#17 Mikal Vega - Navy SEAL / EOD / Call of Duty Director

Mikal Vega, a man of many accomplishments who has earned a substantial number of different titles. A Navy SEAL, EOD (explosive ordnance disposal), Actor, Director, Producer, Screenwriter, CEO of Vital Warrior, and Master of Self Awareness, just to cover a few. We cover his childhood, his military time both as an EOD Tech, and an Operator at SEAL Team 8, his transition into civilian life, and finally his current career both in Hollywood and Directing for Activision's Call of Duty franchise. Mikal Vega Links: https://www.instagram.com/mikalvega https://vitalwarrior.org https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3819620 Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

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• 0:46Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:53Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:00Speaker 04

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• 1:38Shawn Ryan?

  You're an EOD guy, Explosive Ordnance Disposal, a Navy SEAL, an actor, a director, a writer, a producer, a stunt man, a video game director, and a master of self-awareness.

• 2:02Shawn Ryan?

  Rumor has it, and I want to know if this is true. Rumor has it somebody hit you in the face with a baseball bat,

• 2:14Shawn Ryan?

  and you took the baseball bat and resolved the issue. Is that, is that true? That is not true. That's not true? It was a stop sign pole.

• 2:29Speaker 05

  We went into Solder City, that was one of our big ones. I had guys on the Zarqawi hit.

• 2:39Speaker 05

  When you go into a place where a guy is chopping off heads, setting it on the neighbor's porch, and then threatening them that they're next, any day, and they don't know when it's coming.

• 2:52Speaker 05

  When you go remove that cancer...

• 2:59Speaker 05

  It was like this dude, like way the hell down there, and I'm like, he's like peeking out from behind this car, and I'm like...

• 3:11Speaker 05

  "There's a dude right over there you need to keep eyes on. When he pops his heads up, pop it."

• 3:18Speaker 05

  I was like, "That's exactly what the fuck you're saying." I was like, "What makes you think that we can go downrange for years and take live for a bunch of people that obviously don't give a flying fuck?

• 3:34Speaker 05

  And I wouldn't do 10 times more for those closest to me."

• 3:43Shawn Ryan?

  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Sean Ryan Show. Over the past few weeks, we've had a tremendous amount of support show up on Patreon to support this show. I want to say thank you guys for the generosity, and I hope you're enjoying all the behind the scenes and exclusive content that we put over there on Patreon for you guys, our best supporters. Also, I want to say thank you for everyone that left us an iTunes review. If you haven't left us an iTunes review, please hit the link down in the description, head over there, and just leave us a one-word review. That really helps us get to where we want to be with the show. Thank you for that.

• 4:25Shawn Ryan?

  With that being said, let's move on to our next guest. Our next guest is a former EOD technician. That's Explosive Ordnance Disposal. Basically, a bomb technician. He's a former Navy SEAL. He's an actor. He's a director. He's a writer. He's a producer. Among many other things, he is a master of self-awareness. If you want to donate or support to our next guest, you can go to vitalwarrior.org, and you'll find him there. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome 017, Mr. McCall Vega.

• 5:11Shawn Ryan?

  I want to take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon. Patron support is what makes this show possible and gives me the ability to bring these one-of-a-kind stories to the public. Go to patreon.com/vigilanceelite and support The Sean Ryan Show today.

• 5:34Shawn Ryan?

  McCall Vega, welcome to the show.

• 5:38Speaker 05

  Thanks for having me.

• 5:39Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I have been looking forward to this one ever since Capone's brought you up, what, probably about six months ago? And we connected, and it's just been, I've been really looking forward to this one.

• 5:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:54Shawn Ryan?

  I think I'm gonna get a lot of, I learn something every interview that I do, but I think that you've got a lot of wisdom to share, and I plan on just being a sponge this entire interview, so. But, just for the audience, I started trying to research you, and you're involved in so many damn things that it's it's impossible to, to kind of

• 6:25Speaker 05

  I know.

• 6:26Shawn Ryan?

  Get it encompass all of it in a decent amount of time, and and so, usually have mapped out exactly where I want to go. And this one, I don't, I have a general guideline, but I am hoping that you hit a couple of specific topics and and that's where I'll interject and we'll We'll go explore a little deeper into that, but just for everybody, so you're an EOD guy, Explosive Ordnance Disposal, a Navy SEAL, an actor, a director, a writer, a producer,

• 7:07Shawn Ryan?

  a stunt man, a video game director, and with what you're doing with the nonprofit and, and the meditation and all that stuff, I, I don't know what to call it, so I put it, a master of self-awareness. You run a nonprofit called The Vital Warrior. You've been involved in, from what I can tell, at least 28 different major motion pictures or productions, two include SWAT, Mayans Motorcycle Club, NCIS LA, Hawaii Five-O,

• 7:47Shawn Ryan?

  G.I. Joe, Dallas, Transformers, Ninja Turtles, and I believe this is the most popular, most successful video game franchise of all time, Call of Duty by Activision. So...

• 8:03Speaker 05

  It's kinda cool.

• 8:04Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit, man, like...

• 8:06Speaker 05

  Especially when I look at where I, where it all started, man, it's like, it's, it's been a hell of a ride, man.

• 8:13Shawn Ryan?

  I'll say. But I start off, everybody gets a present.

• 8:19Speaker 05

  Oh shit.

• 8:21Shawn Ryan?

  When they come on, so it's Christmas time.

• 8:24Speaker 05

  Alright, open it up?

• 8:26Shawn Ryan?

  Go ahead, open it up.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  Holy moly, what do we got here? Gummy bears?

• 8:34Shawn Ryan?

  Those are the best gummy bears.

• 8:36Speaker 05

  You have your own gummy bear line?

• 8:38Shawn Ryan?

  Absolutely.

• 8:39Speaker 05

  Holy shit. I didn't have breakfast, so I'm gonna crack into this right now.

• 8:43Shawn Ryan?

  We got a lot of them.

• 8:46Speaker 05

  My daughter's gonna be happy too. I love gummy bears. These don't have like THC or anything.

• 8:51Shawn Ryan?

  Nah, they're not the good kind, but they are pretty damn good.

• 8:58Shawn Ryan?

  But, yeah, Merry Christmas. Yeah, I'll take one. I'll take one.

• 9:06Speaker 05

  They gotta be soft.

• 9:10Speaker 05

  They gotta be soft, otherwise it's just, it's not the same thing.

• 9:14Shawn Ryan?

  Not bad, right?

• 9:15Speaker 05

  They're fucking great, bro.

• 9:19Speaker 05

  That's awesome, man.

• 9:20Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. I'm glad you like them.

• 9:24Speaker 05

  I love gummy bears. I use them when I'm working out.

• 9:26Shawn Ryan?

  You use gum- I've heard that there's like a triathlete thing where they-

• 9:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, my, my trainer, his name's Austin Uku. He's like, he's a genetic freak. But, he's a really good friend of mine, but he swears by them too. He's like, use them right after working out. It gives you the glycogen storage right back from them.

• 9:46Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 9:46Speaker 05

  So.

• 9:47Shawn Ryan?

  I'm gonna have to start doing that.

• 9:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:48Shawn Ryan?

  I did not know that. I pretty much just eat them all the time, but-

• 9:51Speaker 05

  Nah, well now you have, now you have a, this is benefiting me. I am, I am-

• 9:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 05

  Helping my body with these gummy bears.

• 9:59Shawn Ryan?

  Now I have a reason. But, um, so,

• 10:05Shawn Ryan?

  your name came up, as you know, we went out to dinner the night before the interview and, and pretty much with all the guests, I take them out to dinner, uh, just to kind of calm the nerves and get to know you a little bit better. And so your name came up when Marcus and Amber Capone came out. And, they asked me if I'd known you, McCall Vega, and I said, "No, I've never heard of that guy." And, and, and I hadn't, and then, they said that he was, they said, "Well, I thought you were at SEAL Team Eight." And I said, "I was at SEAL Team Eight." They said, "Well, I think he used to go by Hooch."

• 10:47Shawn Ryan?

  And I was, my face just dropped. I was like, like, like, "Hooch? Like Dave Fritsch?" And, and, um,

• 10:57Shawn Ryan?

  and they, that's exactly what they did. They started laughing. They said, "If you could describe Hooch in one word, what would it be?" Without hesitation, I said, "Monster." Just monster. And, um, so they started laughing, so you, you kind of have that reputation from the past, if you didn't know that. And, um-

• 11:25Shawn Ryan?

  So, so when I showed up to teammate, uh, we're in ProDev. There wasn't a whole lot going on. Most of the people were, most of the, the operators were on leave. You weren't. And there was a couple of guys that I'd known that were, that had graduated.

• 11:44Speaker 05

  Here we go.

• 11:45Shawn Ryan?

  Buds in front of me. And they had said, just, you know, like, everybody seems pretty cool, but watch out for this fucking guy, Hooch.

• 11:56Speaker 05

  Never do.

• 11:57Shawn Ryan?

  And I'm like, who? And they're like, watch out for this fucking guy, Hooch. And I'm like, well, what am I looking for? And like, don't worry. When you see him, you'll know it's Hooch. And I'm like, oh, fuck. Well, all right. Whatever the hell that means, you know? And I'm like, well, what's the deal with this guy? And they're like, well, rumor has it, and I want to know if this is true.

• 12:18Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 12:18Shawn Ryan?

  Rumor has it, somebody hit you in the face with a baseball bat. And you took the baseball bat and resolved the issue. Is that, is that true?

• 12:34Speaker 05

  That is not true.

• 12:35Shawn Ryan?

  That's not true?

• 12:36Speaker 05

  It was a stop sign pole.

• 12:39Shawn Ryan?

  It was a stop sign pole?

• 12:41Speaker 05

  Piece of pipe, like from a stop sign.

• 12:45Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want to go into that at all?

• 12:46Speaker 05

  It was just a street fight.

• 12:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:48Speaker 05

  A bunch of, you know, bar stuff.

• 12:52Shawn Ryan?

  Bar, uh, somebody ripped.

• 12:53Speaker 05

  It was a bar fight.

• 12:55Shawn Ryan?

  Who took the fucking stop sign pole out?

• 12:57Speaker 05

  I don't know. The fucking thing was laying there in the street or some shit, dude. And this guy fucking hits me with this thing. And I just fucking, I turned around, grabbed, grabbed it and just fuck, pop, pop, pop, you know?

• 13:13Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. So it is true?

• 13:16Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, it was a stop sign pole though.

• 13:20Shawn Ryan?

  My bad. Baseball bat, stop sign pole, you know?

• 13:24Speaker 05

  Virginia Beach.

• 13:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:27Shawn Ryan?

  So.

• 13:28Speaker 05

  Redneck down there in Virginia Beach.

• 13:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, not anymore. But um, so then fast forward, we were doing a water oak horse and.

• 13:39Speaker 05

  That thing was fun.

• 13:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And and exhausting.

• 13:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, that too.

• 13:44Shawn Ryan?

  That's a that's a rough.

• 13:45Speaker 05

  Forearm blaster.

• 13:47Shawn Ryan?

  And uh, so we did a monster mash, you know, the PT run around the base, did a, I think it was ocean swim, the whole shebang. Ended on the oak horse. And there was, there was one older guy in my platoon that was. He wasn't on leave, he wasn't in schools. Turns out he didn't, he didn't deploy uh, the first time, not hit on him or anything, but he was always up all of our asses. And.

• 14:15Speaker 05

  What a name.

• 14:17Shawn Ryan?

  I'll tell you later.

• 14:18Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 14:19Shawn Ryan?

  And I don't want to dime him out on the show, but.

• 14:21Speaker 05

  Sure, sure.

• 14:22Shawn Ryan?

  But we had run the oak horse two times in this and tried to do it a third time. And I just, my fucking, you know, that thing where it's like you got the rings.

• 14:32Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:32Shawn Ryan?

  Swinging. You know, you know, I don't have that fucking far of a reach. And I already did it two times.

• 14:38Speaker 05

  No, no, no, it's not just rings, it's the ascending ring.

• 14:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, they go up.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  They go up.

• 14:44Shawn Ryan?

  And you know, if you don't, if you don't get it, then you fall in the pool and starting over, right? So I already did it twice and I think we only had to do it once and this guy was all up my ass. He's like, you fucking get your ass over there and do it again and. And uh, you know, I was like, I'm a new guy. I'm like, yeah, okay. And it just wasn't happening. And I was like, dude, I'm not doing it again. I knew this guy had not deployed. You know, the first time and I, I was like, all right, I'm a new guy. But this guy's basically a fucking new guy too.

• 15:16Speaker 05

  Guy too.

• 15:17Shawn Ryan?

  And so I told, you know, I just told him, I said, you know, fuck off, dude. Like, I know you didn't fucking deploy. I'm not gonna listen to you. And so he got all butthurt. We're back in the cages, you know, where we keep all our shit for those listening all, we would have a basically a room. When you're silly, you have so much gear, you need a room. Which is basically a chain link fence and every operator at the team has a cage.

• 15:44Shawn Ryan?

  So I'm in my cage, working on my gear, changing my clothes, you know, getting ready to start the, the work day. And I hear this guy behind me and he's like, that's, that's him. And I'm like, what the fuck does this dude want now? And I turn around.

• 16:03Shawn Ryan?

  And there you are, looking at me.

• 16:05Speaker 05

  Uh oh.

• 16:06Shawn Ryan?

  From outside my cage. And I'm like, that's gotta be fucking hooch.

• 16:15Shawn Ryan?

  And then the cage door locked and you gave me a little spiel, you were nice about it and then disappeared and I sat in my fucking cage locked for the next couple hours.

• 16:26Speaker 05

  Oh my gosh.

• 16:27Shawn Ryan?

  But uh, yeah, so that's how we met.

• 16:30Speaker 05

  I was like, well, fuck, no handshake, nothing.

• 16:33Shawn Ryan?

  I couldn't get my arm through the cage.

• 16:35Speaker 05

  The holes are open.

• 16:37Shawn Ryan?

  But uh, and from that point on, I just avoided you everywhere you were. I was like, you know what? I'm not fucking going over there. That guy's over there and I, I don't like being locked in my fucking cage.

• 16:47Speaker 05

  Fuck.

• 16:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, but uh, anyways.

• 16:51Speaker 05

  Man, I don't remember it. Head trauma is real.

• 16:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, well.

• 16:55Speaker 05

  There's a lot I don't, I still don't remember.

• 16:57Shawn Ryan?

  I'm probably not the only new guy that you fucking locked in a cage.

• 17:01Speaker 05

  Probably true too.

• 17:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  You know.

• 17:04Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you know, I got out.

• 17:05Speaker 05

  I don't want to paint the wrong picture though. Like, like, okay, so, so in all fairness, I was a pretty fair guy. I always, at least I feel like it. Like, like it was just when guys got out of what my sense of, you know, left and right flanks were um, on what's acceptable behavior on predicated upon experience in the teams. Where those types of things would occur, you know?

• 17:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:33Speaker 05

  And, but I was pretty fair. If the guy was like completely squared away, I wasn't, I, I wasn't the guy that was just like beating up on new guys or anything like that.

• 17:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:41Speaker 05

  It was, it was, it was just, I was showing them when they were outside the boundaries of. What I thought at the time was where people should be. Yeah.

• 17:53Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that was probably actually the nicest lesson an older SEAL taught me because after that it was all fist and fleet. You know, and, and, and rigger's tape.

• 18:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's, yeah, see.

• 18:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, being taped up. But anyways, so there's my SEAL teammate story when we met.

• 18:15Speaker 05

  No wonder you wouldn't tell me that at dinner last night.

• 18:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 05

  All right, I get it.

• 18:19Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, so.

• 18:27Shawn Ryan?

  So you, so they told me, you know, back to Capones, you know, they told me about you and how you had,

• 18:37Shawn Ryan?

  you changed your name and how you had gotten into meditation and it sounds, if I remember correctly, the Capones started their entire vets organization, uh, you kind of, you're responsible for that essentially, uh, or maybe not responsible for that.

• 18:57Speaker 05

  I was a key player. I was a key player in, in that evolution of Marcus and his wife.

• 19:05Shawn Ryan?

  You showed them the light, I guess is what I'll say. It's, it is the way it sounded.

• 19:11Speaker 05

  We provided an opportunity that, that they seized upon and took down the road, you know? And, um, you want me to go into that now?

• 19:22Shawn Ryan?

  Sure.

• 19:23Speaker 05

  So it's a, it's a long story to get there though.

• 19:27Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's go, let's start the interview from childhood, but, but I was, I was just fascinated with the whole thing. I, you know, with the, with the Ibogaine stuff and I had really researched some of the science behind that on how it, uh, blocks the default mode network and forces the brain to.

• 19:49Shawn Ryan?

  Use other avenues to pass information that it doesn't normally do. And after seeing, hearing their story and what it did for him and, and, and actually a lot of guys that have been on the show. I just, as I heard and learned more about it, I just got more fascinated and, and, and researching you. Uh, man, I'm just, I'm so happy you're here and, and.

• 20:15Speaker 05

  So am I.

• 20:16Shawn Ryan?

  I'm really hoping that, I know I'm gonna learn a ton and, uh, and so is everybody listening, so. Thank you again for being here.

• 20:25Speaker 05

  Absolutely, man. It's an honor to do so. Um, any, any opportunity, so one of the big things, like as a default for anybody listening is, is. There may be things that you don't understand that you hear today, that you hear me say today that you won't understand. It's fine. It's fine. Um, there's gonna be different levels of listeners out there that are on different levels of a spiritual journey. That will understand exactly what I'm talking about. And then those that don't, maybe when they engage upon that path. Later on, those, those seeds will grow and they'll be like, oh, or they can reference this show. And, and go, oh, that's kind of what I'm experiencing now that I've been doing this for a while. Like, and I, I, I get it now.

• 21:09Speaker 05

  You know, so it's, it's the why, I, I think it's, I personally feel that, that being able to convey my journey. And the way that it can be replicated in others is why I'm still here. I was always given just to the edge of, you know, the end, right? I always had just enough, like, so, so IED blast didn't like completely blow us apart. You know, bullets deflected by, you know, machinery in a, in a, in a minigun. You know, it's like all the, and the armor. And it's, you know, incoming mortar fighter, all the type of stuff that like it just doesn't.

• 21:55Speaker 05

  I was protected. I was protected. I got, I, I, enough would get through to where I could have the experience and relate to people that weren't completely, you know, protected. The IEDs where people are losing legs and arms and, you know, these types of things. But I can, I can, I can relate to people somewhat. I, I mean, in, in a, I don't want to paint the wrong picture here, but somewhat I can relate to, oh, this is what it would be like to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I don't know how those people. I don't know how they surmount that.

• 22:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:33Speaker 05

  Those types of things, like when you, when, losing a limb, I, I haven't lost a limb. I don't understand what that's like having to overcome, you know, and, and that type of adversity. But what I do know is that it doesn't matter what the experience is. It's that experience that completely shifts us. That is going to project us into a place of absolute prosperity and joy. If we learn how to focus that beam in that direction. So we can turn the channel from negative to the positive. And those are the types of things we'll talk about today. So being able to share that life experience on a platform like yours

• 23:17Speaker 05

  is an absolute honor and directly in line with the reason I'm still alive today.

• 23:25Speaker 05

  So.

• 23:25Shawn Ryan?

  I can't wait to dig in. Yeah, you're welcome. You're welcome. Let's start with a, I told you a little bit ago that we have a Patreon network. Basically, it's a subscription network. They get behind the scenes stuff. And their support is actually what funds this entire operation with everything from the film crew to everything. And so I give them an opportunity to, I tell them who's coming on and they get an opportunity to ask a question. I pick a couple of questions. And this question is from Foxtrot one.

• 24:06Shawn Ryan?

  And when we tell them who the guest is, a lot of them do their own research and dive in and kind of see what you're all about. So, his question is, "Being into providing psychological treatment for wounded soldiers and veterans, what do you think about the role of military psychologists or shrinks which were part of the forces overseas to maintain combat abilities of vulnerable or already traumatized soldiers, handing out prescriptions for benzos, opioids, antidepressants, sedatives, etc., not to heal the patient, but to prolong the exposure by maintaining combat readiness?"

• 24:54Speaker 05

  So, at the beginning of that, it says that I'm involved with the psychology.

• 25:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:01Speaker 05

  I'm not, I'm not, just want to be clear, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a psychiatrist. But I have extensive experience of working with those doctors. And so, for me, I didn't find benefit, okay, so we have to go into this a little bit. So, which is going to kind of cause a piecemeal type of thing once we get flowing later, but I'll keep it succinct. So, for me, it's been, the initial, if they don't have extensive

• 25:42Speaker 05

  experience in a combat environment with special operations forces, that's where we start getting into issues, right? And then, I want to, this is rubbing on the chair. And I also want to delineate, there's a very clear line between psychology and psychiatry, okay? Psychiatry is the ones doing the pills, not psychology. The problem with the medications and these types of things is that there's never an exit strategy. There's a time and place for medicine, right? But I feel we turn to it much too quickly before analyzing hormone panels, seeing what's

• 26:26Speaker 05

  going on, you know, physiologically with the system. And...

• 26:34Speaker 05

  And then, you know, being diligent on ferreting out and using the medication as a last resort. That's what we should be doing, in my personal opinion, having walked the path that I've walked.

• 26:48Speaker 05

  Again, I'm not against medicine. I'm not against these types of things. And there is a time and place for them, but we jump into it far too quickly, especially on the end of that. You know, we're in a reactive state when we don't have to be. We can be in a proactive state. But in regards to this particular question, my feelings around that are just that. We, we, psychology for me was the better route. You know, no pharmaceuticals. Let's talk about these types of things and, and then, you know, formulate a plan on, you know, gaining some type of foundation we can even stand on after, after these events.

• 27:33Speaker 05

  As far as using these types of medications to, to keep us operational, I can see where there's certain, I, I personally think that there's certain instances where it's, it's warranted, depending on what the mission is, you know? And I mean, it's, we're sacrificing a lot. There's a big cost that people don't hear about by doing that. And I think that at the end of the day, mission specifically, if you have to stay up for 48 hours because you're trying to hit a certain target or you're providing critical intel so people don't get killed, yeah, I'll bear that. I'll bear that. You know, absolutely, I'll bear that.

• 28:18Speaker 05

  But it's where there has to be, and I think where we fall short a lot of times is there's no back end plan. Okay, there's, there's not, there's not proper monitoring on, okay, this guy's been on this for about this much time. We're starting to hit addictive type levels that, that he's going to have some type of withdrawal symptoms and these types of things. And, and we don't have a plan in place. At least they didn't when, again, these answers are all based upon my experiences, not the conjecture of anybody else's. Okay, so, so for me, it was, there was not a, a solid plan in place for what to do after that.

• 28:57Speaker 05

  Right? And invariably, that that very same system as people in inherently, I feel like people are trying to do the best they can do for us with an unknown type of entity. Yeah. Right? An unknown situation and they're trying to figure it out. Unfortunately, that's at the cost of the lives of many veterans. Yeah. So, so what I've found through this journey now is that is again, going back to what I had said earlier, is that now I can use the the lens of hindsight, which is 2020 at all times.

• 29:38Speaker 05

  And I can see where I'm at now and where I was then, and I can understand how critical those components were so that I can even have this conversation right now to hopefully awaken the very same chain reaction in somebody else. Yeah. That's the purpose. That's the mission. That's the that there's no greater purpose for me. Yeah. You know, than than being able to relate to somebody going through that because I've experienced it, or I've had at least a dose of it. Might not be as bad. Everybody's got a different story, but I know how to come out of it. I know how to come out of it. That's huge.

• 30:24Speaker 05

  Yeah. We can recover from these things. And if we can successfully do so, not run from the past, incorporate the past, own the past, because the past is our power. Because once we start to realize those breadcrumbs of the past led us to where we are now and gave us the strength to step upon this spiritual path, this path of this path of of enlightenment, whatever level of that is for you, the practitioner, to that that over time with diligence and

• 31:06Speaker 05

  and consistency, we are going to have progress and we are going to gain an understanding of the why these things happen.

• 31:18Speaker 05

  And then over time, as we progress, we'll start to be able to have new experiences that are foundationally related to those that were before like a negative type of mindset when we associate to that past, right? It becomes, the negative mindset becomes a type of gratuitity that we have because we went through it. I'm sure you've experienced stuff.

• 31:51Shawn Ryan?

  I have.

• 31:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, and see, that's, that's, we have, again, this is why I say we have to learn how to hear, then we have to learn how to listen, because that is the frequency, that's the tone of how that teacher within talks to us, right?

• 32:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:10Speaker 05

  You're already hearing it, you're already seeing it, and you're, and you're kind of like looking at it, now you have to learn how to explore it. Now we have to learn how to get away from judging and replacing with observation and compassion and these types of things, right?

• 32:29Shawn Ryan?

  Makes sense.

• 32:30Speaker 05

  So.

• 32:31Shawn Ryan?

  Before we go too far down this road, let's start, I know your dad was a SEAL. Let's start childhood, what was, what was McCall's, McHale's childhood like?

• 32:47Speaker 05

  So, I was, I was completely creative. I wasn't violent. I was, I had a lot of, I started to develop a lot of anger when I was younger.

• 33:06Shawn Ryan?

  How young?

• 33:08Speaker 05

  Probably around first grade or so. And I think that just comes from being in the environment.

• 33:15Shawn Ryan?

  Really young?

• 33:16Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. And, and that anger turned into, I, I, I created, so, so I was literally a Glee Club kid, like, like we had briefly discussed earlier. And, uh, full-on Glee Club kid, I was like Madrigals. It's called Ma- they called it Madrigals. Drama Club? All that, all of it. I was doing musical theater, um, I was, I was, um, singing, you know, dancing, hot pink vest, top hat, putting on a ritz. I'm serious, I'll show you pictures, dude, you'll be like, what? But when you see this child that I'll show you in these pictures, you could see that it,

• 34:01Speaker 05

  I was frail. I felt that, I mean, my build was frail. You know, I was very much 100% um, a creative. I still am. I still always was. I always have been, right? Even in combat. I was very creative, you know? So, as I grew up, I was bullied a lot. There was, there was a lot of abuse.

• 34:29Speaker 05

  You know, my dad, my dad was a SEAL. And, um, you know, I'm so grateful that I had that type of powerful figure to, to kind of show me a, a way, right? There's no coincidence there. That, that was, that was by design, for sure, in hindsight being what it is, you know, again.

• 34:55Speaker 05

  But, you know, it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy. Dad was gone all the time. He was a team guy. Yeah. Gone all the time, 10 months out of the year at least. You know, uh, divorced very young. You know, I think I was four or five when they divorced, before I even started school.

• 35:13Speaker 05

  Didn't get to see him a lot, you know? And, and, and I understand it now, be- having become a SEAL and have sons and daughters of my own, and, and I understand now. And so much so, in fact, that like I'm and we'll get into this, but you know what? It hampered my relationships with my children as well. How can it not?

• 35:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:36Speaker 05

  You know, I see these guys that like, and I'll come back, but, but I see these guys that do this perfect blend, like they have this seemingly this really strong relation, family relationship as they're gone all the time in the teams. And I never understood how they did it. It's because I was never shown how to do it. You know, is what I learned. And that's no hit on my father or my mother or anything like that. That's just, that's just, they did the best they could with what they had and what their experiences are, right? At the time, I didn't understand that. At the time, as a child, I was like, this is a shit show. This sucks. And my fucking, it was horrible, right?

• 36:21Speaker 05

  And, um, and so, um, there was drug use when I was a kid and, um, there was all kinds of stuff going on, you know? Sexual stuff and, and like all these types of abuses happening.

• 36:37Shawn Ryan?

  Did you live with your dad or?

• 36:38Speaker 05

  I lived with my mother. I lived with my mother. Um, I was, I was, uh, I was alone.

• 36:48Shawn Ryan?

  What did your mother do?

• 36:49Speaker 05

  She had to work multiple jobs to support us. You know, so she was gone all the time. I'd come home from school, a lot of times walking home from school and I'd be alone, you know, until late at night where I'd see her in the morning or I'd be at some babysitter's house for a couple of days at a pop.

• 37:08Shawn Ryan?

  Sure.

• 37:09Speaker 05

  And, and, or, and during the summers, I'd go live with my grandmother and my grandmother imparted to me like even more, a deeper creativity. And she's the one that's established and taught me about God and as a Baptist, you know? And so I always felt I had a.

• 37:32Speaker 05

  Special connection to God. And it was always in.

• 37:38Speaker 05

  It was always in. Direct. Direct opposition. My experience of that in that relationship was always. In direct opposition to what the church was saying. And doing. It was like. That doesn't feel right to me. You know, it doesn't feel right that that that. You know, my version of God isn't the one that's like. Burning. People down to the ground. I always feel peace and love in this connection when I I. I would sit alone as a child. Wow. Like very young, like six.

• 38:21Speaker 05

  I'd go to church camp and stuff like that and you'd learn more and. You know, and not really fit in with. Anybody there. You know, and kind of be on my own. Not not making many friends. You know, and. And it was it was just because. I I think it was because I couldn't relate.

• 38:44Speaker 05

  And and I don't know. I don't I know now why, but but at the time I didn't know. I didn't know why I was very awkward, you know, but the the place that I felt at home and open. Was when I was creating. But then somewhere along the line, you know, my desire to fit in with people started to get stronger. The desire to be. More accepted. Started to get stronger and invariably I wasn't. It was it was the opposite. It was there was. As I grew up, there was more bullying, you know, as you get. Into, you know, high school and these types of things and.

• 39:27Speaker 05

  And so I barely got through high school. I barely got through high school and I think a lot of it was. When I started doing really well. This is around ninth grade or so. I was like getting A to Bs and all that type of stuff. And then. That's when that's when like some heavy, you know, bullying type stuff came in and. You know, people just it was bad. It was bad. And.

• 39:53Speaker 05

  And the pain that I felt when I went home, like I didn't wanna, I didn't wanna be around anymore. I just, I, because of that connection to God, I just wanted to, I, I kept praying. I kept praying, can I, can I please come back?

• 40:11Speaker 05

  Can I please come back? I just wanna come be with you. That's, that's, that's the connection I had. And so, when I was 11, one time, I was hunting. I was with my stepdad. I was 11. And we went hunting and I had an M1. And I remember praying. And I was sitting there. I didn't wanna hunt. Remember the kid I am. I didn't wanna hunt. I didn't wanna kill a deer. It wasn't me. I didn't wanna do it. I was doing it to fit in. You know, nothing against hunters out there. You know, I have since hunted many times.

• 40:54Speaker 05

  And, and, and not always stuff on four legs. So, so a lot of things changed. So, but at the time, you know, I didn't wanna do it. You know, I didn't wanna be out in like the cold and I was, I was, I just wanted to keep, you know, performing and, and doing my thing.

• 41:15Speaker 05

  Video games were a big part of my world then too. So, we'll get more into that later, but, but.

• 41:23Speaker 05

  And then drawing also, you know, all, all kinds of stuff. I'll show you, I'll show you my stuff later. Cool. But, but, but I'm sitting there and, and.

• 41:36Speaker 05

  And all these hunters.

• 41:40Speaker 05

  It, it was kind of a proverbial straw. And, and all these grown men started fucking making fun of me and shit. Right? These grown men, like, making fun of me, like tormenting me. And my stepfather at the time let that shit happen because he was weak. You know? Yeah. Yeah, so we went out and I was, I was already in anguish because of a whole bunch of other types of abuse that were, I'm just holding all this stuff, you know, who do I talk to? Who could I talk to? I had nobody. There's nobody to talk to about this. And I always

• 42:22Speaker 05

  thought that if I did talk to my father or mother about it, they'd be ashamed of me, you know, and because somebody else abused me, what the fuck? That's how that abuse, that's how abuse works, right? Yeah. And so I'm sitting there and I'm, I'm sitting on this log. And I remember I started praying and I was like, it was it. I'm sitting there, I take the M1, I put my forehead on the barrel and I said a final prayer. I started to squeeze the slack out of the trigger and I was like, God, if I, if this

• 43:03Speaker 05

  is not okay for me to come back to you right now, please give me a sign right now. Crack. I look and there's a fucking buck standing like from here to your fucking corner, just staring at me. No shit. I just start crying. Damn. And I look and I'm like, I'm so sorry, you know, it's like, but the pain is so deep and I don't know what to do. I don't know, I don't know what to do. And I tried

• 43:44Speaker 05

  to shoot the deer and I missed him, you know, but, and so then they do a shame thing where you gotta cut off the bottom of your shirt if you missed the fucking deer and all that type of stuff, right? There's a part of me that wonders if the deer was even there, you know, but, but that's the story, that's this, that's the last time that anything, I think, and I think not literally right here as I sit here, I think that's probably why I didn't kill myself after combat.

• 44:23Shawn Ryan?

  That's a big sign. I mean.

• 44:26Speaker 05

  I think inherently like, but I had forgotten like as time goes, you forget. And it doesn't become the forefront of our thoughts. You know, but it's a massive sign, right? And. But I think that's what kept me from even consider like, like I never, after combat, I never thought about. I never like made plans to kill myself or anything like that. But I knew. Um, but I really understood why people were. You know?

• 44:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 05

  And I think now literally having, I'm having this connection thing happening while I'm sitting here, having told that story. I think that that was one of the necessary experiences I had to have so that I didn't do it later.

• 45:17Speaker 05

  You see how the timeline type of those types of things work? That's interesting. But time goes on, I go through high school. I, I'm, I want to create, I'm in Virginia though, between Virginia and Ohio. And it's like, well, what do I do? There's not any like great acting outlets at, in Virginia Beach in 89.

• 45:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:43Speaker 05

  You know what I mean? There's not a lot of great acting outlets in Bath, Ohio in 89.

• 45:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:50Speaker 05

  You know, so I'm like, I don't know what to do. My dad's like, well, maybe you should join the military. And I'm like.

• 46:01Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 46:04Speaker 05

  Maybe I'll go into the Marines. I tried the Air Force first, I tried the Air Force first and they were like, get the fuck out of here, kid.

• 46:14Speaker 05

  And, uh, and so then I was like, well, they said no. I wanted to be a pilot. I think I wanted to be a pilot first. I remember that now. I was like researching Embry-Riddle University and all these types of things. And I was like, that'd be really cool to be a fire pilot. And my dad's like, yeah.

• 46:35Speaker 05

  Okay, go for it. And then the Air Force was like, nah. He didn't, he didn't go, hey, the Navy's got a flying program.

• 46:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 05

  He, he was like, he was like, he's like, well, what, I was like, well, what about the Marines? What if I go be in the Marines? It's like, fuck that, dude. They treat you like shit. Don't go to the fucking Marine Corps. They're gonna treat you like shit. Join the fucking Navy and, and, and go into explosive ordnance disposal. If you want to do something like that, I was, I literally remember asking this question. I was like, can I use my artwork?

• 47:07Speaker 05

  Is there a way to use, is there anything in the military where I could use my artwork to do it? Like to, like, that's my job? You know, and he's like, uh, well, you could be kind of like a MP or something. And maybe like doing the, the profile sketches. He's like, he's like, I don't know of anything that you can use your, you know, art ability. But, um, but he goes, he, he goes, no, no, go. You know, I was like, well, what about what it is you do? What if I go do that? SEAL teams. He's like, uh, no, don't, no. He goes, go EOD first. If you really want to become a SEAL, go become a SEAL.

• 47:51Speaker 05

  After you do the EOD thing, it'll make you a much better SEAL. You'll have the explosives knowledge. You'll, you'll be, you'll be a real force multiplier in the SEAL teams as an explosives expert type guy, you know? And I'm like, That that had logic to me, right? Yeah. He goes, and then like you're probably gonna fuck up a lot when you get in the Navy and I don't want you to do it over there instead of in the SEAL teams. And I did, I fucked up a lot, a lot. People thought I was a rock and I wasn't, I was the other way around. But it was like, but when it came to the job, when I finally got through, I went to EOD school, joined in eighty-nine, went to EOD school, went through, they had an assistant

• 48:34Speaker 05

  program at the time, EOD assistant, fifty-three, thirty-one. And so I went to Det Norfolk and I was a shit show dude. But when I was actually doing the job, it's because I didn't know how to act in my off time.

• 48:50Speaker 05

  Because I was so, I was so messed up in my personal life. But doing the job itself, I was really good at it. I was really good at it. And because I could retain, I retained all the knowledge, the job itself, actively working as an operator, I was solid. And that's, I think that's why they kept me around. And I had a big heart, I had a huge heart. You know, it was just, I kept fucking up and out in town, fighting, trying to find my way, like more and more aggression started coming out, you know? And I started turning into what you saw in those pictures and everything. And, and I think that was, that, that whole thing was so, it was not just a byproduct

• 49:35Speaker 05

  of our training and everything like that, but it was also a get the fuck away from me. Yeah. Protection of who I was still, always was inside. I was always that sensitive kid inside, you know? And, and, and, but I had to build up like nobody else was gonna take care of me. I'm gonna take care of myself, you know? And that, that's what drove me. And so that, I started cultivating aggression, destruction, like violence, you know? And, and it served me really well in the teams. When we were working. Yeah. You know what I mean?

• 50:21Speaker 05

  But out in town.

• 50:25Speaker 05

  That stuff's happening like all the fucking time and everybody's going, fuck, man, can you stop?

• 50:33Speaker 05

  If I stop drinking, maybe?

• 50:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:36Speaker 05

  You know, so, so, fast forward, EOD, nine years, screwed up a lot. I tried for six years to go to BUDs.

• 50:45Shawn Ryan?

  You tried for six years?

• 50:46Speaker 05

  Fucking years to go to BUDs.

• 50:49Shawn Ryan?

  What took so long?

• 50:50Speaker 05

  Well, I'd fall on my own sword a couple of times, you know, getting in alcohol related incidents and, uh, but then, then it was EOD and, and I gotta say, um, if there's some EOD guys out there right now,

• 51:06Speaker 05

  you know what I'm talking about? Uh, be nice to people when they want to go outside the community. Because they weren't to me. They called me a traitor. When they found out I was, I was, I was like four, at the time it was a four O sailor thing. And, and I'm not playing a victim here is, I get it, you know? A lot of, at the time, there was a lot of guys in the EOD community that, I don't think that's the case anymore. I don't think they're allowed to like cross pollinate anymore like they were in the, in the past. Where you could jump from one warfare to the other, you know what I mean? Um, but, um, there were some, there were some people there in positions of power that were,

• 51:53Speaker 05

  pretty abusive when they found out I wanted to be a SEAL. You know, and they, and again, it wasn't all them. I'm, I'm not saying it's all them. I, I gave them plenty of ammunition to say no, you know? So plenty of ammunition to say no, I'm owning that, you know? But my message here is if you're an EOD guy, listen to this and you have a guy that is in the community that wants to go do something else, support them. It's okay. Support him.

• 52:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:25Speaker 05

  Don't, don't, don't call him a betrayer and a traitor and then like give him all the shit jobs because he wants to go do something that you maybe wanted to do or tried to do and couldn't.

• 52:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:39Speaker 05

  You know, give him their shot.

• 52:41Shawn Ryan?

  What was it about becoming a SEAL that appealed to you?

• 52:45Speaker 05

  What, my aggression? I knew because we started, we started, that's when they started embedding EOD guys in the platoons. Um, it was, it became really definitive. I had a lot of, you gotta understand, I had a lot of deep ties to the teams too, because I grew up in them, right? These guys would come over and, and it never left. It was like, if I'm gonna go do this, I, I want, my dad to me was like, and you've heard me say this before, because it's, it's my story. And, and my dad to me was like Batman. I, I'd not see him for tons of time. He'd show up in the middle of the night

• 53:23Speaker 05

  and he'd be there the next day and then gone again. And, you know, oftentimes where like he'd be standing right behind me out of nowhere, not having seen him for four to six months. And then all of a sudden, he's there typically when I'm giving my mom a really hard time. You know, and then I'm like, uh, and he's right there behind me with no sound. It's like that kind of shit, growing up with that. And then the guys he'd bring over, Danny Chalker, all these types of dudes. You know, it's like,

• 53:54Speaker 05

  I mean, those are fucking superheroes.

• 53:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:57Speaker 05

  To a kid like me, to that kid I described, they're like superheroes, you know? And, um, so, so over time in that, when my dad was there, that, I think that planted that aggressive momentum that started happening. Um, thankfully. Um, it really set a balance that I'm grateful for. Uh, and, and so, so as I was in the EOD, going back to your question of why I went from the EOD into the teams is, I think that seed was there. Originally, I wanted, I, I, I remember,

• 54:38Speaker 05

  I was with the platoon, uh, Delta Platoon on the Roosevelt. We were doing it, and that's when team guys were still doing six-month deployments on aircraft carriers, right? And, um,

• 54:51Speaker 05

  And I remember I, I just felt so at home with them. I felt so, I like, I understood the balance too. Like, I knew I wasn't one of them, but, but I was welcomed by them because of my mentality and what I was into. I was starting to box and, you know, and, um, and just training with them. And it was just a fucking blast, man, being with them. And, um, and so I remember I walked into my EOD detachment cage. I told them, I was like, I wanna go, I want, I wanna go be a SEAL.

• 55:34Speaker 05

  I wanna go into the SEAL teams. And, uh, and I handed them my package and they tried for a week to talk me out of it. And then they got violent. They got violent? They got violent. Started throwing shit at me, told me, get the fuck out of there, that would probably kill somebody and, you know, you know. Meanwhile, that whole week, they're telling me how phenomenal of an EOD tech I am. You know? And this is a real story. I'm just telling the facts. Yeah. You know? Um, and so I did. I, and they go, go fucking muster with the platoon, go get the fuck out of here, bud. I was like, okay. And so I went down and mustered with the platoon.

• 56:18Speaker 05

  The platoon chief was like, yeah, no problem. I told him the story. He was like, yeah, no problem. I got it. We're good. And I was like, okay, I'm your guy. They wrote me up. No shit. They wrote me up for being unauthorized absence and, you know, fucking, no, fuck your package now and all that type of shit. Damn. It was, that's what I mean. It was, it was rough. It was rough. And don't get me wrong, there are a ton of phenomenal fucking dudes in the EOD community. Oh, they're such, there's some solid, solid humans in that community.

• 57:02Speaker 05

  It's just one or two guys that tried to go to BUDs and couldn't make it or wanted to and Yeah. Didn't, you know, have that. You know what I mean? And, um,

• 57:15Speaker 05

  And that's, I'm sure that's, I'm sure there's a lot of organizations out there that experience these types of things.

• 57:23Speaker 05

  And so I um, I went on, carried on smartly. I finally stopped drinking. I was like, I'm never gonna go do this thing if I keep drinking. I was like, I was like, because weird shit would happen, right? You know, weird, weird, like when I drank, weird things would happen. That could absolutely happen when I was sober, but they never did.

• 57:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:47Speaker 05

  You know, like a car like coming around and hitting me with a fucking rear view mirror or something, you know, off the sidewalk, you know, it's like, it just never happened, you know? Shit falling off something and hitting me and because I had blood alcohol content, now it's an alcohol related incident.

• 58:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:06Speaker 05

  But I could have been sober and the same thing happened. You know what I mean? It was, it was just, it never happened.

• 58:12Shawn Ryan?

  But you're rarely sober.

• 58:14Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 58:14Shawn Ryan?

  I'm guessing, but you're rarely sober, so.

• 58:16Speaker 05

  But, well, no, I was.

• 58:19Shawn Ryan?

  You were?

• 58:20Speaker 05

  I was, yeah. I, I wasn't like a major alcoholic yet, you know?

• 58:28Speaker 05

  But, but um, I never was, I don't, I don't feel like I ever was a major alcoholic. I could just drink a lot.

• 58:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:36Speaker 05

  I could drink a lot. And then I could not drink. And I know that they put all those different type of categories of alcoholism and all these types of things. I get it, I get it, I get it. But for me, I even bought into that for a little bit. It was like, I am a recovering alcoholic. I did all that. And I went down those paths and, and it was like,

• 58:57Speaker 05

  I'm saying and doing this stuff, but there's a different way. I don't feel like this is, this is me. And so I just stopped. I just stopped drinking, you know? And every once in a while I would drink, like every special occasion, something like that, you know, I was fine with it. But then shit would still start happening only when I fucking drank.

• 59:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:21Speaker 05

  And I'm like, okay, fuck it. I'm done, you know? And then I drink again, you know? And, and uh, it wasn't until I started my spiritual practice that I, that it really stopped, you know? Stop, stop. Because.

• 59:37Speaker 05

  It was just too much of an energetic cost to recover like from that mindset state. You know what I mean?

• 59:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:46Speaker 05

  It just, it just, there was too much of a, as you start to, you know, practice in this, there, you could feel the difference in, in your ability to focus and joy and all these types of things. It, it just, there was a distinct difference and it was like an anchor, a spiritual, spiritual anchor. I mean, it's depressing, right?

• 1:00:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Speaker 05

  It's depressing. And I'm trying to do the opposite of that. So why am I going to bear that extra load while I'm trying to, you know, ascend? You know, so I stopped. And, um, so, um, fast forward, went to BUDs, uh, class 224. We started with, I think, 183, something like that. Graduated 11 originals.

• 1:00:31Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. You were an original?

• 1:00:34Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. Uh, my swim buddy was too. Mike Coke. Michael Coke. And remember the story that I painted when I tell you this, this, this experience in BUDs? So I'm sure from people listening to your show, they know what a swim buddy is by now. Right?

• 1:00:55Shawn Ryan?

  You want to describe it?

• 1:00:56Speaker 05

  Should I go into it? Okay. Swim buddy, it's, it's the opposite of COVID, right? It's the opposite of, of social distancing. You have to be within six feet of your swim buddy at all times as you go through this training. That person learns more about you than you probably know about yourself, you know, and, and you get through things together. Case in point, I, uh, was in third phase with my swim buddy and, and, um, we're all doing fast roping and rappelling, right? In third phase. And they had this 80 foot rappel tower and we're going through the hellhole. Hellhole is like a, yeah, I understand.

• 1:01:37Speaker 05

  I was 238 pounds when I went through BUDs, right? So, and I'm going through the hellhole, which is about this big. And I was a first class petty officer. I was a senior EOD tech. Father's a plank owner of Dam Neck. My, um, so I'm sitting there and we're standing there and, and I remember one of the instructors come up, warrant officer. He's like, hey, switch.

• 1:02:06Speaker 05

  That name's really familiar. And you look like a love, like a shooting buddy of mine. Oh shit. And I'm like, and I'm like, here we fucking, cause I had kept it under the wire. Nobody had figured out that your dad- Nobody had figured, this, nobody had figured it out until like, I think after Hell Week. Holy shit. It was after Hell Week. Nobody put it together. And then, he's like, you wouldn't happen to be related to Fred Rich, would you? And I'm like, maybe. He's like, yeah, that's what I thought. You know it's coming now, right?

• 1:02:49Speaker 05

  It was game the fuck on dude. It was, no, actually it was right before Hell Week. I think it was right before Hell Week. I think Hell Week was the fourth week. And this was probably the third week that that happened. I can't remember exactly, but, um, but it was, it was that kind of thing that like, you're like, fuck yeah, bring it, bro. Let's go. Let's go. I'll earn every, I'll earn every fucking bit of this shit. And I want to. Yeah. I want all of it. Give me the extra shit. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so, so they did. And, um, it was, it was, it was game on.

• 1:03:33Speaker 05

  And, um, my swim buddy got to bear some of that with me. He's like, god damn it dude. I'm like, hey, yeah, but it's better this way. You know, it's better this way. You want this. This is the, you wanna know that you earned it. You know what I mean? Yeah. You don't want the easy course. You know? And, um, so, so, um, fast forward to third phase, you know, the, the story ripples on. And, uh, these guys are like, okay, Fred Rich is gonna demonstrate some, you know, rappelling and, and how to, how it's done. And they hand me fucking Wilder's gloves. And I'm like,

• 1:04:16Speaker 05

  I'm like, thanks. And they're like, what? You don't like the gloves we gave you? Everybody else is in rappelling gloves. I got welder's gloves. They're super fucking thick. Like getting them to fucking close. I'm going through the hellhole. I'm 238 pounds. I'm scraping the sides of the hellhole as I'm going through. You know, and, and they're pulling a bunch of line out and I'm going dynamic. Showing off for all intents and purposes, you know, it's like, and everything's fine. Everything's fine till it's not. One of my runs, I jump through the hellhole. Catch a loop of the slack on the deck. Rips my fucking brake hand out. The belay man thinks I'm still going dynamic. Boom, straight into the fucking ground.

• 1:05:01Speaker 05

  I hit so hard, this orange jelly came out of my fucking nose, dude. I'm like, I remember the dust settling on my face. I start to sit up and the corpsman's like, no! Lay back down. And I'm like, okay. And my right knee's fucking boom, boom, boom. And I'm like, fuck. Systems check. No, just my right knee. I don't have any broken bones or anything. I don't think. And, and so he comes up. He checks, I forget his name, but what a great dude he was. He checks, he goes, what knee is it? What knee?

• 1:05:45Speaker 05

  And I'm like, it's this one. It's this one. But I'm like, it's this one. This drama class is paying off. I'm like, oh, fuck. And he's like, yeah, feels okay. I don't feel any. And he goes, and he looks at me and he's like, let me check it against the other one. And then he checks the other one and I'm just like, you know, and he's like, He looks at me and he's like, "Just take the roll, dude." I think we were in third week of third phase. Damn. He goes, "Just take the roll, dude. Go heal up, come back. We're about to get on the fucking mountain." You know?

• 1:06:29Speaker 05

  He goes, "Then you're gonna have to do all this shit again. It's nine weeks." Especially when you get out to the island. And I'm like, "I'm good, dude." He's like, "Okay. Get up there, we're doing fast rope next."

• 1:06:43Speaker 05

  Shit. I go around the corner and I'm like, "Fuck, bleh." You know, just like, sick, dude. I'm like, sick, this thing fucking hurts so bad. I get up there and I'm like, burning my fucking palms going down the fast rope. You know, because I'm squeezing so tight. And, uh, you know, I do a run and I'm kind of like, keep recycling back to the back of the line type thing, you know? They know, they're fucking smart, they're watching. You know, go again, get a couple runs in, just try to drag it out as much as I can. We start forming up to take off. I couldn't keep up with the class. I'm like, "Fuck, man." "Fuck, I can't run." And, uh,

• 1:07:27Speaker 05

  so I was paying out of pocket to, to go out in town and get my knee worked on every night after we secure. You know, and it started working. Like, I failed my next time run and, and, but, but, but then I started getting back up on step, right? I'd go out every night, I'd do all the work on the knee, the injections, all that type of stuff and, you know, uh, just click, you hear it? Um, and, uh, and to this day, that thing's bugging the shit out of me. But, but,

• 1:08:01Speaker 05

  um, but I was doing okay. You know, I was getting back up on step, I was doing fine. And then, and then we went and did land warfare. And I couldn't go out and get those treatments every night. Yeah. I couldn't do all the work on my, on my legs. And, um, and so, uh, we, me and Mike, we, uh, we...

• 1:08:27Speaker 05

  Had a system in land warfare. We'd haul ass to the next point. You know, one dude would take a break while the other guy ran up and grabbed the point. Yes, we broke the six foot rule, but it was quick. You know, we were turning it around quick. And we, and most times we could keep line of sight. You know what I mean? We'd try to keep line of sight, you know, so one guy could rest up and it kept our overall time. This is back when that it mattered, like you had to pass that shit, right? Well, after about the third day of that shit, I started slowing down. I couldn't do, I couldn't do the treatments and like it was, it was wearing on me and I couldn't, I couldn't keep up.

• 1:09:08Speaker 05

  And, um, and we got to one of the hills. It was my turn to do the, the thing and, and he's like, let me go up there and get this.

• 1:09:17Speaker 05

  And I was like, it's my turn, dude. Let me go get the fucking, take your break, enjoy it and I'll be right fucking back. And he's like, he's like, dude, we're fucking slowing down. Let me just go get the fucking point. You can get the next one. And I was like, look, dude. And he's like, dude, everybody saw you saw, fall off that fucking rappel tower. Nobody thinks you're fucking weak. Is that what you fucking think? Is that what's going on right now? Let me go get the fucking point or we're gonna fucking fail. And I'm like,

• 1:09:49Speaker 05

  ate my ego, ate my pride. I'm like, he goes, whatever, as I go, fine, go. Felt like shit, right? We don't ever want to be in that fucking position. Felt like shit. And, and he goes, whatever you do, don't fucking leave here. Don't, no matter what. I was like, just go. Fuck. I got it. We're good. He goes up, he's gone an hour, two hours, three hours. I'm freaking the fuck out, dude. Shit. I'm like, this dude fucking fell off a fucking cliff. Like I didn't move. I didn't want to go look because if he came back and, and I wasn't fucking there, now we're really fucked, right?

• 1:10:32Speaker 05

  You know, so I'm like, fuck it. It's starting to get dark. He comes fucking.

• 1:10:40Speaker 05

  Fucking coming out of the bushes, alright, let's go. I'm like, where the fuck have you been, dude? He goes, I was getting all the fucking points. I was like, you motherfucker, I'm... Wait, you got all the fucking points? And he's like, he's like, yeah, but now you gotta fucking sprint. So we're sprinting down the fucking side of the mountain and we made the fucking time just barely. And had we been, for everybody out there that doesn't really know why that's such a big deal, is because had we been caught, we would have both absolutely been kicked the fuck out for safety violations.

• 1:11:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:13Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 1:11:16Speaker 05

  And, um...

• 1:11:20Shawn Ryan?

  So he did the whole damn land navigation course?

• 1:11:23Speaker 05

  He did, yeah, we were, yeah. Did the whole fucking last piece of it.

• 1:11:30Speaker 05

  For us. And had he been caught... It was the first time, it was the first time anybody, and I get this way every time I tell this story because because it was so profound for me. It was the first time, you gotta remember where I came from, right? It was the first time anybody ever truly sacrificed anything for me.

• 1:12:04Speaker 05

  It was the only time up to that point that somebody put their dreams on the line for me. For us. It was the first time I ever truly understood team.

• 1:12:21Speaker 05

  And what it meant, what it really fucking meant.

• 1:12:27Speaker 05

  And...

• 1:12:30Speaker 05

  And so, when he died in Iraq,

• 1:12:36Speaker 05

  doing what we do,

• 1:12:39Speaker 05

  it was really hard.

• 1:12:42Speaker 05

  Because you know, like you always think you have more time. You always think that you're gonna be able to see that guy again. You don't, you don't think, I never, in combat, I never thought about death. About that possibility.

• 1:13:01Speaker 05

  I was never, I never experienced fear.

• 1:13:06Speaker 05

  In combat, like I never, I was never afraid.

• 1:13:11Speaker 05

  And it wasn't from a lack of firefight.

• 1:13:16Speaker 05

  It just wasn't there.

• 1:13:21Speaker 05

  Never. Ever.

• 1:13:25Speaker 05

  Ever.

• 1:13:32Speaker 05

  And I remember falling down in turrets and I've had the slowdown and all that type of stuff like where I'm in a turret and like it seems like the opening of the turret is like way the fuck out there. And it's like, why am I, why am I still laying here? You know? And it's like, and you gotta fucking, it feels like you're pulling your whole body through to force it to move again. You know? And then everything speeds back up, you know? And even then, it was just like a, what the fuck just happened? Type feeling, you know what I mean? Yeah. Not fear. Not like, I don't want to go in there or do these things, you know?

• 1:14:19Speaker 05

  I don't know. And, and it, and it wasn't, I don't know, it just, I wasn't wired in that timeframe.

• 1:14:30Speaker 05

  Maybe, maybe it was because I didn't care.

• 1:14:34Speaker 05

  Maybe it was because I didn't care about the death thing. I knew I was good. Yeah. I don't know. I can't, I, I, to this day, I don't know why. I, I didn't experience that.

• 1:14:48Speaker 05

  And we've experienced a ton of death.

• 1:14:52Speaker 05

  Like, we've experienced so much death.

• 1:14:56Speaker 05

  And, and you know how, you know, I caught myself this one time. Do you know how you know that you've seen way too many funerals?

• 1:15:12Speaker 05

  When you turn, after it's done, when you turn to your buddy and you're like, that was a good one.

• 1:15:27Speaker 05

  And in Mikes, that was heavy. It was a heavy...

• 1:15:34Speaker 05

  Up to that point in my life, that was the

• 1:15:41Speaker 05

  the biggest sense of loss that I had felt.

• 1:15:48Speaker 05

  Because he was truly gifted.

• 1:15:52Speaker 05

  Like, as an operator and a leader, he was just... He was just...

• 1:16:00Speaker 05

  It's like God put all the pieces of like the ultimate operator, whoo. And that was him. Like, anybody that knows him will tell you so, you know?

• 1:16:11Speaker 05

  You know, and...

• 1:16:18Speaker 05

  I was just honored to call him friend and brother.

• 1:16:36Speaker 05

  It happened at a time when...

• 1:16:41Speaker 05

  It happened at a time in my life when

• 1:16:46Speaker 05

  everything was going sideways on me.

• 1:16:53Speaker 05

  I couldn't sleep for four days at a pop. I was... I was starting to go into metabolic syndrome and shit.

• 1:17:04Speaker 05

  They had started to put me on the medications and all these types of things that weren't working.

• 1:17:12Speaker 05

  I, uh...

• 1:17:15Speaker 05

  I had to take emergency custody of my son because his mother abused him horribly.

• 1:17:24Speaker 05

  How old was he? Six.

• 1:17:28Speaker 05

  I was two months away from another deployment. I had done another workup. This would have been my...

• 1:17:37Speaker 05

  Fourth deployment at SEAL Team Eight. I did one UCOM and then two tours to Iraq and then this was gonna be, it would have been my seventh deployment in the Navy.

• 1:17:53Speaker 05

  And two months prior to that, that's when I had to take emergency custody of my son and in that situation, the state appoints what's called a guardian ad litem. And they look after the best interests of the child. And I had just gotten married to my wife. She's from the Czech Republic and and

• 1:18:21Speaker 05

  and I remember her asking me, she's like, "How much were you gone last year?" And I was like, "Ten months." And she's like, "Okay. How long have we gone the year before that?" And I was like, "I see where this is going." And she's like, "It's okay. I just need to know." And I'm like, "Ten months." She's like, "Okay." She's like, "Well, we don't see how it benefits the child for you to have custody if you're gone ten months out of every year." It's like there's a war going on. I'm a SEAL.

• 1:19:06Speaker 05

  I was like, "He won't be alone. He'll be cared for." My, my wife has been in his life since he was two. You know, been more of a mother to him than his actual mother. And, and she's like, "Yeah, but because of her language, the language barrier, we're not sure if like his school work will suffer and these types of things." I was like,

• 1:19:36Speaker 05

  So what are you telling me? Well, we have facilities we can put them in while you're away. And I'm like, what, like a fucking home?

• 1:19:46Speaker 05

  She's like, yeah. I'm like,

• 1:19:51Speaker 05

  let me get this right.

• 1:19:54Speaker 05

  Because I volunteered to go step in Han's way with the men beside me

• 1:20:02Speaker 05

  and stand in front of the bullets intended for you, you're gonna put my son in a fucking home?

• 1:20:10Speaker 05

  She's like, that's not what I'm saying. I was like, that's exactly what the fuck you're saying. I was like, what makes you think that we can go downrange for years and take live for a bunch of people that obviously don't give a flying fuck? And I wouldn't do 10 times more for those closest to me.

• 1:20:34Speaker 05

  She's like, you gotta remember what I look like. She's like, are you threatening me? And I'm like, no. I'm not.

• 1:20:48Speaker 05

  Don't worry about my fucking job. My command will take care of me. I'll find something. So, I took, I may have had to choose between two families.

• 1:21:05Speaker 05

  Fucking one of the hardest things. I mean, how the fuck? I had guys, I had guys defer their favorable for green team because I was gonna be their platoon chief and deploy with them. Because they had just come back from combat with me.

• 1:21:23Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:21:23Speaker 05

  And then I had to leave them.

• 1:21:26Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. That's tough. That's real fucking tough.

• 1:21:36Speaker 05

  I had to fucking talk and there's no winning that talk. It's like people that don't have kids, they don't understand. People that don't, people that, that child needed me. I wasn't there for myself.

• 1:21:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:58Speaker 05

  But I knew I had to do this. I had to, I had to, you know? And that's how I wound up on the west coast. Right? I had to care for him. I couldn't make the same, I didn't want to replicate what happened to me. You know, when I was a kid, because that's what was happening. When I got that call, when I got that call that he was abused like that, again.

• 1:22:38Speaker 05

  It was, I was two weeks back from combat, dude. I wasn't even mad. It was just like, let's go.

• 1:22:49Shawn Ryan?

  Who's abusing him?

• 1:22:53Speaker 05

  I don't want to.

• 1:22:54Shawn Ryan?

  Alright.

• 1:22:56Speaker 05

  Some people are bearing the load right now that are, that are of their own design. I don't want to add to it.

• 1:23:06Shawn Ryan?

  I understand that.

• 1:23:07Speaker 05

  So.

• 1:23:09Shawn Ryan?

  Um, let's take a quick break.

• 1:23:13Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:23:14Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a quick break.

• 1:23:15Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:23:18Shawn Ryan?

  Hey guys, let me tell you about this subscription service that I've been working real hard on called Vigilance Elite. Patreon. Basically on Patreon, we have it broken up into three different tiers. We've got Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3. Let's dive in. Our Tier 1 patrons get all the behind the scenes footage of the Sean Ryan Show. That could include behind the scenes photos, that could be side conversations that we have in between breaks, that could be specific questions that our patrons give us for the guests on the Sean Ryan Show, and a ton of bonus content that doesn't really fit into any specific category.

• 1:23:59Shawn Ryan?

  For our Tier 2 patrons, they get access to our Tactical Training Library, which consists of well over 100 videos. We've broken those videos up into separate categories, and those categories are rifle fundamentals, pistol fundamentals, drills, tactics, driving, gear and weapon setups, and everybody's favorite, mindset. Also on Tier 2, you will get a live update from me on the 1st and the 15th of every month, where we talk about the upcoming guests on the Sean Ryan Show, plus all the benefits of Tier 1.

• 1:24:41Shawn Ryan?

  Our top tier, which is Tier 3, gets full access to all the other tiers, plus they get full access to me, where we do video teleconferencing, VTC, once a month, we discuss anything from tactics to current events to who's coming on the show. I take suggestions, and it's very interactive. No matter what tier you choose, the support is greatly appreciated, and it is the only thing that makes this show drive on. So, thank you for all the support.

• 1:25:16Shawn Ryan?

  See you on Patreon.

• 1:25:23Shawn Ryan?

  So we're back from the break. You remember where we're at?

• 1:25:27Speaker 05

  Taking custody of my son.

• 1:25:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:25:31Speaker 05

  Guardian Ed Lightman.

• 1:25:36Speaker 05

  So.

• 1:25:44Speaker 05

  So that was one of the, of what I call the perfect storm shit that, that I was going through at that time. The other one was, I was starting to have neurological symptoms too. An IED blast. I, to be honest with you, I don't know if it was just the IED blast, or if it was a now because of, you know, the data that's coming out of close proximity explosives and stuff like that. I'd been working explosives my entire career. That was my thing. That was what I absolutely loved doing was explosives. Explosive on its disposal.

• 1:26:25Speaker 05

  Breacher, Breacher RSO, you know, all, lead breacher, you know, all these.

• 1:26:31Speaker 05

  That was my thing. I loved doing. And,

• 1:26:35Speaker 05

  and so, so who knows truly is probably an accumulation of all of those different things. But the one that the doctors attest to, the big, the big contributor to the issues I was having with my cervical spine and, you know, vestibular damage and all these types of things is when there was a roadside IED that had gone off on my vehicle during my first tour to Iraq.

• 1:27:02Speaker 05

  All of the events that I've talked about thus far with my son and everything was after my second tour to Iraq, which was a very heavy combat tour, right? And the first tour,

• 1:27:17Speaker 05

  we were returning from an op. West Coast was running it and it was funny, man. It was like.

• 1:27:27Speaker 05

  They um, they went down a route that they thought they could get away with. It was a black route and they thought they could get away with some stuff and they didn't.

• 1:27:37Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want to describe what a black route is?

• 1:27:39Speaker 05

  So a black route is, um, at the time, a, a black route is one that is probable for either some sort of an ambush or an attack and you should avoid it. Period, right? So it was a black route and um, we were only going on it for

• 1:27:59Speaker 05

  a very short amount of time and I'll tell you this, and I was just augmenting because we were doing the PSD mission during that first deployment.

• 1:28:08Speaker 05

  There's a lot of,

• 1:28:11Speaker 05

  there's a lot of things I learned during that deployment, which was great and you know, to put it in perspective, to take a break from the PSD, we'd go do DAs with the West Coast guys over at the, at Buy Up, right? In the Grom. And so we were with the West Coast guys, uh, developed a lot of good relationships with those guys.

• 1:28:30Shawn Ryan?

  You were working with the Polish?

• 1:28:31Speaker 05

  The Grom, yeah.

• 1:28:32Shawn Ryan?

  How was that? Did you like that?

• 1:28:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was great. Those guys are phenomenal. They're really good at what they do. I, I thought, personally, my experience was great with them. You know, I, I, I love the Polish people. They're, they're, they're hard charging and there's no nonsense with them. They're, you know, they, they just work really hard, you know, really smart, really heart-driven people. Um, from what I saw, you know, and, and of course that, you know, appeals to me. And um, and so, um,

• 1:29:12Speaker 05

  but I wasn't like core to those operations. I tried to get over there every chance I could with the PSD mission. I made a deal with the Command Master Chief, like, hey, I'll train these guys in PSD. I'll stay here longer to train these guys with PSD if you let me stay with the guys over at Biap for three months and so I can do DAs. You know, I kind of worked deals with my CMC so I could, you know, kind of, you guys aren't going to be back till here. I'll be ready to take the platoon. It'll be fine. You know, all these types of things, right?

• 1:29:47Speaker 05

  I was still a first class during that first deployment. I think I made, I think I made chief

• 1:29:54Speaker 05

  somewhere after that. Yeah.

• 1:29:57Speaker 05

  Which was amazing. So, but we were coming back from this operation. It was about three o'clock in the morning, I guess. And then a roadside IED went off on the vehicle. I was in the turret and I remember we're driving down the route and I'll tell you this, and anybody that's probably been in an ambush or anything like that can can attest to, you could feel it coming. And that's going to be key later when we talk about some things. You feel it. You get a sense of it. And in this particular sense, I had turned my head and I looked straight down. It's pitch black. I looked straight down as we're traveling down the route and I looked at the IED.

• 1:30:43Speaker 05

  It's pitch black, but I saw a flash. I remember distinctly seeing a flash. And the next thing I remember is me yelling down at a dude to stop punching me in my fucking leg because

• 1:30:57Speaker 05

  because he was trying to get my attention. And he's like, hit me in the leg. And I'm like, stop fucking hit me. He's like, well, damn dude, fucking answer me. Are you okay? And I'm like, I must've went out for a minute or something, you know? And I'm like, yeah, I had a couple of scratches, but I was, I was good. I felt like I was good. My ears were ringing and, and I remember like being kind of dazed and I'm like going, why is my barrel pointed at this fricking wall? And I turned around and then like everything kind of came back in. Oh, we just got attacked.

• 1:31:33Speaker 05

  Nobody's fucking there cuz it didn't even down our vehicle. It was low ordered. And but it was like a Pope fiction moment, dude. This thing was packed. We had, we had indigenous forces in the back of the vehicle. We had, the Humvee was packed inside and there was quarter sized holes through the, through the vehicle and the breacher blankets and nobody got hit.

• 1:31:55Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:31:56Speaker 05

  That's the kind of protection stuff I'm talking about.

• 1:31:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:58Speaker 05

  You know, and it's like, holy shit, you know? And I've had stuff in the past that has been the same thing, getting pinned by an LCU in the North Carolina post hurricane current surf zone.

• 1:32:11Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:32:12Speaker 05

  Like being pinned against the bottom of the ocean and this thing's been slamming down into the bottom of the ocean floor, but not, not getting me there, getting sucked into the propellers of a fucking aircraft carrier.

• 1:32:25Speaker 05

  And then the buddy line gets hung on something and we're like,

• 1:32:30Speaker 05

  you know, just kinda like,

• 1:32:34Speaker 05

  you know?

• 1:32:36Speaker 05

  Both of those were with EOD, by the way.

• 1:32:41Speaker 05

  And,

• 1:32:44Speaker 05

  and, and then now this, and, and so, we had gotten back to the, back to base and,

• 1:32:54Speaker 05

  and I remember like I started getting this gnarly, gnarly earache, dude. It felt like there was an ice pick in my face, dude. I kept going up to the corner, like you do, like we'd only been there a short amount of time at the time. It was relatively new, you know? And I mean, a couple of months, maybe. And, and I go up and I'm like, hey, man, check out my fucking ear, dude. This thing's, something's jacked. He's looking in there, he's like, dude, I don't see anything, man. There's nothing wrong with your ear. And I'm like, fuck, something's. You know, and that went on for like six weeks, dude. And, and they go, do you want to go to the top of the hill and take a look? You know, so, and I'm like, no, dude.

• 1:33:38Speaker 05

  You know, cause then they're, they'll send me out of here. You know, we finally got into war.

• 1:33:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:42Speaker 05

  You know what I mean? And, um, and so I just like taken like, give me something. Are we going out tonight? No, okay, cool. Give me some painkillers for this fucking thing. And I, I, I just went on that way. And then nights we were going on, I'd strap on the, the 12 pound helmet and just,

• 1:34:05Speaker 05

  I'd be like drooling on myself, dude. Like seriously, cause it's like, fuck. You know, and, um,

• 1:34:14Speaker 05

  it was, it was, I, I thought I had pulled like all the muscles in my back and my neck or something. Cause that was all spasming and everything and none of us put two and two together. None of it, it was after the IED. None of us put on anything together. And then over time, you know, us being quiet, we, I just kind of went on and it went away. You know, over about six weeks or so, like it, it started to fade over that six weeks. And then I was okay.

• 1:34:44Speaker 05

  I felt okay. And we continued on and then, and then, um, did the second tour, which was, which was a heavy, you know, we, we got to do a lot of good work, you know? And, uh, this was when, uh, Jaco was in Ramadi. We were in, on the buy up. And I was with the Iraqi special forces unit as one of the senior enlisted advisors. I landed that dream job because I made chief and I didn't have a platoon. So I was a free agent. And it, and it just aligned that I need, they needed to, um, they broke it into four groups, A, B, C, and D.

• 1:35:25Speaker 05

  So Alpha Platoon Bravo for, for these Iraqis, right? And so they'd have different senior enlisted advisors for each one of those. And there just happened to be a free seat.

• 1:35:36Shawn Ryan?

  How were those guys? I've, I've worked with a couple of them and. I don't know if there were actually special forces. It seems like sometimes things got interchanged. I was not impressed at all, but I've also heard really good stories from these guys too.

• 1:35:56Speaker 05

  So it's kind of a double edged sword, right? You get what you get and you have to treat them like what they are. And you gotta understand, these guys are operating in their backyards, right? They're familiar with everything. They know exactly where, think about like just going around your neighborhood and you're operating in that. You know where everything's at. You know, I mean, you have that comfort level. You know where the threats are. You know where the bad guys are kind of hanging out. You got these things. We're not privy as much to that inherent knowledge, right? Until we've been there for a while. And so, for me, it's a different thing, man. You gotta

• 1:36:40Speaker 05

  treat them with kid's gloves. They're very sensitive people. You know, they're very passionate people about what it is they do. They love one another deeply. And so, for me, I learned the hard way. I had a great LPO that came in because it was our, my, I was Bravo. And so, I was the tactical commander for Bravo with this unit, right? And so, what I had done is I took one of the existing Team Eight platoons and they split that platoon into two and made a fire team here, fire team here, and I was the

• 1:37:22Speaker 05

  chief of that second fire team. So, I did the full chief platoon workup after the full platoon chief deployment.

• 1:37:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:35Speaker 05

  I did it backwards. You know what I mean?

• 1:37:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:38Speaker 05

  So I got the deployed chief and then I got the full workup with the one I had to step out of, right?

• 1:37:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:48Speaker 05

  Now, those guys were phenomenal. You know, their actual platoon chief did a

• 1:37:59Speaker 05

  Fantastic job with those men because I could absolutely trust them to carry out, you know, what my vision was for the battlefield. And, and they, they, and that's why I was good at it. I could see, like, I was pretty average as a SEAL. And we talked about this a little bit last night. Across the board, like, I was an average runner, average shooter, average, you know, for SEAL standards, right? I was middle of the pack type guy. Running, not so much middle of the pack. I was, I was 200, at that point, I think I was 248 pounds. You know, just, you know, served me well, though.

• 1:38:39Speaker 05

  And so, so, uh, my running wasn't, like, I could get down the road, but very dangerous over short distances. You know, and, uh, so, so I had a quick sprint, but the long runs, um, I wasn't as fast. But, but average, you know, as a SEAL across the board. Personally, for, for me, I felt like, um, being able to see and communicate and, and kind of know what the battle, the, the tone is on the battlefield and being able to look at a target and identify actions on really quickly.

• 1:39:23Speaker 05

  I, I felt like I was really good at that. Um, so for time sensitive targets and these types of things, I felt like that was absolutely right in alignment with every purpose, like, that I was designed to fulfill at the time. And, and then it made it really easy having those types of men that were so capable, because I could just tell them what I wanted to do, and they'd go do it, you know? And then they had the initiative to, you know, and then all I had to do was corral this in, in the space, right? Through comms, visual acuity. Like, I'm a very visual person, I'm an artist. So, that creative side, right?

• 1:40:05Speaker 05

  So I could see, I can, in my mind's eye, I could see everything on the battlefield. I could, I could, it was, it was really satisfying, you know, so.

• 1:40:19Speaker 05

  Fast forward through that deployment, we did a couple of operations where we went into Sotter City. That was one of our big ones. I had guys on the Zarqawi hit. You know, we did a lot of, yeah, we did a lot of tier one stuff with Keg. And so they had so much work during that, that we'd get a lot of tier one targets, you know, and it's a very purple unit. So I had, I had CCT, I had SF, I had the commandos, I had the Iraqi guys, I had the, you know, it was like, it was just this big mix of just military force. We're doing TF night hits.

• 1:41:03Shawn Ryan?

  You guys were all operating under one, holy shit, that's a lot of

• 1:41:08Speaker 05

  badass.

• 1:41:09Shawn Ryan?

  portions that it was not to include air and all the others. Did you guys have air?

• 1:41:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:41:14Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:41:15Speaker 05

  Yeah. It was badass. We didn't have, we didn't have our own, like, it's not like it wasn't a tier one, like dedicated air for us, unless it was one of their targets and then they'd push air to us, you know, we had no problems getting assets, you know, it was, it was the priority, right? Because a lot of times you'd be doing these operations and they had to have the Iraqi face on them. So we're literally, I don't know if we could say this. I don't know. I'll tell you offline. But, but, so, so, so, a lot of times they had to have that Iraqi

• 1:41:59Speaker 05

  face on it. So that's why we were there as a senior enlisted advisor so that we could facilitate that combat. Right? And that's what I'd do. You know, we'd go up, we'd plan out the stuff for them so that it was tactically sound. And then, and then we'd roll up. And basically, my fire team leaders, depending on what phase was on that evening for those operations and how we were cycling. And we picked a target and we let those guys, you know, gonna let them go, you know, and we'd run the breaches and stuff like that with, and we'd bring them in and kind of show them how it was done and, you know, invariably so that we could build up that force so that

• 1:42:42Speaker 05

  they could take care of themselves. Didn't work out so well, but, um, but that was the intent at the time, right? So, so, um, so it was a lot of great, great work and, um, and I remember, uh, just feeling, I was really satisfied with everything that we did.

• 1:43:11Speaker 05

  And again, that protection thing, going to that protection thing, one of our targets in Solder City, uh, we, we, um, rolled up to it and, and we'd switch. So it'd be Alpha, Bravo, Alpha, Bravo, Alpha, Bravo, you know, night after night, who's running the operations. So the platoon chief for Alpha would run the operations one night and then we'd augment them while they're doing that. And then next night they'd augment us, you know, so, um, but I'd be running the operation, right? So, uh, and so, so I remember, I remember on this one target, and this is, the only reason I'm telling this right now is because

• 1:43:54Speaker 05

  of this protection thing that I'm going to talk about later that we kind of talked about last night. And, and we're on this target and it's tight. Like I'm in the top, I'm in the Humvee. I, I became qualified on the, um, was it 134, I think, the, the minigun? And so did the training on that because how can you not, if, if you're there and you get to man that thing because it's fucking awesome. Um, a Humvee mounted minigun is awesome. What a great asset to have on the battlefield. The whole Humvee rocks back when you shoot the thing. So Oh, man, that's awesome.

• 1:44:35Speaker 05

  And then those bullets are so close to each other that like it causes a vacuum and so it'll suck all the dust up off of everything when you fire these rounds down. And so

• 1:44:49Speaker 05

  So I'm like, um, I'm, I'm, I'm basically the, the, the line of death going down this road, right? Anything comes on to this road, we know it's hostile, right? So, and we had air and these types of things, but, but, uh, my guys were going into the, uh, this, this target here to pull these guys out. I had a guy literally right here, like that had, had a weapon and like, he's just hiding behind this wall here. I'm like, hey, there's a dude over here. This is how I was. It's like, there's, there's a dude right over there. You need to keep eyes on when he pops his heads up, pop it. And he's like, all right. You know, he starts throwing

• 1:45:32Speaker 05

  crash in there, dude crawls back into the house. And then him and his buddies start coming around and trying to, you know, cut across that road. It was just like, and I couldn't see. And I'm like, so I'm locked on and like, they're like, what are you shooting at, Ouch? And I'm like, I'm like, we had a couple of guys that were tactically moving on our team. And, and then I go, and there was like this dude, like way the, way the hell down there. And I'm like, and he's like peeking out from behind this car. And I'm like, and, and I gotta tell you, I, I thought, like, you gotta

• 1:46:15Speaker 05

  understand, all these shots are calculated. That's what we do. And I'm like, does he have a weapon? Or is he just scared shitless? You know what I mean?

• 1:46:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:24Speaker 05

  And then I saw it. I saw the fucking weapon. And I was like, sorry, dude.

• 1:46:29Speaker 05

  Lit him up. And then, and then, um, then rounds start coming in on my armor and, and I hear it. I hear it hitting the armor. And then I saw these, these other guys come running across and he just keep opening up, you know, and, and, um, and then there was a guy standing in the street. And this is, this is a testament to the, to the. meticulous nature of not just our guys, but the SF guys, the, the, the CCT guys a- across the board. This is what I saw is, is like, there was a guy that came out,

• 1:47:10Speaker 05

  you know, and he's like crying and everything at something he saw behind the car that I had lit up. And, and I'm like, I don't see a weapon. I don't see a weapon. I was like, hey, do you see a weapon on this guy? And they're like, I was like, there's a dude in the middle of the street right now. Cause it was down there a little bit. And, and he's like, I don't, I don't, I don't see one. And we didn't do anything. You know what I mean?

• 1:47:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:36Speaker 05

  It was like, it was like, okay, just keep eyes on him. Let Vampire know that we, you know, that we got that guy and keep an eye on him. Let them have him.

• 1:47:46Shawn Ryan?

  This was at eight still?

• 1:47:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:47:48Shawn Ryan?

  Team eight?

• 1:47:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:47:50Shawn Ryan?

  I heard the CO over there at that time was just fucking phenomenal.

• 1:47:55Speaker 05

  Oh. Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:58Speaker 05

  Paluso?

• 1:48:00Shawn Ryan?

  Ser.

• 1:48:02Speaker 05

  Donnie Ser?

• 1:48:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:03Speaker 05

  Great too. I had Paluso, I had Ser. I mean, both of those dudes were, uh, Neil Guinan.

• 1:48:11Shawn Ryan?

  I remember.

• 1:48:12Speaker 05

  They were just, it was just amazing. Amazing.

• 1:48:17Shawn Ryan?

  You guys were setting.

• 1:48:19Speaker 05

  Ser was, Ser was before. Ser was when we were doing the PSD thing, I think.

• 1:48:24Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. I remember hearing, cause I got switched over to.

• 1:48:28Speaker 05

  I know Paluso, I think Paluso came in after Ser and he was the one on this deployment. So.

• 1:48:36Shawn Ryan?

  I remember hearing you guys were setting up basically targets where it looked like a fake ambush. It looked like you had just had been ambushed. Like maybe a burning Humvee, set an Humvee on fire, lure these fuckers in.

• 1:48:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, we do all that kind of shit.

• 1:48:55Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome.

• 1:48:55Speaker 05

  We do hits on, on like low level targets. And then. I don't want to talk about tactics. Okay. I don't know if they're still using them. You know what I mean? Let's not talk about it. Yeah, I don't know if they're still actively using that stuff, so. Makes sense, right? Yeah. Yeah, so. But, but I can confirm there was a lot of really cool stuff like that going on. Cool. And we could talk offline about it. But, but. It's just, it is like a dream, it was a dream deployment, man.

• 1:49:37Speaker 05

  It was like, I had screened twice for Damn Neck. Right, and. And. Long story short, I was told no twice. They said I was too high of a risk because of the fighting stuff and the, my history of fighting and alcohol and all the, the stuff. It had been like five years, but you know, it still, it still was a factor. Right, because of kind of the culture over there, right? So, so, which I understand. In hindsight, in hindsight. It was kind of good because, because I got to go do that deployment. I wouldn't have got, I wouldn't have been on that deployment. I wouldn't have gotten to do that.

• 1:50:21Speaker 05

  I would have gotten to do some other really cool shit, I'm sure. But, but that was my path, you know, so, so.

• 1:50:34Speaker 05

  So, yeah, I came back from that deployment. And, you know, you're like a lion on the Serengeti, man. And there's tons of stories that can be told there, but it's, but it's like. You're like the absolute purpose. When you go, when you go into a place where a guy is chopping off heads, setting it on the neighbor's porch and then threatening them that they're next any day and they don't know when it's coming. And, and they're actively helping you as an American?

• 1:51:09Speaker 05

  You know, when you go, when you go remove that cancer, for me, there was this woman that had come out and, and she was trying to give me anything she could, anything she could, like bread, like, like just anything from her house. Like, and, and just weeping after we got done. And, and it was like, and when you, for me, it was, I locked with this person. And it was like this, it was beautiful. It's the beauty of war that you don't get to see. It's like, you, you always focus on the violence and, and the destruction and all these types of things.

• 1:51:54Speaker 05

  But again, remember Glee Club kids still rolling around in there. I had completely forgotten about them. But still rolling around in there. And, and I locked with this woman and it was like this,

• 1:52:09Speaker 05

  this experience of death and life and hope and like that, that human experience of we just did this. And, and they experienced what we've done. And there's such a profound gratuity that we did what we did. You know what I mean? And it's so justifying and it's so liberating. Like it, there, it, it ameliorates any type of, type of self-conscious, am I doing the right thing? Mentality. When you experience something like that. At least it did for me.

• 1:52:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:48Speaker 05

  You know, and, and so,

• 1:52:54Speaker 05

  so when you realize that there's no greater sense of purpose than that, that you're absolutely doing specifically what God created you to do. You are the hammer that you prayed to be for God's work. That's what I wanted. Like originally I had prayed to be God's, the shield of God as EOD. Help me make it through this.

• 1:53:22Speaker 05

  I want to be the shield to protect the innocent that can't protect themselves from these weapons of war.

• 1:53:29Speaker 05

  But I didn't, but that was only part of my equation because I didn't quite fit in there. It didn't fit. You know what I mean? Yeah. I knew I had to be with the other men that make up that spear.

• 1:53:46Speaker 05

  And then that's when everything made sense. Right? Not necessarily so much in my personal life, like I said, it was still chaotic. You know, I'm still, you know, I was still coming out of all of that. Wasn't drinking or anything like that. But, but I'm still coming out of all of that. Right? And, and to have that type of experience and that sense of purpose. And then you go home.

• 1:54:22Speaker 05

  What the fuck am I supposed to do now?

• 1:54:26Speaker 05

  What do we do? Now, what, what the fuck am I going to do with the rest of this? One Africom?

• 1:54:35Speaker 05

  What?

• 1:54:37Speaker 05

  You do your best, you know? And then you, well, come to find out, I kept having these, I kept having like these spasms in my back that would like literally make it so I couldn't turn my head for two weeks. Like because everything's knotted up and like, so I'm going in for injections to get, you know, for pain management clinics and these types of things. Again, nobody putting two and two together. And, um, and so,

• 1:55:12Speaker 05

  fast forward through that next workup, uneventful, not lackluster. I'm having, I'm having more and more problems sleeping. I'm up for four days at a pop, literally. More and more medications are starting to be put on.

• 1:55:30Speaker 05

  And um.

• 1:55:33Speaker 05

  And all the while I'd just taken custody of, uh, temporary custody of my son. And I was going in and I was going to these meetings with these attorneys and, you know, and um, and his mother, uh, you know. It was, it was, it was a painful time in life.

• 1:55:59Speaker 05

  So I got custody.

• 1:56:03Speaker 05

  Literally, I got that, that whole thing with my son happened like two weeks after that deployment.

• 1:56:08Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit, it was that fast?

• 1:56:10Speaker 05

  It was that fast.

• 1:56:12Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:56:12Speaker 05

  Two weeks after that deployment. So I'm going through that lack of a sense of purpose. So naturally, you know, protecting this child became the purpose.

• 1:56:24Speaker 05

  But I didn't know how, really. My other two children had bore the brunt of my service. They barely saw me. You know, I didn't have much of a relationship. My daughter wasn't speaking to me.

• 1:56:39Speaker 05

  And.

• 1:56:41Speaker 05

  And.

• 1:56:44Speaker 05

  And I understand where she was coming from. I really do. You know, because there, I, I didn't understand my, what, what was going on me. Nobody understood what was going on with me. Or us, I should say, because I know I wasn't alone. You know, and, and even when I was home, I, I, I couldn't be there. I don't know. You know, all, all these types of things started adding up. You know, the disassociation from the pills and injury that we didn't know was a thing at the time. And, and. You know, it, it all kind of started to become this amalgam of a, a perfect storm that I alluded to that,

• 1:57:27Speaker 05

  that we're really just now tapping into. So.

• 1:57:35Speaker 05

  So, everything that's going on right now is I can't sleep. My son, I've got custody and they're threatening to put him in a home if I don't stop, if I deploy. And I'm getting ready to deploy. And so, I have to go to the CMC and go, hey, they're threatening to put my son in a home if I deploy again. He's like, well, what do you want to do? And I'm like,

• 1:58:02Speaker 05

  I don't know. I don't know what to do.

• 1:58:07Speaker 05

  Because of that choice.

• 1:58:11Speaker 05

  Invariably, I chose my son.

• 1:58:16Speaker 05

  We always say family first. We always say family first, right? But,

• 1:58:23Speaker 05

  when I made that choice, it didn't feel like that.

• 1:58:27Speaker 05

  It didn't feel like people believed that.

• 1:58:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I could say that.

• 1:58:33Speaker 05

  You know what I mean?

• 1:58:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:34Speaker 05

  They said they understood, but you can feel it. You know, you can feel like, oh, now you're gonna leave us here with this and...

• 1:58:46Speaker 05

  You can feel, you can feel the disappointment. You can feel the... The guys were fine. Everybody was fine. Everybody made it through. I didn't have to bear the weight of like, somebody getting killed because I wasn't there. You know, and somebody making a bad call.

• 1:59:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:01Speaker 05

  You know?

• 1:59:04Speaker 05

  Thankfully.

• 1:59:05Shawn Ryan?

  Still tough.

• 1:59:06Speaker 05

  It was still... To this day, like, I haven't spoken to many of those guys.

• 1:59:13Speaker 05

  Not, I don't think it's anything because of that. I think everything would be fine. I really do. It was just, I never, I never really ever looked back. You know, I never really just tried to hang on to those, to the past. It's like, and that's been true with every, a lot of relationships in my life. I never go back and like, like if I'm, the momentum's going this way, everybody that's there for that ride, I enjoy that. I enjoy the richness of that and developing that for as long as I can. You know, don't get me wrong, like, every once in a while there's calls and, you know, we catch up and stuff like that, but, but it's not like I have to... I don't feel like...

• 1:59:56Speaker 05

  I don't know. I just, I just developed the new, the new in the now. I guess that is the best way to put it.

• 2:00:07Speaker 05

  But now I'm, I'm getting ready to move over to the West Coast, having made that decision. I was the Ops Chief, you know, while the guys deployed and I managed everything and got, you know, just worked the desk job, you know, in preparation for moving over to the West Coast and trying to figure out what the hell it is we're going to do, right?

• 2:00:32Speaker 05

  And so they agreed to send me over to BUDS. You understand, I'd been, I'd been on, I'd been on, I'd never taken shore duty.

• 2:00:44Speaker 05

  And I was at like, what, 15 years, something like that? I never took, well, the EOD Det Norfolk was shore duty, I think. But that was like at the beginning of my Navy career.

• 2:00:58Shawn Ryan?

  Shore duty, for those listening that don't know, that's basically a job where you don't deploy, you stay home.

• 2:01:03Speaker 05

  Right. You stay home, do training and we were area response in the EOD Det Norfolk. Whew, I messed up a lot of stuff over there.

• 2:01:13Speaker 05

  But, but, but yeah. So, so once I, once I went to EOD Tech School, that was it. And that was in 93. So from 93 to 2008, I never had shore duty.

• 2:01:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:01:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:01:36Shawn Ryan?

  That's a lot of pulling.

• 2:01:38Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, or training, you know, some of it was BUDS, some of it was, you know, EOD School.

• 2:01:48Speaker 05

  And, and, but yeah, it was all sea duty. Until the end, which was instructor duty. So went out to BUDS to get, as, as I, as I was in that transition, I started to really notice some stuff going on with my body, right? Like I was gaining weight and I couldn't figure out why. I didn't, I was still having problems sleeping. And I didn't know, I didn't know what was going on. And so.

• 2:02:24Speaker 05

  I wound up, once I got out to the west coast, I started to, I was a third phase instructor, demo instructor. And that lasted all of about, I think, what, a year max before they fired me?

• 2:02:49Shawn Ryan?

  What did they fire you for?

• 2:02:52Speaker 05

  I still think it was a great trading thing, but to be quite honest with you, I,

• 2:03:02Speaker 05

  I went in there and having the explosive experience that I had, I wanted to make things better. And at the time, that's not what they wanted. They just wanted somebody that was gonna go in there, run the demo program as is, and not, just, just, run the demo program.

• 2:03:19Shawn Ryan?

  Don't make any waves.

• 2:03:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:03:21Shawn Ryan?

  Just keep it going.

• 2:03:22Speaker 05

  Just, let's just keep this going. We've got a good, you know, humming along type of routine here. Don't make any waves, you know? And so,

• 2:03:35Speaker 05

  got out to the island and again, I couldn't sleep, remember? And I've got my boy with me. And, and I had two properties, like back on the east coast, remember it's 2008, that the mortgages had inverted. And so, like, I couldn't, I couldn't fill them, nobody'd rent, nobody, you know, and so I had to declare bankruptcy. You know, so that's going on as well. My son is

• 2:04:06Speaker 05

  having really bad symptoms of trauma, right? And he's doing things at school that are

• 2:04:13Speaker 05

  inappropriate. And, and so we had to,

• 2:04:18Speaker 05

  we had to, we had to address all that. So for a while, he was a special needs case. That's how bad it was.

• 2:04:25Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:04:25Speaker 05

  Yeah. And so,

• 2:04:31Speaker 05

  I promise this has a, there's a pot of gold at this black rainbow. This, this, there, there truly is.

• 2:04:42Speaker 05

  And this isn't a woe is me story. I have to paint this. I have to paint this picture in this way so that I can reach the people that are in this situation now. That are feeling this now, so that they know that there is absolutely a way to come out of this.

• 2:04:59Speaker 05

  And it doesn't use a lot of pills. It doesn't use, it's, you can do it under your own power. And, and, and it's to establish hope and light in the darkness is what it is. So, so that's why this is the way it is. That's why I'm telling this story. Um, I just, for some reason, felt like I needed to tell, to say that, so that you have it. So, um, so I got fired from HUDs because, because there was two students sleeping on watch. You gotta understand, third phase is designed to be, um, to, to be treated like it's a FOB, a forward operating base, right?

• 2:05:43Speaker 05

  That's the whole point of going out there is that you're learning how to operate outside of a FOB. You know, and then come back and that's, that's kind of developing that in the psyche. So when we go do what we do, we kind of get it, right? Oh, this is familiar, you know, so, so that's what we're doing. Well, these Slipknots, uh, one, one is on his iPhone. Like at four o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, I'm coming out of the hell box and I see, and I look and I go, uh, one's asleep and one's on his phone. Just kind of doing whatever. So I was like, okay.

• 2:06:29Speaker 05

  So I go back into the hell box, which is the instructor's, you know, area. And I grab, I grab a M4, paint rifle, blue, blue barrel. And I light them up, right? Paying attention to their eyes and all these types of things. I, I shot them in the back of the calves, kept everything low. There was a desk, so any ricochets wouldn't hit him in the face. I, I wasn't just completely, you know.

• 2:06:58Speaker 05

  You know, so, so, but, but I let them up and they're standing there and I'm like,

• 2:07:05Speaker 05

  so.

• 2:07:11Speaker 05

  What's the most expensive thing that you guys are protecting right now? You know, this is a fob, right? And they're like, yes, chief. And I'm like, okay. This is a fob and what's the most expensive thing you're protecting on this fob? And the guy's like, one guy goes, the weapons. Another guy's like, no, the demo. I'm the demo instructor. The demo. And I'm like,

• 2:07:37Speaker 05

  guys, we have absolutely failed you. This training has absolutely failed you. I'd be pissed.

• 2:07:47Speaker 05

  What about those guys that are sleeping in that fucking hut over there in case harms way comes?

• 2:07:54Speaker 05

  What's to stop me from going in there and killing every one of those dudes? Sound? Oh, sound? Really, sir? I grab a sharpie. I take the lid off. I go, follow me. And I fucking draw a line across every other dude's necks while he's asleep. I was like, go try it.

• 2:08:15Speaker 05

  See how easy it is when they trust you.

• 2:08:19Speaker 05

  He's like, I don't want to do that. I was like, no, you need to do it to see how easy it is and you'll never forget it.

• 2:08:27Speaker 05

  He goes in, he does it. I was like, well, he's like,

• 2:08:34Speaker 05

  you could see the weight of it on him. And I was like, all right. Go on. Go to the beach, grab your shit. Go to camp stupid. You know what I mean? Yeah. Grab two other dudes, put them on watch. Without saying shit to them, without saying shit,

• 2:08:53Speaker 05

  these kids put watch on the watch with a radio. They set an OP on the watch so that they could, now they're thinking like SEALs, right? They put a watch on the watch so they could see and report what's going on. They put early warning devices on the doors and windows of the barracks. So if you come in, like knocks shit over and like wakes everybody up without telling them how.

• 2:09:21Speaker 05

  You know, invariably, you know how the, anyway, um, so, so, so those dudes were excited about that training point. They were like, holy shit. They were talking about it. I thought all of Bud's was gonna be like this. I thought it was gonna be like this the whole time. It's fucking awesome, right? Well, one of the, one of the other guys heard it. And now, understand, I'm, I'm not easy to be around at this point. I'm not, and I know it. I knew I was a ticking bomb.

• 2:10:02Speaker 05

  It was only gonna take the, that's why they stuck me on the fucking island. I just put him on a fucking island, you know?

• 2:10:10Speaker 05

  I was a ticking bomb. I knew it. I could feel it. Like, all it was gonna take was the wrong, you know, indiscretion, you know? Somebody grabbing a woman or, or doing something. And it was always towards that. It was never like, I'm just gonna go nuts. It was always towards like injustice type stuff, like crime and these types of things. And like, you know, people, it was always in a protecting type of thing. That's the biggest thing. It was always like, I always wanted to protect. And, and that's what drove all of it.

• 2:10:47Speaker 05

  Might not look like that, but it was.

• 2:10:52Speaker 05

  And so, so, and, and my way of training people, yeah, it's outside the box. I, to this day, I still thought that was a really good training point.

• 2:11:01Shawn Ryan?

  I think it is.

• 2:11:02Speaker 05

  You know, but, but, but I, I feel like, because I think outside the box on how that, that training went, I feel like we can have, we can have a better product at the end of the day, and that just didn't fit, you know? At the end of the day, it just didn't fit with what was going on around me. And that's, that's on me. My situational awareness on how to be more additive to what was going on was not there, you know? It was like, it should be like this, you know? Let me show you. It's gonna be like this. And it broke a bunch of rules, right? So.

• 2:11:42Speaker 05

  So they moved me over to ATC.

• 2:11:45Speaker 05

  And they, they, and, and I did the combatants program over at ATC. And now I'm really starting to have some neurological stuff going on. I can't lift my arm. Like I'm having a hard time lifting my arm. I lost 80 pounds of grip. I'm down to 80 pounds of grip strength on this hand and then like 220 on this one. And, and I'm like going, what? I'm taking hard rights when I get out of chairs. You know, and, and falling and like losing my balance. I'm like, what the fuck is going on? And

• 2:12:22Shawn Ryan?

  How the fuck are you gonna teach combatants in that condition?

• 2:12:28Speaker 05

  I didn't think about it at the time. It seemed like a good fit.

• 2:12:34Speaker 05

  Basically, once again, let's put them in the combatants room, lock the door, show up twice a day, teach boxing in the morning, teach boxing in the afternoon to the platoons. And then like I helped write the striking, the standing striking portion of our combatants manual and stuff like that, right? And, and it was great. You know, it was fantastic. I loved it. It was great. Then there was a change of guard and, and they put me in maritime operations. Didn't work out so well. And I just kept focusing on the combatants. But I was too combative for combatants and they didn't want me to teach it anymore. So.

• 2:13:17Speaker 05

  The platoons did, but the people running the show didn't. Basically, long story short, somebody was talking, one of the instructors were talking in the background while I was up there teaching. I took him, I know it sounds, I took a pad and I was like, whoa, hit him in the face with it. And I was like, shut the fuck up. I'm teaching. What are you doing? And I went on about and, and kept teaching, right? It didn't work out so well, like.

• 2:13:46Speaker 05

  My, my way of doing things on the east coast didn't work on the west coast. Yeah. Very well. So, um, which is fine, you know, which is fine. And so, so,

• 2:14:01Speaker 05

  what I wound up doing is I was in maritime operations and I was being medically discharged now. Now, they had, they had identified that at some point in my career,

• 2:14:14Speaker 05

  they're like, okay, because all this shit that was going on, they're doing neurological tests, ulnar nerve tests and all these, sticking these needles in your arm to see if you're getting conductivity. And I wasn't. And they're like, okay.

• 2:14:29Speaker 05

  And so in 2009, they identified that at some point I had a fracture of my C5 vertebra. And, and it was more than likely from the IED. I don't know. But at some, that's the main thing that I think it could have been. But who knows? Because there's so much. Yeah. There's so much, you know, who knows where it really was. And, and so in 2009, I had neurosurgery to address a lot of these issues. And, and to great success, it was only supposed to last, Dr. Toomey Allen was his name. And it was only supposed to last like five to 10 years. And I've been, I'm still pretty damn

• 2:15:13Speaker 05

  good, you know? Guy did a phenomenal job. Normally they go in the front and they rip everything open and they solder everything up. And, but he had this new way of doing things where you use these telescoping rods that open up the space so he can perform the surgery with, you know, so my recovery time was like, well, would have been like, um, probably like a month or something like that, but, but. But it got infected, so.

• 2:15:45Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 2:15:46Speaker 05

  So.

• 2:15:47Shawn Ryan?

  I was just gonna ask you if that was like immediate relief, but.

• 2:15:50Speaker 05

  It was immediate relief.

• 2:15:52Shawn Ryan?

  It was?

• 2:15:52Speaker 05

  Like after the surgery, like, like before the surgery, he pushed down on my, on my elbow and it was just like boom, nothing. After I could hold him, like I can hold him there. He's like, yeah.

• 2:16:03Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 2:16:04Speaker 05

  And everything, I was like, yes, it's fantastic. So they just had to drivel out some of the, you know, because it grew back wrong. It was never addressed. It, it, the bone grew up around the nerve root or something like that in the foraminal space and clamped it off. So he just had to go in there and drivel out the bone and create the space so that the signal could get through again. It was great. Um, so now I'm recovering from neurosurgery. I'm on 13 different medications and, and I'm, but I'm still, I'm sorry. I messed up the timeline here because I was still teaching, I was still teaching, uh, buds at this time.

• 2:16:49Speaker 05

  Because after that, when I was recovering, I, I started having this pharmaceutically induced cardiac arrest.

• 2:16:59Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 2:17:01Speaker 05

  And I remember, yeah, so that timeline's off a little bit, but you get the gist. So, so I, I remember I'm like, I, I had come off the plane. I just got there for the weekend and I was doing the weekend watch for the, for the class. And, and I'm walking across the grinder and then all of a sudden it was just like, boom, and I fall on my back. And I'm like, and I could feel it, dude. It's like, I could feel it and I'm sweating and I'm like, fuck.

• 2:17:38Speaker 05

  And then all the students come up to me, they're like, holy fuck, chief. You look gray. What, what's going on? I was like, I'm dying, you fucking idiot.

• 2:17:52Speaker 05

  And, and, and they're like, wha- what do you want us to do? I was like, nothing. It's okay. You got plenty of witnesses here that heard me say so. Don't do anything. Because it was, it was, it was the first time. And it's the first time I felt relief. It's the first time I felt like peace. And I gotta tell you, like, and I know there's other people out there that have felt this. It ha- it has to be. Because that's kind of what the system does, like the medical system was doing at the time is, is that they give you so many pills that you don't feel anything. Or

• 2:18:32Speaker 05

  and, and that is infinitely worse than feeling depression.

• 2:18:38Speaker 05

  Like feeling nothing. Like absolutely nothing. Yeah. That's a complete disconnection of soul. Like it felt like to me, it felt like to me, like I had used.

• 2:18:55Speaker 05

  I felt like, I, I felt like a husk.

• 2:18:59Speaker 05

  Like, like an empty shell.

• 2:19:06Speaker 05

  And, and

• 2:19:10Speaker 05

  and as I laid there, I, I was just, I was just like, finally. Finally. I finally get to go. That's, that's what life was to me. I was, I can finally get the fuck out of here.

• 2:19:26Speaker 05

  Maybe that's why I wasn't afraid. Yeah. Because that was always there. Ever since I was 11.

• 2:19:34Speaker 05

  Maybe it was always there still.

• 2:19:38Speaker 05

  And that's why it was just like, so what? Like, that's why there was no, maybe that's why.

• 2:19:47Speaker 05

  I don't know, you know, but I didn't die. And I finally started to feel something, though. It was fury.

• 2:19:58Speaker 05

  I was so, like anger doesn't cover it.

• 2:20:03Speaker 05

  It was, it was, I was so

• 2:20:10Speaker 05

  enraged by, by the people, the system that was in place that was killing me. When I trusted them to make me strong again, to, to figure out what was going on with me. It's not their fault. It's not their fault. I'm not blaming anybody, but that's what I felt, right?

• 2:20:29Speaker 05

  And, and it was,

• 2:20:33Speaker 05

  I, so I revolted against the system. I got myself off of all those fucking pills, which don't fucking do, do that shit with a doctor, because I started really having like psychotic type of shit coming off those fucking mind altering drugs, right? And, and I was like, like, like I get this brain buzz, like getting off of, it was the weirdest things, dude. Like now suicide's like in the forefront. Because everything's, it's crazy. And that wasn't an option. But, but it accelerated everything I had been feeling before. And that's kind of when I found Doc Potterat.

• 2:21:18Speaker 05

  You know, I was like, I, I had found Doc Potterat earlier, but that's where I really started to, to, to re, really open up to him, like, I don't know what's going on. This is that and the other, blah, blah, blah. You know, I had seen him when I first got out there because it was continuity of, of care, kind of, because we had started doing something like that at SEAL Team Eight. There was a psychologist that was at SEAL Team Eight that I was talking to that started, started that whole medication thing. And, um, and when I got to Potterat, um, that was, it was, uh,

• 2:22:01Speaker 05

  that's when, that's when it really started to help, I feel like. Like when I talked to, when I, when I talked to Doc Potterat, uh, he was the guy that, that really started.

• 2:22:13Speaker 05

  Helping me hone in on, he, he kinda let me go do my own thing. Like, like he just gave some guidance along the way. Like, he supported me and me ferreting out. In the new CMC that was at Trade Ed at the time, also I owe my life to. Because, because he afforded me, and this is, this is kinda what happens in our community. You see it through all of your other guests. There's blood in the water. There's blood in the water, there's a seal that's not doing the seal job. He's at Trade Ed and he's focused on, you know, fixing something that's wrong with him.

• 2:22:55Speaker 05

  And they're after, they're after, they, they attack it. I don't know what that is in our community. Yeah. You know, instead of supporting it and helping people to get strong again. Not everybody, because there were some that did, like that, that Master Chief supported it. And I'm glad he did because it saved my life. You know, he's phenomenal. I, I, I have nothing but love for that man. And, and my family as well. What do you think it is about the community?

• 2:23:37Speaker 05

  I think maybe it's a, um, it's just, I mean, it's kinda baked into the creation of the community about being hard and strong and going and performing and performing. If you can't perform, get the fuck out of the way. Type thing. You know what I mean? Because we have a mission to accomplish. And it's not that it's wrong, it's, but, but I came from the East Coast where I had a pretty good reputation, I think. And, and, and nobody even looked into that. Nobody even looked into what.

• 2:24:15Speaker 05

  The resume, so to speak, like, like, nobody even really knew. Nobody even dug deep enough to, to see what the fuck's going on with this guy.

• 2:24:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:26Speaker 05

  In particular, third phase chief. You know, he, he didn't like go, who's this guy I'm getting? What, what the fuck's making it tick and how can I help him? How can I help this guy that's coming to me? You know? How can I help this other chief? He was a senior chief.

• 2:24:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:44Speaker 05

  You know? How can I help this guy?

• 2:24:47Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think maybe everybody in the shore duty position is

• 2:24:53Shawn Ryan?

  going through something like you and they just don't fucking care about anything else? They're just pissed off all the time?

• 2:24:59Speaker 05

  Could be.

• 2:25:01Speaker 05

  Very well could be. Maybe they're in their twilight tour, they're about to get out, they don't give a flying fuck anymore. They, they, they just wanna get the job done, go home to their families, which I totally get.

• 2:25:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:11Speaker 05

  I totally get it. You know? But

• 2:25:17Speaker 05

  that, that was the experience there. So I revolted against the system. I revolted against, I didn't wanna go in and talk about my stuff, like my negative shit anymore. You know? I didn't wanna go in and talk about, you know, you know, fill out the, the, the, the synopsis sheet for the new J O, since my, the people I was talking to every two months, rotate out and I have to restart all again. You know? It's a training center after all, Alboa. So

• 2:25:53Speaker 05

  I just stopped.

• 2:25:55Speaker 05

  You know? And I started to do things that made me feel better. I started to do things that made me feel better in the past. That I found effective for me in the past for performance wise. I wanna get back into, like, I wanna get, you know, strong again. And

• 2:26:15Speaker 05

  because I was having a hard, a sluggish time coming out of the surgery and like, I was like, I was like 290 pounds, bro.

• 2:26:23Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 2:26:24Speaker 05

  And I couldn't lose weight, I didn't know what was going on. I was in metabolic syndrome. My adrenal system shut down, my thyroid took up the functions of my adrenals. Nobody had done a, nobody had done a hormone panel on me.

• 2:26:39Speaker 05

  Nobody had done a hormone panel on me that entire time. It wasn't something that we were doing. And, and so, the first one I had was when I got out, I paid for it out of pocket. But,

• 2:26:52Speaker 05

  but all of those things,

• 2:26:56Speaker 05

  I just, I, I just, I started with Rolfing.

• 2:27:01Speaker 05

  Do you know what Rolfing is?

• 2:27:02Shawn Ryan?

  I don't. I've heard you talk about it, but I still don't fully understand it.

• 2:27:07Speaker 05

  It's like torture, but nobody asks you any questions. Cause, cause when you, so your muscles, they operate within a sheath. You ever open up a, an orange and you see all the white stuff inside that kind of holds the pieces of the orange together? The pieces of the orange, that film?

• 2:27:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:28Speaker 05

  That's, that's fascia. Right? And we have that in our body. Rip beef jerky, those fibers, those white kind of fibers?

• 2:27:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:37Speaker 05

  That's fascia. Okay? So, so, we have that in our bodies and it, it, it holds the track of where our muscles slide through it. Think of it like a sheath for a sword.

• 2:27:48Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:27:49Speaker 05

  Okay? Well, through injury or repetitive use, scar tissue can cause that, that sheath to adhere to the sword.

• 2:27:58Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:28:00Speaker 05

  And so what they do is they anchor the fascia with an elbow, a knuckle, something hard and with a lot of pressure, they anchor it and they slowly move as you flex the muscle and tear the scar tissue. So that it can slide again. And the body can come back into alignment. It's pretty fucking painful. Right? And, but it, on the, on the back end of it, it's, it's a tremendous,

• 2:28:32Speaker 05

  it's a tremendous technique for increasing performance, ameliorating pain and, and just, you can, you can literally have emotions come out because it's held, the issues are in the tissues, right? You've heard that before, I'm sure. So, so. From there, I found acupuncture. And because acupuncture is what it is, I started finding out about yoga and meditation. And I'm like, huh, let me go try that out. And, and so I wound up in Bikram's Yoga and I was doing that like every morning, maybe twice a day sometimes. And double sessions and, and I was like, you know, the first time I walk in there, there's like this five foot woman on the stage.

• 2:29:16Speaker 05

  And she's like, is anybody's first class? I'm like, mine? And she's like, okay, your whole goal is to not leave the room. And I'm like, it sounds like my kind of thing. You know what I mean? So, so, so I'm in there and I'm doing it. And within like 20 minutes, I'm just like this puddle on the floor, like going, ah. You know, cause it's so, cause you gotta understand, it's like 100, what is it? 120 degrees in that room? Damn. Something like that and you're doing the yoga. And if you push too hard, you're, you're done. You're done. So over time, I got really good at that, but I, I still had this, I still had this thing that I was trying to fix in my heart.

• 2:29:59Speaker 05

  Like, like it was this vortex of like, it was just this emptiness, right? Physically, I start, I'm starting to get better and stronger. But, but emotionally, I'm still stagnating in this, in this place. And I'm in, and I, I start finding out about far infrared spectrum therapy, flotation therapy, sensory deprivation tanks, these types of things. Reflexology, I'm doing everything, man. Like I'm on a quest now. Now I'm on a quest. I've had a glimmer of, you know, experiences in the yoga where like I'm about to

• 2:30:42Speaker 05

  heat exhaustion out, where I'm seeing things and I'm like, like having these, these very profound events, right? And, and so. So I started to, I started to, um, uh, that very same Master Chief got me involved in, in near the very end where I was getting medically discharged because I never came back up online. I still have vestibular damage, ulnar nerve damage, these types of things. And if I come up from a dive, I'm, I'm, I'm already like AGE symptoms and shit. Yeah. You know what I mean? So if I come out of the back of a plane, you know, and, and I get dizzy, I have a vestibular thing and I run into somebody, that's no good either, right? Yeah.

• 2:31:27Speaker 05

  So, so, um, it disqualified me and invariably it's like, okay, let's just go. Like, let's just get out, you know? And, um, and so they, they processed me out, but in that process, right there at the end, Master Chief had me go to this, um, this thing called TRE, which is tension release exercises, where, where we actually initiate what's called a neurogenic tremor that, you know, systemically goes and, and works out injuries, um, by using this biomechanical, um, this biomechanical reaction that we have as mammals, all mammals have it.

• 2:32:08Speaker 05

  Um, and basically if, if you've had a major shock, you know how people are shaking? Yeah. It's called a neurogenic tremor and that's discharging stress from the system via the central nervous system, right? Does that work? Yeah. No shit. Yeah, it works. I'll run you through it. I'll run you through it, you know? You'd be like, what? Um, but for me, and that's a longer, that's a big sidebar, but, um, so, so I found some effect in that and, um, and so, but while I was there, more importantly, while I was at that training, I heard somebody talking in the corner about this master shaman. And I immediately was like.

• 2:32:56Speaker 05

  What, did you say something about a master shaman? And they're like, yeah, his, his name's Don Diego. He's out of Peru and he has 160,000 acres of protected rainforest that you go into and, you know, it's like a month long and, you know, and I was like, oh,

• 2:33:18Speaker 05

  and it's ayahuasca and you're doing ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a very powerful DMT type of experience, a prolonged DMT. And I'm like, that sounds like what I'm supposed to, like, in my heart, I was like, I could feel like I have to go do that. I have to go meet this shaman. And so I did. And, and from that experience, like the things that I experienced there, and this guy was a master, master. Like, it's a very long story. I could probably write a book about it, you know, but the books are already out there, you know? You know,

• 2:33:58Speaker 05

  Carlos Castaneda wrote them. But, but it's, it's very real. He's very disciplined. He makes you sit up and meditate while you're doing it. He's, he's, and he's the real deal. And invariably, he is the guy, he is the guide that showed me,

• 2:34:20Speaker 05

  showed me what's, what truth is all about. And that truth guided me to this master that I study with today named Hadi Jeevan that teaches out of the Rama Institute in Los Angeles. So

• 2:34:35Shawn Ryan?

  So this guy's got 160,000 acres in Peru?

• 2:34:38Speaker 05

  It's not his.

• 2:34:40Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:34:40Speaker 05

  He was the protector of it. So he gave it back to the people a long time ago. He's no longer, he, he's no longer doing it there. So, but,

• 2:34:52Speaker 05

  so you fast forward a little bit here, and then I found, I found this system. It's called Kundalini Yoga. And for me, it, the easiest way to describe it, it's a martial art for your mind. And, and it's the science of prayer.

• 2:35:10Speaker 05

  Is what it is. And it's all based upon science. So, so it's a system that, that utilizes. So, so if you think of, if you think of matter and in our reality, it's all made of what?

• 2:35:30Speaker 05

  Atoms. Atoms, which are what? Electronic particles, right? Yeah. Electricity is measured in what?

• 2:35:39Speaker 05

  Frequency, right? Mm hmm. So when you hear people say frequency, this is one of the things I want to do is break down the stigma around when I say you have to hit the certain frequency to do. What I'm talking about is power. What else is measured in frequencies? Radio waves. Sound. Very good. Sound. Sound, power.

• 2:36:06Speaker 05

  Sound, power, what our thoughts are, neurons, electrical. Our, our atomic structure synced with our sound, unified with our sound. Our breath is a what?

• 2:36:23Speaker 05

  If a frequency is a sine wave, right? Yeah. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, right? Yeah. It's also a frequency. You see where I'm going here? Yeah. So we unify all, what's our heartbeat?

• 2:36:42Speaker 05

  A frequency. Yeah. And it more than one, like how many beats per minute is a frequency per minute? And the electrical charge.

• 2:36:55Speaker 05

  Those are all frequencies. The central nervous system is the wiring system for the whole thing. You see? Yeah. It's not, it's all science. So if we learn how to breathe at an accelerated frequency, if we expand our rib cage, if we expand our capacity in our rib cage, we develop the power of our diaphragm, we increase the partial pressure of oxygen in our system at a frequency that starts to get a pulse going in the body that gets the glandular system, the pineal, the hypothalamus, the pituitary. All of those start secreting hormones

• 2:37:37Speaker 05

  because of the different frequencies that we have in the body through the sound. Sound creates that. Our frequency of breath creates that vibration in the body. It gets the cerebral spinal fluid going. And then everything's unifying. All of those different frequencies, we unify those frequencies. And that's where we start to have the bigger experiences of life because we have increased the partial pressure of oxygen. We accelerate healing. We increase our ability to focus. We have a higher quality of thought. If we have more power in the system, we have more power in the system of thought. And in that more power of the system thought,

• 2:38:20Speaker 05

  it's a higher frequency of thought, right? Because it's fueled by more oxygen, we can have better focus, better discipline, better everything. We start being able to sustain more in our lives because we are consistent in our frequency of practice that allows us to develop a mental capacity that can have an awareness, that has the awareness to realize what's not ours and what is. And now here's where I start breaking off into the higher levels of things. But, but...

• 2:39:02Speaker 05

  As we start to develop the awareness, that subconscious thought, we gain a conscious awareness of the subconscious thoughts that don't serve us. And then through this system, because as we're realizing it, that realization is those thoughts leaving. So if anybody's getting ready to go do any type of psychedelic experience, or engage in a Kundalini yoga practice at the Rama Institute, there's a lineage there. So I want to be very clear right now. Is that, is that, there's a lot of different Kung Fu's out there.

• 2:39:43Speaker 05

  But only certain ones have a very powerful lineage that are really effective, right? So what I'm learning at the Rama Institute in Los Angeles from my teacher, Adi Javan, is by far the most powerful form of meditation that you can get. There's a lot of different things that, there's a lot of different systems out there that work, okay? And I've tried a lot of them. I've tried a lot of them for long, prolonged periods of time. Because I was on this quest of seeking all of this, right? And this is by far the fastest.

• 2:40:26Shawn Ryan?

  Can we go back for just a second? You were talking about getting rid of the subconscious thought, the conscious, can you revisit that?

• 2:40:35Speaker 05

  So, so, so as we develop an awareness of the subconscious thought, that subconscious thought will release things from our past into our conscious mind.

• 2:40:45Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:40:46Speaker 05

  Do you know what I'm saying?

• 2:40:47Shawn Ryan?

  I do now.

• 2:40:48Speaker 05

  So, so things that we've been holding on to come up in the subconscious mind. But the trick is, is to realize is that, that's it leaving.

• 2:40:56Shawn Ryan?

  But you don't even really know that they're fucking there.

• 2:40:59Speaker 05

  You don't know, a lot of times. Everybody else might know.

• 2:41:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:41:05Speaker 05

  You know, like I've had stuff come up from my childhood, you know, abuse stuff, these types of things. And I'm going to tell you something. And this is why I went through all of this story with you. So that I can get to this point right now is, is that those times where there was an intervention, we can, through this system, we can absolutely, and on this path, this whole path, our life experience, our life experience,

• 2:41:41Speaker 05

  it's, it's laden with adversity so that we can develop the strength to, to, to use it, to develop the strength that we need to truly fulfill our purpose that we came here for. And for me, military service and, and all of that stuff that I talked about, was just the, the, the, the beginning of what the true purpose is. I am a walking testament to the power of this system, this lineage of teachings that I now teach. There's, there's,

• 2:42:22Speaker 05

  there's things I've experienced in this that, that you, you read about in books. Like master, I'm talking, like I'm sane, I'm a sane person. I'm just conveying what I have experienced to be true. And that is the why I am alive. That is the why I do what I do. I use creativity now, and we'll get into this in a minute, but I use creativity now to broadcast that, and you're affording me the ability to do that here. You're allowing me to show what is possible. I am an example of what is possible.

• 2:43:04Speaker 05

  Anybody that knew me, and anybody, anybody that knew me in the past,

• 2:43:11Speaker 05

  will, will be like, I don't recognize that guy. Or I vaguely recognize that guy.

• 2:43:17Shawn Ryan?

  I can be a testament to that, for sure.

• 2:43:20Speaker 05

  It's, I am the same person, that person's there. I am that person. You're witnessing, what you're witnessing is, and I want to correct that fallacy. It's not that I'm not the same guy.

• 2:43:37Speaker 05

  It's that what you're seeing is what is possible in one life.

• 2:43:43Speaker 05

  The complete expanse of light and darkness in one human experience.

• 2:43:51Speaker 05

  And I'm not even there, like, wait till we see, let's revisit this in five years, watch. Watch.

• 2:44:01Speaker 05

  Because what I've gained is this, and there's some really hard stuff to still go through, but it's a testament to

• 2:44:12Speaker 05

  to the power of this and what I've experienced. I've gained the ability to take everything out of here and move it to here. When we have an event that occurs to us, when we have an event that happens to us in life, a lot of times, we try to analyze, why did this happen? How did this happen? Why can't, you know, there's a time for that, but we have to, and, and and we do need to analyze certain things at certain times. But invariably, in the case of trauma,

• 2:44:51Speaker 05

  we get stuck there and it's stuck in the head and we never fully process it. We, we run away from it. We drink it, we fight it, we fuck it, we, we eat it, we, anything to do to, to, to outside of ourselves to try to not see that, to be that, to own that.

• 2:45:17Speaker 05

  And that's what the problem is. Nobody teaches us how to look inside of ourselves. And the people that do teach it, they write off as hippies or they write off as spiritual fanatics, or they try to discredit and say that, you know, they've done all these horrible things in their past. Yeah, so did the 12 apostles.

• 2:45:43Speaker 05

  You see, all throughout history, anybody that's brought any type of enlightenment to the planet, they've been attacked. So don't fall into those traps.

• 2:45:54Speaker 05

  Don't fall into those traps, because those are all people external to us, trying to dictate our internal narrative. That's what all the fear broadcast is. That's what all of the look like this, be like this, have to attain this. That's what all that shit is, is to keep you distracted, so that you go through life without ever realizing who you truly are, and what your true power is. Because, holy shit, if you realize what your true power is, all this pain goes away. All the fear goes away. All the hate, all the judgment, all of it goes away.

• 2:46:35Speaker 05

  And you realize that all those, and you've heard this. You've heard this from masters. And you start to realize that all of those other people are you.

• 2:46:47Speaker 05

  They're us, with just different layers of experience on them.

• 2:46:53Speaker 05

  Different tones of life.

• 2:46:57Speaker 05

  And that's, that's the journey. To experience that life, that life force. That very thing, tune into that very life force, that we are, the core of that, and follow that.

• 2:47:18Speaker 05

  That's all internal. That's all internal work.

• 2:47:23Speaker 05

  That's the martial art. That's the chi. That's the Kundalini. That's the power. That's the force.

• 2:47:35Speaker 05

  And that's what I teach is how to find it.

• 2:47:39Speaker 05

  I try to replicate my journey and not just the veterans and with one of your subscribers.

• 2:47:50Speaker 05

  But it's not just the military. I'm on a journey for all. This is a journey of all, for all, by all of us.

• 2:48:05Speaker 05

  Because

• 2:48:08Speaker 05

  and I wasn't always this way. I had started down this thing and I did this thing with the shaman and I found this master. I found this master and this is real. This absolutely happened to me. I'm going to share something with you. There'll be skeptics out there.

• 2:48:30Speaker 05

  To be honest with you, that's fine. There's always going to be skeptics. You know, the guy talked about being on all these drugs. He might not be stable. He might be, right?

• 2:48:43Speaker 05

  No, man.

• 2:48:45Speaker 05

  This is absolute truth and I'm going to share this story.

• 2:48:55Speaker 05

  There's so many of them. Like this is one of, you gotta understand, this is the first experience I had, but it was by far not the last. So much so that it has become the normal. It has become the normal, the new landscape of what reality is to me.

• 2:49:16Speaker 05

  And it's there for everybody. It's there right now. I'm not asking anybody to believe anything right off the get-go. I'm not asking anybody to believe. I don't work in beliefs. I don't. I work off of experiences. This is a system of experiencing oneself. That's it, right? And so

• 2:49:42Speaker 05

  and now we're into the stage where we talk about the power of what is possible when we start to implement this lineage of Kundalini Yoga that I've learned at the Rama Institute.

• 2:50:01Speaker 05

  The first class I ever went to,

• 2:50:04Speaker 05

  I'm laying there and they play this gong like, like so, so like you said, everything's made of atoms, right? So NASA, did you listen to this? Did you listen to this?

• 2:50:16Shawn Ryan?

  The dong? Oh, the NASA thing?

• 2:50:18Speaker 05

  The NASA thing.

• 2:50:19Shawn Ryan?

  I couldn't get it to work.

• 2:50:21Speaker 05

  Ah!

• 2:50:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I tried, I couldn't get it to work.

• 2:50:24Speaker 05

  Alright, I'll play it for you after we get down here. Are you on Spotify or anything like that?

• 2:50:28Shawn Ryan?

  I don't have it on Spotify.

• 2:50:29Speaker 05

  So anybody out there listening, if you're on Apple iTunes or Spotify or something like this,

• 2:50:36Speaker 05

  NASA has recorded sounds of atomic vibration, the electromagnetic field

• 2:50:45Speaker 05

  of an atomic vibration of planets, of the cosmos. You can listen to this, just Google NASA Symphony, just NASA Symphony and it'll probably populate your search bar. Alright? They say sound doesn't travel through space, but it actually does. And NASA has recorded it and tuned it to a level that we can hear with our ears, right? So,

• 2:51:14Speaker 05

  atoms vibrate, the vibration makes a certain sound. That sound

• 2:51:21Speaker 05

  of the cosmos that NASA has recorded sounds almost identical to what you get from a gong when properly played by a Kundalini Yoga teacher in this lineage.

• 2:51:38Speaker 05

  Right? So when my, when my master, Hadi Jeevan,

• 2:51:45Speaker 05

  plays the gong, it sounds like the vibration of the cosmos. It's almost like, you're like, holy, except that it's been around for 10,000 years.

• 2:51:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:57Speaker 05

  You know what I mean?

• 2:51:58Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:51:58Speaker 05

  You see what I mean?

• 2:51:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:00Speaker 05

  And so, and so, how's that coming to play? Talk to any of the team guys that have been in my live shops on, on what happens when that's played properly. They'll tell you. But for me, my first experience with it, I'm laying there and it felt like, it felt like a lid, like the lid of like a, a pot or something fell open on the top of my head and all this cool air started coming in, into my body.

• 2:52:32Speaker 05

  I, I.

• 2:52:33Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 2:52:33Speaker 05

  Trust me, I'm a team guy and I'm in such a space to where I'm sitting there like all these people are wearing turbans and everything and I'm like,

• 2:52:46Speaker 05

  I'm very uncomfortable, but I'm getting over my own shit and like they, they may have something. I have to find out. You know what I mean?

• 2:52:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:54Speaker 05

  I laid there and this gong's being played and I'm just like, ah, you know what I mean? And, and then this person comes up and whispers next to me,

• 2:53:07Speaker 05

  "You're gonna spread this energy across the globe." And I'm like,

• 2:53:13Speaker 05

  and nobody's fucking there, dude. It was like they whispered it in my ear. I shit you not. I'm like,

• 2:53:24Speaker 05

  I get done, I can't drive for like two hours. I feel intoxicated. I'm like, I can't even fucking drive. I'm like, what the hell just happened? I was like, I finally found it. I knew I found it now. I knew I had found what I was looking for. I was like, what was that? And I go up to the teacher and I'm like, I'm like,

• 2:53:46Speaker 05

  "Look, you have this teacher training coming up." Like, I wanna, I wanna go to this teacher training. And they're like, "You don't wanna go here." And, and she may have even waved her fingers with this Jedi thing. I, I swear, dude, I'm like, I can't make this up. And, and she's like, she's like, "You don't wanna come here for training. You wanna go see Hadi Jeevan." And I'm like, "Hadi Jeevan, Dagobah system, got it." And, uh, and so I go in and there, like, I thought there was a couple of turbans before. Now everybody's got turbans. The instructor's got turbans. I'm like, I'm like,

• 2:54:26Speaker 05

  I'm sitting up against the back wall, like my back in a corner. Like I got a bad, right? You know, my back's in a corner, I'm like fucking watching everybody and shit, just kind of observing. And they're like, okay. And we do this exercise, breath of fire, and we start. We start doing the thing. The teacher stops, looks at me. Never met this person before in my life. This is absolute truth, bro. You see that I'm like, this is absolute truth. This isn't some illusion. This is like me and you right now.

• 2:55:07Speaker 05

  This person stops, looks at me and says, you'll spread this energy across the globe. And I'm like, you know, and I just started going into it. I was like, boom, I'm here, I'm done. And like, and everything took off from there as far as teaching and everything. And so those types of events have become commonplace. They've become commonplace. And what I've learned in the last eight years, eight plus years of teaching now and practicing this

• 2:55:45Speaker 05

  is that, is that there's a whole other reality. And it's, and it's right, it's right there. It's right there. It's existed in all times of our experience in life. It's something that we cannot be separate from. And that's what causes pain. That's what causes the pain because it's always there. And the pain is, is that we know that there's something there. Somewhere we know something's there, but we don't know how to get to it.

• 2:56:29Speaker 05

  So we ignore it. We learn how to ignore it. We learn how to not listen. We learn how to not hear. We learn, we learn how to not live.

• 2:56:51Speaker 05

  The system is so powerful

• 2:57:00Speaker 05

  and so effective

• 2:57:04Speaker 05

  that it can take

• 2:57:07Speaker 05

  the most debilitating pain

• 2:57:13Speaker 05

  and make you grateful for it.

• 2:57:40Speaker 05

  My son,

• 2:57:48Speaker 05

  the one I took emergency custody of,

• 2:57:54Speaker 05

  passed away.

• 2:58:06Speaker 05

  And what I've realized is

• 2:58:12Speaker 05

  is it was

• 2:58:16Speaker 05

  one of the most profound blessings

• 2:58:22Speaker 05

  that

• 2:58:25Speaker 05

  can exist.

• 2:58:35Speaker 05

  Invariably, the very thing I tried to save him from, he succumbed to.

• 2:58:46Speaker 05

  He passed away from a lethal dose of fentanyl.

• 2:58:54Speaker 05

  And what I saw

• 2:58:58Speaker 05

  in the system of meditation as I processed that grief

• 2:59:06Speaker 05

  was

• 2:59:10Speaker 05

  just an answer

• 2:59:15Speaker 05

  of of a question I had always been asking but never knew. I was asking it.

• 2:59:27Speaker 05

  Could I love?

• 2:59:32Speaker 05

  Was I able

• 2:59:35Speaker 05

  to?

• 2:59:45Speaker 05

  Because

• 2:59:52Speaker 05

  as I was able to move all of the noise in the mind of why into here and just bear myself to the experience of that pain of

• 3:00:10Speaker 05

  a pain that

• 3:00:14Speaker 05

  an indescribable

• 3:00:17Speaker 05

  limitless blessing of pain

• 3:00:24Speaker 05

  that

• 3:00:27Speaker 05

  I realized that that grief

• 3:00:32Speaker 05

  was an aspect of love and an answer

• 3:00:39Speaker 05

  a resounding answer of yes.

• 3:00:45Speaker 05

  I felt it.

• 3:00:54Speaker 05

  And as I continue to go along and

• 3:01:02Speaker 05

  with that gift, because of that gift, I realized the profound nature of his life.

• 3:01:19Speaker 05

  We have the inherent ability when we achieve a certain level of consciousness

• 3:01:27Speaker 05

  to where we are no longer

• 3:01:35Speaker 05

  we are no longer in a reactive passive going through life type of situation.

• 3:01:43Speaker 05

  We're now actively

• 3:01:46Speaker 05

  controlling life.

• 3:01:51Speaker 05

  Not

• 3:01:54Speaker 05

  what's happening out here in life, but life.

• 3:02:02Speaker 05

  Our life force.

• 3:02:09Speaker 05

  Through this journey

• 3:02:13Speaker 05

  and these meditations, we can revisit. Well, it will happen, it's a byproduct. We don't have to try to do it.

• 3:02:22Speaker 05

  Things will come up from our past.

• 3:02:27Speaker 05

  I see the child, the alone child. I always felt the presence as that child. I remember what I talked about. I always felt the presence of God. I've always connected to that. I've also had a connection that didn't match what the religious teachers were saying. It was different.

• 3:02:48Speaker 05

  They were teaching me that there's a separation between me and God, but

• 3:02:55Speaker 05

  I didn't feel that separation. I never felt that separation.

• 3:03:05Speaker 05

  And what my teacher has guided me to through this specific lineage.

• 3:03:19Speaker 05

  Is that experience and time, every moment exists at all times.

• 3:03:31Speaker 05

  Like a book.

• 3:03:33Speaker 05

  If you can, you can flip to the beginning of the book, you can flip to the end of the book. But when you hold that book, every aspect of time in that story exists at all times in that book. Timelines are the same thing.

• 3:03:52Speaker 05

  And we can sit in one and visit another in our minds. That's what memories are.

• 3:04:04Shawn Ryan?

  So can you access that?

• 3:04:07Speaker 05

  I can.

• 3:04:13Speaker 05

  We all can.

• 3:04:17Speaker 05

  And it happens naturally. In a meditative state, things will come up. And when we have gained that ability to broadcast unconditional love.

• 3:04:30Speaker 05

  When we gain that ability to broadcast unconditional love into and over these memories in our mind, we rewrite our perceptions of what those memories are.

• 3:04:48Speaker 05

  And when we rewrite the perceptions of what the memories are, the whole foundation begins to come to a higher level.

• 3:04:58Speaker 05

  And then our lives go from, "Man, I had this fucked up ass childhood. I had all this shit happen to me," to,

• 3:05:10Speaker 05

  "I had everything I absolutely needed to become

• 3:05:18Speaker 05

  a manifestation of the purpose in this life."

• 3:05:24Speaker 05

  And that's going to be completely different and myriad in nature for every life across the spectrum. And then we get to pick and choose. And then as we start to have those experiences, the external will completely change.

• 3:05:45Speaker 05

  It will completely change to reflect the attainment that we have within ourselves.

• 3:05:55Speaker 05

  I'm a walking example of that.

• 3:05:59Speaker 05

  I'm a walking example of that.

• 3:06:02Speaker 05

  Of a guy that Kirk Parsley, the medical, the group medical guy got on stage at Marcus's event for vets a couple of weeks ago, said that I was the worst case of operator syndrome that he's ever met.

• 3:06:21Speaker 05

  That he'd ever seen. He didn't know what to do.

• 3:06:25Speaker 05

  To fast forward to where I'm sitting in front of this guy that I spent

• 3:06:33Speaker 05

  hundreds of hours in front of, talking, trying to figure things out.

• 3:06:40Speaker 05

  And I'm sitting like I hadn't seen him for a long time. I saw him out in town, we're talking.

• 3:06:47Speaker 05

  And I told him,

• 3:06:50Speaker 05

  you know, I was, he had no idea, he had no idea who he was talking to. He said he kept trying to place it. He couldn't figure out who he was talking to. Who is this guy? I can't figure out who this guy is. And when I told him, he was floored.

• 3:07:07Speaker 05

  And so, we started together to try to replicate what I had experienced. This isn't recent. This is back in 2000, the end of 2012 or something like that. I was already out.

• 3:07:25Speaker 05

  But that's, that's just from the beginning of it.

• 3:07:31Speaker 05

  Didn't recognize me.

• 3:07:35Speaker 05

  If I didn't have this, if I didn't have this practice, I couldn't have had.

• 3:07:44Speaker 05

  I couldn't have had the ability, and there's a much, and I am making this succinct, because there's a lot of things that did occur through the processing of my son's death that continue to occur that

• 3:08:10Speaker 05

  that we'll reserve for another time. But are the types of things that you truly read about in books?

• 3:08:24Speaker 05

  And it's become the norm, like, it's become the normal. It is the normal.

• 3:08:29Shawn Ryan?

  Well, can you?

• 3:08:32Speaker 05

  I gained an ability. I saw, I saw things. I experienced things.

• 3:08:47Speaker 05

  I experienced things that went from my mind into and corroboration with nature. Because I sit in the mountains of San Diego at the C4 Ranch. Beautiful land, beautiful place to heal. If there's anybody in our community, like, reach out to those guys, because there's something enchanted about that land. It's incredible. The C4 Ranch, you've heard of the C4 Foundation?

• 3:09:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:09:21Shawn Ryan?

  I've not been there, I've heard about it.

• 3:09:24Speaker 05

  It's good.

• 3:09:27Speaker 05

  But went out there to process this, and I was in meditation for like five, six hours, you know? And, and just learning, sitting with my son, you know, communing with my son.

• 3:09:46Speaker 05

  And, and there's a lot of corroborations between what was happening here and what was happening out here in nature.

• 3:09:58Speaker 05

  And that's as deep as I'll go into it for now. But, but at the end of the day.

• 3:10:13Speaker 05

  At the end of the day, just know that there is a system in a way

• 3:10:21Speaker 05

  for anyone, no matter where you're at, to find absolute truth within yourself that will fuel, that will become the fuel of

• 3:10:41Speaker 05

  of a purpose that that you can't begin to even comprehend

• 3:10:49Speaker 05

  the expansiveness of.

• 3:10:52Speaker 05

  The whole trick of life, not trick, but the whole purpose is to experience the infinite within the finite. Right? We want to experience the infinite within the finite, and it begins with our life force. You know, it begins and ends with our life force, right?

• 3:11:16Speaker 05

  We get so many breaths on this planet. We want to be, make sure that those breaths are quality breaths. And by ensuring that they're quality breaths, we're going to ensure that the vehicle taking us through this journey

• 3:11:33Speaker 05

  is going to last us

• 3:11:38Speaker 05

  for as long as we need to be able to fulfill the purpose that I'm referring to.

• 3:11:45Speaker 05

  Because when it's done, it's all about how much love did you spread?

• 3:11:54Speaker 05

  That's the game. How much love did we spread?

• 3:12:03Speaker 05

  In this experience, I found

• 3:12:08Speaker 05

  that I can be...

• 3:12:12Speaker 05

  You know, we talked about, like, what do I do after all this service and everything? What do I do? Like, what's my purpose now?

• 3:12:22Speaker 05

  The realization is, is that I can be infinitely more effective using the power of creativity,

• 3:12:34Speaker 05

  the source of creativity, to affect life.

• 3:12:41Speaker 05

  If I understand that the destructive power that I wielded in the past

• 3:12:49Speaker 05

  is just as important.

• 3:12:52Speaker 05

  Without, without, without shadows, your picture's flat.

• 3:13:00Speaker 05

  There's no form.

• 3:13:03Speaker 05

  We have to have shadow.

• 3:13:07Speaker 05

  We have to have the negative. It's a polarity. It's a simple, it's a very simple

• 3:13:15Speaker 05

  concept. We have, for power to flow, we have to have polarity.

• 3:13:21Speaker 05

  And we draw from both. And I think that's where we go wrong in our community.

• 3:13:29Speaker 05

  I think we're reactive instead of proactive. We don't have to be, but we are.

• 3:13:38Speaker 05

  We cultivate this destructive force over and over. Violence of action, violence of action, violence of action. Right? We unleash that on the battlefield to great effect.

• 3:13:54Speaker 05

  We eradicate the enemy.

• 3:13:57Speaker 05

  We leave the battlefield.

• 3:14:00Speaker 05

  The sounds of war die down

• 3:14:03Speaker 05

  externally. They turn up internally.

• 3:14:08Speaker 05

  And that destructive force remains. There's no enemy, so we create one within ourselves and then all that destructive force starts attacking it.

• 3:14:24Speaker 05

  That's what's going on.

• 3:14:29Speaker 05

  That's a warfighter's mindset.

• 3:14:34Speaker 05

  A warfighter takes action based upon inflicting or driven by fear and destruction. A warrior, a warrior does everything from love,

• 3:14:55Speaker 05

  is driven by love,

• 3:14:58Speaker 05

  harnesses both the power of destructive and creative,

• 3:15:06Speaker 05

  becoming not twice as powerful, but infinitely more powerful.

• 3:15:12Speaker 05

  Because they're using all. They're using the full polarity. I'm not saying there's not a place for destroying. To the contrary, it's necessary.

• 3:15:26Speaker 05

  Because there's beauty on the other side of it,

• 3:15:31Speaker 05

  which I hope I've articulated in one of the stories earlier.

• 3:15:37Speaker 05

  The...

• 3:15:40Speaker 05

  Do you know what the irony is? We model ourselves after these societies that all inherently knew this to be true, about a warrior's ethos. Odin!

• 3:15:57Speaker 05

  The American Indian with nature and staying in commune.

• 3:16:05Speaker 05

  The Spartans, the Samurai.

• 3:16:11Speaker 05

  You see? But somehow, somewhere along the way, we decided, we've been, we've allowed ourselves to be programmed

• 3:16:23Speaker 05

  that that side of things doesn't serve.

• 3:16:28Speaker 05

  If I say mindfulness, if I say meditation, if I say breath work.

• 3:16:37Speaker 05

  If I say spiritual, if I say God, love, how's that make anybody listening to this right now feel? That's exactly... It's a GPS? So you know where you're at on the scale? There's only one scale. You know this, right? Yeah. There's only one scale. Unconditional love and fear. It's intithesis. Everything else grows from those or dies from those. It's the polarity. It has to exist.

• 3:17:22Speaker 05

  So if you don't want great calamity, don't wish for great blessings. Because that's where they come from, right? They come from that because that gives you the strength, that gives us the strength to go from pulling out of this, it's like resistance training, from pulling out of this and all the gifts you attain by gaining the ability to do so, so that you are in a tuned machine of prosperity, on a journey of absolute purpose.

• 3:18:07Speaker 05

  That's what I teach. I teach what my teacher taught me. Teaches me. It's profound. It's profound. And it's been the catalyst for... No matter what the situation is, we've had a lot of death. Mike Coke hit hard. But even then, there's an understanding. We walk into this arena and that can occur.

• 3:18:59Speaker 05

  People that have been close to me, family members, my grandmother raised, really raised me a lot. Like showed me some core, the core values of spirituality.

• 3:19:10Speaker 05

  Wrapped in a religious structure, but.

• 3:19:14Speaker 05

  But showed me art, showed me these things, guided me to these paths.

• 3:19:21Speaker 05

  Where my mother couldn't, you know.

• 3:19:26Speaker 05

  And when she passed away.

• 3:19:30Speaker 05

  But when we lose a child. When a child passes.

• 3:19:40Speaker 05

  For me, there is no, there's been no greater anguish.

• 3:19:49Speaker 05

  And I know it sounds crazy, but I, I, I am so grateful for it.

• 3:20:02Speaker 05

  Because it liberated me from trying.

• 3:20:09Speaker 05

  To gain anything externally. It liberated me.

• 3:20:16Speaker 05

  It showed me, like, like that, that processing, that continual processing of that, which I will be processing my entire life.

• 3:20:29Speaker 05

  Is that it showed me that.

• 3:20:39Speaker 05

  Everything, and I know.

• 3:20:43Speaker 05

  You hear it all the time, because, because somebody's trying to get through. But we're just hitting, we're hitting walls, but, but.

• 3:20:58Speaker 05

  But that everything that we need is inside of us. And by truly learning how, but nobody shows us how to do it. Again, but the people that do show it,

• 3:21:12Speaker 05

  you know, other people try to discredit.

• 3:21:17Speaker 05

  But it's all there inside of each one of us. We just, and we don't have to believe. We just have to remember.

• 3:21:31Speaker 05

  And so I go from,

• 3:21:38Speaker 05

  I go from all of the things you've heard.

• 3:21:43Speaker 05

  And since my son's passing, and I've been working in film and television for a while now, and I'm sure we'll talk about that a little bit, but,

• 3:21:53Speaker 05

  but it's kind of in irrelevance, but,

• 3:21:59Speaker 05

  but I go from all of those things to by having this milestone,

• 3:22:10Speaker 05

  this passing, this rebirthing.

• 3:22:19Speaker 05

  Everything externally just has,

• 3:22:24Speaker 05

  it's everything anybody ever fucking wants as far as success goes.

• 3:22:29Speaker 05

  What the fuck else do you want?

• 3:22:32Speaker 05

  And that's an outward, that's, that's a perfect example of, look at the timing of it. When you go back and look at like the timing of when everything hit for, hit, hit for me, you know, as a director and an actor,

• 3:22:49Speaker 05

  it was when my son passed away.

• 3:22:53Speaker 05

  Because what that gave me is literally, I'll be there on set. And, and

• 3:23:03Speaker 05

  I'm connected to him.

• 3:23:06Speaker 05

  Through, like, I, I feel it now.

• 3:23:10Speaker 05

  It is not me. It's not me. That's, that's the problem. Like, everybody goes, "That's my idea. That's my thing. My, I did this." No, man. It's, it's existence.

• 3:23:27Speaker 05

  We did the work to get out of the fucking way and allow existence to happen.

• 3:23:32Speaker 05

  To allow expansion to happen. Yes, we did that.

• 3:23:37Speaker 05

  But that end result, that's us.

• 3:23:42Speaker 05

  Not me. Be gentle with yourself. Don't judge yourself.

• 3:23:50Speaker 05

  Right? Maybe there's something you want to stop doing. Maybe you want to stop masturbating. Maybe you want to stop drinking. Maybe you want to stop being so fucking angry. Maybe you want to stop thinking about something.

• 3:24:02Speaker 05

  Start. Start. Start the practice. And that stuff, you'll, you'll fall back, you'll fall back, you'll fall, just keep going. That doesn't mean stop. Just keep going. And be gentle with yourself. That's not, that's not, uh, uh, hey, I can keep fucking up. You know, card. But you have to, you have to find the truth within yourself that you're actively, truly trying and moving that. And that's what I do, is I guide people into that truth. And as they start to have an experience of that truth, they develop their own internal barometer on where that navigation is. And they learn how to navigate.

• 3:24:47Speaker 05

  Then they learn how to see the obstacles. Then they know, "Oh, fuck, I did it again." Okay.

• 3:24:55Speaker 05

  Keep going.

• 3:24:58Speaker 05

  Don't attach to it. Don't attach to any type of label or thing. No, you're on the journey.

• 3:25:11Speaker 05

  You're on the journey. Keep going on the journey. And keep working diligently, consistently. Above all else, there is no higher purpose than the seeking of truth within oneself.

• 3:25:28Speaker 05

  There is no higher purpose.

• 3:25:32Speaker 05

  We can make the body strong. We can make the mind strong. We can attain a lot of money, a lot of women, a lot of men, whatever the fuck it is.

• 3:25:43Speaker 05

  We can attain all these things. But at the end of the day, nothing is higher than the, than the discovery of truth within oneself

• 3:25:56Speaker 05

  of the nature of things. And it's already there. You just gotta remember. You gotta remember how to remember.

• 3:26:07Speaker 05

  And then you gotta remember how to remember to remember. Because you'll get it and then you'll, ah, fuck, I was there and now I was, uh, why am I not there now? No, just keep going. It'll come back. It's always there. That book, remember?

• 3:26:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So the book, so when you say the timeline, you know, the, the whole, everything's

• 3:26:33Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not very good at explaining this. When you say the timeline, you know, it's all in a book. It's already been written. Is, is it easy for you to go back and access?

• 3:26:47Speaker 05

  So here's the thing. Here's the thing. I don't, I don't actively try to go back and, and look at shit.

• 3:26:55Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:26:56Speaker 05

  This happens as a natural byproduct in my meditation. For example.

• 3:27:04Speaker 05

  The presence I felt when I was 11 in that story I told.

• 3:27:11Speaker 05

  I put that experience I've had of that light within me, of that life force within me, as that limitless source of creativity. And I'm observing that child. And when that child asks for a sign, I'm the one that sings the deer.

• 3:27:40Speaker 05

  Does that make sense?

• 3:27:41Shawn Ryan?

  It does. When you, when these things come up, these, the, from the past, or these, uh, we talked about visions a little bit last night at dinner. Are you, and then you come out of it, you know, out of the, the meditative state. Do you, are you?

• 3:28:02Speaker 05

  This is one of my classes, actually. I think, I think I know where you're going. Sorry, go ahead.

• 3:28:07Shawn Ryan?

  Do you spend time wondering what the meaning of that was, or why that came up? Or are you just in a moment?

• 3:28:17Speaker 05

  I used to.

• 3:28:17Shawn Ryan?

  It's, it's, do you just appreciate the fact that it happened?

• 3:28:22Speaker 05

  I used to. And, and then I'd talk to my teacher about it. That's what a teacher's for, is to kind of guide you how to figure out your own shit. Right? That's the whole point. You know, I don't want people dependent upon me. I want people to, to take these teachings and learn them from an experiential base of truth for themselves, and then replicate that to other people. That's the game. I'm not training students or disciples or any nonsense.

• 3:28:54Speaker 05

  I'm teaching teachers.

• 3:28:57Speaker 05

  That's the whole thing that's going on on the planet today. You know, that's why everything's going nuts. Is because that's what that whole, you know, they say the whole 2012 thing, you know, the whole, you know, end of the world, all that type of shit. Or was that 2000?

• 3:29:13Shawn Ryan?

  2000.

• 3:29:14Speaker 05

  2000? Was that 2000 or 2012?

• 3:29:17Shawn Ryan?

  Well, now it's pretty much every year.

• 3:29:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. See, it's all changed now.

• 3:29:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:29:23Speaker 05

  The reality's changed. It used to be this big looming thing, right? What's gonna, I wonder what's gonna happen?

• 3:29:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:29:30Speaker 05

  You know, in 2012 or whatever. You know, the Mayan calendar ends on 2012, right?

• 3:29:37Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, was it? I was thinking Y2K.

• 3:29:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. So.

• 3:29:45Speaker 05

  Ah, man, some people cashed on that one, didn't they? Your clock on your computer is gonna shit the bed. Oh, no. None of your software is gonna work. Uh, anyway, sorry. Um, but yeah, like the Mayan calendar ends. That was an end of an age. That was an end of a dark age. And now we're moving into a different age. And that's why everything since 2012 has gone fucking haywire. Is because we, our consciousness, think about this. Our consciousness is, is, is attuning to

• 3:30:30Speaker 05

  a new, a new era, right? And inherently, we understand, inherently, we know that. We know that. It's, it's what's... And so if we don't action that, think of it like a wave. If we don't get on top of that wave, we're gonna get crushed by it.

• 3:30:51Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:30:52Speaker 05

  Right? And that's what you're seeing.

• 3:30:56Speaker 05

  You can either ride that wave,

• 3:30:59Speaker 05

  learn how to swim, or you're gonna get crushed and drown. Right? There's no, like, it's written about in the Bible. Any major, sorry, not just the Bible, but any major, you know, religious text talks about the end of times, right?

• 3:31:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:31:19Speaker 05

  And that's what's happening. Because the end of times are the one, like, everything up to that point is, is the, is the, which way is it you're going to go when that time comes?

• 3:31:35Speaker 05

  So as reality diverts towards

• 3:31:40Speaker 05

  dark and light,

• 3:31:43Speaker 05

  which way, which way are you attuning yourself? Because I'm telling you, from a place of experience, that we absolutely have the power to right our reality. You've heard tons of people talk about that. Right?

• 3:32:01Speaker 05

  But I'm the type of guy

• 3:32:05Speaker 05

  that shares a teaching that shows you how. But at the end of the day, you've got to practice it. I'll show you how.

• 3:32:17Speaker 05

  I'll show you how.

• 3:32:20Speaker 05

  But you have to practice the way I'm telling you to.

• 3:32:24Speaker 05

  Or not.

• 3:32:26Speaker 05

  It's your choice. It's your life. It's your ride.

• 3:32:30Speaker 05

  Yeah. But I'm telling you this. If you do find the ability to be able to pursue what it is I'm telling you to pursue and the frequency that I'm telling you to pursue it.

• 3:32:48Speaker 05

  Right? Brother.

• 3:32:51Speaker 05

  Beyond, beyond what you can imagine. Just.

• 3:32:58Speaker 05

  And it's, and I'm not always there. I'm not always there. But I'm there. More and more frequently.

• 3:33:08Speaker 05

  And when I'm not there, guess what? I have tools and techniques to put me right back.

• 3:33:19Speaker 05

  And it's.

• 3:33:22Speaker 05

  My life has become an absolute blessing.

• 3:33:27Speaker 05

  And it comes from just complete abandonment of.

• 3:33:36Speaker 05

  A natural abandonment, because there's no room for it. Of. Any type of victimized mentality.

• 3:33:46Speaker 05

  Any type of, and this isn't all, this isn't, let me just be perfectly clear. This isn't about turning the other cheek. I'm not saying that. But people will take it that way. It's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about drawing from all power sources.

• 3:34:13Speaker 05

  The. Power source. The power. The all, the everything.

• 3:34:24Speaker 05

  The Alpha Omega, it's, it's, it's there.

• 3:34:31Speaker 05

  We can have it. Just gotta learn how to remember how to have it. And that it's okay to have it. There's no shame.

• 3:34:43Speaker 05

  Shame.

• 3:34:50Shawn Ryan?

  So if somebody wants to start this, start this, this journey. What's, what is, what is step number one?

• 3:35:17Shawn Ryan?

  When a seal comes to you.

• 3:35:19Speaker 05

  Okay, that changes a whole spectrum of things.

• 3:35:21Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:35:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, a seal, if a seal wants to start this journey.

• 3:35:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:35:27Speaker 05

  That's easy. Just contact me.

• 3:35:32Speaker 05

  Contact me directly. [email protected].

• 3:35:36Shawn Ryan?

  For anybody else, what's step one?

• 3:35:41Speaker 05

  You have to, okay, so all throughout time,

• 3:35:46Speaker 05

  all throughout time, there's always been a teacher, right? Right?

• 3:35:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:35:54Speaker 05

  Christ, Muhammad, Buddha,

• 3:35:59Speaker 05

  Confucius.

• 3:36:02Speaker 05

  You know what I'm saying?

• 3:36:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:36:04Speaker 05

  So, so

• 3:36:06Speaker 05

  all throughout time, there's been a teacher and we have to develop the ability to recognize our teacher.

• 3:36:17Speaker 05

  You have to find your teacher.

• 3:36:20Speaker 05

  In order for you to find your teacher, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Heard that before?

• 3:36:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I have.

• 3:36:28Speaker 05

  That's what it means.

• 3:36:31Speaker 05

  There's many masters walking this planet.

• 3:36:36Speaker 05

  I personally have been,

• 3:36:43Speaker 05

  I've met two.

• 3:36:56Speaker 05

  But there's many and, and

• 3:37:01Speaker 05

  we have to develop ourselves, we have to purify ourselves, we have to do what we now know we can do to improve our lives.

• 3:37:11Speaker 05

  I don't care where you're at, somewhere inside of you knows the direction. There's an intuitive thing. I'm going to eat better. I'm going to drink more water. I'm going to

• 3:37:29Speaker 05

  pray.

• 3:37:32Speaker 05

  I'm gonna help do something nice for somebody today.

• 3:37:37Speaker 05

  See what happens.

• 3:37:40Speaker 05

  With the understanding that you're seeking your teacher.

• 3:37:46Speaker 05

  Read. There's a couple of books. They'll help guide you.

• 3:37:52Speaker 05

  Okay? There's a couple of books.

• 3:37:56Speaker 05

  One is The Duet of One.

• 3:38:00Speaker 05

  It's kinda, it kinda unfurls that way. These people, Khalil Gibran, right?

• 3:38:10Speaker 05

  The Alchemist.

• 3:38:13Speaker 05

  You know, is a great book. The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Is another great book. As you start to engage in actively reading those things. You're opening yourself up. You're starting to change what you're putting in. We're holy people. We have nine holes. Right? Our eyes, our nose, our ears, our mouth.

• 3:38:39Speaker 05

  Our anus and our genitals. Right? We have nine holes.

• 3:38:49Speaker 05

  We have to be careful what goes in and out. You know, so what we're watching, what we're hearing, what we're eating, what we're smelling, what we're tasting. You know, all these types of things. We have to be careful of what is occurring. We have to be vigilant.

• 3:39:08Speaker 05

  We have to be vigilant of thought.

• 3:39:12Speaker 05

  How? How do we do that? I'm so glad you asked.

• 3:39:18Speaker 05

  The way we're vigilant of thought is when we have a thought come up that we don't want to have. We have to develop the awareness that we're actually having the thought. And when we develop the awareness that we're having the thought and we don't want to have that thought. Mantra. There's a lot of different mantras. You know, you can do.

• 3:39:36Speaker 05

  You can do that. You can do. You can do. Truth is my identity. You can use whatever. Whatever is a mantra, it's a powerful one. Victory is another one.

• 3:39:55Speaker 05

  Something that changes the frequency of the neural network.

• 3:40:02Speaker 05

  That's what we want to do. The breath. Breathe, motherfuckers. Breathe. You have to dedicate to a higher quality of breath. Anytime we start to get stressed or depressed, notice what you're doing with your breath. Notice what's happening with your breathing.

• 3:40:24Speaker 05

  It's been around since I was, I've been on this planet. And before. Take a deep breath, count to 10. Right? Change your breathing. So anytime we're stressed or depressed, a lot of times we're either clamping on our lungs or, you know, or we're breathing very shallow, if at all. When you get stressed. How many times a day did you see me breathe through emotion? Well, part of you.

• 3:40:58Speaker 05

  You know what I mean?

• 3:41:01Speaker 05

  Re-channel it.

• 3:41:04Speaker 05

  Right? So, so breathe, that's, that's, that's the one. Breathe. Breathe.

• 3:41:15Speaker 05

  Change the breath.

• 3:41:18Speaker 05

  Play with that. There's a lot of technology in this system.

• 3:41:25Speaker 05

  If you're in Los Angeles, come to the Rama Institute.

• 3:41:30Speaker 05

  See myself, Hari Jivan, Kali Jas. Hey, whatever. I will. So. And, and see what happens. Again. You keep going, bro. You gotta have the open cup, though. Because there is some stuff in here that you're like, like, all that stuff I articulated about how I felt, every freaking team guy feels. Guarantee it. And then they get done with the class and they're like,

• 3:42:02Speaker 05

  "Holy shit." "What the fuck?"

• 3:42:08Speaker 05

  And then sometimes it scares them. They won't call it that.

• 3:42:13Speaker 05

  But it unlocks shit.

• 3:42:16Speaker 05

  It's like, oh, you're ready for your weights.

• 3:42:19Speaker 05

  Here you go.

• 3:42:22Speaker 05

  I don't want to look at that shit. Right? They're seeing the stuff. But they haven't developed the ability to

• 3:42:31Speaker 05

  transmute it. Right? But they see it. Why is this stuff coming up? Why is this stuff coming up? Because it's leaving? Or it's presenting you with an opportunity to see it under a different light?

• 3:42:46Speaker 05

  From where you are now in your growth. You know? That's interesting.

• 3:42:53Speaker 05

  And then a lot of times, guys run.

• 3:42:56Speaker 05

  They'll run.

• 3:42:58Speaker 05

  This is by far. Don't let me create any disillusioned.

• 3:43:04Speaker 05

  This is by far the hardest thing I've ever done. By far.

• 3:43:14Speaker 05

  You can stay in the matrix.

• 3:43:18Speaker 05

  I'm telling you. The other side of this thing is pretty

• 3:43:24Speaker 05

  pretty wonderful.

• 3:43:27Speaker 05

  That sounds like it.

• 3:43:30Speaker 05

  That is, man.

• 3:43:32Speaker 05

  I can look. I can look at my daughter and I just see. I see God in her.

• 3:43:46Speaker 05

  And the biggest gift. It just

• 3:43:51Speaker 05

  it's multiplicative. It's exponential.

• 3:43:55Speaker 05

  So when I impart what my teacher's shown me through my filter of the experience of it. Right?

• 3:44:04Speaker 05

  And then it sticks in a student. And that student starts working with something that they're they're like. And then they get done with a class. And when you see it, you can feel it because there's that there's that life connection going on. Same as in the combat. Right?

• 3:44:26Speaker 05

  And it's like.

• 3:44:32Speaker 05

  It's a reciprocation of everything, of everything. Like when they, when you see it unlocking a student. It's just, it's just, it's like, it's the true service of God. When you see someone realize it for themselves. That's, I mean, you want rewarding, like. Yeah. And then when you can unlock it, see it, you can unlock it in your children.

• 3:45:11Speaker 05

  You give them, and that's where I think, you know, in our, in the SEAL community, it's like, if I would have had this as a SEAL, I would have been so much more effective. So much, it's called the yoga of awareness. Come on. We're always talking about situational awareness. Yeah. And increase, and it's all about increasing your lung capacity. So you have a higher quality and higher partial pressure of oxygen. So you can think better, make better decisions, have more acuity.

• 3:45:53Speaker 05

  And invariably, you build up, you build up a resistance to, you know, stress. You have tools that we can give these men at the ground level that will help them ameliorate stress. And we're not doing it. Why the fuck are we not doing it? Why? Why are we waiting until after a whole, a whole 20 years? And then we're going, oh, you're all fucked up. Here you go. Have a good life.

• 3:46:36Speaker 05

  Hopefully somewhere out there in the teams, they take care of you.

• 3:46:42Speaker 05

  Depending on who you know.

• 3:46:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:46:47Speaker 05

  But we can absolutely include, I call it mental disciplines within the Warrior ethos. Why can't we include that in our pipeline? Just basic tools at Bud's.

• 3:47:03Speaker 05

  If I would have known this as an instructor, I would absolutely been slipping that shit under the wire. Like, try this shit out, guys. That's how I've been punishing them.

• 3:47:13Speaker 05

  Hold it. Hold it, keep breathing. You know what I mean?

• 3:47:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:47:19Speaker 05

  That would have been their thing. They would have got done with me like, I don't feel like I got my ass kicked, I feel pretty good.

• 3:47:32Speaker 05

  Who knows what will happen one day, right? You know, maybe you're gonna get packaged in such a manner that it serves our mission.

• 3:47:41Shawn Ryan?

  I hope it does.

• 3:47:42Speaker 05

  I hope it does too.

• 3:47:45Speaker 05

  I hope it does too, because I think we'd see a lot less of what we're seeing now. I think we'd see a lot more love between members of our community. I think we'd see a lot more support

• 3:48:02Speaker 05

  of one another within our community and understanding and compassion. Compassion's not weakness.

• 3:48:12Speaker 05

  Somewhere along the way, people cross their wires on that shit.

• 3:48:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:48:22Speaker 05

  You know?

• 3:48:25Speaker 05

  Anyway.

• 3:48:27Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a break.

• 3:48:29Speaker 05

  Felt pretty encompassing.

• 3:48:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I hope you're enjoying The Sean Ryan Show. Let me take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patron community receives exclusive behind the scenes content from The Sean Ryan Show. As well is an extensive library of Vigilance Elite videos not seen anywhere else. I also engage in live video chat with Tier 3 members once a month, where we discuss a variety of topics. Vigilance Elite Patreon is what makes The Sean Ryan Show possible. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your support. And head over to patreon.com/vigilanceelite and get your subscription today. Alright.

• 3:49:15Shawn Ryan?

  So this will be the last segment. Want to dig into kind of what you got going on now with, especially when it comes to Call of Duty. How'd you get into that?

• 3:49:29Shawn Ryan?

  You know, all the good stuff.

• 3:49:31Speaker 05

  Fuck, I don't know.

• 3:49:32Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's only the biggest video game franchise in the world.

• 3:49:37Speaker 05

  It's crazy, man.

• 3:49:41Speaker 05

  So you heard all the other stuff, you know, it's like...

• 3:49:46Speaker 05

  Should I tell the Transformer story?

• 3:49:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:49:51Speaker 05

  Alright. I'll tell the Transformer story. So, so, around that 2010 timeframe, you know, I was starting to find meditation and all that type of stuff, right? I was on, I had just really started on this kind of quest, so I was still really awkward on, you know, kind of how everything worked, but I knew the meditation stuff worked for me. I didn't know really the science of the meditation, I just knew I had to sit down. It was, I think it was after the Shaman though. It might have been after the Shaman. But, so...

• 3:50:33Speaker 05

  I get a call and they're like, hi.

• 3:50:39Speaker 05

  I work with this group. I don't want to really name names, but I'm really grateful for these people. And, and we're doing a production called Transformers. And I was wondering if you'd be interested in coming in and being a part of our team to, you know, kind of do some tactics in the, in the film. And I was like, that sounds like fun. You know, I wasn't, wasn't thinking like, oh, I remember I started, you know, I, I, you know, I wasn't thinking anything about it. I was like, that just sounds like fun, like hanging out with a bunch of team guys on a movie. Okay. Yeah, let's go. You know, I want to, that sounds like fun.

• 3:51:25Speaker 05

  And so I went in, we did the thing. It's my first time ever being on a set, right? And I see Michael Bay walk by. It's Transformers 3. And I see Michael Bay walk by and Michael's like, he walks, he walks past me and he goes, he goes, he's like doing something. He looks, holy shit, what the fuck do they call you? And I was like, hooch. And he's like, fuck, perfect. He goes, you want to be an actor? And I was like, yes, sir. And he goes, all right, come here. And he goes, wait a minute, can you act? And I was like, he's a fucking director. Don't you have to be the judge of that?

• 3:52:13Speaker 05

  And he's like, fair enough. Come here. And dude, they started putting the mic on me and, and I don't know if you remember, have you seen the movie Transformers 3?

• 3:52:25Shawn Ryan?

  I've seen a couple of them. I don't know which one.

• 3:52:27Speaker 05

  So there's this movie where there's this big bald motherfucker with a rocket launcher and a milk cor. And, and the, the whole building's falling over and this worm, you know, is like crushing the building and the whole thing's collapsing. It's really, it's really cool. I think they got a, they got a nomination or a VFX nomination for that one. And.

• 3:52:52Speaker 05

  And so I'm standing there. And all of a sudden, I got like really nervous and I didn't fucking know why. You know what I mean? I was just like, my heart starts beating, I'm sweating, I'm like, whew, what the fuck? And, and, and then it hit me. Right? Then it hit me. I was like, holy fuck. I wanted to do this as a kid. I remembered, I had completely forgotten about the Glee Club kid. All that shit buried that Glee Club kid. And in that one moment, it was like, wham, this was like a dream that you had.

• 3:53:33Speaker 05

  Like, I was a huge fan of the Transformers franchise when I was a kid. You know, I had all the toys, I was into it. I was deep into it. And watched the cartoons every time it came on. And, um, and I'm sitting there, this building's tilted and I had to sprint down this, this building because they had the, the whole floor was like on this gimbal. And they'd lift up the whole floor so that everything would fall and shit like that. They built a whole skyscraper floor for this thing, right? No shit. Yeah, yeah. And Playa Vista. And then they had like, it would lift up. And so we'd all do our thing.

• 3:54:16Speaker 05

  And I remember remembering, and I was like, holy shit, it felt like I was being choked out. Right? He goes, okay. When I call action, you're gonna sprint down there, you're gonna look out the, the thing and like be really nervous. I was like, okay. And he goes, action, and I run down there, I fucking sprint out the thing and I, and I'm like, and I had some, some lines, he gave me lines. Right? And I was supposed to say, the building's teetering. Then I lean out and I'm like, the building's tiltering! Fuck! And he's like, you can't say fuck, it's a kid's show.

• 3:54:55Speaker 05

  He knows I'm nervous, right? Like, he's like, go back to one. And then, and then, uh, you know, Tyrese Gibson just starts laughing and shit. Shia LaBeouf starts laughing and everybody's fucking laughing, right? I'm like, ha, ha, laugh at the fucking big guy. Alright, fine. You know, laugh at the first timer, it's easy target. You know? And, and he goes, he goes, okay, and action. I go, I run down there and then I say, I, he goes, I go, what was that fucking line again?

• 3:55:30Speaker 05

  He, he's laughing at this point and he, he's like, he goes, the building's, you know what? Just say they're shooting at the building. And I was like, that's, that's a stronger choice. I think that's a stronger choice, Mr. Bay. You know, and, and I fucking go back up and I'm like, in my head, I'm like going, man, I'm fucking this up. I'm fucking this up. I don't want to fuck this up. I, I kind of want to do this shit, you know? And I fucking go down there and dude, something just kind of clicked. And I was like, and like I'm, I could see shit, like all the stuff started coming back. You know, from when I was a kid, like, and I'm like, whoa.

• 3:56:12Speaker 05

  And like I'm doing shit like that when, and I'm reacting to this fucking big fucking thing. And I'm like, looking around and he's like, fuck, yeah. You know, he's like, yeah, now fucking towards the camera a little more. And I fucking listened and I did what he said. He's like, he goes, cut, fuck dude. He's like, yeah. He goes, come here, do this, do this. I was hired as a special ability extra to be in the background, you know? And, and, and he made me a principal in a film. He, he gave the other guys contracts too, you know? And he, he was just a, a big supporter. He's just a great supporter of military and like, like people that wanted to get into the industry, like really helped.

• 3:56:55Speaker 05

  And so, I gotta tell a story. Um, this is the first, this was a pretty profound moment for me. And

• 3:57:07Speaker 05

  And you know how I told the story about how in combat I felt that ultimate certainty of purpose and like, you know, like when I came home, I was like, well, what the fuck am I gonna do now? Like, what compares to that? Like, nothing's gonna compare. Like, eh, it's all over. You know what I mean? But, but, but there I was. It was Chicago in the middle of the summer, baking heat. And I showed you the picture of how I looked like. Two hundred, like 260 pounds at this point. I got a rocket launcher on my back, an AT4, and a Milkor grenade launcher. You know, the, I think you got a picture of him carrying one in one of these

• 3:57:50Speaker 05

  pictures somewhere. Anyway, so I'm carrying this thing. And, and I see this kid probably about 150 meters off, like, like, just looking at the, like, the crowd was cordoned off. Like, they had everything blocked off because we're blowing shit up. And, you know, it was cool. We run down the street, shooting. I mean, pretty cool experience, right? Guys are dropping in and, you know, their parachutes are catching on fire from the fucking explosives. I'm like, damn. And it was a really cool experience. And we're making believe we're shooting at all these big robots that aren't there. And it was, it was fantastic, right? It was a

• 3:58:33Speaker 05

  really cool experience. That, that, that was. Not, not the one that we talked about last night. But, but I remember seeing this kid, right? And, and he's standing there, and our eyes lock. And I'm like, ew. He's like, four. He's like,

• 3:58:59Speaker 05

  Mom, you know, and he, and he, and he points and I start walking over to him. And then I get, as I get closer, he's getting more and more like catatonic, dude. He's like, just like, oh, you know, I grab him, I pick him up. I was like, you enjoying the show? I got like blood and shit on me. I got like dirt and I'm sweaty. I'm soaked through, I'm completely saturated. And he's just like, whoa. I look at the mom and that's the first time I noticed that they're probably homeless. They're probably homeless people, right? And her, her tears are streaming down and, and it's cleaning, it's cleaning the dirt off her face, man.

• 3:59:43Speaker 05

  I look over at the father, he's right here. He's crying too, same thing. He's, he breaks out this little wind up camera and he's like, can we take a picture? And I'm like, you're not gonna put this on your Facebook page, right? And, and he's, and the kid's like, kid's not answering. And, and the mom's like, you have no idea how much this means to us. Thank you so much. And as she was saying that, dude, it was like fucking Thor landing, wham. I saw the chick in Iraq. Like, like, look at this. I'm like, I'm like, I saw, I saw the, the woman in Iraq. And, and I was like, and in that moment I realized, I was like,

• 4:00:28Speaker 05

  I can use creativity to affect people like I did destruction. And that was, that was like, I had a conversation with my wife. We were still down in San Diego when this was going on. I was like, hey, hon, what do you think if I like pursue this acting thing? And she's like,

• 4:00:53Speaker 05

  I think, I think you should. You know, is that what you want to do? I was like, it's gonna be hard. It's gonna be fucking hard. It's gonna be a lot of me still traveling again and. And but, but I'm never gonna quit. This is gonna, we're gonna be trying till we die. You know, are you, are you down for that journey? And she's like, she's like. Okay, let's do it. She's a great woman. She's, she's been through all that shit.

• 4:01:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:01:26Speaker 05

  Like, and stayed. Barely sometimes, barely sometimes, but she did. You know? Stubborn, stubborn Czech women, like German Czech.

• 4:01:41Speaker 05

  Love her. She's a shit every time.

• 4:01:47Speaker 05

  But I love her, like she's, she's.

• 4:01:51Speaker 05

  She's amazing. You'll love her when you meet her. So, so.

• 4:01:57Speaker 05

  So, one thing led to another. I, um, you know, I was in Transformers four. I picked up a TV show.

• 4:02:07Speaker 05

  These little, you know, co-star roles in TV shows. Those co-stars started turning into guest stars. The guest stars started turning into reoccurring, recurring guest stars.

• 4:02:19Speaker 05

  And I have a series coming out, actually on Netflix. After the first of the year.

• 4:02:25Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, no shit?

• 4:02:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:02:27Shawn Ryan?

  Can you talk about it or?

• 4:02:28Speaker 05

  Um, I don't know.

• 4:02:30Shawn Ryan?

  TS, huh?

• 4:02:31Speaker 05

  I don't think so yet because it's not out yet.

• 4:02:35Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 4:02:35Speaker 05

  But, um.

• 4:02:38Shawn Ryan?

  Well, congratulations.

• 4:02:39Speaker 05

  Thank you. I, I could look something up real quick. Hold on. If it's on.

• 4:02:46Speaker 05

  IMDb.

• 4:02:49Speaker 05

  Then we can talk.

• 4:02:52Speaker 05

  It's called The Lincoln Lawyer. Okay. Okay. And it is in post-production right now. The new show. The Netflix show? Yeah, the new show. The Lincoln Lawyer. It's called The Lincoln Lawyer. It'll be on Netflix and it just says 2022. But it's on here, so like anybody can access it. So I guess I can say something about it. Can't tell you what or what character and all these types of things, but it's a, I'm in there. Let's just say. And um. And so um, that's the latest, I think that's the latest release.

• 4:03:30Speaker 05

  I don't know. I think the last biggest thing was The Mayans, season two of The Mayans, uh, which is a spinoff of Sons of Anarchy. Fantastic, you know, cast and crew on that. Man, that was a great experience.

• 4:03:45Speaker 05

  That was, that was a great experience. There's a longer story there, but we'll continue. So, so um. But uh, on, on or about 2017, I, I was asked to be, one of the biggest things for me in film and television was, I feel like, you know, veterans, um.

• 4:04:11Speaker 05

  At least I did at the time, like at the beginning, it felt very hard to, to, to get involved in some things, but um, I felt like they, like veterans were only seen as, like they could be, they could be stunt guys, or they could be, you know, grips and these types of things, but nobody ever like really saw them as being creatives. You know, like writers and, you know, um, actors.

• 4:04:40Speaker 05

  I mean, you you see some veteran actors now, but you don't see you don't see a lot of veteran, big veteran actors, right? So, so.

• 4:04:50Shawn Ryan?

  Who? I can't think of anyone.

• 4:04:52Speaker 05

  Adam Driver is one.

• 4:04:53Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 4:04:54Speaker 05

  Adam Driver is a veteran. He was a Marine. And they're out there, you know, they're out there.

• 4:05:01Speaker 05

  And big veteran supporters as well are are out there, you know, so it's it's there. It's just it's just hard to find sometimes. It's just kind of the landscape a little bit, you know? But that being said, I I was asked to to come on to NBC's The Brave as a technical advisor. And I was like,

• 4:05:30Speaker 05

  I don't want to be an advisor. I don't want to do it. I told I told the person setting up to me, I don't want to I don't want to be an advisor. I want to be a creative. I want to create. And I want to just tell people how to look good carrying a gun, you know? I think I think we shared some of that.

• 4:05:48Shawn Ryan?

  I'm familiar with that.

• 4:05:49Speaker 05

  You're familiar with that a little bit.

• 4:05:50Shawn Ryan?

  Turned into a complete fucking disaster for me, but.

• 4:05:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, yeah.

• 4:05:58Speaker 05

  But but, I mean, that's all a thing, right? And we discussed that last night, kind of it.

• 4:06:05Speaker 05

  But I was like, okay, I'll talk to the guy. And the guy's name was Dean Georgiris. He was one of the writers on Gladiator. And he was going to be the showrunner. And and I was like, hi, and we talked. And he's like, I really want to get this right. I really want to get this right. I will, I will. You you will have priority, what you say will have priority. And, you know, because I worked with other people, like helping them tech advise, and then they put us in the movie, like G.I. Joe and stuff like that, you know? And, you know, we have a line here or there, nothing, nothing big, but we're in it. Like, you can see us in it, right?

• 4:06:49Speaker 05

  Well, I told him, I was like, I was like.

• 4:06:54Speaker 05

  I will make you a pilot. And and then we'll see how it goes, right? So, so, so we shot the pilot in Morocco. And then they let me take the cast and do whatever I wanted to do. We did live fire drills. We did all kinds of cool shit, right? And I was like. And I, and I started to develop kind of a relationship with some of them. And I was like, you know what?

• 4:07:24Speaker 05

  All right, I'll do the show. You know what I mean? Show got picked up and they go, do you want to do it? And I'm like.

• 4:07:31Speaker 05

  I'll do it, you know? And so I moved to Albuquerque.

• 4:07:37Speaker 05

  And had to live there and it was like full on like. And I'm the type of guy that I, I pick up all this rope that I see laying on the deck. You know what I mean? Like, oh, nobody's doing this job. It needs to be done. I'm going to do it. I'm, you're going to let me do this too? And this and this. And, and pretty soon I'm like. Wow, I really painted myself into a corner on this one. I never get a fucking minute off. Yeah. Like it was, like, there was times where like, I'm literally talking to the producing director where I'm like. They're like, yeah, they need you over here on the, because they, they shoot two episodes at once. Okay, now they need to move you over to the other episode and move to this episode. Now go to that episode. You know, it's like.

• 4:08:20Speaker 05

  And he told me one time, hey, they need you down at the, the studio so they can, you know, you can do X, Y, and Z. And I was like. Okay. Just so you know. I'm going on 24 hour work day right now. He's like. You're really going on a 24 hour work day? I'm like, yeah, man. I haven't slept. I've been working for 24 hours. And he's like, uh, shit. And I go. So. And he's like, okay, well.

• 4:08:56Speaker 05

  Just go down and check in with them and then, and then like, you know, take a day off. I'm like, okay, cool. I'll do that. And, uh. So, so. Time went on and, and right just prior to this, I had done this. I'd never directed before, right?

• 4:09:17Speaker 05

  But I was like, there was such a lull between, I forget what the last thing was in this show. There was such a lull that I engaged in this directorial program. It was like a crash course in directing. It was like the art of visual storytelling. It was held by USC and it was sponsored by veterans and media and entertainment. I think they called it VFT at this time. And, um, and so I went and did that. And basically you make, like, you have to write, shoot, edit, and present a film in three weeks. Right? You have to write it, shoot it, edit it, and present it. Short film.

• 4:10:02Speaker 05

  I wrote my script. I handed to the guy teaching it and he's like, he's like, dude,

• 4:10:11Speaker 05

  this is pretty, this is pretty ambitious what you're wanting to do here. This is like multiple combat sequences. This is, uh, multiple locations. You've got three different locations. You've got, you know, they intend for you to shoot the thing in a room, right? So you don't have to go anywhere and you just do everything right there and be done. Nah, you know the deal. We're gonna crush this shit. Yep. You know, so, so I had a great guy, um, and he, he, a close friend of mine and he, he, he's been in the industry for a long time. He did a lot of visual effects stuff, a lot of, uh, second unit stuff in video games and these types of things.

• 4:10:55Speaker 05

  He's like, anywhere I can support, I'll support, you know, so, uh, he started connecting me to people that like can, can, um, you know, like a DP and, you know, you know, I knew some talent. So from the acting side of things, hey, I'm shooting this thing. It's about veterans and vital warrior and, you know, and they're like, okay, I'll volunteer, you know, and, um, so no budget, but we shot this thing, right? So, fast forward back to The Brave. I have this thing in the can that we actually screened. And I gotta tell you, are you a filmmaker? Yeah? So, this was my first film. And I had to screen this thing.

• 4:11:38Speaker 05

  We're literally editing this thing down to the wire of where I have to show it. So, we didn't have time to put credits in it, right? And so, they're playing this thing and they play it on a big screen. It's in a theater. And they play it on the screen. And there's like, I don't know, 30, 40 veterans in there. And we watch everybody shit, right? And they play mine. It runtime of about, I don't know, 12 minutes or so, 13.

• 4:12:10Speaker 05

  And when it gets done, there's no, there's no, there's no credits. So, it's just a pitch black room. And all you can hear, like when the sound dies down, is

• 4:12:28Speaker 05

  people fucking crying and shit. And we sat there in the dark, like they didn't turn the lights on or anything for like two minutes, dude. And everybody just sat there in the dark, just like, like it was the coolest fucking thing, dude. And, and, and so I was like, wait a minute.

• 4:12:49Speaker 05

  Like because the whole process of directing, I was like,

• 4:12:54Speaker 05

  directing uses every aspect of my experience, my creative ability, my situational awareness, my visual, my storytelling, it uses every aspect of it, right? And so, so there I am on The Brave. And, and I'm like, hey, man, I developed a good relationship with the producing director.

• 4:13:21Speaker 05

  And, and he's like, he's like, and he's seen me, he starts seeing me like, I'm like taking the reins on the choreo, the tactical choreography and directing camera and everything, right? And, and how the camera can capture this action. And, and he's like, he's like,

• 4:13:42Speaker 05

  Because have you ever directed? Because you're you're talking and moving like a director. And I was like, only one short film. I got I got one or two short films. He goes, can I see it? And I'm like, yeah, I'll throw it to you. And I gave him the thing. And and he's like, he's like, he watches it, gets back to me next day. He's like, holy fuck, dude. That's the first thing you've ever fucking made. And and I'm like, yeah, it's kind of like your painting guy. And and he's like, he's like, holy fuck, you're talented.

• 4:14:24Speaker 05

  He's like, dude, the way, you know, because I I get aggressive with the camera. And like, I'm like, even the DP is like, you know, that camera is going to be right in his face. I was like, yeah, yeah. And he's like, OK. You know, he does the thing and then like, I'll show it to you if you want to see it. Yeah, of course. But but but the story, you know, as well is like, it's powerful, right? And he's like, dude, we got to start fucking developing you as a director here. I was like, yes, yes, you do.

• 4:15:02Speaker 05

  So so everything's keyed up. NBC is on board. The showrunner is on board. I'm going to be DJA and I'm going to direct the season finale of an NBC show. I'll be the second unit director, I should say. Damn. You know what I mean? Of an NBC fucking prime time television show. Holy shit. That's pretty big, right? They fucking canceled this shit. They canceled the show. They weren't going to re know the show. They cut the budget. They got rid of second unit and I didn't get to do it. Are you shitting me? No, dude. I've been there. I've been so close so many fucking times.

• 4:15:45Speaker 05

  That close so many fucking times where what Michael Bay pulled me into his office. He's going to make me a series regular on the last ship. I to this day, I don't know what the fuck happened. Damn. I have no idea what the fuck happened. He told me to my face, he goes, you got a TV show. And I was so stunned, I didn't know how to respond. I was just like.

• 4:16:07Speaker 05

  It was like so much that that I was just numb. I was like, I was like, that's fucking awesome. Thank you. And it was like, that was about the extent of the reaction, right?

• 4:16:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:16:23Speaker 05

  And and I'm like, did I not react enough? Did I like, what the fuck happened? I don't know what the fuck happened. You know, um.

• 4:16:31Shawn Ryan?

  Is that how it always is?

• 4:16:34Speaker 05

  No, dude.

• 4:16:35Shawn Ryan?

  They never they, you know?

• 4:16:36Speaker 05

  No, no, no.

• 4:16:37Shawn Ryan?

  If you don't get it.

• 4:16:38Speaker 05

  When when that when the executive producer of the show tells you, you got a show, you probably got a show.

• 4:16:42Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 4:16:43Speaker 05

  Yeah. Especially when they bring you into the studio and all the directors and everything in there is like congratulations type thing.

• 4:16:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:16:51Speaker 05

  You know, no, I still don't know what the fuck happened. It's just I never got called again. I don't care. It doesn't matter. It's a part of the journey. It was a part of my tempering of expectation and, you know, and just, oh, this is what this is like, you know, and this is the world I'm working in, right? Shit can go sideways. How am I dealing with it when it goes sideways? Right? And so, but at the time I wasn't there. At the time I was like, what the fuck happened? You know, because we were hungry. That was my income, you know? And so, but everything happens for a reason. Had I done that, then I wouldn't have been on The Brave, then I wouldn't have been

• 4:17:33Speaker 05

  having that directorial experience that led me to what I'm doing now, right?

• 4:17:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:17:37Speaker 05

  So, so,

• 4:17:40Speaker 05

  so they they they cut the second unit and um, and I'm like, holy shit, that one stung like a motherfucker. I was like, oh, man.

• 4:17:53Speaker 05

  Ah, so, so they canceled the show and then there was um, then I got involved in these independent films that are just.

• 4:18:07Speaker 05

  That didn't come out like I'd like them to, you know, I didn't direct them. I wanted to, I wanted to, but they wouldn't let me and, you know, and invariably, I think the, the product at the end of the day could have been better. And, but it was really, it was a great time and I developed great relationships along the way.

• 4:18:32Speaker 05

  And fantastic people involved. So, so go forward a little bit more, you know, I, I, um, I get involved with the Mayans, I do the Mayans and, and then, and then I got hit up to just, just go talk to a bunch of developers for this little known franchise called Call of Duty, right? What's that? Uh, it's this video game. Just kidding.

• 4:19:07Speaker 05

  So, so you gotta understand, I have been a heavy gamer, I still am. I have been a heavy gamer, uh, my entire life. I, games have been Atari 2600, you know, ColecoVision and Television. All the in-between type systems like pre Nintendo, uh, type stuff.

• 4:19:32Speaker 05

  Sega Genesis, all these types of, these gaming systems. I, I've been since table, uh, Tennis for Two. You know what that is? No. Is the very first video game ever made is Pong. You remember Pong? Yeah. It had wood panel on the box and like you had a knob with your friend and a reset button. And you turn this thing and like the ding, ding, ding, ding. And that's what you did. That was the first video game. So, so.

• 4:20:03Speaker 05

  So I've been, literally been playing video games since they've been being made. And, and deeply, like sometimes way too deep, like post combat, I lock myself in a room and I'm just like playing.

• 4:20:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What's your favorite video game of all time?

• 4:20:20Speaker 05

  Ooh, man, you put me on the spot like that. You can't do that.

• 4:20:26Shawn Ryan?

  Um, Street Fighter II.

• 4:20:28Speaker 05

  Really?

• 4:20:29Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:20:30Speaker 05

  That was your jam?

• 4:20:31Shawn Ryan?

  Street Fighter II. Yeah, maybe Zelda.

• 4:20:35Speaker 05

  See, fantasy is my shit. I know I'm doing Call of Duty and everything like that. Even the dudes in Call of Duty were like, we'll get you more involved with the zombie stuff, you know, but, but like the fantasy stuff is, is just for me is.

• 4:20:51Speaker 05

  I'm working on some stuff now that I can't, I absolutely can't talk about, triple top secret, but, but, um.

• 4:21:01Speaker 05

  I can't wait to be able to tell you, but it's, but it's, it scratches every itch, you know what I mean? It's one of my favorite IPs out there, you know, so, so, um.

• 4:21:15Speaker 05

  You asked what my favorite video games were, right?

• 4:21:20Speaker 05

  I really like, uh, I really like the Diablo franchise a lot.

• 4:21:30Speaker 05

  I love the, pretty much anything Blizzard makes, I, I enjoy. The Last of Us, The Witcher, um, God of War. God of War. How can you not love the God of War franchise? Have you, have you played that? Do yourself a favor and just get yourself, get off and just get, get that, play that, you'll be like, oh shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get, get yourself a PlayStation, am I wrong? Oh man, you haven't played God of War? Alright, but God of War, um, if I had to pick a favorite,

• 4:22:10Speaker 05

  man, they're such great, it's such a powerful storytelling platform, man. It's the future of, it's the future of storytelling.

• 4:22:19Shawn Ryan?

  Video gaming?

• 4:22:20Speaker 05

  Oh, absolutely. That technology, as they start to get into photogrammetry and these types of things and how they're capturing, 100%.

• 4:22:29Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 4:22:30Speaker 05

  100%, watch, mark my words.

• 4:22:33Shawn Ryan?

  I believe you.

• 4:22:34Speaker 05

  The, the, the, uh, CEO of Warner Brothers,

• 4:22:40Speaker 05

  this is a quote from the CEO of Warner Brothers. "It doesn't take a genius to know that video games are the future of entertainment." And he raised Warner Brothers games to the same level as Warner Brothers films, from what I hear. So, yeah. So, now that I've set the stage for this, you gotta understand how this is, huh, bro. So, I get asked to talk on stage to a bunch of developers for Call of Duty. Can I help bring in a guest speaker? I do, you know, and, uh, a mutual friend had introduced me to the contact over at, um, at Activision, come to find out we had some history together and we didn't even realize it, you know, and,

• 4:23:25Speaker 05

  so let me bring you in and, you know, we'll take a look and talk, talk to these people and who knows? You know, so, again, it comes up. Well, we'd like you to be the tech advisor for this shoot we're doing for, you know, Call of Duty. And I'm like,

• 4:23:49Speaker 05

  if there's anything I learned, show the fuck up, no matter what the fucking job is. And then they'll see that I have other things to offer. They may or may not take that, but they'll see that I have other things to offer, is the hope, right? Well, these guys did. Trey Art did. And, and I have an incredible team. Like, I have this guy, my, my original coordinator has had, you know, triple A talent on his roster. And he brought that and allowed me to use that in this endeavor.

• 4:24:27Speaker 05

  Once we got there. So what turned into me tech advising, what we saw was, this is how this happened.

• 4:24:38Speaker 05

  We saw.

• 4:24:43Speaker 05

  I was going in to, to, to just tech advise on the movement on, you know, what it was they were doing. And, and then COVID hit and everybody's in a lockdown. And it's like, well, shit, we're shooting this. Can you tune into this shoot? And look at what these guys are doing. And, and I'm watching what these guys are doing with weapons. And I'm like, guys, I gotta be honest, like, like they're so off the mark. Like for me to tell you everything they're doing wrong here in real time over a Zoom meeting is going to be really challenging.

• 4:25:20Speaker 05

  And I'm not trying to take anything away from anybody, but

• 4:25:26Speaker 05

  if I can just show you an example, what, what we can do is this, is I can show you an example of what my team can do. And then we can give it to them and then they can rehearse what we put together. And then they'll be more in alignment because they don't know what they don't know. If they can replicate what it is we're doing over here on my team, everything would be great. You know, I never went into it like trying to screw anybody over or anything like that. Right? Like that was not the intent. The intent was let's just make some really cool stuff. Give it to them and then, you know, this other team can shoot it because they're, they have a mocap stage and they can do all the stuff. You know what I mean?

• 4:26:12Speaker 05

  So we did and they were like, holy shit. Like with the choreo and all the things we did. We put our best foot forward at the time. And so, um, they were like, I think, I don't know what happened, but we got approached again and they're like, hey, um, so we noticed that you recorded all that stuff on a mocap stage. Where were you? And I was like, in Los Angeles. They're like, really? Well, would you, would you be interested in shooting that stuff for us? You know, and I'm like, uh, yeah, absolutely. We'll shoot it for you. You know?

• 4:26:53Speaker 05

  And, and so went from tech advisor to directing again. Like, and I'm directing all this second unit stuff. And basically what they have in game is, is, is this ability to where you can go up behind a guy and you hold down the melee button and it performs an execution. You guys play Call of Duty? Yeah. And it performs this execution. Well, this execution is like an animation using different types of weapons. Depends on the operator package and all these variables, right? And so we made these things and they're like, oh, that was great. Can you do some more and do some more?

• 4:27:35Speaker 05

  And wound up being like 300 different ways of killing somebody up close.

• 4:27:42Speaker 05

  If you ever played, like, so you said Street Fighter. You ever play Mortal Kombat?

• 4:27:46Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:27:46Speaker 05

  You know how at the end you can do fatalities?

• 4:27:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:27:49Speaker 05

  It's kind of like that.

• 4:27:50Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 4:27:51Speaker 05

  It's kind of like that. So you want me to come up with the Call of Duty fatalities? That's my job? Okay, I'll do that. Fuck, all day long, you know? And so.

• 4:28:03Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have a favorite fatality?

• 4:28:06Speaker 05

  Ooh, there's a lot of good ones, man. What, uh, in the Call of Duty? And so in Black Ops, um, so we're on, we're on a different Call of Duty now, but Black Ops was the first one that I had done.

• 4:28:22Speaker 05

  And, and I like the Jon Rambo one a lot, you know, um, I like, I like, uh, I like different ones for different reasons. Um, and, um, the Judge Dredd one's cool. We have some that haven't come out.

• 4:28:43Shawn Ryan?

  You gotta, you gotta make one with a stop sign pole, just for old times sake.

• 4:28:50Speaker 05

  Nice, nice. Yeah. Um, we have stuff kinda like that though. That's funny. Um,

• 4:29:01Shawn Ryan?

  You call it the hooch.

• 4:29:03Speaker 05

  I still don't know where the fuck the guy got a stop sign pole. It's crazy. Anyway, um, so, so one thing led to another. We started developing relationships, good working relationships with the, the, the stage there at Central and, and, um, one thing led to another and then, you know, I, I was asked to come in and do another Call of Duty IP, the one that just came out, Vanguard. And now I'm the, um, second unit director, uh, we got the guy that shoots all the action stuff for the one that just came out, Vanguard.

• 4:29:47Speaker 05

  And, and in the interim, we were working on different cinematics and directing cinematics and conjunction. You gotta understand, there's a lot of people that wear a lot of different hats in, in the video game world. So it's not as clear cut as in film on, on who's doing what. You know, you have the performance capture director that is for all intents and purposes, the director of a film that, that, that works with the actors and, and, you know, elicits the performances, right?

• 4:30:17Speaker 05

  They Performance Capture Director, you know, you've seen the helmets that they wear with the lights and the dots on their face and all that. Yeah. That's it, you know, and they they direct all that, the ADR performances. They're working with all the actors. Um, second unit director, um, the mocap director, uh, works with all the second unit stuff, all the action, you know, so, um, so I did, I did that in conjunction with, um, you know, being the first assistant director too, the, the assistant director is the guy that, you know, handles the logistics and, you know, kind of, you know, make sure the flow of the day. He's like the, he's kind of like the, the LPO.

• 4:31:02Speaker 05

  Okay. You know what I mean? Yeah. He, he makes shit flow along. Chief is the director, you know, LPO is the one that makes all that shit happen, right? Yeah. And so, kind of the same, kind of the same thing.

• 4:31:19Speaker 05

  And so, uh, you know, one thing led to another and, and I had a very good working relationship with the lead animators over at Trey Arc and, um, they wanted to bring me on full time as the Performance Capture Director for, you know, their studio. So now I'm officially a developer. While I was creating this franchise and, and going back to everything that we've talked about before, there's been adversity, you know what I mean? Like, like things have gone sideways sometimes and like, that's just the nature of production. You know, things come in late, you don't know which way is up, you know, talent cancels

• 4:32:03Speaker 05

  on you, they get booked on something else or, you know what I mean? Like, and then like all the productions like weighing on that. And so, so there's a lot of adversity, um, but.

• 4:32:15Speaker 05

  But it's okay to like, take that breath and, and just truly enjoy the type of problem that it is, you know, for what it is. And, and so, um, while, while we were making that first game, yeah, uh, and to put this in, to kind of put this in scope, um, my son passed away while I was on the stage shooting. And you gotta understand this IP. There's no coincidences. There's no coincidences. Me and my son played this IP while I was

• 4:32:52Speaker 05

  in Iraq. We use Call of Duty as a way to, to bond, you know, when, you know, it was difficult face to face sometimes, you know, because of what he's going through, what I'm going through and, you know, but, but in that other world, you know, the walls come down a little bit. Makes sense?

• 4:33:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it does.

• 4:33:16Speaker 05

  You know, and things start coming out and you're having conversations and you're just having fun. You know what I mean? So I don't think we talk about that enough in games. You know, just the, the, the good that can happen, you know, and, and, and the friends you can make, you know, and the connections that you can make. Um, and I think we should focus on that more. And, and, and so that's kind of what drives me. And so while I'm creating this IP, there, you think there's any coincidence that, that like after my son passes away, then all of a sudden like all of these things start to bloom. And I can't, I can't tell you all of the other things that are happening,

• 4:33:59Speaker 05

  but it's just like through that journey, like I'm talking to you about, and I, and I alluded to this before, and maybe you can go back and kind of do your magic. But...

• 4:34:12Speaker 05

  The journey itself and the transition and the being able to kind of, you know, incorporate all of those events into that, into my heart, you know, just as granted and that realization of the ability to love unconditionally.

• 4:34:32Speaker 05

  I bring that into why, that's the why I create. Like I use that whole journey and that's what motivates my creative effort. It's not the outcome of anything. It's not, I'm trying, I'm striving to like, go get this thing next. I did that. It's painful. You know what I mean? Yeah. Nothing's ever good enough. You know, you're never satisfied with where you're at.

• 4:34:59Speaker 05

  And that, that causes a hole. There's always a hole that can never be filled because you're always looking out there and never like appreciating what's right here. And right here, you know? Yeah. And so, so that all changed through that. That's, that's one of the myriad of gifts that this event has, has given, this singular event has granted me.

• 4:35:25Speaker 05

  And so,

• 4:35:28Speaker 05

  now, in a little over a year and a half, I have signed with Treyarch as a developer, doing a job that normally is reserved at a meta level where, that, you know, guys have been doing this for 20 years.

• 4:35:46Speaker 05

  How's that happen? Damn, that's awesome. How's that happen? A gamer, a seal. Think of, think of all the pieces. Yeah. Like through my whole life, the glee club kid, the actor, the, the artist, the writer, the director, the seal.

• 4:36:09Speaker 05

  As a Call of Duty director. What the fuck? Damn. That's awesome, man. What the fuck?

• 4:36:19Speaker 05

  Like, that's not, you can't, you can't. Every time I think about it, it's just like, thank you. Thank you.

• 4:36:31Speaker 05

  It's everything.

• 4:36:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:36:34Speaker 05

  You know, not the job, but the journey. The realization of, wow, you put me through all of that so I could be here right now.

• 4:36:45Speaker 05

  Knowing, knowing that this isn't the end, this is the beginning.

• 4:36:51Speaker 05

  This is the beginning, this is the start.

• 4:36:53Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 4:36:57Speaker 05

  It's fantastic. It's, it's so satisfying. You know? It's so satisfying, it scratches every creative edge. You know? And, uh...

• 4:37:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. I'm pretty content.

• 4:37:12Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you, man. Like, until you're happy, that's, that's awesome.

• 4:37:18Speaker 05

  It is.

• 4:37:20Shawn Ryan?

  But, well, how can people get ahold of you?

• 4:37:26Speaker 05

  What people?

• 4:37:27Shawn Ryan?

  Anybody. Anybody wants to reach out?

• 4:37:29Speaker 05

  Instagram is great. Like, I check that at least once a day. Maybe once every couple of days. If anybody wants to get ahold of me there. If it's for a professional reason, I have representation that can be found on IMDb. Just Google my name, IMDb, there's representation there. All the information's there to get ahold of me that way. If you're an operator, you can contact me at [email protected]. Reach out, you have any questions about the practice. I do have, at the Rama Institute, I do have something set up through the nonprofit that we'll talk about offline, if you're interested in seeing what these classes are about and how they can benefit you.

• 4:38:15Speaker 05

  And then, um, if you're a SEAL, just contact, contact me through any one of the aforementioned and we'll get you right.

• 4:38:29Speaker 05

  And if you're a SEAL that, you know, in the past, that we've had, um, interactions,

• 4:38:37Speaker 05

  I'm not the same guy. In fact, so much not the same guy, I changed my name, remember?

• 4:38:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:38:44Speaker 05

  You know, a lot of people wonder, well, that's weird. You know, why'd he do that? You know? And it's like, well, the first name's a contraction to Michael Koch. That's why it's spelled that way.

• 4:39:00Speaker 05

  So it kind of gives you context. Last name. This all came to you. I know how it sounds. This all came like in this process. It came through in like meditations and all these types of things. It's like, oh, you know. And so, but for you to get the gist, that's kind of the driving force behind it. First name's a contraction of my swimming buddy's first and last name.

• 4:39:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:39:32Speaker 05

  So that's, well, we'll talk about the other stuff later.

• 4:39:39Shawn Ryan?

  Well, thanks a lot for coming out, man.

• 4:39:41Speaker 05

  Thanks for having me, man.

• 4:39:42Shawn Ryan?

  This was a real pleasure.

• 4:39:43Speaker 05

  This is great. I love your setup. It's fantastic. Yeah, you're doing it right, man.

• 4:39:51Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 4:39:52Speaker 05

  It's really cool.

• 4:39:53Shawn Ryan?

  I appreciate that.

• 4:39:54Speaker 05

  Thanks for having me.

• 4:39:56Shawn Ryan?

  Best of luck.

• 4:39:58Speaker 05

  Luck's got nothing to do with it.

• 4:40:06Speaker 05

  There's no luck. Yeah.

• 4:40:14Shawn Ryan?

  All right. That's a good ending.

• 4:40:21Speaker 05

  Thank you, man.

• 4:40:22Shawn Ryan?

  Nice, man. I knew you were gonna say that about luck.

• 4:40:29Speaker 05

  It's true.

• 4:40:31Shawn Ryan?

  We were landed like that.

• 4:43:15Speaker 02

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