like we're the only white people in a historically black church in North Philadelphia, sure, you know, the um deliverance evangelistic church of God in Christ on North Broad Street um during the time that Pastor Benjamin Smith was residing, and we're in there in a church during the time that you know um Frank Rizzo from you know an Italian-American hero in South Philadelphia is literally bombing black neighborhoods. And here we are, you know, my mom with a brand new tambourine planned so badly that people had to take it literally take it out of her hand. This is a this is a true story, bro. This is a true story hock and we're falling out in the spirit and like we were, we were, we were absolutely absolutely in it, in it, in it. Nice, and um so so later when I would when I would move on from our sort of accidental black experience to um to trying to rationalize for myself what what God was, I want to say that there were moments in my childhood which were so intense and insane that I did my own work, not because I was motivated, but but because I was just trying not to die.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 13:10

I did my own work to sort of gnaw inward toward a safe space and to avoid the terror that was surrounding me. And I had the kind of personal experience that leads a person to say, I think there's more than this, and I understand now why these systems are in place. Yeah. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 13:41

Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense for sure. And I think that you know, I don't know if you agree with your experience. It sounds like there might be something similar, but going back to like there was some parts of it that were incredibly weird and incredibly confusing, right? With all this exploration in our youth, but there were parts of it that were amazing that served me well. And it's just it this long process of self-actualization and coming closer to something that none of us have good enough words to describe, right? So, like part of the journey for me, like my mom didn't necessarily talk to me about God, but like when I was having some trouble, my dad went to prison, I was kind of a wreck emotionally in school. She sent me to a therapist who uh practiced self-hypnosis, and so actually taught me self-hypnosis, which is essentially meditation, right?

SPEAKER_04 14:50

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

So we would go into entire sessions and never say a word. Literally, we would meditate a quarter hour and go, okay, see you next week, you know? Yeah, for sure. And so, like, I'm so grateful for that experience, right? Most uh Christian moms wouldn't be they'd consider that woo-wee will fringe, or you know what I mean? And I wouldn't have had the freedom to explore certain things like that. On the flip side, though, you know, in my exploration, I ended up in a condo with a bunch of holy rollers on the beach, and they're standing in the circle, and somebody's praying over them and popping them on the head, and everybody's falling down on the floor, and I'm like, oh shit, all right, that's coming up on me, I guess. So I just do what he else did. I just wait on the fucking floor and clean my plants. But I was like, not going back there. Um it's just so it's a wild ride, you know, figuring this whole God thing out.

SPEAKER_04 15:52

For sure. Um, yeah, there is a there is there is overlap there indeed. I I like the piece where you uh talked about the you know that there were some good things that you that you got out of it. What for me I think was hard to separate, and maybe you'll find this true as well, is there is a certain uh piety that you'll recognize in a community of people who are practicing um self-restraint in areas where we might otherwise be indiscriminately indulgent. Yes, um, because the Bible said so, or because God said so, or you know, Jews who are you know forbidden to eat certain foods, or sure, you know, same with Muslims that you know keeping kosher or halal, um there's this idea that just because you can doesn't mean you should. And when you see Mormons, Mormons are a great example. Like if you've ever known a Mormon family, they're like super fun and like they're the epitome of what you would think of as like normal. Like if you you know, watch TV and are like I would, you know, you're some little screwed up kid, uh, and like I want to be like the normal people, they're like like super normal, and you're like, oh man, this is like I want to like live like this, whatever this is. And they're like, Okay, well, you know, there's just some we're gonna give you some literature to read, and then you start reading your literature and you start scratching your head and going, Well, I don't know that I could seriously subscribe to some of this ideology, but this family seems so cool, and I want to be down with this.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

Yeah, do you know what I'm saying? 100% my it is literally my wife's family. Oh, for real? Oh, dude, complete polar opposites, right? So, like, we grew up kind of liberal, even though I'm whatever, I'm more in the middle now, if anything, more conservative or libertarian. But like, we grew up, yeah. We grew up super liberal, loud as fuck. We fought, dude. Like, we fought each other, we fought the world, like we are something's on your mind, fucking sing it from your chest, what you know what I mean? Like, that was us, right?

SPEAKER_04 18:34

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

Her family are the meekest, most respectful, most communal, thoughtful of everyone around them. Like, there is no outstanding personality. Everyone's opinion is weighed on every decision, period, and we'll wait to make a decision until we come to a consensus, right? So it's they are peaceful, they're it's raising voices, like it does not happen, and so it's it could just so I sit in that environment, and to me, I'm just like, they're so tiny and nice and loving and respectful towards each other. And even though I love me and I found a lot of value in parts of where I came from, it's almost like therapy sitting in a group. Just all are amazing. Yes, and it's like it's like being at a zoo and that's gonna pull some their natural habitat, and you're like it's gorgeous.

SPEAKER_04 19:44

Look at that, it's what yeah, man, and I I totally understand that, but then you come to find out, of course, you know, as I'm sure you realize, that that um what seems on the outside like equanimity kind of comes at a cost, and it's yeah, it's the idea that you don't speak from your chest, yeah. And what can happen as a result of that. I mean, we deal with that in coaching, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:15

You so nailed it, Dennis. Yeah, that's exactly right, man.

SPEAKER_04 20:19

Right. So um one of the one of the things that I think we can we can say about spirituality is that it's looking at the physical world in a way that is different than assuming that it's physical. Now that's a weird statement, so I'll just kind of say it again just so it doesn't get lost in the sauce.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

Yeah, good idea.

SPEAKER_04 20:54

We live in a world that operates according to the idea that physics is the blueprint for how life mechanically works. That's why if somebody tells you that they are a you know, a PhD, you know, physicist working at a high level, like NASA or you know, they're an MIT grad and now they're a professor or whatever, we tend to have the same reverie for them as we would for like a shaman because they are the shaman of the belief system of science.

SPEAKER_03 21:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:46

Yeah. We don't understand it, but they understand it and we trust their understanding.

SPEAKER_03 21:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:55

And their understanding gets results. Yeah. You see a whole lot of math on a page that you don't understand, but next thing you know, there's you know a rocket going into space and then coming back and you know, getting caught by some big lick, you know, big mechanical chopsticks, and you're like, how did you do that? And they're like, Physics. Yeah, okay, well, sh shit, you know, all right, you're on the you're on to something, you know, right on, right?

SPEAKER_02 22:28

So it's so funny because if you changed your terminology by the literally said everything else the same and just changed your nouns in there, I could have equally ran a religious commentary, right? Yeah, I mean every ounce of it, right? The faith that's required, the ability to foresee circumstances, right? The like all just beginning to end. So it's great exam.

SPEAKER_04 22:57

Great example, right, and yet we all somehow understand at some visceral level. You might not you might not know that you know this, and that's where I kind of like to kick away at somebody's belief system a little bit. Yes, physics is accurate until it isn't. I mean, let's be honest, you know, if we look at history, we were cool with the idea that the you know, sun moved around the earth. Right. Yeah. Until we weren't. Right. And then when that changed, you know, you have this Copernican revolution that changes all the books. Oh, well, I guess all of a sudden Pluto's not a planet anymore. All right, well, let's just double back and you know, um retroactively rewrite everything that we know. So it's kind of like we're solving a crossword puzzle. We, you know, erase out the that part and then fill it in, and that's how we learn, and that's how we grow. Yes. And in theory, we never let our pride um get ahead of our desire for truth. However, there are still people who are very staunch and conservative in their beliefs in science. And so when radical ideas come along, they're met with they're met with skepticism, and they're also met with pride because some of the people who have made a name for themselves standing, you know, on this hill that they're willing to die on, don't suddenly want to be dethroned. So I point that out only to say that physics uh is great, but it's always changing our our our understanding of how things work. I remember going to the um, you know, when I was a kid in Philadelphia, I remember going to the um Frank Franklin Institute, which was sort of a science and technology deal. Right. And at that time, that represented sort of the epitome of scientific knowledge, and the model for an atom was the old school 1950s nucleus with a bunch of uh electrons and you know, protons or whatever kind of spinning around it. That and there was literally a physical model that showed you like atoms colliding and creating molecules. That explanation has since been deprecated because the reality is because of quantum physics, we understand, or using quantum physics as an explanation, we understand that if we're really going to take a snapshot to examine particle, then we don't get to see wavelength. You can't have both. And so we don't really know where the nucleus is at any given time. So we just draw an empty space and we draw a probability field of um of electrons and protons around it, saying this is where they'll probably be. Now, not to get too science-y, but the famous Schrdinger's paradox cat paradox basically says that if you take the idea of this probability thing, and you take a um whatever, a and put an atom in a in a cathode ray that's supposed to release uh an electron at a rate of one per hour, that's random. If it releases the electron, then it triggers something that kills the cat. If it doesn't, because it's you know, it's a probability, it's not a it's not a clock, uh, then the cat stays alive. So the what makes this um uh what makes this experiment critically important to science is that it factors in the observer. So the observer looks at an opaque box, and at the end of an hour, either the atom has released an electron or it hasn't, which means that either there is a live cat or a dead cat. Because we don't know until we look in the box, it's scientifically reasonable to say that there is both a live cat and a dead cat, and that the potential for both exists until you observe it. Observe it. So, how does this play back into spirituality? Well, when you have squirreliness like that in physics, it leads us to imagine that physics is contained within a container, which we call metaphysics. And metaphysics is where scientists and you know spiritual savants start to look a lot more similar than different. Right now, what do you what do you think about that?

SPEAKER_02 28:40

Oh no, I love it. I'm tracking with everything you're saying. And I another example is the double slit experiment, all right? Yeah, where they they fire electrons at a at a yell, essentially, and whether or not someone's observing depends on whether they act like articles or waves, right?

SPEAKER_04 29:00

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

And so they even tried to trick the electrons by pretending they were watching, but really watching, and it still affected the experiment, like the electrons, you know, as soon as the electrons discovered they were watching, they behaved in a different pattern, right? So it it's it's fascinating to understand that there are these hard and fast observable accepted rules about religion and life and science, but then there's also this weird freaking magic in the middle that all of a sudden all the things that we thought about science that were proving religion wrong, when we get into this world of metaphysics, and we start to realize they're really describing each other in different language, and all of a sudden, one is just proving the other, right? That's right. Um, and so I find that very exciting and youthful for my own personal experience, uh, and growing as well, right? Because again, when when I coach, we all have a bias and we all have a language that we speak in that we're comfortable, right? That's right. Yep, and so I can with a clear conscience find a man's language and speak to him in his language so that he can understand what I'm saying and receive the same principles, the same ancient wisdom, the same science, the same process, the same, you know, ability to test it and to fleece it and uh the same result, right? But in a way that's digestible forms.

SPEAKER_04 30:54

That's right. That's right. Before I get into, and I think that's an important vertical, but before I get into that, I'm gonna stay in the what the hell are these two on about pocket for a second. Well, yeah, and I'm gonna say just to give it order. So we first talked about a couple of guys who grew up as kids with a certain amount of exposure to religious ideology. Right. Um I in I in my life, for instance, would go on to study a lot. Like I was sort of an accidental theology student just because you know, I wanted to know what like what I was very much a seeker. What is it? Yeah, what is it? And I learned more than the average Joe about a lot of different religions that I wouldn't otherwise, you know, come in contact with. And that culturally we create different names and systems and conventions as a way of rationalizing that something for ourselves, and then if you could be open-minded enough to see the similarities between these different cultural rappers rather than get into wars over the differences, which is ironic, sure, um, then I might be kind of on to something in terms of establishing a practice for myself that not only allows me to experience peace and wisdom, but allows me to communicate with anyone regardless of their cultural rapper, such that I'm able to relate to them rather than get into arguments about dogmatic differences. Yeah?

SPEAKER_00 33:39

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SPEAKER_02 34:09

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, man. There's a principle, and so one of the places that impacted my spirituality as I grew up is when I was getting sober initially, I went to 12-step meetings, right? And so they have a tradition in there that their program is based on attraction rather than promotion. And just that simple principle of attraction rather than promotion sums up for me what I was just hearing you say, right? So it's like hopefully the superiority and the efficacy of my beliefs or or my system can go through in a way that's appealing and that's attractive, right? That's somebody sees it and they go, oh wow, that rings true, right? As opposed to us having to go, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, right? And come across in this way that attacks their beliefs and doesn't give them freedom to make their own decisions. But instead, it's, you know, the love and the charisma and the emotional intelligence, right? And the the results that my system actually shows through in me can draw them in, right? And and give them something that they get to make they get empowered instead of stealing their power and telling them you have to believe exactly as I believe, right?

SPEAKER_04 35:44

Right, right. Definitely. Um that's where I think getting back to the idea that in the very beginning, you know, I was saying that I think it's fair to recognize that source, whether you're calling source God, whether you're calling source Allah, whether you're calling source Hashem, whether you're calling source the Buddha, and you know, I can do this all day, um I think it's fair to recognize that if we say that spiritual means non-physical or even pre-physical. Yeah, right? Yeah, if if we say that source is non-physical, then uh okay, what is it? So I'm gonna get on a little bit of a diatribe here, and I'm gonna say that I don't think it's an accident that the world accepts Einstein as the smartest man in the world because he came up with a tidy little formula that helps us to imagine we can define energy. Right. It doesn't actually define energy, it just says energy is equal to matter times light squared. It doesn't say, you know, what it is, right? But it's enough of an answer for us to go, okay, we pretty much got it. Let's move on. So somebody who's touted as the smartest guy to ever walk the face of the earth, you know, tells us that energy equals some shit. And we're like, okay, sounds good. They so the priests of science know what energy is, so that's good enough. I don't because uh I don't know math or whatever, but that's not really, you know, that doesn't really land for me, right? So you're telling me that everything in the universe is in vibration, and that's a fact. If you look at the periodic table of the elements, and you look at, you know, all of these different building blocks of our physical world, they're all made of something that vibrates at a certain frequency, and the rate of that frequency is a part of that element's identity and its physical characteristics, and for that matter, there is nothing perceivable that doesn't have an energetic charge and that doesn't vibrate, yeah. So if you just sit with that idea for a second, that's really a lot deeper than it sounds. We're saying there is no such thing as stillness in our perceivable universe, and yet we also say that the secret to understanding the universe is to practice stillness, sure, which is meditation or prayer, yeah. And we begin to get to the idea that vibration without something to vibrate, vibration without particle, vibration that is vibration itself, which is a very tricky concept to wrap your head around, because you're basically saying, except that there's a verb, but there are no nouns that are verbing, right? You're like, well, wait a minute, that's not how I was taught the thing.

SPEAKER_02 39:48

Ow, ow. Right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_04 39:54

But if we can pull all the way into the idea that energy is vibration, period, and that that is vibration with no matter per se, just vibration itself, we start to understand that vibration has its own sort of rules. There's, you know, there's science that demonstrates that if you put five pendulum clocks in a room together that are asynchronous, they will eventually all synchronize and swing at the same rate, you know, because they will vibrationally sort of tune themselves. Put five women into a college dormitory together, and their menstrual cycles will all eventually coordinate and synchronize. So this idea of vibrational synchronicity is proven, it's a thing. And anytime we get into a church-like experience, when we are huckabucking and when we are in the spirit, and we are when we are looking around, having that freaky sort of existential moment where it feels like you're like lifting out of your body a little bit, it's because a number of sentient beings are all vibing, synchronous and vibing. They're vibing, like for real, right?

SPEAKER_02 41:34

Yeah, absolutely, man.

SPEAKER_04 41:36

And so what is world peace? But total harmony, sure, absolute harmony, sure. Now the problem with that is it also sounds like communism. Yeah, think about it.

SPEAKER_02 41:58

Oh, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_04 42:00

We celebrate individuality, we we champion the one who says, I'm gonna be different. You know, Frank Sinatra said, I did it my way. It's like, oh, what a hero. What a stud. He didn't he didn't go with the flow, he did it his own way.

SPEAKER_02 42:15

Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:16

So spiritually, we are trying to achieve um vibrational harmony, and yet socially we stay distracted.

SPEAKER_02 42:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:36

What are your thoughts on that? I know I just took it into the weirder. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

You you articulated a scientific and sophisticated concept so well, and that's why at the end there, because I was already seeing it in my head, I was like, this is this beautiful way that is granular to explain what's happening, and then the dumb beach boy is like, you know, the vibes are good, but that's we're that's what we're saying, right? Like, that's it, and it can communicate it, it's the same concept, and we get it on a fundamental language, it's just everybody doesn't have the same words for it. Everybody's got this unique way of trying to explain the thing according to their programming and their vernacular, and so as you were describing that, I'm sitting there going, yeah, okay, that's exactly the way it goes. We're trying to harmonize vibrationally, right? Can't can we do that if we almost do away with the language component, right? So, like there's people that we interact with. With right, then I might say, Oh, that guy, dude, that guy's good vibes. Love that guy, right? And then the next guy might go, oh, he's full of the Holy Spirit. You know what I mean? And then the next guy might go, Oh, that guy is one with his higher self, right? And then the next guy might have a different description of the exact same thing, but it's all the same thing.

SPEAKER_04 44:23

Right. You know it when you see it, right?

SPEAKER_02 44:25

Right, yeah. And it's something that's almost easier experienced than it is described.

SPEAKER_04 44:31

Right. So that's where I appreciate. Um it you will hear me draw from the Quran, from the Bible, uh, from the Torah. You will hear me pull from a lot of different uh religious doctrines, not because I believe in it, but because I believe that it points to these are rungs on the ladder, but you eventually have to abandon the ladder. Sure. And I think that's the final jump off. Um, you know, and uh so for instance, in the for people who are familiar with the Bible, you know about the Tower of Babel, um, which we often say Tower of Babel, right? But the Tower of Babel, which is that you know, there's a story about you know, you know, the the people wanting to make a tower that reached all the way to the heavens, and God recognized this as a um a proud endeavor in which the people were trying to be God, um, and so rendered them such that everyone was speaking different languages so that they couldn't communicate with each other, they couldn't coordinate, and they couldn't get it done. So when we talk about a bunch of different people saying a bunch of different things in a bunch of different ways, and that preventing us from coordinating, for me, that's a real handy little uh story to say, yeah, well, when everybody comes in speaking different languages, that's necessarily gonna throw us off our game. Um where I want to take this, however, keeping an eye on the time, is uh you said it yourself when you said whether the language is that that guy's in the Holy Spirit, or the language is that that guy is um found peace or been saved, or um, you know, has achieved enlightenment or um has found his higher self or however you put it, no matter what language you use, you know what it feels like. You know what it is. When we coach, um there it's very it's it's very important, and I'm gonna say this really like this whole I know this whole thing that I'm saying, this whole thing we're doing here, you know, the bro coach is supposed to be a feeder for for uh for man up life coaching, and like I'm like, okay, well, how many Jews did I just lose, or how many Christians did I just lose, or how many Muslims did I just lose because of some of the stuff that I'm saying? But if you show me who is somebody who is such a devout practitioner of their faith that they get to the aha moment of their religion, these are the people who no longer duke it out over dogmatic differences, these are the people who recognize each other as saints.

SPEAKER_02 48:24

They become thermostats and not thermometers.

SPEAKER_04 48:27

Yeah, that's a really good way to put that, right?

SPEAKER_02 48:29

So, like it makes me think of we're talking about this vibe and then the ability to harmonize, right? Well, that can be a positive harmony, but it can also be a negative harmony, right? The mob mentality, you'll see it happen all the time, all throughout the world, right? One person starts acting like an asshole, and then you got a yang- and then you got all of a sudden now you've got five people ganging up on one about something insignificant, right? And so that harmony can work in either direction, but I agree with you. The most spiritual people who usually do have a particular religious devotion, they become unthreatened by those energies, by those vibes, right? They've reached a place where they're so autonomous and so connected to where all of a sudden you're allowed to have whatever beliefs you desire. It doesn't threaten their sense of identity, it doesn't threaten that they know where they're going and they know who they are, right? They know what their value is, they don't need you to believe what they believe, right? And those are usually the exact people who can be the most influential, right? They will come in and they will change the temperature in a room, no matter what's going on, right? Those are the people who walk in in power and authority and influence, and it's most often not coming from these common characters of that oneness that they've created with their spirits, right? The love and the peace and the patience and the strength and the resolve and all those kind of things that they've just tapped right into the source of all that power, so it's they don't give it away.

SPEAKER_04 50:25

That's right, that's right. Now, for all the people who would listen and say and say, you know, you have to be careful not to imagine that you know, when when when this guy says that they're autonomous, that that means that they think of themselves as sort of uh a god because that's that's problematic. Um one of the things that I like to point out is, and my um analogy is kind of just like a big pizza. Now stay with me on this, it's gonna be pretty bonehead simple, but at the same time, hopefully profound. You take a pizza and you cut it up into a whole, into let's just say eight slices, right?

unknown 51:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:22

So now every single one of those slices is gonna be unique. You know, one's got the pepperoni in the middle, and one's got the, you know, the half-cut pepperoni on the edge, and one's got three pepperonis, and one's got five pepperonis. So now if you take all those slices and you separate far enough from each other that every single slice is not near another slice, you know, it's harder for the individual slices of pizza to think of themselves as a collective. We are a pizza. They think of themselves as I'm slice number one, I'm slice number two, I'm slice number three. And they might even group together based on their perceived similarity. You know, oh, we're the we're the pepperoni in the center piece, well, we're the edge pepperoni pieces, and uh, whatever, you know. Yeah, we're the we're the 30, 60, 90 triangles, and we're the you know, you know, you know, my my point is a good I get it.

SPEAKER_02 52:23

I'm trying.

SPEAKER_04 52:24

Yeah, that that that each individual slice is gonna think of itself if you think of yourself as individual slices, you're thinking in terms of what makes you dissimilar rather than your commonality. No, yeah, your commonality is you're a pizza. No, and uh what we are right now is there's so much there seems to be in this physical experiment that we're uh that we're uh that we're obviously in, there seems to be so much distance between the slices. Yeah, that's what time and space uh does is it is very effective in convincing you that you are separated from your source and that you are uh terrifyingly autonomous. You've convinced yourself that you're able to be separated from the source. The reason that we have faith is because we have faith that even though I can't see it, I know that as one slice, I'm not just hovering alone out here, I'm part of a whole. Right? And the way I have perceived that this works in the short period of time that I've been here is that that whole is not divisible. The idea that we are cut apart is a fiction because if we go back to energy, how is energy separated from itself? How is why would energy how does energy hurt itself? That doesn't make any sense. So what we're dealing with isn't actually anything that's foundationally good or bad, it's something that's locally and situationally perceived as good or bad because we believe that we're capable of being separated from our source. It's exactly our individuality, yeah, which we're here to experience that also gives us suffering, gives us fear, gives us uncertainty, gives us doubt. And the gospel, as it were, or the good news, yeah, literally, is that you're able to fear separation, yeah, but you're not able to actually be separated. So don't trip.

SPEAKER_03 55:03

Yeah, cannot I was gonna say can I get an amen on that, right?

SPEAKER_02 55:12

Yeah, well, that's it. It's the experience of heaven or hell, right? And it's like we get it's so easy to believe for me when I get into and I still it still happens occasionally, right? To a much smaller degree than ever before in my entire life, but every now and then I convince myself, or you know, some outside outside influence tries to convince me that I'm separated from God somehow, and that experience is hell. That's it. A moment of believing I'm disconnected from source is the most terrible, horrific suffering um I can imagine and have experienced ever. And it it happens like that, and when you're in it, it feels eternal. Like you can't remember who it's and you don't feel like it's ever gonna end. You are 100% in that moment, it is hell, but the vice versa, right? The the opposite's true, right? That one moment we're like, oh shit, I'm connected and can't be separated. There's as far as the east is from the west, like it I it's gone. I am connected and can never be disconnected. That isn't once you have that revelation, welcome to heaven, brother. That's it.

SPEAKER_04 56:38

That's right, you know, that's right, and yet uh, you know, here in this in this coaching situation that we're in one of the things that I think we're responsible for doing when we reach that understanding. First of all, you have to keep practicing because never be so um arrogant or cocksure as to assume that you can't get baited back into doubting and sucked back into the labyrinth because you know, the matrix, as it were, because you you very much can. Yeah, um, which is why we want to maintain regularly the idea that we are connected to source. So whether it's someone rocking rosary beads, someone making tasbiyah on their on their you know, Muslim prayer beads, um, whether it's a you know Jew saying prayers every day, wrapping the Khalid, whether no matter what the practice is that keeps us connected to source, we need to constantly remind ourselves, you know, like kind of Alice through the looking glass, like this is just a dream. This is just a dream, this is just I always say, I always say that like my my thing is like the whole wisdom of how to get through the world is in the nursery rhyme, row, row, row your boat.

SPEAKER_02 58:19

Really? Yeah. All right, explain that one to me before we're done, because I know we got a couple minutes here, but I gotta know what that is.

SPEAKER_04 58:30

So listen. So, first of all, it it doesn't hurt that the boat itself is a Vesa Capis, which is the Amundine shape that it shows up in sacred geometry where you have um two circles which intersect such that each side goes through the center, you get the Amundine shape. And that Amundine shape is often associated with Jesus, it's associated with birth. It's a pretty it's a pretty interesting little symbol to check into. But anyway, when we say row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. If you really think about that, that is exactly how a wise person plays this life.

SPEAKER_03 59:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:21

I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but yeah, so so man up life coaching says row your little boat down the stream and be merry and keep your keep your butt out of trouble. You don't start no shit, there won't be no shit. Don't rock the boat.

SPEAKER_02 59:39

That's good.

SPEAKER_04 59:40

And and our job when we work with guys isn't to validate their religion, it's to keep them from having existential crisis when something in them says, I think there's more than this. Yeah, the good news is there is more than this, it's rooted in brotherly love, yeah, and that's where this whole broach thing came from that I'm a brother. All men are brothers, yeah. We are slices of pizza, but we're also the whole pizza, and I don't care if your pizza's longer than my pizza or whatever, we're all part of the same thing. And when we come together in love, in trust, in strength, and we harmonize in a way that recognizes right from wrong, because everybody has that in your heart. You know, kids know, animals know. Yeah, and when you support the ideology that no matter how different we are, we can always find common ground through through love, through grace, and with the intent to incorporate rather than to separate, then the the the Holy Spirit or the chi or the divine energy, um, the force will will work with you to help move you back in that direction from which you technically cannot permanently separate anyway, no matter how hard your stupid ass tries. Yeah. So what do you say, Charles? Did we hit it?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:23

I thought we hit it, man. I enjoyed that thoroughly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:27

All right. Well, let us play, let me play us off the stage. Um, hey, listen, couple of guys sitting around here uh talking about, you know, uh religiosity and spirituality, and like, whoa man, life is deep. And we don't have the answers, but we do what we do have is some really good questions. And here on the Bro Coach Podcast, we believe that uh it takes men to make good men. We love you guys. Um, and if you like what we're uh putting down, I ask you to follow the Bro Coach Podcast. Like, follow, subscribe, because your male contribution is as valuable as any other any other male contribution to this uh decidedly male conversation. Thanks for being with us, and we'll catch you on the next one.