Praying at the Altar of Maybe with Micaiah Deull

In this episode we go deep with Micaiah Deull— who is a psychospiritual coach specializing in guiding people through significant transitions and transformation, addiction recovery, and psychedelic integration. He is a master kambo practitioner with 10 years of experience, a writer, speaker, storyteller and a self proclaimed ssilly goose.

We start off sharing some epic drag avatars, which inspires a convo about fanaa, or the ecstatic annihilation by, of and for GOD. 

From there, we explore the dark night of the soul—how, instead of breaking us, these moments of deep struggle can empower us if we meet them with the right perspective.

We take a raw and real look at self-love, self-loathing, and the slippery terrain in between, and then Micaiah introduces us to the powerful practice of “The Altar of Maybe”—a space where embracing non-binary thinking and uncertainty, can build bridges and connection. 

Then, we get into disaster collectivism—those rare, paradoxical moments when crisis forges unlikely connections between people with wildly different worldviews. Micaiah reflects on the hurricanes in Asheville, and I share my own experience of this phenomenon on 9/11 in NYC.

Speaking of radical experiences, we also explore the medicine of Kambo—what it is, how it's used, and my personal rite of passage in Micaiah’s Kambo Brotherhood, where I received three days of this powerful frog medicine in a deeply transformative initiation.

And finally, we talk about prayer as a technology, not just a way to speak but a way to listen—and Micaiah leaves us with the question:

In a world of bridge-burners, how can we be bridge-builders?

It’s a powerful conversation, full of heart, depth, and a little bit of silly goose fun!

Learn more about Micaiah and his work here -https://www.kambofroghealing.com/edward

Connect with Wil here - https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/

Transcript

Wil Fisher  0:02  
All right, Micaiah, welcome to queerly beloved, my brother. It's so good to have you here. It's such a pleasure to see you shining face. 

Micaiah
yes. Wil, being in your presence helps me shine.

Wil: And I'm so grateful for our connection, for all the exciting work we've done together, all the good times we've had together. And yeah, it feels like a natural thing to have you as a part of this as well. So thank you for being here. Yeah, thank you for the invitation. I'm excited for it. So I want to start with the first question I ask all my guests, which is this, I invite you to take a breath and check in with how you're doing in this moment. And the question is, Who are you in this moment, at this point in time, in this body on this planet? Who are you? But please tell me by describing a drag avatar that embodies that. And it doesn't to be like a drag queen. It's like some people talk about, like, you know, some element or a flower or something, but, yeah, a drag avatar is my drag avatar. I am. I love this question. So

Micaiah  1:18  
my the drag avatar, which

would most eloquently and creatively express who I am at the moment, would be a Persian mystic, Two Spirit tattooed and adorned and wildly surrendered to bhakti, wildly surrendered to the absolute ecstatic love of God, wildly surrendered to the Sufi concept of Fana, which means to die with the love of God before you die, before the body dies, to be absolutely enraptured and unraveled with and by and for the love of God. So my drag avatar would be that a wil tattooed and adorned and silk robed, long haired poetic mystic named Fana. But no,

Wil Fisher  2:24  
wow, let them be here. I love that so much. That is so beautiful. Thank you

powerful.

Thank you for calling them in. I'll do the exercise myself.

Hmm, yeah. Spent a good morning sipping cacao by the fire today and feeling into that fire energy also, also drew a Metatron card this morning, which was around Kundalini and sort of feeling this call to keep working with and bringing up that Kundalini energy, that fire energy, that fire serpent energy. And so it's not, you know, it's just a call that it's a whisper of a call, a reminder of that energy that is within me, within all people that we have access to, if we choose to, to invite it in. And so it's sort of, it's a snake. My, my avatar is a snake, and it's a fire snake. But it's not fully

it's not fully realized just yet, she's she's kind of sleeping. She's like a soft, sweet, orange and red snake sleeping by the fire, and she's cuddled up and, you know, and I'm starting to whisper to her, I'm starting to call her in and to invite her to dance and to play with me. And so, yeah, that's where I'm at. I'm a sleeping red and orange snake resting warmly by the fire. Sounds cozy. I love it. Thank you. Yes. So I'm so excited to get into this. And yeah, maybe we come back to the drag avatar. And I'm curious, because that was just such a powerful and

vibrant description. And I'm curious, what would what would invite that in? What? What is it about that that that descriptive avatar that you felt called to, to connect with today?

Micaiah  4:35  
That's a great question. I'm in a really, really good mood, as I had mentioned to you briefly in our our little chit chat before we began, I'm, I'm, the pendulum has swung the other way from the hardest year of my adult life in 20 years. Wow, really, really serious to the point.

Point of being pretty scary depression and I am on the other side of that feeling so deeply connected to God and to the the the Spirit of Jesus, Christ, of Christ, consciousness of Gnosticism, of of Christ before the writ of kings and politics and many, many, many translations muddied the water of absolute, unconditional forgiveness and absolute, unconditional love and absolute love thy neighbor as thyself. So I'm feeling very surrendered to that right now, and I believe that that's where that came from. And I have always greatly appreciated

queer wildness within myself, for lack of a better description,

you know, I've been a burner for over 10 years now, so I was

always felt very, very free being adorned in flowing skirts and wild outfits at Burning Man. And I also love Persian mysticism and Sufism. And as I was that that that avatar, that character, was kind of flowing through my verbiage. I remembered that that Sufi word fauna, which I just find is so beautiful, and it's just to it's another word for bhakti. I would call it another word for bhakti, perhaps another word for samadhi or Satori, of just what it takes to be annihilated with and by and for the love of God requires an absolute burning away of ego, which is painful because we grip and we cling, especially to certainty, into stories and narrative and identity and wanting to be right and wanting to feel safe, and there's no room for that in the surrender to God. And I am, by no means suggesting that I am there. It is a work in progress, and furthermore, I think a spontaneous grace, rather than something that can be earned or attained. However, I feel closer to it now than I have felt in a very long time. And it it allows me to see the virtue and the gift of that very, very, very dark night of the soul of the it's a trope, but it's true. It's the pressure that turns coal into diamonds. Sometimes we must be brought to our knees with uncertainty and fear

and depression in order to really, truly surrender to God. So that's where that came through from beautiful and I know your story, and I know you've had

Wil Fisher  7:50  
dark nights of the soul in the past, and I'm curious about the cycles of these. You know how they they sometimes come and you get through them. What do you think is the value and purpose of that for you, from your experience, and I know that I've had that too, where it's like, Oh, I'm so high, I'm so I'm so vibing. I'm thriving. I'm in this great energy. And then, boom, something happens, and I go down into some darkness, and then I get through it, and I tend to feel like when I come out, I'm I'm higher than when I was high before. But I don't know if it's always like that. I'm curious. Do you have thoughts on these cycles where we do sometimes have to go through these dark periods to come back to this god surrender state?

Micaiah  8:39  
Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on it. I mean, the first is contrast. You know, I've said before, like, knowing what you don't want is enough to start from. That's enough to start from of like knowing, like, I don't want that, and it also, in me, inspires great humility and prioritization. And remembrance of simple appreciation when the light gets so dim that you don't want to live anymore. And I have been there. I have been there. I made a non suicide pact

26 years ago after coming very, very, very close.

So sometimes we must be brought to our knees to remember the simple grace of food in the fridge and lights that turn on and gas in the car and our five senses and our mobility and the absolute wondrous miracle of our lungs pumping breath and our heart pumping blood without conscious thought. On our behalf, it is that shattering that for me, bring.

Me to the glory of appreciation, because I, like many people out there, come from a past of severe trauma, and that has in me led to,

sometimes a acquiescence to or addiction to or subconscious, unconscious leaning toward victimhood and victim mentality. And while that had its place for me, to protect me, while I was a child, it absolutely does nothing for me and as adult, and those passages, the one way that I have found that helps me to get back to the light from the darkness is to continually act again and again and again. How is this happening for me, not to me? How is this happening for me, not to me? And a second, Wonderful question I like to ask, and I've we've shared this one before,

what would this look like if it was simple? Because the mind and the ego loves complexity, loves drama, loves victimhood,

that eats it candy, to the ego. Victimhood, drama and complexity are tools and fuel of and for the ego. So when I am brought down to these places where I'm like, Oh man, it feels hard. It feels like it is happening to me. It feels like a full on frontal assault, the light is hard to find. My self worth is hard to find. Yeah, how

is this happening for me, not to me? What would this look like if it was simple? What would this look like if it was simple? And this last passage around wil I mean every passage, to get back to your original question. Every passage has something different to teach. I believe this last passage around for me brought me back into I have more work to do with self love and self acceptance and self compassion. And again, that goes back to having

some pretty severe trauma in my childhood in which I was taught that I was not lovable, that I was not acceptable, that I was not worth the time, primarily my masculine caregivers and to Learn to love myself unconditionally,

to be shown the ways in which I don't that's

Wil Fisher  12:46  
really hard. It's a really tough pill to swallow, but it's been necessary for me, and I do not think I'm unique in that passage. Yeah, absolutely not. And it is such a pivotal, pivotal piece of work self love. It is a game changing piece of work, and absolutely one that I think we're all on a spectrum around, where we have different levels of self love, and that changes within time and the the amount of of self love that we can potentially access is so vast. It's, it's, it's insane to think of how much we are deserving of love. It's, it's very hard for our human hearts to even comprehend, and so it is a a journey towards infinity. And yeah, I really hear you in this realization that there's more self love for you to connect with, and some, perhaps some, some wounds around that too, to keep working on healing 100% and one thing I've been writing about, and I'll be putting some content out about it soon. Is

Micaiah  14:04  
and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, because you're, you're you're very wil in the same communities and the same many of the same scenes, same scenes as I am.

We hear about self love a lot in the coaching space and the spiritual space, the psycho spiritual space, the plant medicine space. But what is less addressed is self hate and self loathing. I don't see that addressed too much, and that's what I'm interested in right now, because to address self love implies a lack there of which also implies the presence of its opposite, which would be self hate, self loathing and lack of self acceptance. And that is like grimy, ugly, uncomfortable stuff that people don't want to look at or talk about. And I always go back to my first teacher, the beloved Tommy star child, who is he is queer. He was my very first self.

Spiritual Teacher. He is practicing witch in a powerhouse, and I love him dearly. And he was the first person who ever asked me, Do you love yourself? And I'll never forget, nobody had ever asked me that question before, probably 15 years ago, wow. And at first, my knee jerk reaction was like, of course, I love myself. I travel and I treat myself to good food and good booze and this and that, and then it was like and like, but something hit me, and I bragged, and with tears in my eyes, I was like, Oh my God, I don't I don't love my I don't love myself. And not only that, I have had, historically, throughout my life, a very, very strong sense of self loathing and a lack of self acceptance and not being able to see my worth. And then this last passage from, you know, I recently went through what I call my midlife passage, because I refuse to call it a crisis, and it really culminated with this

big move to Asheville after 13 years in San Diego and for the first time, and a lot of changes in my life and being brought again face to face with Both just this absolute

lack of self worth and acquiescence to self loathing to the point of self hatred, that, again, comes from my childhood and comes from trauma, and it's been

really, really hard, frankly, to look at that and to love the parts and pieces of Me and learn how to reparent the parts and pieces of me that adapted those belief systems, because it was easier for me to do that to myself and take it on myself when it felt inevitable that that was going to be the continued message from the masculine in my life, who I thought was supposed to take care of, nurture, support and protect me, and did not.

So it's a passage, and it's a tough one, and I believe to add one little other addendum to your question of like, why does this happen? Yeah, is as I'll use a combo corollary right. As a combo practitioner, I need to know what all kinds of different ways to serve combo feels like, from the gentlest, most subtle application to the rites of passage work that I was blessed and fortunate enough to guide you and other beautiful men through I need to know what that feels like. I need to know the terrain before I ask someone else to go there, or before I say, hey, I can walk you through this, because I know what it looks like. And that's the other part. That's the other side of navigating these really dense, heavy, dark emotions, narratives, belief systems, CPTSD, capital, trauma with a capital T, I need to know the terrain. Wil, I need to know the terrain so that, because I work with people in my coaching practice, in my medicine practice, who are in extraordinarily deep and disorienting and lonely states of transformation and transition and addiction recovery and psychedelic integration and dark nights of The soul, and they need to be able to trust me. And in order for that to

be there, they have to know that I know the terrain. This is Chiron. This is the wounded here. It's all over my car. You know sure the wound in many can emit the light through which many or the wound in one can emit the light through which many heal, we turn our wounds into wisdom. We upcycle and recycle the path all of it for all of us, I go back to that on my journey, which is so deeply personal, and it's about me and my trauma and my lack of self love and my belief systems in my narratives. But how when I feel that in myself, when I employ Kintsugi to repair that with gold and become more beautiful for having been broken, how can my pain and the journey of that be an offering to the world? How can I be a lighthouse for others who have fallen to their knees with trauma, addiction and depression, and that's what I'm here for, beautiful and I hear so much strength and power in that, in removing it from just yourself, your personal struggle and challenge, and bringing it into the collective and.

Wil Fisher  20:00  
That there's so much power in that and so much more potential surrender in that, when we recognize that we're not just doing this for ourselves, but we're doing it for the collective, certainly something that I have related to in plant medicine ceremonies, when sometimes it's so intense and it's like, Why me? Why do I have to go through this, and then the remembering that sometimes it's not just about me. In fact, it's never just about me, that it's that it's a healing, that it's healing work for many, many, more than just me and and by by going there, it's like remembering that helps me feel like I'm not alone in this, that I am doing this, and I'm doing this for all these, all these people, ancestors, ancestors of the future, people in the room that I'm in, people in the entire collective, and I'm doing it for them as well. But by because of the nature of me doing it for them, I'm doing it with them. Even though maybe I'm the vessel. There's still a collective experience that's happening. Yeah, the other thing I wanted to highlight is you were talking about how self loathing is often not looked at by folks in this space. And I agree, and it is important to bring these pieces into the light, these pieces in the shadow into the light. And there's a lot of talk in the coaching field around limiting beliefs. And what I often do with my clients is I help them see how almost any and perhaps I could say all limiting beliefs come back to beliefs about ourselves. It might seem like it's a limiting belief about this thing outside of ourselves, but if we keep asking questions, it comes back subconsciously to thoughts about ourselves, and a lot of that is rooted in lack of self worth, self loathing, etc. And I feel like that has been one of the things that I've helped people see, is to bring that stuff up into the surface, because when we don't see it, it's very difficult for us to do anything about it. I was recently in Costa Rica and had a memory of my father come up, where I was feeling unloved and unsupported by him, and recognized this father wound that I wasn't aware of, and because I was able to bring it up, I was able to do some reparenting work during that that retreat to help heal it. But it's I can't heal it without it being first exposed on some level, and so I feel like it is a disservice to ignore these thoughts of self loathing, these these self hatred thoughts and feelings, and that it's important for us to help folks see that they might be holding these thoughts and beliefs and then help them find the tools and the passages to release them and to move more create more spaciousness for the self love to come through because that, I mean, even in that experience in Costa Rica, it was like I did that work, and it wasn't like then I did some self love work. It's like I did that work and I woke up the next morning and I was just flooded with self love. Like all I could say in my head was, I am so loved. I am loved, I'm loved, I'm loved, I'm loved. And it was just like, it just naturally flows in, because when you clear that space, you create this new space. And then one final piece, and I think this could be a good segue, actually, is to remember that it's not like a self love versus self hate, like, oh, I have self I don't have self love, I have self hate. Oh, but then I got rid of self hate, and now I have self love, like it's always, you know, back to that spectrum, you know. And I think that's helpful, and I think that can bring in this subject that I was hoping we'd explore, around binary thinking and moving into

helping the collective move into more of a of thinking on a spectrum, and especially during these divisive times. So yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, that was beautiful and eloquently put. Thank you. Wil,

Micaiah  24:13  
yeah. I mean, we are very much squarely entering the area or the era of both and right. And you know, when you, when you invited me onto this podcast, and some of the questions you had in the you know, what would you like to talk about that's related to queerness and spirit spirituality, as you know, Wil, and we've talked about this for a couple of years now, I, I sincerely believe that the holiest word in the English language is maybe. And I call my practice the altar of maybe. And

I am very, very, very interested in queer thinking and non binary thinking.

Mean, yeah, in that like the world is so complex right now, it is very, very, very complex, and it is very, very, very uncertain. And for a lot of people, it is also very, very scary. And when humans are faced with complexity, that invokes deep feelings of fear and uncertainty, the tendency is to revert to tribalism. Yeah, to us versus them, my team versus the other team, we are good and they are bad. Fear is why, maybe,

maybe, maybe

the issues that we are facing as a species right now, in my opinion, are far too complex for most people, and I throw myself squarely in that population to truly understand them. They're deeply, deeply complex on a geopolitical level, on a spiritual level, and I sincerely believe that there is a God sized hole in the fabric of our society and our species and our civilization right now. Yeah,

people worship the author, David Foster Wallace, has a lovely commencement speech called This is water, in which he says there is no such thing as atheism in the day to day trenches of adult life, everybody worships. Everybody worships. I do not. I have never met a human being to know well enough to know that they didn't worship something, and if they don't worship God, then they worship their sports team, or they worship their money, or they worship their political ideologies, or they worship their own beauty. Everybody worships. Everybody worships. Look at the symbols that we exalt. We may no longer exalt religious symbols, but we exalt everybody knows what the Louis Vuitton symbol looks like. Everybody knows what the Gucci symbol looks like. Everybody knows the sports logos. Everybody worships, and we worship symbols, and we worship ideas, and we worship our own egos as well, and I don't think that anybody is free from this and in that and in an increasingly complex world, and you get into deep fakes and AI and bot farms and social media and the fact that outrage cells, we are in the era of outrage and othering, we we other people like that. Oh, you are other than me. You are on the other side of the fence, baby. Is that helpful? Is that helpful? I live in Asheville, North Carolina, which just experienced one of the most destructive natural disasters in American history. Yeah, this place got

destroyed. It's, it's, it's,

it's hard to put in words, it's a lot. It's a lot, yeah, and in the wake of that this community experienced what is known as disaster collectivism. And what that is, is in times of great disaster, when people need shelter and people need food, you don't go up to their door and go, who did you vote for? Who did you vote for? You just help. Yeah, and a lot of my very spiritual, very open minded, very liberal and liberal identified and liberal thinking friends said that one of the greatest things that they experienced during the fallout from Hurricane Helene was their right wing other side of the fence, neighbors coming over and bending over backwards to help them out. And suddenly these lines of division disappear, and suddenly we're all humans. We're not liberals or conservatives. We're not on this side of the fence or that side of the fence. We are humans that are in a really dire situation who need help, and then all of this stuff disappears, right? So how can we get there without the disaster? Right? Curiosity and compassion, yeah, non binary thinking, not either or not black and white. It's all shades of gray. It's very complex. The Buddha talks of the Middle Way, yeah, one of my teachers used to call it fuzzy thinking.

Squint, blur your eyes. Yeah, the truth somewhere in the middle, we are addicted to certainty, and the quest for certainty is a cage, and we are addicted to wanting to simplify very complex issues, so that we have someone else to blame, and so that we can be on the right side. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, I think that we are being driven toward a world in which that is not true. I believe that the world needs bridge builders in a world full of bridge burners, and the best way that I know to build bridges is curiosity and compassion. And instead of standing on one side of the fence and going, how dare they think that? How dare they believe that? Go, Well, why do they think that? Why do they believe that? Yeah, and how am I just like the people that I believe to be on the other side of the fence of me, because all humans are far more similar than they are different. We all want to feel safe. We all want to feel important. Yeah, what does Kevin Walton say? Safety and significance based on human needs? Am I safe? Do I matter? Am I safe? Do I matter?

Every single human being on the face of the planet is addicted to stories. We're addicted to them, and we confuse beliefs with identity. Beliefs and identity are not the same thing. They're not we have to be allowed to change our minds, and if we are involved with or acquiescent to any group that lionizes, demonizes, shames or exiles us for changing our minds, then that's fundamentalist. In my opinion. We have to be allowed to change our minds, yeah, in the face of new information, in the face of complexity, and we have to, you know, as again, to bring it back to the true Christ consciousness. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Like how am I like this person? This person just wants to feel safe. They just want to feel significant. They're a product of their environment. They're a product of their trauma. They're carrying around whatever load, and they are believing whatever stories and narratives help them to feel like they have a place and a purpose, just like me, and that makes us far more similar than different, far more similar than different. And I've lived in enough places, Alaska being one of them, and North Carolina being another one, where, you know, the the right and the left really coexist, yeah, and I'm pretty, I call myself a political agnostic. I'm pretty about all this stuff, right? That's another story about agnosticism versus faith, right? We're putting our faith in politics and our agnosticism in God. I think it should be the other way around. Yes. And I see these people like, yeah, you're right and you're left, but oh my goodness, y'all are so similar

Wil Fisher  33:24  
from the outside, and at the end of the day, you guys just kind of want to be in the country and be left alone, don't you? Yeah? You know, yeah, it's very similar, very similar. So good. Yeah. Thank you for sharing all that. And going back to this story around the tragedy, bringing people together made me reflect on when I was in New York City during 911 and it was this new experience of the city and its people, where suddenly it was like we are in this together. We are moving through this city and this experience together. And it was almost like

a veil that was was down, was lifted up, and this veil of separation, where we kind of ignored each other and and pretended like the others didn't exist. And suddenly, when this tragedy, when this scary thing happened, we suddenly realized that we are all living in this city together, and I think that is what we are needing. More is to Yes, to help each other, and also to just recognize that we are in this together, that we all ultimately do want similar things, how we get there, how we move there. Might we might have different ideas about that, but we need to unite with what we actually ultimately desire in our hearts and and, yeah, start, stop distancing ourselves and othering each other. The other thing I wanted to bring up is that altar of maybe it has been so helpful for me, that idea.

It's, again, it's so funny. I keep telling you all the ways that you influenced my Joshua retreat. I'm realizing that I brought that in as well. It's, it's very helpful, especially when I'm talking to people about their relationship with spirit, with source, with God, many of them feel a certain unease around it, and they worry about feeling uncertain, right? It's like, well, I'd love to be a spiritual person and believe in God, but I just don't know if that's true. And I feel like, if I am spiritual, then I have to know that it's true. And so reframing it with the altar maybe can be a really helpful invitation for folks to recognize that our job as spiritual people isn't to abolish any questions or any doubts, right and to have all the answers suddenly that that's not for me, my definition of living a spiritual life, but it's rather finding the things that resonate for US, finding the parts of us that do have faith, that that do hold beliefs, and leaning into those parts. And I remember, I'm sure I shared this with you, but I remember going to Ayahuasca ceremony, and I had set my intention of of grandmother, Ayahuasca abolish all my doubt, my doubtful thoughts, like I just want to, I want to fully believe. Just help me be in 100% certainty of God and help me have faith that is, that is unwaverable. And I really like prayed for that, and what I got was a invitation to pray to the altar. Maybe there was, there was images of gambling, which I thought was really interesting. It was like, I mean, grandma was is also showing me that, yes, you can believe, child, it's safe for you to believe you can have faith. But also, I can't guarantee anything that ultimately is some uncertainty. And so the gambling for me, because so much of what I enjoy in life is looking through life through a lens of play, right? And so it was like, so let's just be playful on this altar of maybe it's it's a game. We're having fun. And yes, I can't tell you that it's absolute certain, but if I did, it wouldn't be quite as fun, just like if we were, if I'm in a relationship with a man and I'm so in love with him, and I know that he is, he, yes, he has a level of commitment which feels good, but at the end of the day, he could make another choice, but him me, knowing that he can make another choice, and he keeps choosing me. It, it holds the fire, it burns the flame, it creates some some energy around it. And both of those things are these, these elements of maybe that that our human brain fights against it and just wants the certainty, because that feels so safe. We want so badly to feel safe. And yet there's something so playful, enjoyable,

energizing about the maybe, you know, and it also helps stretch us and evolve us into into our faith, right? It's like it helps us to to

to be in that spirit of agency and keep choosing, keep choosing to believe in God. Keep choosing to love this man. Whatever the choice is, we keep coming back to we get to keep choosing. And there's, there's so much value in that as well. Oh, my God. Eloquently put, and I couldn't agree more, you know, I mean, like faith does not come from certainty.

Micaiah  38:40  
Faith comes from trial. Faith comes from being tested. Yeah,

and you nailed it, Wil and like, it's a relationship, like the relationship with God is a relationship, right? The the Bible is full of stories of acolytes raging against God, why did thou forsaken me? Yeah, part of my midlife passage was a couple of months of, like, a deep existential crisis, because I I love God. I love God with all my heart. I wasn't raised with religion, so I didn't have like, this religious baggage or religious trauma that I know can prevent people from coming to the love of God when I found it, it was through just glory and wonder when I found God. And during that time of deep existential crises like the the the flame of my faith got so dim, it got so dim, and I was like, Oh, my God, man, what if I have just been screaming into the infinite empty What if there is nothing there? What? Like, holy shit, what am I doing if there is really no god and and, you know, do I really, really, really, really believe that.

And I had to be brought to that. And one day, it was when I still lived in San Diego. I was walking through North Park and like, man, on paper, on the outside, like everything was fine. I was living a great life. Anybody would have looked at my life and been like, Dude, your life is dope. But on the inside, it was just this deep existential crisis, like my friend gave a great metaphor for it. Of it was like being in the middle of the ocean and a sailboat with no wind from any direction, just like

and as I was having one of these days of deep existential crisis and longing and doubt about God and my place in the universe. Clear, clear, clear as day. And you know me, Wil, I'm pretty

Clair, Audient, clairvoyant. Clair, sentient. Just God's voice in my ear, clear as day. This is how your prayers are being answered right now.

This is how your prayers are being answered right now. And if we do want to pray, as you did, take away my doubt.

What greater way than to be sincerely and severely tested by doubt?

Right? You know, there's no, there's no easy way life is, as I say to my clients, like life's gonna life just because we have these grandiose awakenings and beautiful days of appreciation and gratitude and connection with God doesn't mean that it can't all be ripped off

like you know, you're two hours from LA those people never thought their homes were going to Go up and smoke. I am literally five minutes away from the river Arts District, my most beloved, beautiful part of Asheville that was

swept away and wow,

Wil Fisher  41:53  
gone. Wow, gone. Hundreds and hundreds of art studios. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, faith in God does not ensure an easy life, but it does ensure a rich one, in my opinion, yeah, beautiful, yeah. And this, you know, these, in these experiences that we're all facing with, with climate change related stuff, it's, it's really emphasizing the the temporary ness of all things and and really putting in our face this, this uncertainty, you know, and having us collectively look at that and and be confronted by that again and again. And there is such a stretch that that we get to experience

as we as we deal with it. So I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't

connect with you around combo, and that is one of the the key pieces that you've brought into my life. You know, combo brotherhood. I was just looking at your Instagram and saw a story of of a star, I saw a post of our brotherhood, and that was such a rite of passage for me, and so powerful me, powerful for me. And I imagine that some of my listeners don't even know what combo is, so I'd love for you to share a little bit about combo and what it means to you to work with that medicine and to get to serve that medicine. Yeah. Thanks. Wil um, yeah. Combo is the secretion of an Amazonian tree frog called the phyla Medusa bi cola. And it is a secretion that is

Micaiah  43:38  
as one of the very first western researchers, espano,

pardon me. Can I

remember his name right now? Espromer, that's his last name. Is from her. You could look him up. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering serotonin. Vittorios, from her. There it is. He said it is a fantastic peptide cocktail with healing potential unequaled by any other amphibian. Yeah, he was a researcher at the University of Rome who was researching combo in the late 80s. So it is loaded with peptides. How many peptides is up for debate, but you know, peptide therapy is very, very popular right now.

It is the secretion from this frog. It it has been used by the indigenous and Amazon, as far as I understand it, and at least through the tribe which I've primarily studied, which is the mat says tribe who I've visited and studied with. It's been used by them for hundreds of years. It is applied to the body by tiny burns in the skin that are called gates, and then a small dot, about half the size of a pea is put on those gates, and it begins a physiological process that is quite uncomfortable. It induces five types of purging, sweating, shaking, vomiting, toilet purges and emotional purges, and it eliminates parasitic.

And toxic energy on a spiritual, mental, emotional and physical level, there are three primary uses in the Amazonian rainforest. The first is this, general healthcare. Far before the word vaccine was as controversial as it is now, it was known as Puna de la salva, the jungle vaccine. It is used as healthcare. I have had tremendous and profound success with it, both personally with myself and professionally with clients throughout the years of treating people with lots of the mystery diseases that Western medicine throws a question mark at. You know, fibromyalgia, mold poisoning, Lyme disease, things like that. Wild, wild, wild success with that. And the second use for it is hunting medicine. The men of the tribes will use it before they go hunting because they believe that with repeated application and right relationship with the spirit of combo, It tunes in your senses to a very, very, very high degree. It's, I call it the hunting magic, which I've received. Perhaps you've received, you've had enough combo at this point to, you know, wake up feeling like so finely tuned. You can sense things before they happen. All the senses are on, you know, they're dialed up to 11 out of 10, right? The third use is to clear what they call panema, which is dark energy, stuck, energy, caught energy that could manifest in the West as lethargy, addiction, depression, anything like that. So I've been working with combo for 11 years. I've been serving combo for 10 years.

It's a huge part of my life. It's certainly not the most glamorous medicine to work with. I've been jokingly calling myself a spiritual janitor for a long

I help. It's composter medicine, if you're into the independence. It's very akin to Shiva and Kali. It's these big burning, fiery force that will go to the places that we are either incapable of going by ourselves or too scared to go by ourselves, and it pulls up that toxic and parasitic energy, and it gets it out through one of those five forms of purging. The entire actual process lasts about a half an hour my personal practice, I am very, very focused on specificity and precision and serving. So I have lent a lot of time and effort and study to gaining a good working knowledge of traditional Chinese medicine, of acupuncture points, of marma points of the shocker system of auricular points on the ear. And using this method, there's literally millions of different point placement combinations that we can use with combo to create the exact pathways that get to the root of the issue. And I, myself, and in my clients have witnessed profound

personal transformations in a very, very short amount of time. And to bring it back to what we've been talking about with this non binary thinking and queer thinking and the altar of maybe combos amphibious medicine, yeah, what is, what does it mean to be amphibious in this world? It means to be a master of many environments. This is a tree frog that is equally adept high in the trees, on the ground and in the water, and it imbues us with that amphibious medicine when we receive her. And I lovingly call her a she, even though it is often referred to in the masculine as a heavy handed ordeal medicine, I see both sides. I see a deep femininity to combo as well. And while it is not proven that the Philo Medusa bi color is one of the frogs that can do this, there are some frogs that can spontaneously change sex depending on the needs of the species. It's not proven whether combo can do that or not, but I do like that non binary of combo in that it's a deep animal medicine that doesn't it presents as masculine when it needs to be masculine, and it presents as feminine when it needs to be feminine, whatever it takes to get the job done, and again, imbuing us with this amphibious medicine of being a master of many inference. I am healthy, I am hail, I am fit, I am protected. I am imbued with this hunting medicine and magic, and I need not exist in a particular set of circumstances in order to thrive, because I am that adaptable and powerful, and that's what combo can do for people. Yeah, and I got to experience that firsthand at that combo brotherhood. You know, I'd done some sits with you, some one offs, but then doing that three days in a row.

Wil Fisher  50:00  
Wil was just next level for me, and it did, it did help me tap into that warrior, Hunter energy in somewhat around the senses, but I'd say more in this

recognition of myself and my strength and my power and my capacity. You know, it really exercised and strengthened my grit. This, this part of me that knows I can do hard things. I can do hard things that are going to be in service of my greatest and highest good. And coming out of that I yeah, I don't know if I've ever felt that strong in my life. I've never felt like a man at that level,

ever before that moment. It really was for me. It was a stepping into my self as a man rather than a boy. You know it was. It was a rite of passage for me that I had never gotten to experience and that, you know, in reflection, my dad, I don't think, had ever had his rite of passage from boyhood into manhood. And as a result, he was kind of a boy dad, which was super fun. You know, he was a super fun dad. We played whatever, but I he never did it. And so as a result, he never did that for me. And then this experience really created that possibility for me to step into my manhood, and it was so powerful and and so powerful for me to get to purge these energies and these toxins that I'd been storing and holding on to. I recently my my new boyfriend has a podcast about the Alien franchise, and I had never seen it, so we watched the Alien movies the other day, and and there's, like, the aliens, you know, the classic scene that is. It's like the aliens, like inside the stomach, and like, yeah, it's Yeah. And I was like, oh my god, this is like, a purge scene, you know? I was like, I know what that's like. I can do that.

Micaiah  52:04  
That's so funny. Yeah, I'm glad. Thank you for your kind words. And I'm, you know, it's that. That's the intent of that work, you know. And I've, I've been so like, men's work saved my life, you know, I've been a participant in and facilitator of men's work since 2015

and in many ways, it saved my life. And you know, I, too was, I was raised by a coward. I have no problem saying that my dad, my dad's a coward. My dad is a spineless man. And I believe that men need healthy challenge, and men need something to push against. Yeah, like men, are supposed to have an edge. We are men are supposed to provide and protect, in my opinion, and part of that is is having an edge is being in right relationship with masculinity as one who protects and provides. And one of the tenants of combo Brotherhood is the return of the archetype of the compassionate King, which we are missing in this society. A true king is about service, yeah. But the the the archetype of the king has been co opted by the narcissist, and

so we don't have good examples of that. So there's all this toxic masculinity movement and so many men have felt brushed aside and felt that they had to like somehow box in their masculinity in order to fit in and be appealing to the feminine and accepted by society. And I do not believe in that. I believe in right relationship with the masculine, and I believe that men need something to push against. We need challenge and we need other men. And combo is such a wonderful agent for that, because in that container of combo brotherhood, like it's, it's such a team mentality, because everybody is out of their weight class. I say that to all the all my guys, I've literally served, you know, professional jiu jitsu players, body building competition champions. And it's like you are out of your weight class when you meet this frog. I don't,

and the only way to navigate it is to surrender, which surrender as a participant, not as a victim, courageous to render I call this again to take it back to the victimhood in the dark night of the soul. How is this happening for me, not to me as I am in this process. How does a participant hold their body versus how does a victim hold their body? Yes, and in this container of combo brotherhood, like you've got men from all different walks of life, you know, I've had other queer men do it. You were the first, but I've had other queer men do it. I've had your more standard. I was a businessman until my early 50s, and then I got divorced ahead.

A wild spiritual awakening, and I'm in this crazy combo container more of the standard spiritual people, just men from all walks of life, united in the common opposition and opponent, which is their own fear and their own sense of maybe I can't do this. And to watch those men breathe through each other, breathe with each other, and and, you know the Vivas when we

purge, it's wonderful. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how big or bad or bold you are on your real life, like combos, the great equalizer,

you know. So it's a really beautiful formula that I'm just so grateful to carry and to be able to offer. It's, it's combo has changed my life. Men's work has changed my life, and the union of the two. It can be life changing, you know, and to and to hear you say what you said, and you know, especially to be such a wonderful representative of the the queer community, which I think, as

a person myself who's involved in men's work, I think that that's a big part of the future of men's work is like opening the scope of like, What does it mean to be a man

Wil Fisher  56:23  
and having a space at the table for for more humans to do that type of work? Thank you. Yeah, thank you for saying that and for creating such welcoming space. I in that picture, you're wearing like a pride shirt, and I remember that you have your crutches, and you're wearing, like, some fried shirt. And I remember arriving and seeing you wearing that, and I was like, Oh, I just felt so, so safe in your presence. And, you know, even celebrated. And so, yeah, I just really appreciate your allyship over the years. And, yeah, and it's interesting, you know, going back to this idea of the sovereign energy that we are seeking to cultivate, this, this compassionate King, it is a challenging relationship for queer men, I find I, I ask my, my, you know, when I am holding space circles for queer men, I will ask sometimes their about their relationship to power, you know, and that, that that sovereign energy, that that inner authority. And you know, most of the time, their response is that they, they, they push it away, that they they don't want to, because they only see the possibility of the narcissist, tyrant king. They don't see the other possibility. And so it is part of our work to help create that new model, to reframe that, to show what else is possible. The other thing that I sometimes see queer men struggle with is, is prayer, their relationship with prayer, and that's something that you've really helped me

develop, is my prayer practice. And in general, I see a lot of people who consider themselves spiritual, people who live spiritual lives, who are not using the technology of prayer. And I really appreciate the invitations that you have given me to incorporate more prayer into my life, and the amazing value that I've gotten to receive from that. And so we do need to start wrapping up, but I'd love you to share a little bit about prayer.

Micaiah  58:34  
Yeah, 100% I mean, you called it wil like prayer is technology and half, half of prayer is listening, yeah, and like learning how to listen to and for God and I,

that's a great it just my prayer practice came so naturally to me when I started to wake up and my prayer practice is really

a organic continuation of the serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference and to take it back to dear, beloved teacher, Baba Ram Dass, the only thing I can do for you is to work on myself. You know, I can do that, and I can pray. And I consider myself to be an intercessor, which is one who prays for others. I keep a prayer list. I truly do, and I truly pray all the time. Your mother's prayer list. I pray for your mother literally almost every day. And it's like, truly, you know. And I really do like, I really do mean, and to also take it back to like, appreciation versus entitlement, yeah, and and, yeah. La burns.

Down and feel washed away. And these things can happen at any time, and in the beautiful wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita, we are not entitled to the fruits of our labors. We are only entitled to our labor because nothing is guaranteed. So let me appreciate this. Let me truly sit in prayer for all beings. Let me dedicate the merit of my practice so that the goodness that comes out of my combo ceremonies or my meditations or my coaching work with clients may spread out to all beings. Let me be in my heart present with the suffering of the world in a prayerful way. Let me pray over my groceries every time I get them. Let me pray over my food every time I eat, for the animals who suffered so that I may live, for those who are in hunger, so that they also may have food. Let me give thanks for the simple act of pumping gas and having $40 to put gas in the tank and having a car to use. Prayer is appreciation in action, in my opinion, and it is reaching out to God in a proactive way and learning to listen. And there is nothing wrong with petitionary prayer, with asking for what we want, I have only learned and been taught to pray for others with the same fervor and dedication and wholeheartedness with which we would pray for ourselves. I was once taught to pray as if the life of my loved ones depended on it. Yeah, you know when, when someone we love is in the hospital and we are praying, we are in communion. We are practicing spontaneity. We are not thinking about anything else except the prayer for that person. Yeah, this is, this is the act of of meta, of loving awareness, loving kindness, like so I was taught to pray always in the way that I would pray, and with the same energy and devotion and dedication that I would pray as if my mother were in the hospital and I were praying for her. How can I pray for your mother like how can I pray for people I've never met like that? How can I pray for the world like that? How can I pray for all beings who are suffering like that? And then I have earned the opportunity to pray for myself, and that's my approach to it. Beautiful. So good. Thank you for sharing all that, and thank you for all your prayers. Thank you for praying for my mother and for all the work that you've offered her and all the great healing and transformation that she's gotten to receive as a result of you being in her life. Thank you for the ways that you show up, for all the people in your life and for the collective I'm so grateful for you and so grateful for our connection, so grateful for this time. So thank you so much, my brother. Any final words you'd like to leave with the listeners today?

Yeah, compassion and curiosity. Compassion and curiosity are the final words that I would like to leave for the listeners. How can we all be bridge builders in a world full of bridge burners? And how can we, instead of casting stones at those who we perceive to be on the other side of the fence of our belief systems instead. How can we be curious about them? How can we be compassionate for them? How can we

embrace and embody and encourage collectivism without disaster? How can we remember that we are human beings, and we all have a right to our opinions and our beliefs, and we have a right to not be ashamed or blamed or exiled or ostracized for believing the things that make us feel safe and significant and that we are one human family, and that it is time to start building bridges and not burning them.

Wil Fisher  1:04:28  
Yes. Thank you so much, brother. So much. Love you wil you.

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