Kseniya - Nomad Alliance

SYK Episode 111 - Kacee - Nomad Alliance

Kacee [00:00:03] And they've always been treated kind of like lepers, like a disease. It is the largest division in our society of any minority group. African-Americans mingle with white people. Those that have a disability mingle with those with fully able bodied. But the unsheltered don't mingle with the sheltered. My friend Kenny, I housed him in a micro house in my backyard. He didn't know one person that was housed. At least this the the very, very poor, the abject poor in New Delhi. They are forced to scatter like cockroaches by the city or the state. They have their own little space. They can build a little ramshackle, little shed with whatever materials they can find. There's walls in the in the slum settlements where they have access to water to wash themselves. But here, it's just tragic how little we care about our own poor. Something's not right with our society right now. My heart really does break for the people who are laying like pulled weeds on the streets and casualty of this experiment. 

Brian [00:01:10] How tightly do we grip our core beliefs and values, and why do we provide any room for intellectual curiosity? How often do we seek to understand individuals and viewpoints that are radically different from our own? How did we come to our version of certain knowledge, and what does it really cost us to consider different perspectives and opinions? These questions make up the backbone of this podcast, and I hope today's conversation pushes us all out of our comfort zone and foregone conclusions. Kacee was born in a country that no longer exists. She came to the United States at eight years old when her mother became a mail order bride. She has a unique perspective on mental health as she has been arrested and held in prison and mental institutions in multiple countries. Kacee also runs a nonprofit called Nomad Alliance that works closely with the homeless population. A talented writer, she talks about the book she is writing, discusses declining empires and leads us in a brief meditation. Also, beginning with this episode, Kacee and I both invite you to join our conversation by posting questions and comments on the new Facebook community page of strangers, you know? What do you want to talk about? Oh, you thought about this a little bit. So what's on your mind? 

Kacee [00:02:19] And a lot. We I run a nonprofit called the Nomad Alliance.And yesterday we had our 48th Nomad Supply Drive, actually, I think It was 49th And where we gave out everything from clothing to hot food to ice cold washcloths in the back of their neck, because it was a really hot day yesterday. And I think that the homeless epidemic might be the human rights crisis of our time. And as a political scientist, I can see the writing on the wall of an empire declining and dwindling. And I think this unfortunate thing is the poorest of the poor are going to be the casualty, the byproduct of a country falling apart. And in political science, we were taught that every modern superpower over the last 500 years has had about a 100 year lifespan and life cycle. So America, the United States has reached its super status. So superpower Superpower status around World War One. And so we're past our expiration date. And I see I see that on the streets. I see the ravages of capitalism and the demonization of those who have nothing. But it's also a mental health crisis, which is something that I would really love to discuss today, is I'm writing a book about these concepts of rewriting our our theories and our notions of mental illness. And with my work with the unsheltered and my own experience being hospitalized in three countries Three U.S. states and three cities For what they call mania or psychosis, I think I have a very intimate look into what is mental illness and what is mental health. But also, I would like to change the paradigm and have a conversation about, you know, perhaps it's not so much illness as one a trauma response, but to what if it's a touch from God? 

Brian [00:04:22] Okay. So those are some fascinating topics. I know you've given me, like, ten things in there. Sorry. No, that's great. I made a few notes on them. Which one? Where do you want to start with all that? 

Kacee [00:04:34] Whichever one interests you the most. 

Brian [00:04:35] I know. Let's talk about the the homeless or let's talk about the hundred year cycle. Yes. What do you think it is about that hundred year cycle that is so reliable? Is it a generational thing? Is there just a certain rise and fall that one feeds the other? 

Kacee [00:04:53] I think you on I think it's a little bit of all the above. I think that history Repeats itself and we're no Different than any other superpower that came before, even though Purportedly we are the richest and the strongest and have The most Military might. But I do think that, you know, past a certain point of age, you kind of reach your brief stagnancy and you reach a point where the rich get richer, the more powerful get get drunk on their power. And so that's when I think society collapses. And when we don't no longer have those types of bonds and they have done studies on rats who are placed in cages. And and the more that they multiply and the larger the society gets, no matter how large you make the cage, no matter how many amenities you provide, there is at a certain point in time down the generations, there is a kind of a breaking apart of the familial dynamic. The women stop procreating. The men become very weak, very useless, very preening and just looking at themselves. And and I think, you know, perhaps social media is also our downfall because we it does seem Like there is just something's not Right with our society right now. And my heart really does break for the people who are, you know, just laying like pulled weeds on the streets and casualty of this experiment. This capitalist experiment. 

Brian [00:06:33] Yeah. Do you think that. So I got two questions. One, and answering whatever you want. But is. Is social media just a different flavor of the same old problem that we've seen before? It's just it's put itself into this into this day and age with the technology and also the pulled weeds. Do you think as a as an economy grows? Do you think they're all so familiar with being one of the pulled weeds that they remain in touch with that? And after a certain period of time or a generation or two passes, that they begin to feel like, no, we are better and we deserve more. And then they find ways around it. And now they are so far removed from the pulled weeds that there's like, well, that's their problem. But there are two big questions. I don't know which one of those you want to answer, but. 

Kacee [00:07:28] Well, intergenerational poverty exists for a reason And it's very they've done studies on how few people actually jump from the bottom 10% to the top 10%. So, you know, this is and then trauma compounds and it becomes cyclical. And so, for instance, most of them, the vast majority of the the boys that pose in our sexy calendar, they were part of the foster care system. And so, you know, and that's a break up breakdown of the family dynamic in the parental units who just in their own trauma, couldn't care for their children. So it's a really hard question. And I, I don't have all the answers, but I am open to all sorts of possibilities to explain it. All I'm All I'm seeing is That it's something's breaking and people are suffering. And I don't see that our government is responding. And even back in the Roman times, we talk about social media and maybe that is the downfall, but perhaps it's a byproduct of being a superpower or or this age But even the Romans would gorged themselves on food and then throw it up And then eat again. So perhaps that is maybe it is endemic for us once when we have so much luxury and amenities that we just become, you know, grasping and drunk on this grade. 

Brian [00:08:50] Yeah. So how did you get involved in all of this? I mean, you're clearly very passionate about it. You're also seem like you're very educated on the topics. How did that come about? 

Kacee [00:09:02] Well, my my Masters is actually an International development economics. And so I was Really Drawn. I worked for four months in India and on HIV and AIDS prevention and slum settlements. And we started schools. We did human trafficking campaigns and and conferences with the U.N.. Reasonable ones, etc.. When then I came back home and I just realized that the poverty here in a lot of ways is. Even more heartbreaking and and and difficult I think then places like New Delhi in the slums in New Delhi at least this the the very, very poor the abject poor in New Delhi, they are forced to scatter like cockroaches by the city or the state. They have their own little space. They can build a little ramshackle little shed. And with whatever materials they can find, there's walls in the in the slum settlements where they have access to water. They can wash themselves. But here. You know, it's. It's just tragic how little we care about our own poor while we give so much money to developing nations and to war and and humanitarian aid and whatever. But yet there's people here that live on less than a dollar a day. There's people here that are are dying from the heat today or the cold winter. And we have no room for them in the in. 

Brian [00:10:42] Yeah. That that's so you mentioned that we we give money to these other causes, but it seems to me and you understand this far better than I do. But when you're helping the homeless in Salt Lake, most of that comes from your pocket. But when you're helping the homeless in another Third World country, that's a national level decision that I have nothing to do with other than I might have elected some of the leaders that have chosen that route. Yeah. So given those two different levels of of financial support, is that there one one goes away or we just assume that the government is taking care of them so we stop giving it out of our pocket. Or how how do you how do you balance those two types of giving? Yeah. 

Kacee [00:11:28] I mean, don't get me wrong, I really support foreign aid. I think it's really important for us to help nations that aren't as advantage to us. But the difference about doing service work in your own backyard is that we it's it's our closest neighbors, you know, it's our it's our families, our friends. It's our friends, friends. It's our friends, mother, whoever it may be. And there is an opportunity to, as there's a responsibility of community, to take care of at least among us. And that's what Jesus preached and that's what a lot of the greats would preach. And. The opportunity of working here locally is also you get to see the problem and you as a community member, as a citizen of the city, get to enact solutions that perhaps you haven't seen the government execute or you haven't seen the government do very well. Foreign aid is really important, but I've also worked for U.N. women and other large organizations, and I personally. Became jaded by how bureaucratic everything was. It's just seemed like I was writing papers and nobody would read and pushing paper and not really doing anything hands on to help the people. Here, I get to see firsthand how much someone really appreciates that ice cold washcloth at the back of their neck, 107 degrees outside, or how much tent means to them or how much it means to them. So there's for me, it just feels better. And I feel like I my time and the money that our donors give us and the money that I give is spent on better use because there is no administrative costs. We're all volunteers and there is no I know exactly where that money is going. I can see it with my own two eyes. So I think that's the I challenge everyone listening to do please do whatever you can to change your own communities, change your own backyards, because we're the only ones that can their government. I don't know if or if they don't Care or if they believe that the money that they're pouring into these institutions in these programs is actually going into the hands of the people that. See, I don't see that But I do see that that just average Citizens, people That are barely making it as as it is, are, you know, how much that that much love and that much care and the hugs really matter and really make a difference here. Yeah. Yeah. And then. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. 

Brian [00:14:06] No. Good. Yeah. 

Kacee [00:14:08] And then another reason why I'm really drawn to helping this population is I'm going back to the mental health component. I when I have been locked up in psychiatric wards, the vast majority of the people have been locked up with have been homeless. And those are the people that become my friends and my confidence and the people that are, you know, my soldier at arms to to keep going in a very dark, dark place of feeling like you are jailed. And I have found that the psychiatric ward is the greatest equalizer Nobody knows if you're homeless or not, where you live How much money you have. You're just all in under the same roof, under the same rules, under the same punitive government or the same, you know, whatever. But. The wonderful thing about the intimate on a one on one level on the same level, on the same plane playing field as someone else that maybe I would have never had that opportunity to to meet and really get to know and listen to their stories. 

Brian [00:15:16] And of my idea for this podcast. 

Kacee [00:15:17] Exactly. Strangers, you know? Yeah. Yeah So I think one of the things you touched on earlier is I think when governments put big money towards big projects, there are always big administrators that are willing to come in and eat up just as much of that budget as they can Exactly. 

Brian [00:15:33] And so as little as possible, it actually makes it to where they're supposed to. And the bigger the dollars that go out to those bigger projects, the more people are competing to see how much of it they can stuff into their pockets before it comes on the way through. So these little. Local projects that are going on that are volunteer based, and 100% of the money goes directly to the cause. How do people find out about those? Because I know a lot of people, they get in their cars, they go to work, they get in their cars and they come home and they pass. Hundreds, if not thousands of people that might need help along the way and hundreds, if not thousands of opportunities to reach out and help them. But they are they don't know about any of them because their AC is on there. Stereo is up and they're cruisin to 70 miles an hour. How can someone who wants to get involved locally know one, how to get involved and to which organizations are actually. Worth supporting and not necessarily stuffing it in the pockets or something else. 

Kacee [00:16:37] That is a challenge and I don't really know the answer to That and something that we're battling with ourselves as a very brand new nonprofit with very, very little donations as an income. We have a lot of support. We kind of operate as a mutual aid organization of a bunch of different people that provide and gift and and their time and and water and whatever else and come together in this big, fair like thing out on the streets where people have a table and chairs and shade and they can hang out in a place that doesn't require Them to pay Anything to them to be there. It's really beautiful. And I don't even I don't really Know how to answer that question because we're grappling with trying to find enough support on Our own. I just really encourage people to to look around. And Facebook is a really good place. A lot of nonprofits don't have the the budgets The best nonprofits, the ones that really do the most with very little. They're not the ones putting up billboards about their work or. 

Brian [00:17:39] National TV spots. 

Kacee [00:17:41] Or. Yeah, exactly. 

Brian [00:17:43] Super Bowl ad Super Bowl. 

Kacee [00:17:44] The believe. See how much money is actually going to advertising from your donation dollars. But you can check us out at Nomad Alliance, dawg. And we also have a Facebook group And a Facebook page where we share Successes. Today, one of our nomads actually got graduated in-patient sober rehab, three months of sobriety. And and one of the last time I saw him before this, he did a photoshoot for our sexy mat calendar. And he could barely he couldn't even keep his head up. He was so drugged up. And somehow he managed to just pull himself into gear and have a epic photoshoot and then, you know, went back to the needle or whatever he was on. So I'm really, really proud of him. And we were we are we. He called me on Friday or Thursday because he doesn't have any family. There's family night and his sober living place and he was just a little nervous. Ask would you please come, you know, be my support system. I don't have anybody. And I invited another one of our team members and he just couldn't stop grinning ear to ear. And he said, you know this, I'm the happiest I've ever been. And that is why I believe that Housing First is so important. We can't expect people to give up these crutches that come from the trauma and the mental illness that comes from the trauma, and then the self-medication that comes from mental illness that comes from the trauma. We can't just expect them to give up their crutches immediately. So having a place to live and that safety and that security coupled with mental health aspects, he did a lot of therapy work and working on relationships and boundaries and trauma work and that right there is is so vital we can telling Someone go get a job or, you know, stop doing heroin is futile, right? That's just not the reality. You have to understand the very nuances of Why people would want to to reach for those crutches. And I talk to them all the time about and they admit that this is a slow suicide and they admit that this is they're not quite brave enough to take their life on their own, but they understand that this is a way that they will slowly bleed out and end up dying eventually anyway, because there's nothing to live for in their trauma. And and they're in the horrors that are living on the streets. It's it's understandable. One, it's it's a way to leave this plane Both permanently, eventually and temporarily right now. 

Brian [00:20:20] It's heartbreaking. 

Kacee [00:20:21] Yes, it really is. 

Brian [00:20:23] Especially when you put faces to them, right? 

Kacee [00:20:26] Yeah. And they're so beautiful I. I see more genius and more madness on the streets and more sainthood on the streets than I ever have anywhere else. It really is the light and the dark. These people. The mass majority are so sensitive and so sweet. They give me gifts, they give me hugs, they call me and they're apologetic to ask for help. And it's hard for us to ask for help. Yeah, nobody. Nobody wants to be out there. People that I know aren't flying a flag. They're not begging for money. They're just trying to get by. And they're brilliant. One guy silence has graduated from in-patient today. He has 187 IQ. And he told me for half an hour how to sequester carbon from the air And I couldn't understand a word, but I knew that he knew what he was talking about. 

Brian [00:21:22] Wow. Yeah. So when you were getting involved in this particular project, rather than applying for another project that was already out there, you started. You started your own thing. Yeah. What was the decision making there? What? What did you see? What was the need that you're like, you know, nobody's doing this? 

Kacee [00:21:41] Yeah, well, this was We started on 12, 12, 2020. And this is the depth of COVID and a lot of outreach organizations were operating under COVID. So there really was a really dire need and also an inflation of the population on the street because of COVID. A lot of people became homeless that year and and since so to me and they've always been treated kind of like lepers, like the disease. It is the largest division in our society of any minority group. African-Americans mingle with white people. Those that have the disability and then go with those with that are fully able bodied. But the unsheltered don't don't mingle with the sheltered. My friend Kenny, I housed him in a micro house in my backyard. He didn't know one person that was housed. So it's. It's wild. 

Brian [00:22:39] That's crazy. 

Kacee [00:22:40] It's crazy. It's crazy. And and it's it's our fault. You know, we we pass them by. We don't look them in the eye. We don't want them to ask us for money or whatever. And we also don't want to be confronted with our own shame because we are all tired, we are all one, and we can't help but bleed in our hearts. I feel when we we look upon suffering and so we just turn away because we can't bear to face what what we've become, I think, as a society. 

Brian [00:23:12] Yeah. There's something about, I think the way you look at other groups of people and it's very interesting. I'd never considered that, that there's something about being homeless that makes that gap the largest gap for people to be able to cross. And it's like, Yeah, what's going on with that? That is. 

Kacee [00:23:31] It's capitalism. You know, when you deify the, the wealthy in money, then you demonize the poor And those with with nothing. It's just a natural byproduct. 

Brian [00:23:41] I think you've mentioned a couple of times you keep saying home and here, but you also say you've traveled a lot and I know you were born out of the country. Yeah. So how did you how did you end up calling Salt Lake home? And here I'm always interested because Amanda is very similar, and I'm not sure she considers here home anymore. 

Kacee [00:24:10] Yeah, well, my mom's here. Okay And to get a little bit of my background for the. 

Brian [00:24:16] List, please. 

Kacee [00:24:17] Do. 

Brian [00:24:18] I'm very interested to know. 

Kacee [00:24:20] I was born in the USSR, a country that no longer exists Back in 85. And then we moved to the U.S. when I was eight, and my mom was a mail order bride and I was her mail order daughter. And you have to understand at the time that, you know, there's people lost everything in the nineties. You know, there was I see the writing on the wall that I think we're headed there in a complete disillusion of our own society. Because I've been there, I've seen I've lived through the fall of a nation and it's chaos and terrifying. And my mom had a little daughter, one, two. We grew up watching bootlegged movies of Richard Gere sweeping Julia Roberts off her feet. And so there is that feeling of an American man will love me and cherish me in a way that a Russian man won't. And at the time, there was a lot of alcoholism. There still is a lot of narcotics abuse, domestic violence. We have one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the world. My father beat my mother, for instance. And so it was, you know. In the United States and Hollywood really sold this This grand vision of America and Americans as this city of light on a hill, this beacon of light, the streets are paved with gold. Men will just treat you like a queen. And unfortunately, that's that's not necessarily the reality that we've experienced. Her marriage was very short lived. She would rather have been deported Than stay in that situation Mainly because she feared for my safety. And so we had a meeting with she left and we were homeless for a minute, staying with friends in the church until she got on her feet and started cleaning a motel rooms. 

Brian [00:26:17] And where was. 

Kacee [00:26:18] This? There's an economics in Montana. Montana, Kalispell, Montana. Yeah But the ICE agent that we Interviewed with let us Stay. And so we didn't didn't have to go back. And we were able to make a life here. And then I moved down to St George, Utah. My mom had a fiancee that moved us down there. And then I came up here for undergrad. And because of these mountains They called to me and I snowboard. And so I don't leave. I mean, I leave and they come back, I think because for a metropolis, we are so spoiled And having this the bounty of nature in our backyard Within 20 minutes, you can be in wilderness with nobody around. You can be high. Can you can you ski? And within 45 from six ski resorts within 45 minutes of my back door, it's it really is. We're so Blessed. 

Brian [00:27:07] I just find in the art, I think the housing prices and availability out there. I think other people have found out about it for sure. 

Kacee [00:27:14] Oh, definitely. Definitely And yeah. And have been to 44 countries since I lived in nine. And I speak four languages, but I call Utah sister really special here. 

Brian [00:27:25] So Russian, English. 

Kacee [00:27:27] Spanish and French. 

Brian [00:27:28] Spanish and French. Was there any of those that were hard to learn? 

Kacee [00:27:33] Not particularly. 

Brian [00:27:35] Or harder. 

Kacee [00:27:36] Uh, it was I left Russian as eight, so I have an eight year old's vocabulary. So my Russian is even rustier than my Spanish. My French is really rustic because I just don't practice it But I think there is something to be said. If you're raised bilingual Then it's a lot Easier for a learned for you to learn the third and fourth and the first and the other languages. 

Brian [00:28:01] Okay. Yeah. Do you have any fond memories of the USSR? 

Kacee [00:28:05] I do. 

Brian [00:28:06] Tell me about it. 

Kacee [00:28:07] I do. It was really idyllic. You know, people Always demonize the USSR. 

Brian [00:28:15] Again, it's one of the them situations. 

Kacee [00:28:17] It's like, yeah, they meet one. 

Brian [00:28:18] And you go there. It's a different. 

Kacee [00:28:19] Story. Completely different story. For instance, I've never seen a bread line. And I even asked my my roommate, who was Russian, and she said she's I asked her if she seen a bread line secure one Was it just like, oh, late nineties. Oh. So it was under capitalism, not the USSR was like, yeah So we, you know, 80% of the food consumed is grown By your own hands, by our grandparents So my fondest Memories were spending all summer long out in the country because the USSR would Gift gifted a Plot of land to every family in Russia that will be passed down from generation to generation, as well as gifted us an apartment in the city after seven years of work. And then that was also passed down. And so, you know, growing strawberries and going And foraging for little Wild ones and and and mushrooms and making jam and just having a really, really intimate relationship with my grandmother. It was it really was idyllic. And, you know My mom had her own business She didn't struggle like she struggled here primarily. Well, we had a house, an apartment that was gifted us. We had a country place. But there was also three years of maternal leave. There was free childcare for everyone and high quality childcare. And and there was free universal health care and free universal college up to your master's education. And I really Think that's why they demonized the USSR and Russia in general, because they don't want us to get ideas. 

Brian [00:30:00] Interesting. You obviously you left all your family back there, but your mom. Yep. Have you been able to stay in touch with many of them? Do you visit them. 

Kacee [00:30:10] Or visit them? Yeah. Last time I went, I Went to help my grandmother pass in, I should add 120, 20, 20. I think she really like she's a psychic. We have in Russia there is a lot of connection to the other realms and superstitions, supernatural things. And we. And ever One woman Per generation. My family have had these dreams shattered and foretold of us coming, and she kept holding up her finger saying two too. And incidentally, she died 120, 20, 20. But also, I think 2020 was the most cataclysmic year I think Any of us have experienced. And and You know, undoubtedly, probably even harder than What happened with 911 And so I Think she was just like, I'm out. But just as she stopped eating, stop drinking cheese. That was it. That was it. Well, she didn't want to die alone in a hospital with no family around. She died sandwich to me and her sister And her home And I got to change her diapers like she changed mine And it's really, really beautiful. 

Brian [00:31:18] Yeah. Hmm. Okay. So we talked a little bit about your shelter and a little bit of travel, a little bit of home, a little bit of your back story. What do you want to talk about next? You brought up mental illness. Yeah, mental health. 

Kacee [00:31:40] How about that? 

Brian [00:31:41] Yeah, let's do that. Yeah. You have a different perspective on. I do. 

Kacee [00:31:44] Have a different. 

Brian [00:31:45] Perspective. As you were coming up here, I want to just kind of. Yeah, I'm just let you start wherever you want to start. 

Kacee [00:31:51] I start by telling the audience a little bit about my book. 

Brian [00:31:54] Yes, please. Kind of. Yeah, absolutely. 

Kacee [00:31:58] My theory of mental illness. So basically 5200 years ago, Lucifer determines the world isn't quite bad enough. And he realizes that his prophecy and his role on the earth is to bring about the darkness so the people could choose the dawn and the Mormon terms, use their agency to choose the light. And he he realizes that the feminine large, deep in his gut and besides is too much for the human race for him to bring about the necessary suffering. So he performs sex, self exorcism and pulls her out of him and she inhabits a human form and he can't bear himself to kill her. So he locks her up. And I'm using the 5200 year rubric because according to the Mayan calendar that purportedly ended on December 21st, 2012, we just experienced the darkest period of our collective human history and are now approaching. We're now in an era where it's just going to get better and lighter and brighter. And so halos for brings about the suffering. Is he the traveler? And he he travels and he crescendos the lies we tell ourselves, whether it's en masse or by individual. And she is also a traveler. He can lock up her human form or he can lock of her spirit. And so she is the serpent, the Kundalini, that rises up from the base of the spine and blows up through the chakras, spills out of your crown and turns human into God. And so I'm rewriting the story of Jesus in the last years based from this perspective of this female Lucifer that we call El. Merging and and helping him access his divinity that is endemic to all of us, just like the LDS Church preaches that we are all gods and capable of being gods once again. And I believe we're all gods here right now. If we are only able to access our true power and I don't know if you're familiar with Kundalini awakening now, so it's it's pagan in India and in the the Hindu and the yoga traditions. It's if you've ever read Eat, Pray, Love or watched Eat, Pray, Love. Elizabeth Gilbert talks about it as this like purple kind of fire, the snake that just like was terrifying because it's a roaring and it's an intense energy. And I've experienced it probably maybe less than ten times in my life, maybe seven or eight. And each time is really quite destabilizing because you don't really quite know what's going on. Buddha would talk about this energy and call it Nirvana, and that is just this blissful space. And when I reach there, it's the exact same feeling of what I. I suspect he felt that like the tourists energy around our earth goes up and out like bunny ears and down and up from our South Pole and ups and through. That's kind of how I felt this this everlasting, inexhaustible euphoria. Just circling and circling. And it was like a and a never. I mean, it's orgasmic, never ending bliss, but it's it's quite, quite destabilizing, quite cataclysmic. And there's a an article I read called Kundalini and Psychosis and whether it's one in the same and I suspect that perhaps it is because even Krishna, one of the great writers of this awakening from India, he would talk about how confusing it was to be experiencing this, but that he couldn't, you know, have it medicate it out of it. He didn't want to give it up because he needed to learn something from it. What does it have to teach me? And people who experience the Kundalini Rising as well as psychosis, they have often feel like they are Jesus or Lucifer or Buddha or wherever you are in the earth. You feel like you are Christ reincarnate because it is the exact same energy. It is the like I call it your thrust heating on God's plane. And I. 

Brian [00:36:16] That again. 

Kacee [00:36:16] Thrust Heaving on God's plane or throne keeping on God's plane. Okay And this article reports that there are three major ways to get into this this place. One is intense trauma and deprivation of of sleep and food. And I've been there that way. I was jailed in Thailand And that was my very first time Reaching this plane of what they would call psychosis, what I call nothing other than a mystical experience or kundalini rising. It was under intense fear in this very dirty, cockroach ridden jail cell in Thailand. And then to use through psychedelics and I've reached it through ayahuasca and a little bit of LSD. And then three is meditation. And the monks would use meditation coupled with deprivation of sleep and food to reach the same plane. And I've reached it through on day six of ten days of my passing at 10 hours a day of daily meditation. And it was the exact same space. 

Brian [00:37:26] All three times. 

Kacee [00:37:27] Oh, three times. All, well, nine times in different ways. But it was always either trauma, psychedelics or meditation, which is why I, I, I'm very suspect of our current paradigm labeling people with what they labeled me as bipolar one. They labeled my mom as bipolar one because there are other explanations. I believe that our current modern society no longer is able to kind of hold in its paradigm and it's in its rhetoric. And we used to you know, a lot of the great Saints would also talk about Frances, for instance, but also talk about same type of experience. And the woman that was named after Saint Ksenia, she her husband died and she gave everything away to the poor, put on his military uniform and wander the streets of Saint Petersburg for 40 years healing the sick. And she's the patron saint of fertility and goodness and has. Fatality and the homeless. And she has 13 churches in her name and in Russia But today, if a woman did that, she would be labeled psychotic and locked up. 

Brian [00:38:43] Right. It falls into this category of the DSM. 

Kacee [00:38:46] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And and to me, you know, a lot of what I lament with our unsheltered populations And with the people that get locked up like me is and the people that get labeled this other this mental illness you have, you are sick. Is that we? How many geniuses are lying to waste out on the streets or are locked up in a psychiatric system? How many Picassos? Beethoven's. You know, Steve Jobs has, as they say, is bipolar one say they say that Elon Musk is Beethoven, Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Winston Churchill, Lincoln, some of the greatest of the greats. Have the exact same symptoms as my mother and I and a lot of the people on the streets do. And yet they were either, I think perhaps not. They didn't get labeled. They didn't go through the system. They didn't take the medications. They didn't you know, they and they were just treated as eccentric artists and accepted by society that now doesn't have space for that. 

Brian [00:39:58] Right now you can be diagnosed and then medicated and and locked away for essentially the same thing. 

Kacee [00:40:05] Essentially the same thing. 

Brian [00:40:06] Exactly. Interesting. 

Kacee [00:40:08] So anyway, so about kundalini awakening And how it makes Psychosis symptoms, it's really fascinating to be Able to deconstruct My my notions of mental illness. My mother was someone that had bipolar one And so I grew up with her having these intense breakdowns where I one the very first one when I was 11, she thought devolved into a dog. And the other things were carrots. And other times she got a big, big she'd have to be chased By the cops on her way to California and her tires spiked out and helicopter on the, you know, thinking that she was running away From the KGB. And her her breakdowns were really terrifying, I think, to her, primarily because and really intense because she has a lots and an intense, intense amounts of trauma from her childhood and from growing up. So mine haven't been that bad. But when I experience these these planes, it it really is. Like I said before, you're thrust heaving on God's plane and nothing makes sense because you're filled with so much love. I remember looking into a dog's eyes and not knowing where I ended in the dog began. Not that I didn't know I was a person, but just that I knew so intimately that we were one. You know, you read all these mystical poets and these these authors who write about this world, the beloved and and the oneness of all. And it's one thing to understand it, but to really like and to at least see it and free them, believe it, know it, something else entirely. And I can't. I can't. And all my Miley. Years on this earth. I could I couldn't believe that that is insanity and that is deviant. And that is something that should be medicated out of people because. I just I knew we were. I know we are one. And I talked to Mom about the. 

Brian [00:42:19] Whole being beings all living, animate, inanimate trees, the whole there's this there's energy that we're all just part of the. Okay. 

Kacee [00:42:26] Exactly. And it's funny you mentioned trees, because I the wonderful thing about, you know, my mom experiencing these things and me experiencing them is as I resented her A lot for the instability that those those experiences caused in my life. But now I've since I've this has happened this the first time it happens when I was 30. In the last seven years or so, I've been able to really grow a lot closer to my mother because I've been able to forgive her for these, you know, for her actions that she couldn't control because she was in the same exact space that I've been in and I couldn't control them. And so I'm able to understand but also have kind of a guide her guidance and and almost a mentor. And she's able to see when I'm going into that place and warn me a little bit. And she has a dreams and warning me about it. But I told her, you know, this experience with this dog and she said, Oh, honey, it's happened to me, too. Once I saw myself in the trees, I was never lonely again. 

Brian [00:43:35] That's amazing. Yeah. So when you first were watching your mom having these experiences, what what was your you said you kind of resented her and for the the difficulties that that brought into your lives. What how did you interpret her thoughts or what did you think about that at that time, having not experienced it yourself and got a better understanding of what they might be had? How did you view that? 

Kacee [00:44:04] Well, I was angry. You know I'm like, why did my mother Call? This isn't the mother that I know. And I was bewildered and terrified. And, you know, I just couldn't understand. And of course, I thought she was crazy in on that something was wrong with her. And she's since been very stable. She had she had them very regular. They were a year or two from 11 on to about when I was maybe 26 or so. And then she started taking antipsychotics and she's been really stable since. But she's also told me, you know, I feel like a zombie. I don't have the allow those violent eyes that just exist on the psyche really even played. And I've been on antipsychotics before and I've left not to take them. And even though I have been hospitalized, I would rather, you know, feel the low lows and the high highs experience the unexplainable, because it's It's wild To just see yourself in this little street dark in Costa Rica and. You know. I it's interesting. Interestingly, I. When I was having this experience, I was in Costa Rica and I. 

Brian [00:45:23] And is this your first one? 

Kacee [00:45:25] And this was. 

Brian [00:45:26] This is just the one. 

Kacee [00:45:27] This is one of them. Yeah. Okay. My first one was in Thailand. And and that was a doozy. But this this time in in Costa Rica, I went there because I broke up with my fiancee. And I wanted to I wanted to heal in a beautiful place and also put distance between us so, so and keep going back. But I was also I was conned out of a lot of money, 1100 dollars, thinking I was buying beachfront property and this little place, tiny little space. I was sexually violated. I was robbed. And and then I was drugged. I didn't know I was drugged until I ended up in the hospital. And they checked my blood and there was cocaine. And I have never would never do it. I remember everything that happened, but Someone told me that I was I was naked on the beach in Costa Rica. And I remember being on the beach and I remember falling on my face purposefully because I wanted to wake up and go to sleep. At the same time I just knocked myself out because like this world is didn't make sense. And I'm like, Oh my God, we just must be in a simulation There is no way, like, I am living your life and we're all one and we're so powerful and there's no way we would choose this existence. There's no way that when when we are love, that we would take advantage of somebody else or hurt somebody else. This must be a simulation I must be plugged in somewhere, right in the matrix, you know. So. And but I was surprised that I was naked. And then I thought about it. I'm like, well, I Didn't even have a concept of a body. I didn't even know to look down to see If I was closed or not, because I'm I'm with God. It's like I am God, right? 

Brian [00:47:04] I'm a simulation. 

Kacee [00:47:05] And I have a simulation. And God, you know, the last thing I'm thinking about, I'm looking at my, you know, my cell in a dog's like but like I didn't even Even the thought anymore crossed my mind to make sure I was closed. Yeah. 

Brian [00:47:19] Yeah. 

Kacee [00:47:20] Because I was Nothing. And everything is the same. 

Brian [00:47:22] But you're in a different place. 

Kacee [00:47:23] Yeah, a completely different, different plane, like a different multiverse Just seeing all this. And then, like, I guess we're like, we got to wake up like we are so powerful. Why the fuck are we? And then. And then the natural byproduct is a Yell for a revolution. 

Brian [00:47:39] Okay, great. 

Kacee [00:47:40] But I'm. I'm close to when I yell for the revolution. That's actually how I got out of jail in Thailand. And the reason why I ended up in Thailand is because I was on this really heavy Duty sleeping pill. 

Brian [00:47:53] And you said this was the first time. 

Kacee [00:47:54] The first time. And and I my friend Amanda, who you know, from the podcast and from our little writers group, her And I argued and I tried to outrun the sleeping pill and I was going to take a nap. I took the pills, got a nap, got then my flight was really late that night and then I tried to outrun the pill and get to the airport, fell Asleep on the way And just basically had this waking nightmare dream, you know Walking around, trying to remember someone We were so blissed out. We had just done our very first vipassana in this these mountains of Shanghai. We were so blissed out. We had a travel agent make our arrangements and she also booked my flight back to Bangkok and, and like a taxi and I had to go. She totally said something about needing to go here to print it off or whatever. And I just didn't understand asking people if they Knew what these papers meant. I couldn't read her writing. I looked drugged. Ash And so like and so I got knocked out by a policeman And I woke up in this very, very decrepit jail cell just on this red mat with a little shawl and a pillow and feces, paintings on the walls and forlorn cans like remnants of fingerprints just dragging where someone just had to hug something. So they have this cold cement and cockroaches coming out of the drain and trash everywhere. And and I was scared because I fell off the face of the earth. Nobody knew where I was. They could have done anything to me. And the girls traveling alone disappear all the time. Yeah. And this is a military dictatorship, and they don't do kindly thing in the war on drugs So and then I ended up flooding the place because. 

Brian [00:49:46] Intentionally. 

Kacee [00:49:47] Intentionally, I had this wild aphorism in my head doesn't make sense, but a squeaky wheel doesn't get shot. 

Brian [00:49:56] Does not come by me. 

Kacee [00:49:59] And so, you know, I was going to make a big stink until they knew that I was there and then they were going to come let me out. So I flooded the place thinking, well, one, I wanted to kill the cockroaches and then clean the place and then thinking, Oh, well, they have to come get me. So I put my pillow in this little like drain and there's this. Incessant little trickle of water that was your your toilet paper to wash yourself after you went, but also your hydration And and then I sang and danced and all my languages for two days straight Because there was no glass on this little window. And I could see up on this little privacy wall that Kept Every little privacy From the toilet and the communal cell And I could see that there was a bus Stop right there, and I was in this little city and people were driving by. 

Brian [00:50:52] And so so you did you know what country you were in at this point? Yeah. Okay. So you knew you were still in. 

Kacee [00:50:58] Thailand. 

Brian [00:50:58] In an unsafe place and away from home and all alone? Yeah. And you knew you were in jail? 

Kacee [00:51:05] Yeah Okay, but my mind just flew away. I mean, at one point, I really I thought I was in China. I thought I pulled a Rumplestiltskin and woke up, like, years later, and we're still doing the same madness And I'm so angry. I'm like We're still locking people up I we couldn't look. And then, you know, I don't know if you've read The Count of Monte Cristo. Yeah, yeah. When he runs into the walls. Yeah, yeah, that was me. Okay. But to me, it was like, oh, my God, this is This is all a simulation There's no way this is real. It's a platform, nine and three quarters. If I run through this and I believe it's. 

Brian [00:51:37] Something that's J.K. Rowling all her fault. I call her. 

Kacee [00:51:41] Oh, yeah. Yeah. 

Brian [00:51:47] Okay. So after that had happened, it was a first time. Yeah. 

Kacee [00:51:52] That it was in there. 

Brian [00:51:53] How long did it take you to get back to some level of normalcy? Well, to look back on that and say, what happened? Who was that? I mean, she. 

Kacee [00:52:01] Doing it worked. I got myself out in two days and I hear these helicopters And I'm like, oh, my God, Putin or Obama. I went viral in Thailand Singing, singing and revolution songs, you know, and I don't know, like the word silly, but I'm making them up and like, French and Russian and like, Spanish, like English and like and and I hear these helicopters. I'm like, oh, my God, one of my presence will come to save me. And then I see military doing starting to do in demonstrations at friends is a tiny little town of crabby Thailand and and they're just there were there you know, rifles and they're just marching because people started like like gathering at the bus stop. They started honking for you I guess. 

Brian [00:52:51] Okay. 

Kacee [00:52:51] I suppose like holding up their phones and I could see them and I was like, you know, like, well, so and then and then the military started coming in to talk to me finally. And at that point, I'm so gone, I was terrified. I'm like, Oh my God. In the movies, when they move, yeah, that they kill you, right? 

Brian [00:53:11] They'll go to a second location. Yeah. 

Kacee [00:53:14] People know me. I have like these 13 boys and this one woman in this communal cell next to me watching this girl fall apart. And I'm like, at one point, I'm like, lecturing, you know, the camera when I see it go on and I'm naked at this point because I was trying. There's a. 

Brian [00:53:28] Recurring theme here, you know, you and. 

Kacee [00:53:30] I well, you. 

Brian [00:53:31] Know. 

Kacee [00:53:33] Why? Why, why? 

Brian [00:53:35] Clothing matter, right? It's just a simulation. 

Kacee [00:53:37] Yeah, it's just a simulation. But I. I try to, you know, I feel myself I'm over cooling and I hadn't slept and I was like like I laid in the water and try to give myself, like, the sensory deprivation tank experience and flow and that. And then that didn't work. And then I was really cold. I'm like, Well, I could choose to, like, go into hypothermia or I could just choose to be naked. And I'm never going to see these boys again. 

Brian [00:54:00] Right. 

Kacee [00:54:00] Now. Why does it matter? So I got naked and then I figure, you know, someone once told me a long time ago, if you're ever in trouble with the law anywhere, just act as Crazy as you can Because, you know, a psychiatric ward is, like, thinner than a jail. Yeah. And in the end, you know, they started sending in these people and and The guy was in, I spoke English and yeah, they asked me what I wanted and I'm like, I just want an apple Because they had tried to feed me and it was, there was like maggots in my rice And like little bugs that were crunchy topping and and, you know, it's just and then I asked for some good water and some pineapple or fruit or something. And but I was he was The only one I trust. Another man would come up and they would have in my hand behind them. And, and and I thought That they had Gotten in. So I would just for some reason call them actor. I just called him actor. And then when I've been researching and writing about this book, the it's interesting because Jesus would Call people hypocrites, you know, in the Bible, but in the Greek translation, a hypocrite, an actor with the same thing. 

Brian [00:55:09] Interesting. 

Kacee [00:55:10] And so and I really think that I just didn't trust them. And so for some reason, you know, I knew that they probably would know the word actor, you know. So and then So And then also I kind of got I've said there's these 13 boys have been languishing there since I got there. How long have they been there And they're you know, they're obviously really poor They're probably petty thieves And so I was like, well, I won't leave unless we week go. Listen, like, maybe then I'll be protected, you know, flanked by my boys walking out of this jail. 

Brian [00:55:48] And how vivid are your memories of this? I mean, can you. Yeah. 

Kacee [00:55:52] Yeah While they've got the jail cell there else and in my book is the cell that that I was in. And so I'm writing about it as, you know, using my pain for for passion and purpose. So, yeah, I remember everything. And then basically they they ended up waiting until I ran out of steam and I would perch on this little You know, the privacy wall because the water was filled with, you know, swollen cockroaches and and trash And I couldn't sit there. So I would just kind of be like this little monkey and just meditate And oscillate between intense meditation that I had just learned and then. And tense. 

Brian [00:56:36] While you were in Thailand. 

Kacee [00:56:37] In this jail. I just learn to enjoy setup by Chiang Mai and then and and that and that's how I was able to keep going for these two full straight Days of what they call mania, what I call Just fucking Get me out of here. But in the end, so I felt I kind of just fell, ended up falling asleep on this wall. And then they came in and they injected me. I woke up in a psychiatric ward and I was there For about three weeks until I could pay my way out. But it actually Was a really beautiful experience There was one girl in there that spoke a little English, but nobody else did. One of the nurses said it a little bit. 

Brian [00:57:20] In the hospital. 

Kacee [00:57:21] In the hospital? Yeah. And then We just slept, you know, 22 women in this one big communal space and we had a veranda With that was always open that was right next to this beautiful forest by a tree. And I Learned some Thai and And wrote a lot and took naps On the bosom of grandmother's. I couldn't talk. It was really, really sweet. And we were really there for Each other, braiding each other's hair And I would have never met them. 

Brian [00:57:48] Yeah. Were you still on a different plane at that time or by that when you when you came to in the hospital, had you pretty much normalized? 

Kacee [00:57:55] I was normalized. All I needed was a nap and food, you know, and sleep and food is The best medicine and water. So, so. 

Brian [00:58:04] So then looking back on it, a day or two before me or a day or two out. Now, when you're looking back on it, what were your thoughts? 

Kacee [00:58:11] I got myself out. Thank God. 

Brian [00:58:12] It worked. 

Kacee [00:58:13] It worked. 

Brian [00:58:14] Okay. Okay. Did you have any connections with your mother at that point? Did you're, like, not in jail? 

Kacee [00:58:20] No. Okay. Finally, I got a call. 

Brian [00:58:23] No, I mean with your memory of your mother. Oh. Did you connect your actions then, with the actions of your mother before? 

Kacee [00:58:33] I was in a trance. I was. I was not quite here, not quite there I was in the hospital Yeah, in the in the In the jail. Okay. You know, I would I had a lot of Like, visions and experiences That did make it. I did not know what reality was. Right. That was such a foreign experience to me. 

Brian [00:58:55] After when you were normalized, when you got to the hospital, did you look back on it and make that. 

Kacee [00:58:59] Connection. 

Brian [00:58:59] Connect your mom or. 

Kacee [00:59:00] I mean, of course, yeah. Did it make. 

Brian [00:59:02] Sense to what you did? Did it still seem logical? Are you thinking what the crap was that? 

Kacee [00:59:06] Actually, it it gave me a lot of understanding from my mom's experiences Because though she had never been to jail in Thailand, she had experienced horrendous, horrendous trauma and rape and pain. And her father that try to kill her and all these things and then abuse here in the US and all these. Horrible, horrible. Things that would make anyone break. And and so I sympathized a lot with her, with her fear in that place. You know Her trying to drive away from the police. Fuck. Sorry if. 

Brian [00:59:45] That's. 

Kacee [00:59:45] All right. FTP. MTV. Because really, I mean, everyone's afraid of the police, I think, all over the world completely. 

Brian [00:59:52] Especially if you're if you've got some trauma or some fear factor. 

Kacee [00:59:55] The KGB were terrified. 

Brian [00:59:56] We're here to help know. You're never here to help. You never show up when I need help. 

Kacee [01:00:00] Exactly. And she with, you know, being knocked out by a plainclothes guy that said that he was a policeman that tried to drag me to the back of this truck, saying he's going to help me. And I'm like, I turned around. I'm like, this is this is the horror movie star. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, get knocked out. Like I will never Trust the police And seeing how You know, our my friends on the street, how terrorized they Are from them as well So I It really did give me a lot Of of a really deep insight and and forgiveness. And I think I wrote a letter to my mom in a forgiving her and and the letter to the partners and other people from like I that the experience just filled me with. Really just so much love, just so much love and so much unity and oneness every single time. I am just. You really do believe that you are God. You really do. And people claim it's psychosis, Jesus syndrome You know, even Hasan is that kind of comic. Russell Brand calls it a messiah complex and has a whole big skit on it. I am the second coming. 

Brian [01:01:18] And. 

Kacee [01:01:18] Somehow it's a little bit funny and like. But, you know, I think that that maybe Of believing that we're God as well allows people with this quote unquote label or this diagnosis but also this this. The trauma that allows our brains to escape in times of great trial and stress is also where creation can come from, too. I can imagine that when Picasso tore cut off his ear, he was in the throes of that exact same space that I was in. 

Brian [01:01:54] And it all makes perfect sense. 

Kacee [01:01:55] And it all makes the time at the time made perfect sense of the time. And even in retrospect, you don't you can't quite go back to living. Life the same way that you did before. You know, they call it. I it really isn't enlightening because you're so filled with light and you let go of your burdens. It's it's there's a freedom in that. There's a freedom. And just like being in actually also and not giving one flying fuck about about what you're doing but just releasing you're so scared, you're so stressed. And then naturally I knew that if I didn't shake it out, you know, like I may, my brain may permanently break from that that fear. I was so scared, you know, and and it's I've done a lot of research into indigenous tribes and the ways that we used to be. And we carry a lot of trauma in our joints and later manifest in arthritis. And when a woman gives birth afterwards, she'll normally, like, shake violently. And we think that that is a shock. And we cover them up with blankets and we try to get get them to start. But it's just trauma on the way out. And I had a healer tell me all pain is on its way out, however you manifest it. And for me, when I'm in a place like that, when I'm locked up, whether it's in a psych ward or it's jail, like it's naturally like my body. I just want to just get the trauma down. So I just dance. I just just articulate wildly and get it out. Get it out. Because that is my, my, my sanity. I don't care what they think of me, they think I'm crazy. But I have to I have to do me and I have to maintain my own little Little bit of Of as. It's a tendency A connection, a little bit of connection to this plane and and grounding and being here And for that for me as a movement as to get to get that fear out and get that trauma out. And otherwise, you know, I maybe have if I had just sat there in the corner so scared that I was just rocking what I may still be there, rocking in the corner in my own little world. Not here ever again. 

Brian [01:04:14] Yeah. So from your first experience, tell me how. How? The circumstances for your second experience that you had with that one, what what was that one like? And did you see it coming? Was this one of the times where you tried to bring it back or was have you not tried to do that? A little. 

Kacee [01:04:33] Bit A little bit Of all the above. Okay So this happened In January of 2016. 111, 2016. I was in jail and then I. Had to claw my way back and I was flying standby. Luckily, I was. I had missed my flight already. 

Brian [01:04:54] By several weeks. Right. Then you went prison and then the hospital and then. Yeah, yeah. 

Kacee [01:04:58] And and my job. And it was to be back at Work on the 12th And, you know, and all this stuff. But I had to go. I flew through Singapore. I just booked a flight through to Singapore from. Crabby because there were no flights available. There was no openings on any flights for weeks from Bangkok. And so I went to Singapore and I was so drugged by all the drugs they gave me in the psych ward and then in Thailand, crabby that I lost my passport and all of my credit. And I'm still like really, really delicate. So the trauma from that and having to replace the passport, not knowing you have to leave and just wanting. 

Brian [01:05:40] To still being in a foreign country. 

Kacee [01:05:42] Being in and not. 

Brian [01:05:42] Knowing a. 

Kacee [01:05:42] Language alone Not having access to money. I wasn't eating so didn't have any way to pay for food. And I went and ended up going to a mosque because I just wanted to be with God and Praying with the men in the mosque. I didn't know. I was like, We're all equal. We're all one, right? Even though, I mean, I, I my mother's side is all Muslim, I know in my right mind that you're not supposed to pray with the men. But there I just went into the beautiful place, the beautiful chamber, and just started praying, prostrating. And this man came up to me and he was just so sweet. He let me pray For a while, and then he's like, Oh, you're not supposed to be upstairs And I just went into this little alcove and continued praying with the women, and that was really beautiful because it intimate. We were sandwiched in a very small space and Just breathing each other's, like, sweat and and that energy. But he Ended up this little man ended up feeding me.we would eat with our hands. And he bought me food and talked about his love for a lot crying. So the Experiences I had were just absolutely incredible. And I would have never had those those experiences without this kind of psychosis. But then flying back from I had to fly from Singapore to Japan and then from Japan on this 14 hour flight to Seattle. And on that flight I just the I was bleeding allows me woman time and experience a lot of time I was drinking a lot of water and sleeping enough. And my mom always told me, look, I have sleeping. You have to hydrate your brain. And I kept going, getting up to go to the bathroom and kind of walking, calling myself 14 hours is a long flight and TV didn't work. And so in the end and I guess I was muttering to myself then they told me to shut up and sit in my seat and I couldn't get up for any reason. And so I ended up peeing myself. And at that point I'm like, Well Guys, like if we all stand up, you can take the whole system down. It doesn't like that. And then they tackle me and they put me in a little handcuffs. And then I ended up going back in the psych ward and in Seattle. So taken off the plane, walk and just cry. And I'm so sorry. And then I was there and they wanted Delta wanted to Actually lock me up for 90 days and they banned me. I can no longer fly Delta just for this experience And I'm like, Why didn't nobody ask me what you just went through? Why didn't nobody sit there and be like, Oh, girl, went to one link, can I fix your TV for you? You're obviously, like, in trouble But someone was there Just like, you know, like, are you okay? 

Brian [01:08:25] Your role is just to sit there and behave. That's your only role. And even beyond that is not acceptable. 

Kacee [01:08:31] I mean, I was trying to tell them, look, I'm in my woman time. This is my one time. I'm I'm bleeding. I need to get Up to go to the bathroom. I mean, how inhumane, right? 

Brian [01:08:39] You know. Yeah. To even have to explain myself and my situation and how inhumane. 

Kacee [01:08:45] So anyway But luckily I was working for And Justice For All at the time, raising money for civil legal aid. And I had a lawyer that flew to Seattle and she was working with the public defender there, and she got to like 40 hours Of depositions with my friends who are like, well, she's a little kooky, but she's not crazy. And she was having a very valid reason for falling apart like that because I've never seen her do that. Yeah. You know, and, and so luckily my, they got me out in five days and I, and in the end is actually me that got myself out because I, I ended up getting the whole entire psych ward to start singing and dancing. 

Brian [01:09:27] The work before. 

Kacee [01:09:28] It was muteness. It was so like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's. 

Brian [01:09:32] Nest. 

Kacee [01:09:34] And they were like grown and grown large, tall man, just weeping and crying and singing as they're walking. I'm like, Yeah, but he let it out and. And then there was a very valid reason for me to even start dancing because we, we had the only time we could go outside was for a cigaret break. And that's really where I became a smoker and they gave us free cigarets. And I didn't have a coat. I was just coming back from Thailand. So all I had was this blanket and it was real. It was middle of winter and January and end of January and Seattle And so and that was the only Time I could listen to music. And so I just started dancing then like. And then other people started dancing the whole. Your board would just dance Together and learn, like Breakdancing and just yell. And anyway, there's a guy named Angel, ironically, and he was this little weasel man that would watch us, and he was the court reporter that would Determine whether we were sane enough to go to court and stand in front of a judge. And so he forced me. He would watch me, you know, acting very Crazy and dancing. And he forced me to have this one on one And I ended up meditating that whole morning. And normally I have preferred speech, even when I'm completely sane, because I'm used to being having a very soft voice, being a woman, being talked over. And so I want to get it out Quickly, at least make my point Right and calm myself down. That was really, really slow and rational when I spoke to him and he realized that if he Put me in front of the Judge, that he would look in like the crazy one for locking up this girl And somehow the one thing I bought for myself, clothing wise in Thailand was a little Suit jacket and little like pair of nice pants. And so I looked very put together and and I they released me that day. 

Brian [01:11:28] Wow. So you mentioned that you've figured out a way to manage that process without medication, that you use meditation. And I did start with that. 

Kacee [01:11:45] And it started with it. Yeah, that Meditation is definitely A trigger for getting into that place. But it's also the healing. You know, I unfortunately, a lot of the times that I've coming, I come out of it, I have been medicated out of it. 

Brian [01:12:04] Which you would prefer. 

Kacee [01:12:05] Not that I would do is I want to like like Krista said, I want I want to know what this has to teach me. Okay. And there's been other times where I've come out of it completely without any medication. And one time, most recently, it was with a little tiny bit of acid and and lovemaking with a partner. And it was 11 hours of just beautiful bliss. It was just incredible. At one point, I was like, well It's like Vegas. It's fun to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here. You're only ever going to get back to me my same. You know, I can't function in society where I'm constant, constant ecstasy, you know. And then, you know, I came out of it naturally and and it was it was really heartening You know, this was my eighth or ninth time, heartening to know that I can come out of it naturally. But also, it was the one time that I felt really safe to experience and really feel it and sit with it. Sit with him. Sit with it. And. You know, I felt love that I was touched and then I was fed and give me water and there was a hot springs right there. And so I laid in the hot springs and watched the stars and just really had a really, really beautiful experience with it. But when you're in, you know, trying to claw your way Back to the States Or in a psych ward or, you know, I was I once Ran away the first time I Was They try to take me to the hospital in Costa Rica. I ran away and I didn't have any money, nothing on me. And I just went on this walkabout Drinking river water and, you know, bananas off of vines And and it was a. You know, the the scarcity. And, you know, if I was just in a space where I was taken care of, so now I have a crisis team where and I try to have a crisis team. Last time it happened, it didn't work. But if this happened To me again, here's my credit card. These are the keys to my motorhome. Just take me in the middle of the woods. Let me run around naked, if that's what I need. Have someone there with me that can just babysit Whatever Take away my phone so I don't post. 

Brian [01:14:28] Have you been guilty of that as well? 

Kacee [01:14:29] Oh, yeah. Last time I did actually. 

Brian [01:14:33] Put on a show for. 

Kacee [01:14:34] The Madonna show. Yeah. And I was like, Hey, Zach, why am I not banned yet? And I was just, like, incessantly, like every second, just posting all about revolution. Guys, like, wake up all this. But it was also, you know, the start of the Russo Russo Ukraine war. And I just lost a nomad that I loved was me in one of our maker houses. As she ran away from the cops so fast, her heart gave out. And I was in a quasi abusive relationship and I was taking care of too many people. And just a lot, a lot. I wasn't taking care of myself. 

Brian [01:15:13] So just. 

Kacee [01:15:15] I don't know why it is like it's like every time I'm there, I just want to change everything now because I know we're powerful enough to Be Capable of it. 

Brian [01:15:24] Right? 

Kacee [01:15:25] If we all just, you know. 

Brian [01:15:31] Oh, so you say you had a is a mantra or that you teach to your clients? Yeah. Do you want to share that? I want to talk about that, yeah. 

Kacee [01:15:44] Yeah. I would love that if we could all meditate together. Okay. 

Brian [01:15:48] Yeah, that'd be great. 

Kacee [01:15:49] Oh, I could use it too. Okay. 

Brian [01:15:52] Thank you. Yeah. 

Kacee [01:15:55] Okay, everyone out there. Ryan Senior, please take a deep breath in. Let it out. Pretend. An out audibly. And a deep breath in and shake it out and at least part of the heart. Okay. So I want you to take your thoughts. All your thoughts. And coalesce them into a metabolically. The Center for. I want you to take that ball and drop. Drop. Drop. Your throat. Let it fill your throat with light. Take that ball and drop. Oh. Oh. Into your heart. Let it sell your heart like. As thoughts come out. 

Brian [01:17:30] Dressed. 

Kacee [01:17:36] Take that ball and draw. You're sick to your stomach. Tell your senator. Like. All. Go. Go. Into your own state. Center of creativity for all things rich, but still. Terrible. We'd like. Take that ball and drop. And your room. The very base who you are. Fill your whole body plate. Draw. State. 

Brian [01:18:53] Thank you. That's it. That's it. Then you teach that to all your clients. 

Kacee [01:18:58] I tell you, all of our nomads, even when I was in the psych ward, there is a woman next to me and she hadn't had a ball movement five days. She is Puerto Ricans. Really long fingernails, tiny, gorgeous woman. And they were giving her the amount of meds that they were giving us. So she was just asleep for five days straight. So she was complaining that she had gone. So I did that for her and she's like, Oh, shit She runs into her room. She comes back some time later. She's like, Girl, I don't know what kind of voodoo magic you did on me, but it worked. 

Brian [01:19:33] There is so much power in your own mind and your own ability to just focus. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing how little of that we've actually tapped into exactly and how few people practice. Anything even towards that realm. But how quickly we refer to these. The magic or the doctors or the science and the chemicals and the we want one pill to just take care of things. And it's like. 

Kacee [01:20:09] It's not that. 

Brian [01:20:09] Easy. You can kind of do this on your own. Yeah. If you're paying attention and if you're just present and. Yeah. That's really interesting. Thank you for sharing that with us. 

Kacee [01:20:20] Thank you so much for inviting me to help Neela. 

Brian [01:20:24] Yeah, I can. I just. I'm trying to get more into the habit of that meditation and finding the time in the middle of the day to just take just a couple of minutes. Yeah, just a couple of minutes. And I just find out why I don't have time for that. And I move on and I move on. I don't even think about it cause I'm so busy with. What does it take? 2 minutes, right? Yeah. 

Kacee [01:20:48] Yeah. Who was it that said, if you don't have time to meditate for 20 minutes Meditate for an hour? 

Brian [01:20:54] That's great. Yeah, I'd like to find out who said that because that's a great quote. So what is your current view on who we are? Your essence. Sounds like you've studied a lot of different religions and a lot of different philosophies. With that right now. 

Kacee [01:21:20] I can only go Back to the experiences I've had where I know that I was touched by God. I know that I was with God. And that was love. So I felt this just. 

Brian [01:21:33] Just at the raw core. 

Kacee [01:21:35] That's I think so. I think that's how we are as love and energy and. But I also do believe that we are God and we're capable of far more than we give ourselves credit for. And. In a way, I think there is an article that talks about how this kundalini awakening is actually a. Means. What's the word? It's Sam. An evolution. It's an evolution and a way. That place where my mom and people on the streets, other people that have been in psych wards or have experienced, been touched by this magic, cataclysmic, very Quite scary, quite debilitating, bewildering magic I do believe that that perhaps there. It's a it is. You know, they. Saints come about from intense suffering all over the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church is granted to people who suffer extremely or who martyr and die in the quest for God or to be there for the their human humanity of their fellow men. And then I think a byproduct is extreme suffering. And the trauma that you experience, I think, is a gift from God. That that is a little bit maybe perhaps further along an evolutionary standpoint. And I am a burner and I go to Burning Man events, local microbrews. And I know for a fact probably the vast majority of people there have also experience the same exact space, usually probably aided by psychedelics, which is why I'm a big believer in the legalization of psychedelics and psychedelics as being an evolutionary tool. And, you know, at Burning Man, people erect, 80,000 people come together in a city. Things don't get stolen. There's no rape. They get there's no money exchanged. They give freely. There's just gifts everywhere. I went to the renegade burn last year, and everywhere you go, people are just like, you want a drink, you want some water? What can I do to help you? Here's a gift. Here's this. And. And I. I hope that that's where we're headed. I hope that out of this darkness, the suffering that we collectively as a humanity have. Have had to go through. And then as individuals, some of us a lot more than most. I hope that is a yellow brick road, a lot of cobblestones leading towards. A beautiful, beautiful place. It. Would you like to know the ending of my book? 

Brian [01:24:48] Tell me you want to share. Right. Yeah, absolutely. 

Kacee [01:24:52] L sees this girl praying in the shadow of these Mayan ruins on December 21st, 2012. Wishing so fervently. So fervently. For the grand awakening, for the light to come. And so she decides to just give her a little gift to this girl over a period of years, because it's. It is a process of learning how to deal with these energies and that first cataclysmic and chaotic end. You don't know what's going on. So you're paranoid because you're afraid. And from this place where you don't know, I know I've been there, but I saw this girl ends up writing these books of her travels, being locked up in jail in Thailand and sequoias in Costa Rica, and the experiences of of having this union with God that is aided by this mythical l and I can only write what I know. I don't believe that I'm God. But I have some pretty great stories about what's happened in my life that have been extremely painful that I think could be an opportunity to teach a different way of looking at this phenomenon. So this girl writes these books over a series over her life, over these periods of years, from 30 to maybe 40. Who knows? But in the end. She lays out a date. In the books and invites all her readers to tell everyone to prepare. She lays out this rubric. You get there in these three ways. Here's a story of how I did it. This is how scary it was for me. Don't be afraid of what you experience or something similar. It's okay. You'll be okay and go through it. Jump into the deep black abyss. It's scary. When Kundalini rises up, Elizabeth Gilbert was just wanted to stifle it. She's sort of panicking. She's like, What? A roaring of an energy. It's a tense, the most magnificent force I've ever felt in my life. Powerful, scary, credible fire. And she lays out the stakes for a billion of us, one eighth of our population to go out in the streets on this one day. Drop down down, down to their. And just believe that now we can jump dimensions. And that we can just everything can change in the blink of an eye. And all of us at the very same time. Just. Don't just choose to wake up. Just choose. And all that. Everything is just a twinkle and a glimmer. And we're on the other side. And then we're cheering and there's we're just celebrating and there's just huge festival orgies, whatever everyone's doing. And we are just ecstatic. And when I've been. In these places. I could hear us cheering on the other side. And here is that we've done it. 

Brian [01:28:22] Thank you for sharing that. You're so lucky. I can feel you as well. And it's such a beautiful thing when. When an individual can share those emotions and. With someone else. So. And make it so real. Right. It's just it's it's a fantastic way to connect to another person about things. 

Kacee [01:28:47] So I believe I believe we can do it. 

Brian [01:28:51] Yeah. And I kind of think that this these conversations for this podcast is kind of like that. Just one at a time. Yeah. Just reaching out to someone and getting to know who they are. And it's fascinating because we if we would have passed on the street, we would have said, what, a half dozen words to each other? 

Kacee [01:29:10] Exactly what are the odds we'd be sitting here. 

Brian [01:29:13] Talking about something so personal? Right. 

Kacee [01:29:15] Yeah. Connected by my childhood friend. Right. Who's living in Argentina? 

Brian [01:29:19] Right. Yeah. It's wonderful. I just love it. This is kind of the magic of this podcast. 

Kacee [01:29:25] So beautiful. You know? All of us encourage. All of us to. Question everything. Which is, I think, exactly what you're saying with deconstruction. How do you know what you know? How do you know that that person is crazy? How do you know that their truth isn't a truth, isn't a reality that's theirs alone. Or a truth that you just have yet to see or experience yet. 

Brian [01:29:51] Right. Just because you haven't seen it. 

Kacee [01:29:53] Just because you haven't seen it. 

Brian [01:29:54] My son in law has undergone some deconstruction and he does not like superficial conversations. 

Kacee [01:30:05] I don't. 

Brian [01:30:05] Either. Doesn't want to talk about sports. He wants to start every conversation. So what happens to us when you die? Even a stranger? Let's talk about that. Right. That's where he wants to talk. Right. And so one of the things that he says when he talks about philosophy or politics or whatever. She's like, I just want to start a conversation with whatever they're talking about. Is it possible that you could be wrong? Yes. And he said, if the person says no, then I'm like, we're done. We have nothing to talk about here. If you are that set in your ways, then I don't want to hear what they are. Yeah, yeah. 

Kacee [01:30:38] Exactly. That's just I. I mean, that's. I used to meditate and I still do on the Seven Faces of God And I don't know if, you know, I believe it was. 

Brian [01:30:50] Oh. 

Kacee [01:30:50] Wayne Dryer, who talks about these seven faces and everything from love, kindness, abundance, creativity. But receptivity is one of those. And and I think receptivity is synonymous with knowing you don't know anything. Right. And that and be but being open to finding out and being open to change. Changing your mind. I was a die hard Democrat for a really long time and under COVID I became a lot more open minded to other different, you know, other different viewpoints. And now I'm either left or I am so far left. I agree with the far right. But that means that I can really have a care conversation with almost anyone and agree with them on some facet. Right. 

Brian [01:31:37] And, and be interested in the parts where we disagree. Exactly. 

Kacee [01:31:40] And I don't believe that we need to. I don't I, I loathe cancel culture just, just because you believe a certain way you're inferior to me. How? Just because you think a certain different way, which is why I'm so adamant about About deconstructing our concept of mental illness just because someone thinks differently. 

Brian [01:31:59] That it's in a book. So it must be. 

Kacee [01:32:02] Exactly. Doesn't mean that they are any lesser than you were. Doesn't mean that their truth is any less valid than yours. 

Brian [01:32:08] Yeah, you're probably familiar with this, but there was a time someone wrote a. Someone who was autistic wrote an article about. Making people what he called what they classified as the normals. Yeah. And wrote it as a dysfunction. From the point of view of someone who's autistic. I don't get it either. Have you have you read. Have you read that essay? I haven't. It was so interesting. By the time you read it, it's like, wow. Yeah. The normals really are dysfunctional. 

Kacee [01:32:42] They are dysfunctional. 

Brian [01:32:43] They're the ones that get to decide that everybody else's dysfunction and that they're the ones that are normals. And it's like from an autistic person, it's like, that seems really abnormal. You have to look someone in the eye to talk to them. Why is that? Yeah, right. And it's just like, why do you get to decide that our version is wrong and your version is right? That's just fascinating article. I have to put it into the show notes, please, because it's pretty interesting because it's like depending on who's writing the DSM, yeah, they get to decide what's normal and anything that doesn't fit is abnormal. And my son is also a therapist and he says there are some cultures where there are no there is no mental help. There's no mental illness. 

Kacee [01:33:20] Mental illness. 

Brian [01:33:20] At all. Exactly. So what about that guy? He talks to God. Yeah, he does. He's our shaman. Yes, exactly. 

Kacee [01:33:28] And a shaman actually went and I don't know if you read about this, but a shaman went into one of our Our psychiatric wards and he started crying. He's like, this is where you're locking up all your healers, all your great thinkers, all your creators, your artists. 

Brian [01:33:43] And then complaining that nothing's working out here. Well, yeah. 

Kacee [01:33:47] You know, I my one of the a secretary in the psych ward in Costa Rica posited this to me once, and I would read him my writings and we were friends. And he said, you know, I once had a psychiatrist ask me, what if we're insane ones locking up the most sane? 

Brian [01:34:10] Because we don't understand that we're not even on the same plane. So we have to call it crazy. Crazy like him up is terrified. 

Kacee [01:34:17] Terrified of the deviant. I'm terrified because if you look through history The people that really, really changed something were the crazy ones. You know, like, what is it that that Steve Jobs says? Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the square pegs in a round hole. They're the ones who change things. 

Brian [01:34:33] Right. And so let's lock them up and remove them from. 

Kacee [01:34:38] Well, because they don't want change. And what's working out, the Elites, it's working out really great for the elites. The current paradigm, not so great for the 99%Yeah, but you Know, someone out there is benefiting Very, very well from the fact that Cyrus was on the streets for the last four years thinking he's crazy or, you know, Barbara is out there now trying to we're. 

Brian [01:35:01] All. 

Kacee [01:35:02] Or some all of our psych wards are full and we're medicating all of God out of out of people. My mom doesn't have her spiritual experiences anymore. Once she started taking the antipsychotics, so she and she used to talk to God every night. So it's really is I do think that there's. A conspiracy against the people that against the people that experience these Experiences, because there's no other reason why they demonize and make people so afraid of those who may talk to themselves, who may see things, who react irrationally, maybe running naked. There's that guy. I don't know if you remember the one of the very first really viral videos in 2012 was called Kony 2012. A guy who made a viral video that was half an hour long and many documentary about a dictator in Africa. And millions of people saw it. And then a year later, he was running found it Running naked in the Streets of New York and completely discredited. And he was a genius to make 10 million people care about a dictator I'd never heard of before. Yeah, and watch a 30 minute documentary. 

Brian [01:36:23] So do you think it's I mean, I hear that term conspiracy, and I, I, I hesitate on that a lot because I'm thinking, first of all. A group of people, especially the government, they can't get anything right. So to say they have a conspiracy that's actually working, I'm like, I don't think so. They they can't get injections to a population that needs them given all the money and all the resources. They can't even figure that out. So I don't. And maybe there is a conspiracy. Maybe they just they don't function on the government level. They function on a more efficient level. 

Kacee [01:37:00] They function, I think, on a Much, much higher level. 

Brian [01:37:02] And I think it's more of a collective blindness. They choose to not see that, so therefore it doesn't exist. And then when they're making laws and they're doing all this other things, other stumbling around in the dark, it's because they're just collectively blind. They haven't considered some of these other options to think that they have have foreseen this and they're organized enough and they can be efficient enough to actually bring it to fruition. I kind of question that. I'm like, I don't think they could pull it off if they wanted to. 

Kacee [01:37:32] Our government can't. But the people that are dictating everything the government does, I think, can be and all of the great. 

Brian [01:37:40] Powerful Osborne in. 

Kacee [01:37:41] The curtain and all of this chaos and all of this fighting and Everything, it's all very well planned Their incompetence allows A lot of things to get done under. 

Brian [01:37:52] The. 

Kacee [01:37:53] Cloud of chaos. 

Brian [01:37:54] Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. 

Kacee [01:37:56] You know, so what are they not telling us? What is going on? I mean, obviously, something's going on when prices are are this exorbitant? When gas went from $2 to what we're approaching $6 where, you know, they're trying to start World War Three as a proxy war in Ukraine. And there's you know, there's just. 

Brian [01:38:16] There's. 

Kacee [01:38:17] Got to be, you know, a huge food shortage, even Biden said so. I don't know I Think that There And then the guide stones he heard about that. No there was there are these Georgian guys stones that were just Blown up in Georgia and they're these kind of like American Stonehenge. But they were built in the seventies by an unnamed group of people. And they have these in eight languages. They lay out these precepts for a better world, purportedly. But one of the very first one is to keep the population under 500,000 and or 500 million. Excuse me. And then but there's others like, you know, unjust laws and. No justice. No. Officials, petty officials or useless officials. And and the one with nature take care of nature, be in harmony with her. And, you know, I do think that there's. I don't know. I don't really know what's going on. I and I don't know is when I hear words because but, you know, I think they're they are squeezing us every way they can. And there there is something brewing, it seems. And I don't know if it maybe the the Christian right and fundamentalist believe of the apocalypse is dying And the rapture is coming. And we they've thought that for A really long time. 

Brian [01:39:53] You know, maybe one day they'll be right. 

Kacee [01:39:55] Right down to maybe one day they will be right. Yeah. But, you know, just things that things just seem really just not to make sense. But maybe it's because I've been in a paradigm where guys like, we really can love each other and get along. Why are we not now Because I don't. I don't think human beings are naturally prone to. To hate each other and to fight and war with each other. I think that is definitely concoction that is brewed by scarcity and powerlessness and fear. And those are endemic to us. You know. 

Brian [01:40:35] I think it is silly for the the the the patriarchy. Yeah, exactly. If it were a matriarchy, I think there would be a big difference in all three of those things that you mentioned. 

Kacee [01:40:46] Exactly. 

Brian [01:40:47] Because they have a tendency to take care of their own. 

Kacee [01:40:49] Yeah. 

Brian [01:40:50] And not go fight somebody else for something else. It's like, let's just worry about what we're doing. And if we need to do something there, we can cooperate. 

Kacee [01:40:56] Exactly And made turkeys or everyone's Happy and everyone's free and everyone's taken care of And and I really think that the advent of agriculture And us being Settled down, starting to settle down, that Is where patriarchy came about because we, you know, now we have land and we, we spend a lot of time working this land and we want to pass it along to our children. We have to make sure that this child is really comes from my seed. That's where ownership of women came from. And then that's down and downhill. And ownership of land, ownership of women, it's all one. She's their mother. 

Brian [01:41:38] So you mentioned a couple of things earlier. I want to I was going to ask you. I'm glad we I'm glad we're still doing this. You mentioned. So redefining mental health. 

Kacee [01:41:50] Yes. 

Brian [01:41:51] And you mentioned. Yes. Is there danger in either one of those or what dangers might there be in either one of those? Because. Yeah. Maybe it's just some my old fashioned nature and what we've been told about psychedelics, but I'm thinking I'm kind of a proponent, by the way. Yeah, but I'm just wondering if you have, if there is a. And I guess legalizing it is different than making massive supplies of LSD available to anybody that needs them. 

Kacee [01:42:24] And I mean, not necessarily Legalizing, but decriminalizing. Decriminalizing Portugal. 

Brian [01:42:29] Okay. 

Kacee [01:42:30] Okay. And I don't know if you know that. I'm sure you do. But Portugal decriminalized all illicit drugs and their drug use actually dropped precipitously. And a lot more people didn't have the stigma of going in and seeking care and getting into rehab. But yeah, psychedelics are definitely not a toy. And and they can be. I don't know anyone that's died from psychedelics. Like, there's Mushrooms Are purportedly the most safest drug in the world as far as you can. I mean, unless they're poisonous, but you really can't necessarily overdose to there's people that take your doses and come back out alive and they're fine. But psychedelics. Too much of a good thing is. Is a bad thing. And. And they were really people. I. I balk at some of the use and the very fragrant use of Of psychedelics in my community Because it's not a choice shouldn't be just toyed with and needs to people do need to come into it with an attention. They need to work their dose up just to know that you know that they can handle it. I wouldn't recommend anyone doing it all alone without any friend babysitting or in any safe space. If you're not in the right frame of mind, if you're really down, do not take them. You will have a bad trip But my friend, actually, I have a friend who loves Look, he wants to embrace the batterer because a Brad Patrick gives at least opens his eyes to what he's been overlooking in his life that he needs to change. And that's the power of psychedelics, as it really does, I think. Bring it. Kind of disintegrates All of the noise of Everything else and allows you to go fully in inward so that you can really see what you need to change, but also that you can know that you are so intimately. Joined with a mother with the other lives with us all. We are all one. And when I was in my ayahuasca experience, I actually experienced a really traumatic experience. But I needed to I felt like in in the New Age era, we talk a lot about ancestral trauma and epigenetics is another word for what we do is called ancestral trauma And, you know, and so We we do carry trauma in our genes and with my people, our Tata on my mother's side. And so they were taken over by the Mongols, and everyone was killed except for the boys, shorter than a wagon wheel wagon spoke. And then they were raised to be this really fierce fighting force that took over the majority of the known world at the time. And there's a 200 year occupation of Russia by the US. And in my experience, I was raped, hung, strangled, burned and killed and and all these in all these ways as a woman. And I really think that that. In a way, was was we healing the ancestral trauma of every single woman of my lineage being killed? Every single woman. And after that point, there's never been a full blooded talk. That woman ever walked the earth after that one day. So experiencing that made me who I was in this place. And I was strong enough. That's what you guys need to do it as everything works through your own Issues, dude, do you need to do? And but it was it was powerful because it was You know, it was a choice that I welcome and I knew I need to experience for my lineage and for myself and for my the trauma of my mom and being raped and the women that were burned for the same old Salem witch trials because they knew a little too much about herbs and how to heal yourself and things that my great grandmother would have been killed for. My mother and me and my grandma. So I.really gained a lot of power. And at one point I was, you know, it was Kundalini. This is the most Intense time extra you ever felt it was with mother ayahuasca. And she rose up and my friend was drumming and she really was like a snake. And she just exploded on my head and and they said that there was like a demon that came out of me, like, this dark energy. And I screamed. I ripped my hair out, ripped my shirt off my three necklaces and collapsed. And it's interesting they say that, because when I was doing of a person that one of the other times I reached Kundalini, my roommate reached on day five and she vomited. What she said was like a demon, like this dark energy. And so it's really. And I had another friend who said he also just screamed. And it was just like the snake release of all that wasn't surface's darkness of the past. The present and the future. And. The shaman Quote unquote, white boy from Hawaii is like making Crap Tons of money doing this, you know, and very legally But he put his hand over my mouth and like and I beat him So one of my books is going to be one of the series is going to be called I Bit the Shaman. And like, how much power do you have? Do you feel like I Beat the child So even in the in the darkness, you know, there's a lot of I never I. Some of your questions is were glanced Under there there. Is there anything that you would go back and change And I have to say, even with all of this, even with people thinking I'm crazy, even with, you know, the trauma of being in jail In Thailand or biting the shaman or whatever, I would never change it to nothing, nothing for one, one instant, because the. The darkest times were the ones that gave me. Gave me the most as far as. Thus the experience of this ecstasy that is better than any drug to the knowledge that I you know, we're all one in that. After I die, I'll just go back to one ness. There's nothing to fear there. And. And. My experiences of being with people I would have never been with that I would never met. To know that humanity is the same everywhere. And so it's a lot of gratitude and a lot of growth. 

Brian [01:49:12] Yeah. And that that understanding and that beauty and that love that you push forward with your nonprofit stems from that. 

Kacee [01:49:21] Oh, yeah Oh, my gosh. There's no way. I mean, they even tell me they're like, if you had your shit together, there's no way we trust you. Yeah. You know, and so. And a point. Yeah. So when they talk to me about what quote unquote, we, you know, the DSM called delusions I'm just I just I just ask them questions and I nod and I and I say, okay, that's your truth. And I can't I cannot tell you otherwise. And I can't say that you're wrong. I'm like, okay, I'm open to that And so I think there's they they can trust me more because I am them. And I and I talk about my experiences We used to have workshops For 5 hours every Wednesday Where we would share, you know, the darkest parts of our experience in our life And I think me sharing that, yeah, I've been in the psych ward. Yeah, I've been to jail. That allows them to, to not know that I, you know I get them? 

Brian [01:50:16] Yeah. 

Kacee [01:50:17] I get them. I am them. I got to. 

Brian [01:50:23] So one of my taglines. Well, my tagline for this podcast is honest, vulnerable and bold conversations. And people always ask me, How are you going to find someone to be vulnerable? And I'm like, Vulnerability is so beautiful, and there are so many people that are embracing that, that are willing to admit that says, Yeah, I've been in psych words. Yeah. 

Kacee [01:50:46] Many, many times. Yeah. 

Brian [01:50:47] And that's that's part of who I. 

Kacee [01:50:49] Am, part of Who I am. And that's why I want to have I'm so grateful to you for having me on air, because I really do want to have these uncomfortable conversations these two have about these taboo subjects of addiction and psychedelics, but more importantly, mental health in these psychiatric wards, because we what we don't talk about, we become afraid of. And so I'm hoping that if anyone out there is listening to this, they hope that my story can help you be less afraid of someone, maybe in your family who may be going through something similar. So on the streets, say you see yelling at something that's not there. When you have a mental illness, you are much, much more likely to be victimized from people. 

Brian [01:51:42] Who. 

Kacee [01:51:43] Just think differently, electronically, or maybe naked on the street. Me like you want a cigaret? What can I do for you? 

Brian [01:51:51] Beautifully put. Yeah. I'd never considered that. Yeah. 

Kacee [01:51:57] It's actually a really great tool to break up, like, really intense mania Or even, like Domestic violence or anything on the Streets to do, you know, misery. 

Brian [01:52:07] You know? And that kind of brings us full circle because we originally talking about there is no bigger gap socially than from the homeless. Exactly. And I think it's the fear. It's the. 

Kacee [01:52:18] Fear. 

Brian [01:52:19] I know what the Democrats think and the Republicans think. And I know what the Christians think. And I know a Buddhist think and I know, but I don't know what's going on. That guy having argument with nobody. I don't know how to process that. Yeah, don't worry about it. Yeah. 

Kacee [01:52:32] Don't worry about. 

Brian [01:52:33] It. He's processing it. 

Kacee [01:52:34] He's processing it. Yeah. If he yells at you, he's just scared. Yeah A dog that's been there a lot and beaten the bark. 

Brian [01:52:42] Right. And how many people are willing to adopt these dogs from the shelters and and rescue them and take them home and let them feel love? 

Kacee [01:52:49] Yeah, and we don't. And our people. 

Brian [01:52:50] We don't like that dog bites. Yeah. He barks scruffy. Yeah. Well, I was going to ask you, what would you like people to take from this conversation? But I think thank you so much. 

Kacee [01:53:05] Thank you so much for having me on air prime. 

Brian [01:53:08] Thank you for listening to strangers, you know. If you're enjoying our conversations, please share us with a friend. Continue the conversation by sharing and liking on Facebook and social media, or for exclusive content and detailed show notes. Visit our website at Strangers you know podcast dot com where you can subscribe to our newsletter or make a donation to support the show. Also, beginning with this episode, Kacee and I both invite you to join our conversation by posting questions and comments on the new Facebook community page of strangers, you know. Thank you for your support.