In this episode of AyahuascaPodcast.com host Sam Believ has a conversation with Eric Kaufmann
We touch upon subjects of psychedelics and spirituality in entrepreneurship, conscious leadership, ego myopia, how psychedelics can help you unlock your unrealized potential.
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Transcript
Sam Believ (00:01)
to Iowaska podcast, as always with you, the host, Samba Leif. Our guest today is Eric Kaufman. Eric is executive coach. He’s a keynote speaker. He’s a facilitator. He’s the author of Four Virtues of Leader and Leadership Breakdown. Those are two separate books. He’s a CEO of Segetica. He coaches executives from Verizon, Facebook, Sony, and more. Eric, welcome to the show.
Eric Kaufmann (00:32)
Thank you Sam, delighted to be with you.
Sam Believ (00:35)
Eric, let’s start from ⁓ your life journey. I know it’s a pretty fascinating one, how you started your spiritual path, how you went corporate for a while and then went spiritual again and then came back with some gifts. Can you talk to us about that?
Eric Kaufmann (01:00)
My life journey, you know it’s interesting because the life journey is easier to look back on and say this has happened than to look forward on and this is what I want to happen. But I’m grateful for the way it’s turned out. I you know my interest in spirituality was on deck when I was a
Eric Kaufmann (01:21)
young person. When I was, I remember being a child ⁓ and being fascinated by these concepts that the adults were talking about. I didn’t know what the concepts were but I know how they felt. You know the concepts of transcendence, the concept of ⁓ dimension greater than our own, the concept of ⁓ human connection ⁓ that isn’t just transactional. And then
Eric Kaufmann (01:50)
I spent my ⁓ 20s, so from age 19 to some 32, I spent living in a spiritual community. And in that period of time, I went to college, graduated college, went to work, at 3M went to work at Corning, a big American companies. And ⁓ so, you know, I was toggling the spiritual and ⁓ corporate at the same time. ⁓
Eric Kaufmann (02:16)
and ⁓ finding the two worlds to be sometimes very incompatible certainly back in the 80s and 90s it seemed wildly incompatible ⁓ and ⁓ at some point I decided this is enough a man can no longer tolerate this kind of distinction and I’m going to go all in for the spiritual life.
Eric Kaufmann (02:36)
I gave up my whole sort of worldly ⁓ life, went into a very austere spiritual experience and ⁓ in the midst of that had this revelation that actually my spiritual life would be served. I would be served as a human being in this lifetime ⁓ with a wife and children and service and community ⁓ and that’s when the integration work really started happening. How do I bring these two worlds together? I’ve been doing that for ⁓ I guess 25 years now, stitching it all together.
Eric Kaufmann (03:06)
I ⁓ think I’m doing a better job now stitching it together than I did 10 years ago or 20 years ago but that’s sort of the nature of lung practice where you get ⁓ more integrated.
Sam Believ (03:17)
Well, that’s a very notable goal to do to help people stitch ⁓ those two incompatible things together. You know, as a founder of my own retreat, which is not just a business, but a very spiritual one, I find it difficult sometimes to navigate the spiritual side of things.
Sam Believ (03:41)
and the money side of things. Those seem to be two very different mindsets ⁓ and the reality of the society we live in now is that you have to combine both because if you don’t you lean heavily ⁓ to one side or to another. What have you discovered or I know you coach some very high level executives and not necessarily in spiritual businesses but how do you…
Sam Believ (04:10)
How do you help them ⁓ introduce spirituality into their business? And ⁓ how does it look like, you know, ⁓ from the outside?
Eric Kaufmann (04:22)
It’s an interesting ⁓ concept to reflect on sort of the assumption behind your question, right? Because I think you said ⁓ it’s difficult or you said it’s treated separately. no, no, you said in our society, right? That the money and the spirituality ⁓ are held separately. If you look back historically and culturally, it has been, you know, there’s been a distinction between these two pieces throughout history in all cultures.
Eric Kaufmann (04:51)
way the monks saw for it is that they basically would walk around with bowls and they would beg for their food so that they could practice their spiritual practices but being supported. We have to physically be supported. We have to eat, we have to wear clothes, we have to breathe clean air. So the distinction between spirituality and money ⁓ is a popular one but I don’t believe it’s as necessary.
Eric Kaufmann (05:21)
as we make it out to be. So I’m kind of curious about your reaction to that before I get into anything more sort of material. Can ⁓ you concede that the distinction you’re making is potentially a false dichotomy that’s perpetuated by cultural misunderstandings?
Eric Kaufmann (05:40)
You’re muted Sam.
Eric Kaufmann (05:43)
You’re muted.
Sam Believ (05:45)
Okay, I had to mute myself. My son was crying here nearby. So I personally understand that it’s not, you know, I’m very sorry about it. ⁓ My kids have arrived. Let me just figure that out real quick and I will, and we can continue. You can just see.
Eric Kaufmann (06:05)
Standing by.
Eric Kaufmann (06:08)
Hello beautiful child.
Sam Believ (06:15)
Juan, help me, I’m recording a podcast. I can’t have kids here. ⁓ Honey! Erica! Who’s here?
Sam Believ (06:27)
Kora, take the kid downstairs, I’m recording a podcast. ⁓ Kids can’t be here. And tell Estefania not to let them stay here.
Sam Believ (06:36)
Yes, the kid is here. Look, here are the apartment keys.
Sam Believ (06:49)
Okay, I’ll get my videographer to cut that part out, but ⁓ they just arrived from the city and they wanna see me, so they got upset. My older son is crying and the youngest one just found the window, so I guess that’s a good sign, means they love me. So ⁓ let me just go back to replying and then we cut this whole part with the muted mic as well. So I personally understand that in the spiritual work that we do, for example,
Eric Kaufmann (07:04)
That’s a beautiful sign.
Sam Believ (07:19)
The shaman has to have his hectares of ayahuasca where he has to pay workers to help maintain the medicine. Then he needs help to ⁓ cut the plant, prepare the medicine. It’s a very economic activity and it requires funding. So I also have to have ⁓ a property that has to be well attended. We have a team of 23 people that provide amazing service for.
Sam Believ (07:47)
or people that come to my retreats understand that money is absolutely necessary. But some people don’t understand it. So I get a lot of negativity thrown at me, ⁓ especially by local Colombians, because they kind of assume like, you know, why are you charging money for this? You know, they kind of assume that spiritual stuff has to be free, or at least people like to hide that, you know, it’s a business and you need to pay money and you need to pay taxes and they…
Sam Believ (08:15)
You know, they hide it by saying, you know, it’s not a price, it’s a donation. And I like to be open about it. And for that, I get some, you know, negative feedback. But what I, what I, what I tried to explain to you is that in business activities in, let’s say, finding people and promotion, some spiritual traditions don’t approve of that. For example, I know a lot of medicine facilitators that say, you should not promote, you should not.
Sam Believ (08:44)
you know, collect reviews ⁓ or ⁓ pay for ads and stuff like that. So there’s, it’s like, I personally think that I find the good balance, but there is definitely the stigma. And I also find that, ⁓ let’s say when I’m thinking about marketing or when I’m thinking about business side of things, I need to be very careful with money, not to spend too much. And it’s basically the opposite of the generosity. What…
Sam Believ (09:10)
The opposite of that feeling you feel when you drink ayahuasca, you know, that everyone’s connected. But in that case, you know, in perfect world, it would just work. But here you need, and if you don’t, then it just all falls apart. So that’s what I mean. There is some separation.
Eric Kaufmann (09:26)
So that’s a thank you for sharing that I would I would share two things in response one there’s a distinction between spiritual practice and spiritual life ⁓ and so I’ll come back to that right I want to make that distinction and then I’ll elaborate the other one has to do with you know philosophy or personal preference you know there are ⁓ so
Eric Kaufmann (09:49)
let me go to the first one. Spiritual practice versus spiritual life. Spiritual practice are the things you do, whether that’s ceremony, whether that’s meditation, prayer, giving on, you know, ⁓ praying at the altar, whatever your spiritual practices are. Those practices are intended, you know, to cultivate a certain way of being, which is then your spiritual life. Once your spiritual life ⁓ becomes ⁓
Eric Kaufmann (10:15)
embedded, maybe the word we use here is integrated, then your expression of that spiritual life is of infinite dimensions. So to say marketing, management, hiring, culture, team, how do you hold a meeting? Things that seem so pedantic, so mundane, so mechanically business -like, that’s just life. That’s life when you want to organize something.
Eric Kaufmann (10:43)
There’s different ways to organize it but life requires some form of organization. The fact that we have a body that is distinct has an organization. The ecosystem has organization. The universe, the stars move in orbits. There’s order and structure in things and that’s just life. That’s nothing to do with anything but plain reality. How you conduct yourself. That’s the spiritual life, not just a spiritual practice. So to me the question isn’t…
Eric Kaufmann (11:13)
How do you, you know, is there a distinction between money and spirit?
Eric Kaufmann (11:19)
No, it’s all energy. It’s all life. The degree to which we are living an integrated spiritual life that is bigger than just spiritual practices, that determines how I dispense the money, how I run the meeting, how I hire somebody, how I fire somebody. Right? ⁓ You’re running a business at some point somebody is not a good fit. Either they will exit or you will have to let them go. They’re just not a good fit. Does that mean you’re cruel and heartless and mean? No.
Eric Kaufmann (11:49)
Can you let somebody go as a spiritual practice? Yes, you’re still going to have to let them go. So I find the conversation about money versus spirit ⁓ to be a conversation ⁓ that’s fundamentally ⁓ engaged in a polarity that doesn’t have to be there. So ⁓ the spiritual life, what does it look like to be a conscious leader or a spiritual business person?
Eric Kaufmann (12:18)
It looks like you’re still going to run a business, ⁓ but how you treat your people, where you apply your money, how you do your marketing, the level of integrity, you know, can you demonstrate the things that you hold to be dear? And the answer is yes, you can. And it’s hard. Spiritual practice is hard. I’ve been meditating for 38 years. And for some reason, when I get up in the morning and I go to meditate, it’s not like automatic, like, yeah.
Eric Kaufmann (12:47)
get up, sit down, there’s still a choice I have to make because there’s a little part of me ⁓ that would rather do something else. And so ⁓ this is the spiritual life, right? Is the devotion to a set of ways of being, including how you run your business. So I’ll pause there. ⁓ But I guess before I pause, I want to emphasize ⁓ this question about money versus spirit is such a popular question. I just think it’s the wrong question.
Sam Believ (13:17)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, thank you.
Eric Kaufmann (13:17)
And the verses question is in and of itself ⁓ sort of a Christian biased ⁓ false dichotomy of heaven and earth. And if we look at it from more from a plant medicine perspective where it’s all interconnected, it’s not heaven and earth. It’s just the infinite interconnected web of existence that has infinite ways of manifesting itself with a filament and a line of consciousness running through to make choices.
Sam Believ (13:47)
Thank you. For me personally it was helpful and I can feel the coach in you and I can feel you coaching me which is great. I think I would not be able to afford your coaching otherwise. ⁓ You mentioned meditating for 38 years. That’s a long time. I’m 36. I just turned 36 last week so that’s a long time meditating. So talk to us and talk to our listeners about your meditative practice. Why do you do it? How it helped you?
Eric Kaufmann (13:57)
You
Sam Believ (14:17)
become who you are now and how have psychedelics if they have played the role in your meditative practice.
Eric Kaufmann (14:32)
You know why I meditate has changed over the last almost four decades. I started meditating because I was a total mess. I was a 19 year old pretty messed up. I just got kicked out of college. I was doing very poorly. I was not focused. I was not directed. I was not in any demonstrable way making choices that were aligned with my highest good. Nor did I know what my highest good was. So meditation…
Eric Kaufmann (15:01)
at the outset for me ⁓ was a bit of a life raft. I needed to grab onto something ⁓ that would help me stay afloat in the choppy sea of my life. Once I was able to get on top of the meditation raft and stay afloat, the motivations changed. Now it became more about the ability to be more focused, more present, more intentional. As my meditation practices continue, it really deepened into more of a
Eric Kaufmann (15:30)
lack of a better word, kind of spiritual dimension, which means ⁓ I’ve meditated for a long time with this very strong focus on listening. Not just listening to the sounds around the room or the sounds outside the structure, but can I attune myself to the signal that is more subtle than the noise? And that means what’s the direction of my life? What is the right action to take in this moment?
Eric Kaufmann (15:54)
How should I behave with this person? What should I dedicate myself to? Meditation became this brilliant sort of way to raise my antenna of consciousness and be able to detect the signal of what’s true and right for me amidst the noise of not just the world outside but the world inside. And then as I progressed further…
Eric Kaufmann (16:16)
I realized that meditation was actually this remarkable gym where one of the greatest muscles that was being cultivated ⁓ is the muscle of agency. Agency. The ability to make choices in my own life and my description of what I think enlightenment is at a very achievable level is to be a conscious being at choice.
Eric Kaufmann (16:41)
conscious being that choice and if you meditate in any tradition that you meditate you’re sitting there making this choice to continue to hold your attention in a particular way so you’re cultivating the agency muscle ⁓ and I find that in particular with medicine ⁓
Eric Kaufmann (16:56)
We’re going to do a ceremony. Classically what we do, perhaps you do this at your retreat as well, is there’s some intention setting. What is ⁓ the direction that you’re asking to be moved in by this additional field of possibility when it opens up? Otherwise you walk into that field of possibility. Anything and everything is online. So how will you have some kind of a sense -making device?
Eric Kaufmann (17:21)
And that’s what intention does so well, right? And this ⁓ meditation. ⁓
Eric Kaufmann (17:28)
to me and I think to many people has proven to be this wonderful way to cultivate that muscle of agency and intention. So then what we go into ceremony, you set the intention and then with the intention has to come some willingness to surrender. Because if it’s only about what I want, why the hell did I show up to this place? Right. And if I don’t want anything, well, then everything can come at me and that might be overwhelming. So that balance between being intentional ⁓ and then being open, pliable and available to what’s coming online, that to me is where the meditation
Eric Kaufmann (17:58)
become so…
Eric Kaufmann (18:02)
functionally helpful and when it comes to medicine, right, learning to have that sense of agency and intentionality and then entering into the medicine journey with the capacity to return if I’m overwhelmed or if I’m feeling lost ⁓ and still attend to where the medicine is taking me, that combination to me is golden. I wish everybody who does ceremony would be required by whatever laws that don’t exist, you know.
Eric Kaufmann (18:30)
to cultivate their meditative capacity ⁓ before they go into ceremony. To me, that comes first, not second. So it’s less about how did the medicine help my meditation. It’s more how did my meditation make medicine ⁓ more impactful and richer experience for me.
Sam Believ (18:50)
I think what you’re describing is what we like to explain as, ⁓ you know, there’s set and setting, but there is a third S, which is a skill. And I think it’s partially it’s a meditative skill ⁓ or the skill of agency to control your experience while you’re on PsychoDuck. So it is a meditative practice to guide yourself, which is not easy to guide yourself in that space.
Sam Believ (19:19)
Can you tell us about…
Eric Kaufmann (19:20)
Well, I’ll give you, let me give you a quick example to make this practical, right? I have sat lots of ceremonies ⁓ and it’s not unusual in the ceremony to have this like upwelling in the gut, right? This energy rising up, which often expresses itself as, as retching. So, and you might know this and there are other people who know this, but in my experience, I can sit with that, ⁓ you know, upwelling in the gut, which is almost inevitable.
Eric Kaufmann (19:49)
But the meditation experience has me understand the movement of energy through the body. I’ve been doing this long enough to be able to be with whatever happens and not reject it. And what I’ve found for the past 20 -some odd years is when that experience happens and I can just settle into it, not reject it, not resist it, ⁓ but…
Eric Kaufmann (20:12)
It’s not even embrace it just be one with the sensation that energy can move up and out without retching It just is energy that moves up and out. It has other ways to off gas ⁓ without having to physically retch and That’s not better or worse
Eric Kaufmann (20:28)
But it is working with energy in a very direct way, right? Because when we’re sitting in ceremony, energy is the name of the game in some ways, right? And so ⁓ the meditative capacity to have the wherewithal to not only be sensitive to the energy, but to flow with it as it moves ⁓ means that we are then brought online with the medicine to places that are quite subtle.
Sam Believ (20:55)
So in your journey with medicines and meditation, can you tell our listeners the story about you locking yourself in a wooden box?
Eric Kaufmann (21:07)
I’m amused that you’re pulling it out. That was a secret for like 30 some years and I shared it in one podcast now. I’m happy to share it. But ⁓ yeah, ⁓ I ⁓ spent many years meditating and I spent many years with medicine work. Now, to be fair, my teachers did not condone medicine work because in sort of the traditional, you know, spiritual…
Eric Kaufmann (21:31)
practices and orders in particular in the Zen tradition, that’s not encouraged. It’s not actually, ⁓ they don’t look favorably upon it, but I was who I was and I am who I am. And so ⁓ I ⁓ got to a point where I really wanted to test, this was in my sort of late 20s.
Eric Kaufmann (21:54)
And I wanted to see if I could in fact get to the point where the ego structure, my sense of identity would dissolve to the point that it wouldn’t reconstruct. It’s a dicey experiment to pull off, but I felt like I could do it. So I actually built to your point this wooden box, you know, maybe slightly larger than the coffin because I could actually sit in it. I couldn’t lie in it. So I’m six foot five. I’m a long guy. I built this box too short to lie in.
Eric Kaufmann (22:24)
Just just enough to sit in ⁓ as a you know plywood a heavy box and then I fasted for 24 hours so i’d be cleaned out ⁓ I stripped naked I stepped into this box and had a lid latches and locks on it And I had two of my colleagues michael and rob You know who were volunteering to take shifts and stay with me there for the 12 hours that I was going to remain in there and ⁓ Then I took a couple hits of acid
Eric Kaufmann (22:54)
and stepped into this box with ⁓ a towel on the wood so I wouldn’t get splinters in my butt, but, and a bowl for urinating and proceeded to stay in there for that day, going through an entire journey, sitting up locked in a black box with no light. ⁓ So that was the experience.
Eric Kaufmann (23:20)
I don’t know that I don’t recommend it to anyone who wants to try it, but there’s a certain level of, ⁓ there’s a certain level of terror. ⁓ If you can imagine sort of going through that hole, just being locked in a box period ⁓ is not really something that most of us go towards. Not that I’m crazy about it. Being locked in a box while on a real strong, you know, LSD trip ⁓ is, ⁓ illuminating.
Sam Believ (23:51)
Were you able to dissolve your ego completely and what did you learn from that experience? It’s fascinating how hard one can push yourself and what pushed you to do that? Something in you or?
Eric Kaufmann (23:51)
terrifying.
Eric Kaufmann (24:08)
What pushed me to do that was I was a, for lack of a better word, or to use my wife’s words, my wife is a psychologist, she says I was a spiritual zealot. I wanted to transcend, I wanted to ⁓ swim in the oceanic lap of the divine beings, I wanted to be free of the constraints of my own sense of smallness and
Eric Kaufmann (24:34)
limitation and a lot of that meant I wanted to kill the ego or dissolve the ego. So it’s your question what did I what came of it? No, the ego did not dissolve or die. It’s it’s well online and intact. For a brief period there I was in fact you know beyond that in the transcendent state and and I think many of us who take these kinds of journeys will find ourselves transcendent right beyond the ordinary.
Eric Kaufmann (25:04)
But what came out of it in many ways was this tremendous sense of confidence, right? Because if you can imagine, I don’t know how many people can sort of play with this imagery, ⁓ but it’s fairly terrifying. The terror is not conceptual. The terror is an animal body level terror, right? I’m locked in a black box. I’m naked. I’m hungry. And all my senses are tripped out by these chemicals running through my system. It’s terrifying, right?
Eric Kaufmann (25:34)
And to sit there and breathe through the terror was profoundly liberating on the back end of it. Because what it put me in touch with is some new level of ability ⁓ that at that point I didn’t know I had. I suspected I did, which is why I set this up, but I didn’t know. And the ability to sit with that kind of terror served me better when I then went off and did some of the more radical things than that. But it has served me as a human being.
Eric Kaufmann (26:03)
in my relationship with my wife as a father to my children, as a coach to my clients, as a member of the community. I was just a man walking in the woods. So that was one. One was sort of and I’ve come to say that you know fear is the gatekeeper to power. And the power that we feel you know when we when we do a ceremony and we feel that power coming online and it is the power that is not just my physical biological power.
Eric Kaufmann (26:31)
but it’s a sense of suddenly being lit up and connected with the universal life force. And that power is actually life itself coming online.
Eric Kaufmann (26:42)
to have ⁓ the opportunity to navigate through the terror and feel that power ⁓ and know that I’m okay, that I can make it, is incredibly liberating. So that was one. The other was this remarkable learning that no, killing the ego is off the table, not an option. So what is the option? The option is some level of maturity that I’ve spent the next 30 years going after.
Eric Kaufmann (27:10)
Yeah.
Sam Believ (27:11)
making peace with the ego instead and managing it and ⁓ instead of destroying it completely making it a little prettier. I like what you say about fear every time before going into ayahuasca ceremony I still ⁓ feel some level of fear and I think it’s just natural ⁓ because you never know what’s gonna come up. ⁓ But all this experience and we talk about ego you have this phrase that I ⁓ really like.
Sam Believ (27:41)
and you talk about egomyopia. Can you talk to us about that?
Eric Kaufmann (27:48)
Sure, yeah. I came up with that ⁓ term a few years ago as I was trying to understand what is the barrier here, right? So when I realized I’m not gonna kill the ego, I’m gonna mature the ego. So what is the issue? So ⁓ I came to this term, egomyopia, not being able to see and manage the ego. And ⁓ at this point,
Eric Kaufmann (28:12)
And to your point, my day -to -day work with executives and executive teams, I’d say the number one barrier to executive effectiveness is egomyopia. So we have to correct that egomyopia. I’m not going to kill it, I’m not going to destroy it, not for lack of trying, right? I have made the effort. Nor is it about just making it nicer, prettier. It’s about really cultivating and expanding our sense of consciousness, our state of consciousness. And that egomyopia ⁓ can be softened.
Eric Kaufmann (28:42)
We can be, you know, not being able to see, not being able to manage means we have to cultivate at least two things. To see it, we have to be more self -aware. And to manage it, we have to be more self -disciplined. And self -awareness and self -discipline ⁓ are the first two stages, as it were, in that corrective action towards egomyopia. Which turns out to be quite difficult to do solo. I learned that as well, as much as…
Eric Kaufmann (29:07)
⁓ Even ⁓ self -awareness requires outside input. It’s a little misleading, right? Because it’s self -awareness as though I’m just aware within the self, but it’s dynamic. Myself, my ego is a dynamic construct that came from family, and the way it keeps refining is with other people as well as our own personal work. But ⁓ the…
Eric Kaufmann (29:28)
the symptoms as it were or the signs of the egomyopoeia being corrected, there are two things that start to happen to this ego construct. It doesn’t break, it doesn’t go away, it doesn’t disappear, but there are two features ⁓ that would demonstrate this egomyopoeia softening or that this could be corrected. I refer to that as the ego becoming more porous and more spacious. More spacious meaning that it can hold more contradictions. It can hold more
Eric Kaufmann (29:57)
what would appear to be incongruent elements, they’re not incongruent, they’re only incongruent from a social construct. I can be both angry and happy. I can be motivated and doubtful.
Eric Kaufmann (30:10)
The more spacious the ego is, the more constructs can be in that space and we’re not so crammed and forced to just be one kind of person. When the ego is porous, it means thoughts, ideas, and especially identities can move in and out. I am not bound by who I was 10 years ago, 5 years ago. There’s porosity. There’s movement through the boundaries of identity. That to me is the maturation of our ego state. That we become more spacious and more porous. Then our ideals
Eric Kaufmann (30:40)
our concept of self ⁓ can hold more and can adopt and lose things more ⁓ dynamically.
Sam Believ (30:51)
I like to explain to people and that’s how it feels from my point of view that when you work with strong doses of ⁓ psychedelics, your ego does go away and does get dissolved ⁓ for a period of time and then it gets reconstructed again so it comes back to normal but however in this process of reconstruction you’re built it slightly nicer every time and what you’re explaining is maybe slightly bigger and slightly
Sam Believ (31:21)
more open. Because you work with executives and high level people, there must be extra large amounts of ego that’s just natural because that’s ego that ⁓ brings them to those results. Do you often find that there is resistance to your advice or to your training or do they always ⁓ listen?
Eric Kaufmann (31:50)
⁓
Eric Kaufmann (31:54)
I was invited to give a keynote to a private gathering, which was 120 CEOs of mid -size market companies. And the title of my keynote, this is just about three weeks ago, the title of the keynote was Ego Check, How to Unleash the Next Level of Executive Effectiveness. So 120 CEOs that are running businesses, you know, ⁓ north of $20 million. I’ll sit in there to your point, right?
Eric Kaufmann (32:24)
That’s a dicey conversation to get right into. And they really got the message, and they got it. So partly it’s how I deliver it. Right?
Eric Kaufmann (32:37)
As far as having big egos, there’s a lot of confidence. There’s a lot and there has to be confidence to pull it off. You’re an entrepreneur, right? And as an entrepreneur, as a man who’s sort of running an organization, you are pitting yourself against the odds because the likelihood of success is pretty slim. So there has to be a certain level of confidence, right? Drive, belief in self.
Eric Kaufmann (33:05)
That would have you say yeah, let’s do this. and and I I don’t this is not a Comment about the retreat industry or about the medicine. It’s just a comment about life 90 some percent of businesses simply disappear So the odds of success are stacked against us. So to pull off and sustain a business requires a certain level of confidence, ⁓ What I think you’re calling big ego, right? But the other thing that comes with that ⁓
Eric Kaufmann (33:34)
is some level of if you’re going to if you’re an entrepreneur if you’re a business you know running a business you have a certain level of deferred gratification you have had to learn to plan for the long term to set things aside to do things in order to treat people in a certain way. ⁓
Eric Kaufmann (33:48)
So those are all elements of discipline. When I talk about self -awareness and self -discipline, to get to the point where you’re actually running, there is a certain level of self -discipline. And without self -awareness and self -discipline, the first two steps of our spiritual evolution, it’s difficult to get to the next steps like self -acceptance and self -love. And so there is something in the community of folks who have spent years cultivating this that’s available to be transferred into another domain.
Eric Kaufmann (34:16)
If you think about the people who are starting the spiritual path, a lot of the initial efforts are, can I even control myself at some level? Can I make some choices that look like intentional choices? I’m not going to any executive and sort of attacking them about having an ego. I’m having a conversation about what’s the next level of effectiveness. And I’m not saying you have to get rid of the ego. I’m saying how do you cultivate more consciousness? And so…
Eric Kaufmann (34:44)
And the people who engage with me are selecting, they’re self -selecting. The people who don’t want to hear about this, they’re not going to engage. The people who do, we’re going to engage. But is there resistance? Resistance is a really interesting question. I don’t actually get resistance. And you might say, how the hell are you not getting resistance? Because for me to judge something as resistance assumes that I have a position contrary to theirs and I’m pushing or pulling and they’re trying to push or pull against me.
Eric Kaufmann (35:12)
What I have is signals. If somebody is what’s called resistance, there’s either readiness or understanding. And if I can help with the understanding, great. And the readiness might not be up to me, but I don’t see resistance in people. I see ⁓ readiness or understanding ⁓ and I can work with that.
Sam Believ (35:34)
So you talk about conscious leadership, right? And you’re there in the room of 120 ⁓ leaders. Some of them might be conscious, some not. First of all, explain to our listeners, what is conscious leadership? And then ⁓ how do you train them? How do you help them become conscious? And why would a leader want to become a conscious leader?
Eric Kaufmann (36:05)
Why would a leader want to become a conscious leader is a fabulous question. I ask myself that same question a lot.
Eric Kaufmann (36:16)
There has to be some personal motivation. There has to be something that is switched on. And oftentimes, what switches on is a sense of desperation or frustration. What we’re doing isn’t working. The way we’ve been playing the game isn’t sufficient. Our tools are not getting us to a place. Sufficient for what? Usually, there’s a search for some kind of contentment or some sense of personal freedom. It’s not why so many people show up to your space.
Eric Kaufmann (36:44)
And so the why people want to be conscious leaders is sort of on us, it’s on them, right? I don’t know that I can ⁓ force somebody to want to be a conscious leader.
Eric Kaufmann (36:59)
The how and the what is a conscious leader by at least the way I construct it and the way I’ve learned and the way I pass it on ⁓ is a conscious leader is somebody who is correcting their egomyopia ⁓ and to correct the egomyopia there’s a sort of a triple, a triad of features that we go to work on and I refer to them as wisdom, love and power.
Eric Kaufmann (37:24)
And to me that’s the work of cultivating conscious leadership. It’s the work of cultivating our consciousness, right? Turning on our wisdom, turning on our love, and turning on our power. You could say they’re always turned on, yes, but are they clear, are they aligned, are they integrated? Wisdom is our capacity to see below the surface and beyond the obvious, right? Wisdom is this understanding of the interconnectedness of all of life.
Eric Kaufmann (37:50)
Love is giving without expectation. It’s all the features that have to do with the nurturing heart and with the kindness and compassion to others and to self. Power is our ability to live with purpose and relaxed presence. The ability to show up not with power to over people but this connection to the life force and then the expression of that life force in our unique way. When wisdom, love and power
Eric Kaufmann (38:19)
are activated, the egomyopia is diminished and so consciousness rises. And as consciousness rises, the executives and folks that make decisions from that place, it looks ⁓ increasingly different than just the egomyopic self -serving need to be right, they need to be liked, they need to have might. Turns into wisdom, love and power.
Sam Believ (38:44)
Beautiful. And ⁓ how can psychedelics help leaders to maybe discover that their ego is bigger than it should be and maybe find that desire to be more conscious and to also, you know, unlock their unrealized potential?
Eric Kaufmann (39:15)
So it’s the end of the ceremony. Everyone’s ⁓ done in the North. You’re gonna go to sleep, you’re gonna do whatever, you’re gonna wake up the next morning and you’re gonna do an integration sort of wrap up circle, some kind or another, right? I think these are fairly standard ⁓ features ⁓ of a ceremony. Regardless of the individual experience that people have, some people had a really tough time, it was hard, they had to go through it. Some people had a wonderful, loving time.
Eric Kaufmann (39:44)
You do this now on an ongoing basis. People sit around the circle and there’s two things, three things that come up regularly, right? ⁓ One thing that comes up is to a person, gratitude. Right? To a person. ⁓ Have you had a person come to a ceremony that doesn’t feel a sense of gratitude after? It’s almost impossible. I don’t know. Maybe you have.
Sam Believ (40:07)
Not every ceremony, but in the retreat that will come up at least once.
Eric Kaufmann (40:11)
Right, there’s a sense of gratitude. And so ⁓ What are people grateful for? They’re grateful for the opportunity to have tapped into a larger version of reality Than our mundane day -to -day sense of anxiously driven goal -directed ⁓ You know games that we play So gratitude is one the other thing that often comes up is a sense of love ⁓ You know ⁓
Eric Kaufmann (40:37)
love for life, love for our family, love for our loved ones, whoever they are, that’s almost always accentuated when we go around and ⁓ talk to people after ceremony. And the third that comes online is the sense of ⁓ our own inner boundaries and how we have now a felt sense of being able to transcend them, ⁓ right? And so… ⁓
Eric Kaufmann (41:04)
You can see right how does that help when somebody who’s myopathy focused on the pnl driving the team driving for results and is caught up in this anxiousness on the day -to -day effort to make the impossible possible ⁓ And then they drop into this field of possibility They come out of the skin of their limited boundary and they touch upon and this to me is what the medicine ⁓ does so dramatically, right? You physically emotionally mentally ⁓ embodied ⁓ contact
Eric Kaufmann (41:33)
with a vast field of possibility, with the interconnectedness of life, you come back from that ⁓ and it affects the way you are thinking and feeling and reacting to people around you. ⁓ And I think from that perspective, what the medicine does is it gives us a glimpse into what’s possible ⁓ in a way that’s very difficult to glimpse under normal circumstances.
Eric Kaufmann (41:58)
And when somebody has, we did a, ⁓ I did a workshop a few years ago, there was no medicine involved. It was called the Alchemical Executive. There were 12 executives for three days and we went deep on this sort of personal exploration, no medicine. But similar, you know, with the right coherence and the right set of processes and the right environment, there’s a transcendent experience that happens. About a week later, I got a call from one of the participants and she said, what the hell did you do to me?
Eric Kaufmann (42:27)
I said, what do you mean? She said, one, we got rid of all the plastic in the house. Two, I went out and bought an electric car. I said, for the record, we never talked about the environment. We never talked about plastic. We never talked about EVs. We were doing deep personal work. What happened to this amazing woman, ⁓ a C -suite leader in a Fortune 100 company?
Eric Kaufmann (42:49)
What happened to her? She came online. This personal work actually helped her dissolve the sense of separation as she had a felt sense experience ⁓ of the life force and the inevitable interconnectedness among everyone. And then when she went back home, she wanted to start doing the obvious things that would express the sense of stewardship and responsibility and kinship with life. So she got rid of plastic and brought an electric vehicle as step one and two, right?
Eric Kaufmann (43:14)
That to me is what the beautiful thing is. Once we get in touch with that, and this is so different than the preacher from the pulpit telling you that God is telling you to be nice, to be kind. Well, hallelujah to all that, but that’s intellectual. When you have a felt sense experience of the connection, that changes your perception and your consequent behavior. And that to me is the exciting part about this work.
Sam Believ (43:38)
Yeah, I can imagine, you know, it’s hard for anyone to integrate their psychedelic experience or transcendent experience of any form. But if somebody ⁓ is an executive and they have to not only change their own life, but then, you ⁓ know, a life of this ⁓ group of people and this big organization and they that’s that sounds very, very complicated to do.
Sam Believ (44:05)
in in your own journey ⁓ i i watch some of the testimonials from the ⁓ the executives you work with and one of them called you an enlightened coach ⁓ because i think that the angle you take is very different from normal coaching it’s it’s more about that that spiritual side so ⁓ can you talk to us about first of all you know enlightenment have
Sam Believ (44:31)
Have you felt that you ever achieved it or is it a goal? And then, ⁓ you know, what do you think about people calling you that?
Eric Kaufmann (44:42)
I think she’s overselling it, but I appreciate that you put it on the deck. I can call myself whatever the hell I want, but I have a wife and two daughters, right? So there’s a bullshit detective that I live with. And when I was in my 20s, I was hell bent. That was my spiritual zealot, right? I was going to be enlightened. I remember two years into being in my teacher’s community and it was one of the…
Eric Kaufmann (45:10)
Dharma talks on a Wednesday night and I actually at one point raised my hand and said, you know, I am going to be enlightened within five years and sort of drew a wave of laughter from all the students who’ve been there longer. And I thought, wow, you guys are just losers. So now close on 40 years later, I understand why they laughed.
Eric Kaufmann (45:32)
My notion of enlightenment when I was a younger person is different than it is now. My notion of enlightenment was essentially a desire to be free of the pain and suffering that I was experiencing, emotional pain, sense of alienation, not really fitting in, feeling insecure, all those things I thought enlightenment would just be the opposite of that. So there’s two things I have to say about that. One, I’m certainly more enlightened than I was, but I’m not, you know, whatever.
Eric Kaufmann (46:00)
Even in Buddhism there are four different types of enlightenment. I might be in level two if I’m lucky. I’ve also changed my perception of it. One, I’ve mentioned to you my goal is to be a conscious being at choice, which to me is more of a functional definition of enlightenment. And two,
Eric Kaufmann (46:22)
The high bar that I invite people to and that I have striven towards, striven, that I’ve worked towards over the last few years is ⁓ really the level of self -acceptance. Because I think so much of what I wanted from enlightenment ⁓ was a psychological relief. And ⁓ to me, much of that has to do with our ability to arrive at a deep, loving, embodied experience of self -acceptance.
Eric Kaufmann (46:51)
and we are from birth trained to be in self -rejection, self -criticism, insufficiency, awkwardness, insecurity ⁓ and to arrive at a place where we can be in self -acceptance is going to feel a lot like enlightenment because one of the features of self -acceptance and I’ll speak from my own experience not from you know ⁓ academic perspective ⁓ is this remarkable sense of contentment.
Eric Kaufmann (47:19)
That’s what I was looking for as a young person when I was looking for enlightenment. I wanted to be content. I didn’t know that language at that time. But self -acceptance has yielded a level of contentment. My inner critic is done. There’s no inner critic in me. The anxiety is ⁓ gone. I don’t stress. There are things that are difficult and challenging. There are moments when I’m doubting myself. But self -acceptance and contentment.
Eric Kaufmann (47:47)
If I never reach anything higher than that in this lifetime, this is more than I would have expected in my youth.
Sam Believ (47:56)
You were aiming to kill the ego and you missed it but you killed the inner critic.
Eric Kaufmann (48:02)
I didn’t kill the inner critic. We danced to the point of blending. We integrated. I didn’t kill it. I haven’t killed anything. My pursuit of killing turned out to be a lethal boomerang because ⁓ at the end of the day, Sandra, there is no ego. There is no inner critic. It’s just me. We use all these terms to…
Sam Believ (48:07)
Mm -hmm.
Eric Kaufmann (48:25)
externalize it and deal with it with some cognitive fashion but there is no ego there is no self -critic there’s none of that it’s just me ⁓ and the work isn’t to kill anything because that kind of lethal intention is a boomerang who am i killing ⁓ me ⁓ and so the action is an action of love ⁓
Eric Kaufmann (48:44)
and love looks like blending and blending looks like integration. My inner critic got reintegrated into the general gestalt of my ecosystem of being and resolved, dissolved that energy, but didn’t kill it.
Sam Believ (49:00)
beautiful that’s a great way to understand it ⁓ and in your spiritual journey you mentioned that eventually you had through a year of meditation in a cabin you come to realization that the true spirituality is having a family and living in community can you talk to us about that and ⁓ how did it go for you you know years later
Eric Kaufmann (49:26)
I ⁓ didn’t realize a true spirituality was any of that. I realized that for this man, Eric, me, in this lifetime,
Eric Kaufmann (49:39)
the next spiritual adventure, the growth, would come with wife and children, with service and community. It wasn’t that ⁓ the monastic life is not true. It just wasn’t right for me. And I didn’t conclude this sort of rationally because I sat down with a journal and came up with this idea. This was a profound revelation. And I should add, deeply undesirable. When I got that message that I should leave my spiritual sort of cloister,
Eric Kaufmann (50:07)
and have a wife and children and live in community, it was very aversive to me. I didn’t want to do that. I was convinced at the time that ⁓ children would steal my spiritual energy and that the wife would be a distraction and that life in business would just be crass and mundane and I wouldn’t be able to be enlightened. So it wasn’t a welcome message. But.
Eric Kaufmann (50:34)
years of meditation and spiritual practice ⁓ have ⁓ impressed upon me that when I get that kind of download ⁓ I will pay attention and I will follow. And so yeah my wife and I are married for 25 years. I have a 23 and 21 year old daughters who are these gorgeous creatures navigating the matrix with great skill. And ⁓
Eric Kaufmann (51:01)
What I didn’t know that I can say now is when I left my spiritual order and as you mentioned at the time I was living, it was a year in silence. So I was in a cabin I built in the mountains, a slightly bigger version of that box, but still very isolated and very ⁓ eventful for the year of meditating up there. When I left, I realized that I had…
Eric Kaufmann (51:27)
learned how to touch upon ⁓ the fringes of God and experience direct access to spiritual dimensions, ⁓ but emotionally I was a bit of a moron and relationally I didn’t know how to ground that spiritual energy into the day -to -day mundane experience of chop wood carry water. And so I didn’t know at the time, it took me years to figure this out, but this this
Eric Kaufmann (51:54)
This message is compulsion to stop sitting cross -legged and sort of attuned to the transcendent and begin to apply that into the really intense and maddening experience of being married and having children ⁓ has been a profound lesson for me of love and patience ⁓ and compassion ⁓ and ⁓ nurturing.
Eric Kaufmann (52:17)
in a way that being a monastic wouldn’t have taught me. I don’t think. Me. This is not a universal statement. This is about Eric. I think it’s true for many people. But ⁓ I didn’t marry a woman who would just ⁓ be a servant. I married a partner. ⁓ That’s hard. ⁓ That’s hard because it’s going to require, you know, all this discussion about ego is not theoretical ⁓ when you…
Eric Kaufmann (52:44)
live together, love together, raise a family together for a quarter century. And it hasn’t been easy necessarily or smooth, but my wife’s amazing, my kids are, they have their own challenges and spiritual path, but they’re beautiful, amazing young women. And I’m profoundly grateful for the download and grateful to myself for listening.
Sam Believ (53:07)
You know what they say if you feel like you’re rich to enlightenment, go visit your family for a week. It’s kind of similar to that, but in your case it was ⁓ actually ⁓ starting a family. You talk talking about family and the community. You talk about meaningful communities. What is a meaningful community? And,
Eric Kaufmann (53:14)
That’s right. That’s right.
Sam Believ (53:37)
you know how how should we why should we have more of them
Eric Kaufmann (53:42)
⁓ Feels like a…
Eric Kaufmann (53:47)
kind of a critical question, I think, at this time. It’s always been important, but, you know, we live life. I forget the ⁓ name of the Surgeon General of the United States a couple of years ago, more than a couple of years ago, maybe four or five years ago, he made his declaration that there’s a pandemic of loneliness ⁓ in the United States. And it may not just be the United States, but that’s what he was referring to.
Eric Kaufmann (54:12)
I, you know, in my experience of community, there is a, you know, there’s a lot of references to community where groups of people gather together. When you said the word meaningful, the way I distinguish ⁓ that in my own experiences, a group of people has a shared interest.
Eric Kaufmann (54:32)
A community has a shared fate.
Eric Kaufmann (54:37)
And the distinction is material, right? The shared interest means that we can dive in and out at will and we can participate and we can learn and grow and exchange ideas and information. A shared fate means that when you’re happy, I feel the happiness. When you’re sad, I’m hurting. When you need something, I provide it to you. When I need something, you provide it to me. I think that’s a level of community ⁓ that is ⁓ more traditional as in the older versions of our own societies, right? And…
Eric Kaufmann (55:06)
Why is it so critical these days? ⁓
Eric Kaufmann (55:12)
We exist in relationship ⁓ and when those relationships are solid and shared fate, when I feel that I’m actually being held, supported, cared for, known, observed, attended to, ⁓ there’s more life force in me. I feel more ready to face the world ⁓ and together we can face the world more meaningfully, ⁓ more lovingly, more powerfully. ⁓
Eric Kaufmann (55:38)
And the general construct of our modern society is disempowering. You know, from the time we’re born through school, ⁓ higher education, work, we’re meticulously and consistently being chipped away at our sense of greatness and our sense of power. And a community can help us regain that sense of meaning and power ⁓ and live a life that’s not any bigger or louder, just authentic.
Eric Kaufmann (56:03)
And when people go to their grave, many of them wished ⁓ that they lived an unconstrained life, i .e. an authentic life. And sometimes it’s difficult to do that alone. Community can be a great… Look, it’s communities that keep us from being authentic. It’s communities that can encourage us to be authentic. And when you asked about spirituality and enlightenment, self -acceptance is one measure ⁓ of a sort of enlightened journey and authenticity, the ability to really flow through the life force, the divine power that pours through us so we can
Eric Kaufmann (56:33)
touch upon in ceremony, but bring in day in and day out. It’s not just ceremony that it’s done in, it’s done in our day -to -day activity and the community helps us hold that line, hold that energy and live that life of expression, of devotion and honoring to the divine that can come through us.
Sam Believ (56:56)
Yeah, I agree with you completely about the importance of the community. People come here to Lawara to ⁓ drink ayahuasca to get healed. But what we notice is at least half of the healing, if not more, comes from the community. Just ⁓ when you create that culture of mutual support, people start ⁓ reflecting in each other and they start supporting each other. And this is tremendously healing.
Sam Believ (57:24)
So I’m also excited myself to build the community as well. I kind of see that I’m working on this now as the motto is come for Ayahuasca, stay for the community, have a place for people to come and live and work, be happy, be supportive, be loving. And yeah, we need it. We’re very lonely as a society and sometimes all you need is 15 more people and a bonfire and a good conversation and the healing will come.
Eric Kaufmann (57:55)
⁓
Sam Believ (57:57)
Eric, thank you so much for this conversation. I think a lot of people find it very entertaining and very informative, especially people who are ⁓ in business and want to be more conscious as leaders. Where can people find more about you ⁓ and maybe any last message you would want to share?
Eric Kaufmann (58:24)
My website is sagatica .com. S -A -G -A -T -I -C -A. Sagatica from a Latin word sagasitas, which means wisdom or the sage, sagacious. So sagatica is a play on that word, sage or wisdom. sagatica .com. Obviously I’m on LinkedIn, Eric Kaufman on LinkedIn. Check out my books, To Your Point, The Four Virtues of a Leader and Leadership Breakdown.
Eric Kaufmann (58:51)
sort of practical applications of this conversation. And, ⁓ you know, my any parting words, I would ⁓ encourage folks to give up ⁓ the effort to kill the ego ⁓ and to do ⁓ everything in their power as a spiritual practice, as a living practice.
Eric Kaufmann (59:14)
to leverage whatever practices and whatever medicine work ⁓ to come closer and closer towards that place of self -acceptance ⁓ because that is a path to peace.
Sam Believ (59:27)
Thank you Eric, beautiful words, thank you for sharing and yeah guys, stop trying to kill your ego, Eric try it, it doesn’t work. Just love yourself.
Eric Kaufmann (59:38)
Thank you, Sam.
Sam Believ (59:40)
Thank you for listening to ayahuascapodcast .com. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I will see you in the next one.