Access Spiritual Possibility In Physical Impossibility w/ Colin O’Brady | AMP # 445

TRANSCRIPT:

AUBREY MARCUS: Colin, what's up, my brother? 

COLIN O'BRADY: What's up, man? It's always great to see you. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Last time I talked, you were busy walking across Antarctica with poopy pants half the way through. So if anybody wants that story, about how you shit your pants in a suit that it was too cold for you to take off. Please listen to the last podcast.

COLIN O'BRADY: Yep. Definitely, walked across Antarctica and the poopy pants definitely came into play. You know, when you're that suited up, man, you gotta go, what are you gonna do? You gonna frostbite your hands or your butt? 

AUBREY MARCUS: No, uh uh. You can't do it. I was trying to explain this story because I was excited about doing this podcast and I was explaining some of the crazy shit you get into and I was telling that story. And then I was, I forgot exactly how it worked, but I imagine you had like one of those onesie poop hatches that you like unbuckled and just had like a little poop hatch so you could keep your whole suit on.

COLIN O'BRADY: Well, so normally what would happen is, so for context, I'm in Antarctica. I'm trying to become the first person across Antarctica solo, unsupported, and fully human powered. So that means I'm dragging a 375 pound sled solo across Antarctica. And it was about roughly a thousand miles. And the reason the sled's so heavy is because you just, you know, unsupported means no resupplies of food or fuel along the way. So you gotta bring all your stuff with you. I created these like custom food bars that are kind of all geared towards my high performance, but I'm burning 10,000 calories a day and I'm eating 7,000. So I'm on a 3,000 calorie deficit. I'm a bag of bones skeleton by the end. I've lost like 50 pounds. But like, I try to get my body on a regular schedule. So I wake up in the morning, and because I'm like, when I'm out there pulling my sled, it's like this white room that's trying to kill you. It's minus 40 degrees. It's brutal. So I get on a regular schedule, so every morning, I wake up, I turn my stove on, I get the day going, and I've got a little vestibule, so basically, inside of a tent, you've probably been, there's like the little part that's like where the doorway is. And that's a snowy bottom. And I'd crawl in there, outside of the wind, and take care of my business before I got suited up. And that actually worked pretty well. 

AUBREY MARCUS: So you would take the suit off entirely? 

COLIN O'BRADY: I take the suit off basically and just like, hunker down, but I'm still inside of my tent.

AUBREY MARCUS: Right, right.

COLIN O'BRADY: Inside, outside of my tent's, 

AUBREY MARCUS: The tent's warm enough that you don't freeze your balls. 

COLIN O'BRADY: So I'm like, that's my one time a day. But once I get going, like, it's way more difficult than that. So the night before this, like, day 17. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Wait, one time a day, so you're only pissing one time a day? 

COLIN O'BRADY: No, pissing you can kind of like, turn out of the wind for a second, make it real quick. It's minus 40 outside. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, yeah. 

COLIN O’BRADY: There's a picture I took of me that I took a cup of boiling water and I threw it into the air and it literally just goes, poof, and turned into ice. Boiling water into ice, in like vapor in a second. That's how cold we're talking. But yeah. 

AUBREY MARCUS: So when you took a piss, it was like Sub Zero laying down a fucking spot to slide for Scorpion.

COLIN O'BRADY: Exactly. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, alright. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Get over here. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, exactly. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Some Mortal Kombat stuff. No. So basically, yeah, so, I get into that rhythm, like, okay, that's my one time a day, and then to make the cross, which I barely did on my last bite of food. I'm pulling my sled 12 plus hours a day, so, here I am, I'm so hungry every day, because I’m 3,000 calorie deficit, that's almost like not eating food every single day, if you're running a 3,000 calorie deficit, like, I'm starving every single day.

AUBREY MARCUS: Did you see any animals?

COLIN O'BRADY: No animals in the interior of Antarctica.

AUBREY MARCUS: No animals at all? 

COLIN O’BRADY: There's literally nothing. On the outside, there's tons. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Because if there was like a penguin or something and you were that hungry, would you have side eyed that penguin and be like Goddam.

COLIN O'BRADY: Bro, for sure. I've been cooking that thing up on my stove.

AUBREY MARCUS: I haven't had penguin meat before. 

COLIN O'BRADY: So what happens is I've got these daily bag rations. There's like one day every single day, completely rationed out, so I don't eat the other day's food. And finally I wake up like in this nightmare and like day 17, I'm shaking, I'm so hungry. I go crazy and I just tear into the next day's rations. I just start stuffing my face. I'm just like “I don't care anymore. I’m so hungry”. Whatever. And that for like, well, you know for a minute, I'm satisfied then I'm like Oh, shit. First of all, what am I gonna do for food tomorrow? I'm screwed. But then what God even worth is I had kind of dialed these bars and they're super high fat bars because I want a high calorie, great for my body, it worked amazing. But I ate so much all at once. There's a lot of coconut oil, nuts, and it's super healthy. But like, it was just too much quantity in one sitting. And so I wake up the next morning, I'm kind of not feeling great, but like, I'm like, all right, do my thing, get my regular situation on in the tent. Now I'm out there, fully suited up, I've got my harness on, I'm zipped up on multiple layers, I've got a face mask on. It's so cold that if you expose your face or hands to the cold for one minute, you're getting frostbite. Like you can't really have anything exposed. And I start to feel the stomach just gurgle. I'm just like, “ugh, that's not great”. That's not great. And I'm like, “no, no, I'm fine. I'm fine”. But it's like hour two of a 12 hour day until next time I'm going to be back in my tent set up. It takes like an hour to set up the tent, shovel snow, get inside, the wind, all this. It's not just like setting it up real quick, and like, chill.

COLIN O'BRADY: So man, I'm suited up, and it just starts gurgling, and I'm like, maybe I'll just let out a little fart or something, just a little something. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Never trust a coconut oil fart. 

COLIN O’BRADY: Never, bro.

AUBREY MARCUS: No, never trust a coconut oil fart

COLIN O'BRADY: So, we're down this path, I might as well continue this, finish this story, which is basically what it sounds like, is that little fart turned into quite an explosion in the pants. And now I'm like, okay, What do I do now? So weight was so crucial, 375 pounds sled. I could barely pull it on the first day to move and that still didn't give me enough

AUBREY MARCUS: And now you got a one pound dumper. 

COLIN O'BRADY: In my mind I go like, I had tried to get rid of everything, I was like cutting the tags off my jackets, I was trying to get few weight in there as possible. I only brought 10 wet wipes with me for the entire 54 days, and I didn't bring an extra pair of underwear. I was laughing and crying at the same time, I was like, “this is the worst, what do I do?”. And then I was like, but I kind of have to keep going. So it was like an hour, I don't know, hour four or five of the day. So I was like, well, give it 20 minutes. It's going to freeze against my body anyways, and I'll sort it out in the tent like later that night. So I just kept rolling the rest of the day, like seven, eight hours before I finally set up my tent. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Did you get a diaper rash?

COLIN O'BRADY: I did. It's so dry there. Antarctica is actually the largest desert in the world. People don't really realize that because there's so little precipitation. When it snows, of course, it never evaporates or melts. And so it's actually really dry there. So usually you get diaper ash from like kind of a humidity or like a swamp ass kind of vibes. You don't get that there. It's just basically like frozen shit on the inside of my legs. And I did use, I think I might have even used two or three of my ten wet wipes. It was like a big allocation. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Ofcourse, you gotta use all of them if you need to. 

COLIN O’BRADY: That's the one emergency moment. So, anyways, man. Yeah.

AUBREY MARCUS: You're a wild man. You're always up to doing wild shit. That's just kind of your thing, what you do. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah man. I enjoy it. I love setting big goals through the lens of. I grew up as an athlete. So moving my body, being physically active has always kind of been my modality, I suppose, but it is more than anything in access to the spiritual realm. It's that personal journey going deep, deep, deep inward. And so, to me, there's sort of the external manifestation of what it is to physically get fit and strong and pull a 375 pound sled and grind or the other 10 world records, various other world records I've set in that space, but the same time also

AUBREY MARCUS: So casual, 10 world records, it's casual. As you say that, though, one thing that I really believe is that I know God is real, and God is found anywhere you encounter the real, right? Like, God lives in the real. God is real and lives in the real. And so, whatever method you use to encounter the real, if you're paying attention, you'll find God there. 

COLIN O'BRADY: So, I'm told that, I mean, I have goosebumps. I'll share a story with you that I think that you'll appreciate from that context. So I, in contention for talking about Antarctica, I know we'll talk about all sorts of other stuff, but when I'm crossing Antarctica, I'm alone for 54 days. I deleted all my music, all my podcasts, so that I could really be in full silence the entire time. And you've got 54 days, and then it's endless white. There's no mountains on the interior, there's no landmarks, it's just white on white on white, and the sun doesn't set ever. It's directly overhead. So imagine being in this white box, essentially, with nothing to see for 24 hours a day, and no external inputs. 

AUBREY MARCUS: It's like the opposite of a darkness retreat.

COLIN O'BRADY: Exactly. 

AUBREY MARCUS: It's like a Lightness retreat. 

COLIN O'BRADY: It is. Having gone to that darkness retreat earlier this year, I'm sure we'll chat about that, but it really was. It was like just being in a sensory deprivation tank, except I joke around. I have a deep love and respect for Mother Nature in Antarctica, specifically in my heart, but I'm also like, this white room is trying to kill me every single day, you know? And so, the reason I did that, of kind of deleting everything, was that I had this theory that that's going to be difficult for the first many days, but it will also allow me, if I can find it, to tap into the deepest flow inside of my mind that I possibly can. Into this timeless, spaceless place. I don't know if you got there in your darkness experience or whatever, where you're like, is an hour a minute? Or is a minute an hour? Or is one hour ten? Like when time just starts to bend and warp. And I figured that if I could get into this flow with my mind and body, not that I was trying to skip over time, but that I could just tick off days, just like the same rhythm, the same routine, the right, left of the skis, the rhythm of that motion, kind of a walking meditation of sorts. And multiple times I tapped into some really deep meditative flow, but the story I share comes towards the very end of that experience. So I'm out there, I get to the South Pole on day 40, I'm actually racing this other guy, no one in history has ever completed this crossing, and basically, there's this other guy out there racing, there's a whole other part of it, but I'm ahead of him by a couple days, I'm trying to stay in front of him. And then, I get to this place around like day 42 or 43, where the storms just get so bad. My body's so depleted, my ribs are sticking out, my hip bones are sticking out. A few years previous to us attempting this, a guy had actually died attempting this crossing just a hundred miles from the finish line. And I'd always been like, how did that happen? Like, he was so close. And I start to realize at this moment, like, oh, it's not the first 40 days out here. It's not the first 50 days out here. It's like the last hundred miles, cause your body is so wrecked and so cracked and so depleted. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Like, what's gonna happen? So I'm like, man, I'm out of food, like, basically out of food. Just my body's cracked, and there's a couple videos I took of my GoPro myself where I'm just crying, like, I'm just crying in my GoPro. Like, man, I wish I could quit, like, if there had been an ejector seat button, it would've been easy to push it to get out of there, but I'm, like, pretty pot committed at this point. I'm 900 miles into this expedition, crazy storm after day after day after day, and I wake up, it's Christmas Day, it just happens to be, and the storm's quiet for the first time, and it had been 56 mile per hour ahead winds, which makes it minus 70 degrees, which is directly in my face every day. And I get up, and I start pulling my sled that day on Christmas Day. As I start pulling my sled, like those flow states, I'd like to touch them before, but all of a sudden my body just completely forgets its weakness. I just warp down into this kind of spirit plane of energy that starts kind of bubbling up inside of me. And all of a sudden, like, an hour goes by, two hours goes by, and I start feeling this sense in my body. I'm feeling stronger. I'm feeling stronger, and I've never done this before. I've touched this place in other modalities, but never sort of pulling my sled like this. And this kind of just this telling, a sense, it's like, I don't know, call it God, call it the universe, I'd say like, put your arms out, and so I literally, I'm standing there on the ice, and I put my arms out, extended right to left, and I close my eyes, and I start chanting, I start going, “infinite love, infinite love, infinite love, infinite love”.  And I can feel this resonant energy just going, coursing through like my entire body. And of course my family had been deeply supporting me, and this non-profit where there's thousands of school kids around the country have been like sending me love, and I literally felt like they were like out there on the ice with me, just this love was just shining through the entirety of my body. And just charged up. And I actually started kind of pulling my arms in like this to kind of just like, even charge up the energy more. I was just like, infinite love, and like pulling it out, and I felt the strongest that I felt the entire time. And then I started playing with the energy, and I started like, feeling all this love, and camaraderie, and respect for even the guy who I was racing, even though it was a crazy hard battle. I was just like, I'm sending you love, and I started like, pushing my arms out like this, like, infinite love, and it's like, sending the energy like, back out to my family, to Captain Lujan's racing, to school kids, to anyone out there loving and supporting me from afar. And what ended up happening in this moment is I was like, man, I get it now. Like I touched God. I was in that deep energetic connection, God, spirit, universe, whatever you want to call it. And I realized that the food I had been eating, the thing I needed to think to fuel my body. That was nothing compared to this. Like, this was rocket fuel. This was like jet fuel. And so I looked down at my sled and I was like, or I looked down at my GPS and I was like, how far am I away from the finish? I looked down, 77 miles. It was the closest anyone has ever been to completing this crossing of Antarctica. My average mileage per day at this point had been maybe 15, 20 miles at best.  Like, my sled was lighter, a lot lighter when I started because I'd eaten all my food, but I was like, my body was cracked, I was falling apart physically. And, I was like, 77 miles, okay, like, what is that? Like, that's like maybe 40 or 50 hours, maybe 4 or 5, like, big days. But in this kind of mantra of infinite love and the way my body was feeling in this sort of connected spiritual space, I was like, 77 miles? Like, what is that? That's just a number. What is this time? 40 hours? Like, what is that? And I thought to myself, I was like, if I'm burning this rocket fuel, why would I even stop? And so I literally just kept admitting to myself, I'm not gonna set up my tent again. 10 hours goes by, 15 hours goes by, 20 hours goes by, and I'm just locked in it. And every single time that I'm feeling a little bit, like, as the energy's going back, I just reach my arms back out. I'm not even, like, eating the food anymore. I just put my arms back out and start going, infinite love, infinite love. And I can feel this charge full of energy. Ultimately, 30 hours goes by, 32 hours goes by. And in the distance, in the far distance, you can see super far in Antarctica when it's clear, I see this post in the very, very far distance. It's white everywhere. And I saw his post. And I know that the USGS have pounded in a post at the edge of Antarctica, marking the edge of Antarctica and the beginning of the frozen ice shelves. And I realized at that moment that I'm about to complete this crossing, this world's first crossing. And I just sat there, just with deep reverence and gratitude for what you said, like, connecting this mind, body, soul, spirit, like this was the purpose of this journey. Not the external, I did this, or planted the flag, I'm the first, or this. Like this moment, this space was what it was and interestingly enough as I've been fighting so hard the last 54 days to get to the end, to get to the finish, to get there, whatever, I saw the post in the distance, the actual finish line where I could touch and be done and I wanted to stay. Right? Like I didn't want to actually complete the journey. I just wanted to sit in the reverence of this moment. Eventually sitting there for long enough, of course, my body got cold and needed to keep moving to get to the end. So I stood up and took those last few steps, touched the post, and just this deep reverence to the infinite that I touched out there. It’s incredible

AUBREY MARCUS: Wow, bro. That's beautiful, man. When I talk to my brother Porangi, who is a sun dancer, and I do a fairly regular sweat lodge practice whenever I have somebody, a chinupa carrier, who can pour a lodge for me and my family. And it's really hard for me to make it through one of those three, three and a half hour lodges without having some water at some point. It's really hard. It's so brutal. But the way that the Sundance works is you do a lodge in the morning, a lodge at night, for four days, and you have no food, no water. So like eight lodges, no food, no water. At some point, if you're a piercer, you'll pierce yourself, hook yourself up to a tree, and you'll dance ecstatically until you pull the plugs out of your body and you offer your blood as a prayer and an offering. And of course, the question is like, how do you do it? How do you do it? And Porangui goes, “well, it's impossible except for prayer”, and then so in doing something that difficult, the only way to make it through is to be, you know, like you were, like a goditarian, it's like a prairitarian, like where actually you're sourcing this energy that you would normally get from water, you would normally get from food, you would normally get from rest, because of the realness of what you're doing. You source it from source. And so there's something like infinitely spiritual and you'll even see this in a lot of high level combat operatives too. There's like a deep faith in God, even if they've seen the most horrific things that you would imagine would question their belief, but there's some spiritual component if you actually look in because they've touched something that's really real. And I think all of the people who don't have that kind of spiritual basis, they're living on their phones or they're living in their minds. They're living in these alternate realities, instead of going out there and like really, really feeling it. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Totally, I mean, in that moment, touching that post. It was, sure, like I said, the finishing of this achievement, but really this really deeply connected space was so special and so interesting and certainly one of the peak, peak moments in my life. And as I was standing there, I kind of came up with this sort of rubric in my mind, this might sound silly, but this is where my mind went, like the logical brain. And I started to think about life's experiences on the spectrum of one to ten. Like, one would be what would we consider like, heartbreak, hardship, challenge, death of a family member, heartbreak, whatever that looks like, a one, right? Or shitting your pants in the middle of Antarctica on day 17, right?

AUBREY MARCUS: That's not a one, bro. That's probably like a four. 

COLIN O'BRADY: I'm kidding. Totally joking. And, then our ten being our connected moments, right? Our high highs, like our peak, peak, peak arcs of life. In the spiritual plane, or dancing ecstatically at Burning Man at sunrise, right? Just like, you're just in it. You're just like, this is right where I want to be, right in this moment, just like, pure bliss. And what I realized in that moment is that I feel like that our ones and our tens, they're connected. You don't get to that ten. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah bro. It's like a circle. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Totally. You don't get to that ten in spite of your ones, by hedging against them. You actually get them embracing it. Like, I'm in that connected space. Or the sun dancer in your example, which is a beautiful example. Like, they're in it, man. Like you said, they're hooked in, they haven't had water, food, all the things, like, they're in it, and then that releases the 10.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. 

COLIN O'BRADY: And to your point about people just being on their phones and what, is like, you know, I think it's a, we all know this, but I think most people spend their entire life in what I call the zone of comfortable complacency between 4 and 6, man. They just wake up, it's just like, go to a job, don't love it, don't hate it, like, whatever, it's five, like 365 fives just stacked against each other. You start asking someone like that, you're like, hey, man, like what did you do last Tuesday? What'd you do a month ago? What did you do six months ago? And people are just like, it's crazy, man, like people are like, I have no idea because life just ends up on this autopilot of comfortability. And I've thought a lot about that. I'm like, well, why is that? Like, why is that? And I think that our brains, at some level, are hardwired to hedge against the 1’s, 2's, and 3’s, I don't want those things. I don't want the discomfort. I don't want the pain, whatever. But if you take the 1s and 2s off the table, guess what? You take the 9s and the 10s off the table as well, and you end up in this range bound space. And so, your example of the combat veterans, obviously, those guys don't want to be there necessarily shooting the bad guys, but they're in it, right? They're connected, they're purpose driven, and they're experiencing the full tapestry of life. So for me and all of my expeditions after learning this lesson that Antarctic expedition was five years ago, of what that fuel is, not just that infinite love, that source energy, but also those moments of despair, those hardships. And when I feel that one or that two in my life, not just in an expedition, but in more real ways within my heart that deep sadness, I've learned to smile at it. I've learned to smile, like I feel that one or that two, and of course it's hard and I can find myself tensing up, but then I can also feel myself smiling and go, ah, I'm experiencing a one or a two right now. Yes, I've opened up the doorway to let my pendulum swing off my peak arc all the way from the ones all the way to the tens and get that juice of life on either end of that spectrum.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. It's interesting too because it does tend to go the other way. Right, so if you look at the hermetic principles, one of the hermetic principles, there's seven principles. One of them is the principle of rhythm. And it basically talks about everything being like a sine wave. And this is how we go. Now, hopefully the sine wave is arcing upward in a spiral, right? But it's still a sine wave. So when you get those nines or tens, also. There's likely going to be a one or a two, that's going to be coming the other way. This is just nature, it's a law of the cosmos to a certain degree. They advise that a master learns to polarize themself in an identity space that's beyond the place that would feel the one or two. So you almost intentionally bypass where you could be located for that one or two by just tapping yourself into the greater field, into your infinite undying soul, rather than your personality construct, which would normally receive the blow. So that's what the master does to actually even this out. And that was their guidance. But I've seen this work. In both directions, and I think a lot of people, because of that, they're afraid of going for the 9s or 10s as well. 

COLIN O’BRADY: Right. Of course

AUBREY MARCUS: Like the fear of actually reaching, going for your win, stretching for that 9 or 10, because they're afraid of the disappointment. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Getting knocked off that pedestal. 

AUBREY MARCUS: If they get knocked off. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah, totally. 

AUBREY MARCUS: So they're like, I'll just fucking, I'm gonna hold at 6. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. 

AUBREY MARCUS: It's like having 12 on the blackjack table. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Totally. 

AUBREY MARCUS: No, stay. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Not good. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Stay. And I get it. You know, you could bust. 

COLIN O'BRADY: They don't want to bust. 

AUBREY MARCUS: But fundamentally dealer's showing an eight.

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. 

AUBREY MARCUS: You know, like you got to hit. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. 

AUBREY MARCUS: You gotta take your chances. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Totally, totally. Yeah. No, I think that's important. Say that again from that upper range bound as well. We are as humans, I think, wired against fear of failure, like that downside risk. But man, we are afraid of success too. You know, fear of success. 

AUBREY MARCUS: I know, it's real. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Of really stepping into your full power. Like, what does that really mean? Oh, because then that tells you like, oh wow, I wasn't really at my fullest potential. I wasn't in my fullest power. And it's easy to just kind of leave yourself short of that. Because, like you said, you get to those peak arcs and inevitably there is that sine wave that brings you back down. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. What were your last ten? 

COLIN O'BRADY: Oh boy, that's a great question. I had a child this year, and became a father. 

AUBREY MARCUS: That's fucking cool. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Congrats. 

COLIN O'BRADY: There's natural birth. I guess, first to ever see his face as he 

AUBREY MARCUS: Wait, how'd you get all the vaccines in him if you weren't in the hospital?

COLIN O'BRADY: Good point! Oh wait, hold on, let me get my time machine to go back and poke him a bunch of times. 

AUBREY MARCUS: For sure. He could immediately get hepatitis like for sure. He's a little crackhead drug dealer, heroin addict baby for sure. 

COLIN O'BRADY: But yeah, gosh, I suppose it's graphic, but it's where we all came into the world one way or the other, but to just see his head crown and then his head pop out in the world before his whole body was even out was just a moment that took my breath away, man, that I'll just be, and babies, they're blue.

AUBREY MARCUS: Were you nervous? Cause like, that's kind of gotta be a 10. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. Oh, nervous? What if it’s not a 10?

AUBREY MARCUS: What if you're like, yeah, that was whatever. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Well, chill. It's funny. Yeah. When you have the expectation of that, that's a good thing to think about. It's funny. I think that they're the biology of that. 

AUBREY MARCUS: It's just gonna work

COLIN O'BRADY: It's just something special

AUBREY MARCUS: It's just gonna work. 

COLIN O'BRADY: You know what I mean? There's all things in life that, there's plenty of times in life I suppose where I've had the expectation, this is gonna be amazing, and it just doesn't quite hit. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, for sure.

COLIN O'BRADY: But at least in my experience childbirth didn't go that way. 

AUBREY MARCUS: That’s right, childbirth delivered. 

COLIN O'BRADY: In fact, I would say over index. And just to witness the feminine power and the strength in that moment and to just be in 

AUBREY MARCUS: Talk about some real shit. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Just be in real reverence. It's funny, man, speaking about the, you know, we're talking about the pain or the difficulty, I've had conversations with women who've said to me, they're like, “Man, I can't believe what you do. Like, pull a sled across here. That's crazy, man”. They're like, “I couldn't even run a 5K”. I couldn't even, you know, they say all the things. They say, I can't do this. I could never. It's hard for me to just get whatever. I can't do this. I can't do that. I can't do that. And I look at them and I'm like, didn't you just tell me you have four children? Like, didn't you just tell me, like, I forget how hard it is to raise them and the day to day grind and love that takes. I was like, you birthed four children. Like, I am bowing down to your feminine strength and power and the fact you can do that. Sure, I can maybe go drag a sled across this, but I'm telling you, what you can do with your body is a hundred X, a thousand X more badass than any of the things that I can do. And to witness that and to be in that delivery space was incredible to really anchor that home. 

AUBREY MARCUS: That's awesome, bro. Yeah. What was your last one?

COLIN O'BRADY: That's a good question. Last one. Trying to sit with that for a second.  Not something I've spoken publicly about in this season, but I feel called to share it here. I've had some hardship with my mother recently. My mother has been the most incredible mother I just so, there for me throughout my entire life. She's quite literally saved my life a couple times. And that's not an exaggeration, actually being there in some life or death moments for me and like held me. And she's awesome. Like she's just like a badass, strong, confident. She had me in her early 20s. So had me young, but built an entire life for us. And it's really special. And we've had some ruptures in the last couple of months. That's been difficult. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. 

COLIN O'BRADY: That's been difficult. Hard to even put my finger on the exact what it is, the story of that. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Sure.

COLIN O'BRADY: But it's a transitional moment, me becoming a father, her dynamic with my other siblings and their kids and yeah, she visited me a couple months ago in Jackson Hole, where my son is, visiting, seeing the baby, it's our second time out there, and I've had very little conflict throughout our life, my mom and I. And we ended up down this conversation, this path, where the tone got elevated. There were some words shared that were hurtful on both sides, and we haven't talked in a couple months since then. Never before has that happened in my life. So, I know the love is there, the love is in my heart, and the love is in her heart, and I know that there'll be repair, but that, yeah, that's the most recent one and something I'm still in the process of, for sure.

AUBREY MARCUS: Thanks for sharing, bro.

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, I feel that. Yeah, those relationships where you love so deeply. I think that's another reason why people fear loving that deeply. It's easier to take the edge off. Love at five, love at six. You love at six, you lose it. So what? 

COLIN O'BRADY: You lose four. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, you lose four. Exactly. And you love at a ten though, when you lose it goes to one. And if I really look, I've been through some challenging things, nothing crazy. Car accidents that ripped my nose off my face, different things like that, but those are like, I don't know, four, I mean, I remember when that happened, like, crazy accident. Some people may know the story, but I'm leaving my house, middle of the day, 2018. 2018 was a brutal year, just blank out of consciousness. I've trained in boxing and MMA, kickboxing and been in all kinds of contact sports and different sports and gotten concussions. Never blinked out of consciousness once. Partied my balls off, never blinked out of consciousness. Dead sober, spin drift, sparkling water in the, no, it didn't party the day before, nothing. Middle of the day, blank out of consciousness. Accelerate into a guardrail, guardrail cuts through the brakes, which is a guardrail malfunction, cuts through the side of my car, nicks my neck, here you can see the star, I just have a big scar here, pulls and then pulls my nose like off my face. So like, jaws of life, the whole deal. But I remember like within four hours, I'm hooked up to the heart rate monitors. I'm in the hospital and my partner Whitney at the time, she was there with me and like, I'm trying to fool around with her in the hospital bed, and my heart rate monitor starts going off. So we kept getting interrupted because the nurse would come in. 

COLIN O'BRADY: They're like, dee, dee, dee, calm down, bro, calm down. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Exactly. Everything's good here. Nothing to see here, doctor. Everything's good. Those moments are not the hard moments. The hard moments are when I love at ten. And when I love at ten, and then something ruptures, then those are the ones. And that could be like a really close friend. That could be, I haven't had it with, well, yeah, I did have it with my father. When he went into his dark night in the woods that he never came out of and relationships. And it's funny, like, you'll be at ten in a relationship or a relationship construct, and you'll be like, I did it. Hallelujah. We're at 10. We found the promised land. 

COLIN O'BRADY: We found it. We're here forever. 

AUBREY MARCUS: We found the promised land. We are in Eden, baby. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. 

AUBREY MARCUS: And I was like, the last time that happened was not too long ago and I was like, I'm going to get a tattoo to commemorate Eden. And this. 

COLIN O'BRADY: I'm here. I did it. 

AUBREY MARCUS: I'm here. And we're staying here, baby. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. 

AUBREY MARCUS: And then, fast forward a couple of weeks later and everything falls apart and it's one. But that's to be able to like continue to ante up for ten, like that's the way of the warrior poet. It's just like you know what, like I'm willing to take the ones because I'm not alive if I don't go for the 10s, and I don't live the 10s, so even though I'm dropping all nine points, all the way to the bottom. Fuck it. It's worth it. So maybe a little humility about getting it tattooed on me like it's gonna stay forever. But, yeah, I'm gonna ante up again for that next 10, and not settle for anything less. 

COLIN O'BRADY: That's so true. I mean, and I think you're spot on about relationships. The real true matters of the heart, right? Those tragedies, like the car accident, or I was severely burned in a fire and spent a few months in Thailand being told I would never walk again, normally, back in 2008. Silly enough, jumping a flaming jump rope, lit myself on fire. But those moments teach you stuff. You learn from them, you can grow from them for sure, but there's a deep, deeper cut, when it comes to relationships.

AUBREY MARCUS: So you were just like on a beach somewhere, and they were doing those fire jump roping tricks. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Basically. 

AUBREY MARCUS: And you're like, I'm gonna get in here and fucking do this. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Essentially. I'm 22 years old at times, just out of college. 

AUBREY MARCUS: I get it. 

COLIN O'BRADY: And I look over at that and dude's just lit this rope on with kerosene. It's like flying around. People are about to jump on. Or he was like, we jump you on. I was like, I think I could do this. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Of course. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Obviously. Funny enough to your story about driving. Partied my ass off all around the world that trip. I just graduated from college. I was traveling around the world on a shoestring, but I had no money, but staying in youth hostels and getting drunk at night and having fun, whatever. But that night, I'm dead sober because I'm doing my scuba dive instruction, on this island off the coast of Thailand. And so I'm like, I'm sober, I'm focused on the scuba dive instruction, whatever. And of all the nights, and I'm not blackout, I'm not doing, I'm like, sharp and sober, I look over and I was like, That looks great. No, fully formed prefrontal cortex, I suppose. 

AUBREY MARCUS: You would've had that mushroom shake. You would've been fine. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah, exactly. That would've made the difference. 

AUBREY MARCUS: You would've been fine. You would've been ducking that. You would've been fucking Neo in the Matrix. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Totally. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Just like, whoa.

COLIN O'BRADY: That was the mistake I made, obviously.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, clearly.

COLIN O'BRADY: Clearly. I didn't have the psychedelic mushrooms, I didn't have the alcohol. Nothing in me. And yeah, tripped on the rope. And they had just lit the rope. So there was excess kerosene that hadn't burned off yet. So it trips around me. Then it splattered. Excess kerosene splatters me to my neck. And then that ignites my entire body and all my clothes up to my neck. And thankfully the ocean was 15 steps away or whatever, so I get up in a ball of flames and then I run to the ocean and dive from the ocean to extinguish the flames, which lets me off alive, but I get out of the water, I've got no skin on the lower half of my body, salt water on the ocean. And I look down, and I'm just like, Oh, no, my body immediately goes into shock, and I start yelling for help. And, this guy comes down, and he's like, broken English, but basically like, there's no hospital on this island, but I can take you to this place. And so I get on the back of this guy's moped, I wrap my burnt legs with no skin on them around his waist, And we drive down a, like this one lane, little dirt path. And he's like, we're here. And I'm like, we're here. I'm in shock. I'm like, we're here. And it's like this tiny little shack, little house, that's kind of halfway fallen down. And he's like, this is basically all we got. And I walk in, there's a one room nursing station with some basic medical supplies. And one of the things about burns is that the infection is really painful, but the skin is your largest organ on your body. So you have no skin that's protecting you from all the stuff on the outside in a pretty unsanitary place. Like, it can be really bad. That's why people die from burn accidents. And I didn't know that at the time, thankfully, actually. But I ended up in this rural hospital in Thailand. And one tiny other small one undergoing eight surgeries to scrub the wounds. And there's literally a cat running around my bed and across my chest, like in this makeshift ICU on the other side of the planet, cause like, they're doing their best. It's no criticism of them at all. They were there for me, but like, 

AUBREY MARCUS: Oh bro, you got the toxoplasma for sure. No wonder you're doing all this crazy shit. Now it all makes sense. 

COLIN O'BRADY: It all makes sense. 

AUBREY MARCUS: You for sure have toxoplasma. That makes you more risk taking and more promiscuous. You must be a promiscuous motherfucker. I've figured this out. You had this baby, but you're horny and and very adventurous from this fucking cat. 

COLIN O'BRADY: The cat got in there, cat. It was the cat. It changed everything. 

AUBREY MARCUS: And for those people, people who don't realize, Joe Rogans talked about this a lot. There's this parasite called Toxoplasma A that you get from cats. And it's this thing that actually makes mice attracted to the scent of cat urine, right? So it's actually adaptive for the cat, because if they can spread this to the mice, the mice will be attracted to their urine, and they'll just get to fucking feed. But when it gets in a human, it makes you crazy adventurous, risk taking, and it's like, Also hella promiscuous . 

COLIN O'BRADY: Alright, load me up. Need to put it right there. 

AUBREY MARCUS: You already got it bro.

COLIN O'BRADY: I got it there. 

AUBREY MARCUS: It's in there. 

COLIN O'BRADY: It's in there forever. It's there for life. You don't have to re-up. It's just there

AUBREY MARCUS: For sure. It's got residency.

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. Since we were talking about my mom, the sort of complete, on that story actually was necessarily gonna bring this up, but in the context we were talking about before and in honoring her is. I'm there for like four or five days, and I'm in this hospital, I'm disoriented, I'm on the other side of the world, I'm a young kid, like, I just ruined my life, I've been a collegiate swimmer, very much in my body, it's kind of how my orientation has always been. And the doctor walks in, day four, day five, and he looks at me and he goes, “hey man, I hate to tell you this, but I got some bad news for you. You damaged your ligaments and your knees and your ankles so bad, you're probably never gonna walk normally again”. They just didn't think I'd regain full mobility at all. And, to your point, there's the like, physical trauma, like you said about the car accident, but there's something about whether it's relationships or actually what your brain can do on the emotional level, was like, I thought I was at a one when I was just burned in the salt water in my legs.

AUBREY MARCUS: Sure.

COLIN O'BRADY: But it turns out, That it wasn't until he scrabbed at my full identity, my ego of calling the able bodied athlete this is who you are, that's actually gone forever, that I thought I just went into this darkest, darkest place of my young life at this, at this moment. And day four, day five, my mom shows up in my hospital room. In the tiny little island in Thailand. And I can feel into this a little bit now that I'm a father. Still very nude fatherhood at this point. But, she tells me now, afterwards, she was in the hallways crying. Pleading with the doctors, so afraid. Asking them, please do something, help my son, like whatever. But every time she walked into my hospital room, she came in with just this huge smile on her face. Just all love, all positivity, all grace. “We're good. I love you, I'm proud of you, you know, we're going to get out of here”. And just wrap me in this blanket of love and positivity. Rather than showing, I was already so afraid, I was already so wound up in my mind. If she had echoed that back to me, we would have just been this sort of downward spiral together. And in a lot of ways, I think that's what she wanted to do. But she's so strong and so powerful that she just summoned this Mama Bear positive energy. And she started getting me to look towards the future, I was like, I screwed up. Life as I know it's over. And she starts going to me like, “Hey, what do you want to do when you get out of here?” And I was like, “Mom, wait, get out of here. I mean, I just want”, she's like, “no. I want you to like, let's put something concrete in your mind”. So she walks me through this visualization exercise. She goes, “close your eyes”. She kind of brings me into this visualization. She goes, “think about all the things you're passionate about. What your hopes and dreams were before this trip. What'd you want to learn from this, whatever”. And she goes, “now tell me like, And your best version of yourself, a year from now, two years from now, what are you doing? What's it look like? Just paint, paint the picture for me. Let's play”. And she sees me kind of crack this smile, my bandage from the waist down in this tiny little hospital room. And she sees me crack the first smile she's seen me crack in, whoever knows how long. She goes, “what'd you see? Tell me, I want to hear, what'd you see?” And I was like, “ah, silly”. And she was like, “no, no, what'd you see?” I go, “I saw myself crossing the finish line of a triathlon”, and I'd never done that before. I'd been a swimmer, but like, never. It's not something I'd like, had reps in. But whatever conjured in my mind was this strong, able bodied, fit Colin, and triathlon for whatever was what was in my mind of a vision of that. And she goes, “open your eyes”. And I was like, “okay”. She goes, “great. We're training for a triathlon”. And I was like, “what?”. And she literally, in that moment, instead of going like, “Hey, that's great, but the legs”. She just goes, “Doc! Doc!”. And she starts yelling down the hallway, “Doc! My son's training for a triathlon now. I need you to bring him in some weights”. The doctor's like, “what?”. And literally, my mom forces the doctor to go rassle up these 10 pound dumbbells to just start my training, literally she's like, “we're starting your training now”. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Fucking legendary. 

COLIN O'BRADY: And so I'm lying in this bed, there's one like an old grainy photograph of this, it's like pre digital cameras, like a printed on film kind of camera. And I'm lying there, bandage from the waist down, I have ten pound dumbbells that I'm doing some sort of like overhead curl with, and there's this Thai doctor in the background like looking at me with this side eye glance like, man, someone should smack some sense into this stupid American kid, like it's told him he's never gonna walk normally. And my mom did that every single day in the hospital. Two months or so after I finally got released from the hospital, fly back to the United States, I moved to Bangkok first, to a bigger hospital, and then eventually life flighted back to the United States. I hadn't taken a step when I got back to Oregon, where I'm from. Placed in a wheelchair when I got home, I'm in a wheelchair, and I'm sitting there, my first day back home after a couple months, and it's like, even more, I'm out of the hospital, but I'm like, I'm home in a wheelchair, what's going on? My mom wakes up that morning, she goes, “All right. We're still on that triathlon goal”. She grabbed this wooden chair from our kitchen table and she placed it one step in front of my wheelchair. She goes, “your entire goal for today is to get out of that wheelchair and take literally one step into this chair in front of you. I don't care how long it takes you”. And my legs are still bandaged. They're like the size of my wrist at this point. It takes me three hours to take one step. I finally hobble my way up and like literally slump basically with my arms slump from my wheelchair to position my body in this wooden chair and my mom and the incredible badass that she is. She smiles, she gives me love and praise and the next day she moves the chair five steps away. She goes “here's your goal for today”, and she does that day by day. And I slowly regained the ability to walk and hobble around we're like celebrating when I can go from the living room couch, the kitchen table. And fast forward I moved to Chicago. Eventually, I wanted to get out of my parents basement, get a job. I'd take a job in commodities trading for my very, very brief stint in that world. An economics degree from Yale. Figured I should put that to use. That part of my life didn't last for too long. But what happened was, I went to Chicago, and I signed up for the Chicago Triathlon. And I walk to work every single day to get my legs moving as I'm hobbling and then I go to a local gym, sign up for the Chicago triathlon, and 18 months after being in this hospital, 18 months after being told I'd never walk again normally with all this love and support and encouragement from my mom, day by day by day, I start the Chicago Triathlon. I dive into the water, I swim the mile, I get out, I get on my bike, and I ride my bike 25 miles down Lake Shore Driven. And then I look down at my feet, the feet that have been so badly burned that I couldn't walk on, I put my running shoes on, like, I can do this. I put my running shoes on, and I ran 6.2 miles of 10K to finish the Chicago Triathlon. And it was a beautiful moment in that I kind of had fought back against this negativity of being able to not walk again normally. But there was a massive surprise in store, which is when I crossed the finish line, I actually hadn't just finished the race, but I actually had won the entire Chicago Triathlon, placing first out of nearly 5,000 participants on the day. And Even that, though, is secondary to me when I really go back to that moment. And so I think that's why I'm so emotional about this momentary distance with my mother. As you asked for my most recent one was, is that, that was a sliding doors moment for me. And as a young man, I don't think I was quite equipped to harvest the lessons from a dumb, silly mistake of burning myself. If I had sat there by myself, in my own wallow, in my own misery, we wouldn't be sitting here probably having this conversation right now. I wouldn't have set the world records, done the things I had done, but instead, my mom looked at me with that love, with that energy, with that positivity, and said, “Let's dream. Your life's not over. Let's build from this, let's learn from this, let's grow from this one”, or this two, or this three, whatever you want to calculate that at, but like, yeah, you made a mistake, yeah, it's a hardship, but the wisdom of my mother to say, there is a positive outcome here, in fact, people have asked me, if you could go back in a time machine, and tell your 22 year old self, don't jump the rope, would you, and it's a great question, the pain that I experienced through that, I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, it was horrific. That said, if I'm being completely honest, I learned some of life's greatest lessons from that difficulty. And so I don't think I’d tell my 38 year old self now not to whisper to my 20 year old self, don't jump the rope. I let him jump the rope. And I let the mother come in and shine the love and positivity and give me the lesson that I needed as a young man to launch into the world in the way that I have over the past decade and a half or whatever.

AUBREY MARCUS: It's a beautiful story, man. I mean, I think we spoke about it briefly, but my brother, one of my best friends on the whole planet, Aaron Rodgers. I was there with him at his first games, home for the Jets, and fourth play of the game, he ruptured his Achilles. He'd never been more excited, never been more fired up to walk out there and lead his team. It was a heroic kind of epic story in the unfolding and then the thunderbolt hits and he's in that moment. And he's now deep in the rehab process. He'slike you with a wheelchair in the chair, doing it his own way picking up marbles with his toes and moving a bowl of marbles from one bowl to another bowl just in the deep grind of the rehab and the ups and downs. But in that process, as any good friend would, just kind of guide him through. It's like the last thing anybody wants to hear at that moment is “everything happens for a reason” because it doesn't feel true. At the moment, it never feels true. But if you do enough of the right things and give it a reason, like, I don't know why this fucking happened, but I'm going to give it a reason why it happened, and I'm going to give it such a powerful reason that when I look back, I'll have gratitude for it.

COLIN O’BRADY: Totally.

AUBREY MARCUS: And that's a choice. It has to have a vision of the future. You have to move through all of the different waves. You have to have the right support. But by the actions and the choices you take, you can get to the point where there's gratitude. But it's not like there's, his is all part of the divine plan in the unfolding, you give it a fucking reason. And so then, no matter how horrible it is, you would say “I wouldn't change a thing”. And when you get to that point, that's the redemption. 

COLIN O'BRADY: For sure. I love the Steve Jobs quote that says, “you can't connect the dots going forward, but you can always connect them going backwards”. It's like, alright, here we are. Keep moving forward from that. And to your point, like, in that moment, like, the moment Aaron's getting carted off the field at, he's not like, “yeah, divine plan”, you're mad, you're upset, you're heartbroken, you're in it, right? But I like what you said, you give it purpose, right? You build from it, you actually take your energy that you have as a human being, as a spirit to really continue to push forward and that creates a tapestry of your full life, really. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. Plus you got that Toxoplasma. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Exactly, plus I got that, so I got the horny, promiscuous, adventurous vibes. So, yeah, I got that going for you. I'll tell you  funny Aaron Rodgers, a very interesting tangential moment in my life that may be a good segue is, so I start this Darkness retreat.

AUBREY MARCUS: The one in the one in Oregon, Sky Cave. 

COLIN O'BRADY: In Oregon. Sky Cave. And I'd love to talk to you about your experience. I will chop it up about that. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Mine was in Germany. 

COLIN O’BRADY: In Germany. 

AUBREY MARCUS: I didn't go to

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah, right. So I'm in Sky Cave and I came out, I went in the cave for seven days. I turned my phone on for the first time. I got dropped off at the Medford Airport to fly back to where I was going. I turn my phone on and I've got hundreds of texts. Like my phone's blowing up, just like normally my phone's been off for a week, whatever. But there's a consistent stream of texts. It's like, Aaron Rodgers, Aaron Rodgers, Aaron Rodgers, Aaron Rodgers. And I'm like, what? Like, what is happening? And I literally came out of the darkness. People knew I was there. The day that Aaron announced on whatever podcast that he announced it on. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Mine, I think. 

COLIN O’BRADY: Is it yours? Or yeah, your podcast, whatever, announced that he's going. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Or Pat McAfee, yeah, we talked about it. 

COLIN O'BRADY: I'm not sure. Going to the darkness retreat. And I have reporters from ESPN, Sports Illustrated, whatever, being like, we need a comment on this. You're a professional athlete and you just got done with the darkness. And literally my phone is blowing up from, if you look at, there's some articles on ESPN and Sports Illustrated that are quoting me and basically they're like, I'm coming out of this experience and my phone's getting blown up by the press, like, which is amazing. They're like, “What do you think? Do you think Aaron's gonna sign the 50,000,000 contract with the Packers, or do you think he's gonna, based on your experience in the darkness”, I was like, “I'm happy to tell about my experience”, I have no idea, but it was just the funniest, perfect storm of like, the day I get out, and then the media's like, grasping for a quote, and they're like, who was just there and they find my Instagram that I'm at Sky Cave, literally the same cave that he sat in, so he went two weeks after meeting literally exact same cave, but it was just a funniest synchronicity of timing. I was like Aubrey's my boy. I've never met Aaron and got much love for him. I cannot comment on what he might do with his life on the other side of this thing. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Stop being so thirsty, journalist. Jesus.

COLIN O'BRADY: Let the man go and he'll tell you in a few weeks. But it was just hilarious to come literally have that minute or within synchronous of an hour or two of when I emerged from the darkness.

AUBREY MARCUS: Wow. So tell me about the darkness, man. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Well, interestingly enough, I don't know if you remember this, but you and I were hanging out. I remember the date because it ends up being a pretty crazy date, which was you and I were here in Austin and lifting weights at the Onnit gym on March 8th, 2020. 

AUBREY MARCUS: That’s about two months, after

COLIN O'BRADY: Right. 

AUBREY MARCUS: After I got out of the darkness.

COLIN O'BRADY: Right. And we're hanging out, we're lifting, and the first thing you and I were joking about that day was, I can't believe Austin just canceled South by Southwest for this silly COVID thing. They're gonna lose so much money. So it was like in that liminal space before like a few days later was like NBA canceled, Olympics and whatever, the whole world shuts down and we always know what happened after that. But you and I are like, at that moment, like whatever, this is a weird thing happening, but we're just hanging out like normal, of course. And you had told me, I said, “what have you been up to, man?” And you were like, “I just went to this darkness retreat”, and I remember you telling me about your, somewhat of your experience from that. And I remember just in my mind, that I was like, “huh, that sounds interesting”. I'm kind of pin that in my thoughts for a future date. Previous to that, I'd sat several 10 day Vipassana, but the darkness was something that intrigued me. I think from a lens, also from like you said about Antarctica, that was a good observation of like, the opposite, like so much light versus so much dark and ultimately the curiosity to go inwards. But it took kind of a few years for that to come to life, and then I eventually went and sat in Sky Cave this past February. So, I don't know, six, eight months ago or something like that. And yeah, wow, I have so much to say about it. It was a wild experience. I don't know how it was for you in Germany, but one thing that actually, from the on ramp to it, that stood out to me was, there was no ceremony. Like, there was no like, from somebody else, from yourself, it's self guided, right? But there was, he was just like this guy, Scott, who runs Sky Cave, incredible human, like such a generous kind, like soul, but was just like, basically like, here's the cave, man, like, you know? Do your thing, close the door, blow out this candle. It wasn't like a bring, you know, and I remember that feeling of like, oh. And I think that I actually love that about it in the end. Like, it was a little bit, just because I've sat in ceremony and other things, I'm sort of used to sort of like, okay, the container, and let's set this container.

AUBREY MARCUS: I have a bit more ceremony than that.

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah.

AUBREY MARCUS: I have to say, but yeah. 

COLIN O'BRADY: So for me it was interesting. I was like, just holding a candle, and the door closes to the cave. Like. Cool, I'm in here. I guess I will start now. And I sat with myself and looked at that light and said a few prayers and kind of entered that space. But thematically, that ended, at least for me, my experience ended up being the perfect on ramp. In that I blow out the candle, and then you're just sitting there in the dark, right? And I, throughout my time there, did try to do some more breath work or some more specific directed meditation and things like that. But it wasn't until I kind of let go of all of that, that the darkness really dropped me in, interestingly enough. And the first, I will say, the first day or two.

AUBREY MARCUS: And for those people who don't know about Darkness Retreat, we're not talking about a little bit dark. We're talking about absolute black. Like absolute black. There is not a pinprick of light. If there is a pinprick of light, because some hinge on something has like some way in which it's then you fucking ring a bell or whatever and be like, yo, there's a fucking tiny little bit of light that in my second day dark adapted thing, I see this little green glow coming out of this thing and they'll come in with their fucking blackout tape and they'll tape that shit up and it's absolute black.

COLIN O'BRADY: Oh, I mean, whatever, day five, day six, whatever, the end of a week, I put my hand one inch in front of my face, waving it around and I can't see it. There's no shadow, it is dark and dark on dark on dark. And sitting with that in those first couple of days, there was something that was familiar to me in terms of that whiteness, but obviously different to being there, such as stillness. Obviously still in your body without any sort of objective also, right? There's no like, moving from point A to point B. There's nothing to do and just sitting in that stillness. And where I started with it, I don't wanna say, I don't want to try to put positive or negative on it, but I would say tense or maybe anxiety, it's like for me to just like sit still how is this gonna last has it been, go to sleep for a little bit. Have I slept an hour? Have I slept ten hours? This disorientation with that as I sat there longer was interesting to realize that the sensations on my body, whether that's anxieties, whether that's moments of bliss and joy, love, I just cried tears in there, felt moments of, like, all the emotions. It's self generating. Like, there's no way to say, like, X is happening to me, so therefore I'm feeling this way. Like, you're just running a tape of your own mind. 

AUBREY MARCUS: I know. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Right? Which is, can be very scary, particularly if you've never entered that space at all. But then this realization of, like, I am fully in control of this experience that's happening inside of me with nothing. But then for me it went deeper. It was like, well, am I this voice in my head? Who is Colin? This sort of feeling of like, am I a voice that's talking to me in my head? Or is that actually not me and my pure essence is below, you start like, sort of going to all these different I know as you're nodding your head you get it, but it's also kind of hard to put into words that sort of inner dialogue. With all of that, yeah, it was, and it for me, 

AUBREY MARCUS: Did you get visions? 

COLIN O'BRADY: I would say yes and no. I'd love to hear about your experience, because I know it was, I remember you telling me it was pretty visual. For me, it wasn't visual, it's crazy, you open your eyes sometimes, right? You're like, should my eyes be open? Should my eyes be closed? It's like the same, it doesn't matter. But I found that maybe half the time my eyes were closed, half the time they were open. I don't know, it was just like this, 

AUBREY MARCUS: Whatever. 

COLIN O'BRADY: It doesn't matter. What I was able to start to do, was my memory became very rich, of my own life. My creativity was really enlivened, as were my actual memories from childhood. And so, I felt like I was having these visceral, lucid hallucinations. But like, from my own life, so I remember like, for example, I would like, go back into my mind of, uh, like my first swim race as a kid. I'm five years old. But I'm not like, oh, like I could say to you, Hey Aubrey, remember the day you graduated from high school or something like that? And you'd like, something's gonna come into your mind, but we're gonna keep talking, and you're gonna get distracted as well, you know, we'll continue on. But there was something about the stillness of my own mind that a memory would pop up. I'm first swim race. I'm five years old, but like I'm in this dark room, physical space but playing out in front of me like a full movie screen script visceral in it. I'm like, I am a little kid. I'm diving into the pool deck. I can see my mom across the way. I can feel the wind on my face. I can see the five other people that are surrounding me cheering. I can just be in it. And so I started being able to touch all of these sorts of parts, at least for me, it was based in the past, I suppose, at first, like in memory. But in this like fully lived and felt somatic way. Big peak in some moments of my life, but then my curiosity got to me. I was like, let me reach for the mundane. I started going on my mind like, what was I doing on Tuesday, sophomore year of high school, driving to school, and I was like, all of a sudden, like, vroom, in my sister's car. I can see her turn on the radio station. This is the CD she's putting in the player. She's like this. I can see the other Toyota Camry pulled beside her. Like, it was just, like, vivid. 

AUBREY MARCUS: It's interesting you mention that, because I did something similar, but it was going to all of my childhood homes that I thought I didn't really remember. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. 

AUBREY MARCUS: And I was remembering the fabric of every couch and where the paintings were and what the fireplace looked like and what the kitchen appliances were and like all of these things that I thought like, I don't fucking remember that.

COLIN O’BRADY: Right.

AUBREY MARCUS: Someone asked me, like, what fabric was on your couch when you were three years old at Larrow Drive, you know, in Agoura. Like what the lining of the swimming pool looked like. Like  all of this shit, but I was able to actually access all of those different memories.

COLIN O'BRADY: It's wild, man. Yeah, it's similar. And like, we think about trauma or the body keeps the score, things like that. There's like, oh, it's inside of you. It's all there kind of idea that I intellectually buy into, but this gave me a deeper sort of knowing or understanding of that. Like in our day to day life, it is harder to access the fabric on the couch. It is. But if you sit quietly in enough stillness and really look inward, it turns out like it's for sure there. It's all in there. And we are this stacking of our lived experiences, our dreams, our hopes, all of that. And that the darkness really gave me a deep, deep, deep window into being able to access that, which was beautiful and also made me even more aware of how connected I am to myself and my past and who I am in this temporary moment is a reflection of all of these sort of stacked and lived experiences. The other thing for me, and towards the end, was interesting, I definitely got into some of those deeper flow states and those sort of like timeless states. The one thing, there's a small little bathtub in there so you can

AUBREY MARCUS: Everybody talks about the bathtub. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. 

AUBREY MARCUS: I had an RV sized shower.

COLIN O'BRADY: I remember you told me, I actually remember you told me when you first saw me, you were like, “yeah man, I just didn't use toilet paper. I just, you know, when I went to the bathroom, I just got in that shower”. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Straight in the shower. How would you ever know? How would you ever know?

COLIN O'BRADY: Infinite wipe.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. What am I going to do? Sniff every fucking wipe? How am I going to know if there's shit on there or not? I just got to get right in the fucking shower. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Totally. But yeah, so the bathtub there and it was, I mean, relaxing and beautiful, but it was the one thing that could keep time, interestingly enough. And there were a couple of times where I'd fill the bathtub up, be hot water, come out hot, you know, hot, hot. So you just can barely, you know, you're getting a hot bath, you can almost like barely get in just get your body used to this hot temperature. And there were a couple moments I could swear that like, it was like I blinked. And also come out of this like vision that I was in some deep corner of my mind and I'd be sitting in like a cold bath water. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Wow. 

COLIN O'BRADY: And so just this like a time warp of space time, where am I at this moment? But then also I think the, I guess for me, the take home from it, or the deeper lesson having sat in a lot of different environments and different spaces. There's something about the darkness that was unique and I think maybe has stuck with me more than many other things, was that I took a little journal in there with me. Obviously Kit didn't write very much and can't really write, but I thought if I have some bigger thoughts that I want to kind of scrawl down in some legible script. And so Scott, tells me that I've got half a day left or something like that, that I'm about to be concluded, so to kind of just sit with that, realize that this is coming to an end. And I wrote in my journal, and said just sit by myself. Well, how do you feel right in this moment? And what I wrote I've looked back on it many times this year since then as I wrote I've touched the most common peaceful corners of my mind, body and soul. I wish I could stay longer. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Wow 

COLIN O'BRADY: And it's reflective of what I said sitting there looking at that post in Antarctica. Antarctica felt like something to get through and of course you go into a cave and you think Am I gonna survive this week? Or have these thoughts in your head, and then once you get into this place, or at least for me, when I've gotten to this place, it's like, oh, I could stay here longer. And I think what has been the most beneficial for me on the other side of that, just in terms of my own personal growth and development, to go, Oh, I found that deep meditative place of calm and stillness and peace and love inside of myself with nothing else, meaning, didn't have to take medicine to get me there. I didn't have to be around my friends and ecstatically dancing. What I'm saying is, I want to go ecstatically dancing with my friends. I want to have all this. I don't want to have that. But knowing that feeling, that essence actually lives inside of me without the external of anything, I guess gives me confidence in the, I feel like I'm really blessed in Charm's life and I have abundance and all the things. But that feeling of like, if it all went away tomorrow, somehow, someone snapped your fingers and it just evaporated. Knowing that I'm still left with the stillness and calm that I can conjure up and find internally is powerful. Because to me it makes it feel like all the other things, like the relationships, the play, the laughter, all of that, the community, the joy, is additive. But it's not like, the baseline is still Colin O'Brady, whatever that means, human identity, walking around is peace, is calm, is an embodiment of love at its base level, and then I can find that. And to me, the darkness really revealed that for me, which was beautiful. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, yours sounds a lot more chill than mine. I mean, I definitely, I found a lot of those same places, but it was intense, man. I mean, chill. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Tell me about the visions.

AUBREY MARCUS: So I don't know if it's because I've been a psychonaut for 24 years and my DMT receptor sites are well primed from dozens and dozens of ayahuasca, probably hundreds of DMT related journeys and psilocybin journeys, whatever it is. But it was also a part of the place, like everybody who went to this place in Germany, in Sachem Walden in the Black Forest and with Bharati, who trained, she apprenticed to be able to hold this medicine by going into deep dark caves, and I want to talk to you about caves too, but they would go into caves as part of, and she was part of this particular element of the Hindu faith. And so, we had a big ceremony where she was chanting in Hindu and I don't know if that's the language, but those were the chants, ultimately, Sanskrit, I suppose. But everybody who went there, like, visions were like a major aspect of it. So, three days in, it looked like the ceiling was dripping in these like polyps of neon green. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Wow. 

AUBREY MARCUS: It just starts to drip. Well, no, first it started flashing. Like it's flashing in this green, like flashing like there was this green, but it was everywhere. It wasn't coming from one place. It was like the whole field was just pulsing. Wow, wow. And then the polyps started. And the polyps were just dripping off the ceiling in green. So it started subtle, and then by day like four, I started having actual visions pop through like the Buddha came through. I was having a really hard moment and I saw this golden Buddha appear and the Buddha's just looking at me and smiling and I go, “why are you smiling?”. And Buddha says, “why aren't you smiling?”. And I was like, fair enough. And then I see him laughing. And I go, “Buddha, why are you laughing?”. He goes, “why aren't you laughing?”. And I just chuckled a bit and just looked at him. And I had Buddha right there in front of me, but there was nothing else to say. There's literally nothing else to say. It was like, oh yeah. I can make the choice to smile, I can make the choice to laugh, and it's kind of crazy thinking back, like, there it is, I mean, whether that's the real Buddha or the imaginary Buddha, in my own mind, doesn't matter, but I have, in all effect is Buddha standing right in front of me? And those are the only questions I could ask and the only answers that he needed to answer and that was it. We just looked at each other and then he drifted away and other powerful visions of my father. I've told a lot of these stories, but eventually the whole field bursts open and it's not as vivid as an ayahuasca journey. But this is an endogenous DMT trip. I'm in for like three and a half days. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Learn how to navigate it, get curious, start asking questions, more visions come, star beings, tell me stories and all kinds of crazy shit happens. But that was a major part of that and then also the deep emotional processes and things that are happening.

COLIN O'BRADY: For you, did it feel like, I guess in contrast to an ayahuasca or something like that, did you feel more lucid in your sort of recall of the experience? 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, in a way, because it was so long, and protracted, and so slow, except for occasionally when visions would like burst out of the field and become really poignant, but it was like, it was slow, it was a slow journey.

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. I've tried to describe that and I don't have the best way to say it, but it's like instead of getting shot out of a cannon, you're like slowly walking down this path in the darkness. And so like, you're like, oh, I kind of know how I got here, sort of. Like, and I don't know, for something, for me it, there was something about that it felt like more subtle, but also more lucid afterwards, all the integration of that, I don’t know

AUBREY MARCUS: I think one of the challenging parts for me, why by day six, there was, I remember like when it was the final day, there was some like, I'm gonna miss this, I'm gonna miss this, but also, I was in a DMT trip for three days.

COLIN O’BRADY: Right, you're like, I'm ready.

AUBREY MARCUS: So like, by the end, like I was sleeping maybe two hours or whatever, because the visual field, it was no longer black in there, it was just alive. 

COLIN O’BRADY: Wow. 

AUBREY MARCUS: With all kinds of things and I'm talking to different souls and like, just crazy experiences. So I'm like, fuck man, like I've had enough. Like, I'm like, ah! 

COLIN O’BRADY: Let me out of here, I need to digest all this. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, for sure, like I gotta fuckin integrate this. So, there was definitely a period of breaking and a period of coming back in, but I'm super grateful for it, and as I hear you tell the story, like, there's a deep part of me that misses her. That misses the darkness. I blacked out one of my guest bedrooms. If you ever stay at my house, it's completely blacked out, so the idea was that I would have my own little mini darkness retreat. I still haven't really done it except for more than one day. But yeah, I love that medicine.

COLIN O’BRADY: It's powerful.

AUBREY MARCUS: It's really powerful. 

COLIN O’BRADY: Very powerful. 

AUBREY MARCUS: If I was gonna dial in like, what I would be called to now. I've done lots of psychonautic adventures since then, but if I was to actually really listen about what my body wants. Like, darkness, for sure. Like if I had the time and space and availability to kind of dial that in, and maybe I do. You just gotta make the choice. You just gotta decide. The darkness would be what called me the most. Because I'd really just love that, to slow the pace down. Just slow everything down and digest everything that's happened in the last few wild years of my life. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah, I can relate, man. I feel blessed with all the opportunities and experiences and like you and I traveling to Egypt earlier this year and like, all the different things. But at the same time, in the midst of all this excitement and growth and chaos and all that, there is that calling back to that set point, that stillness of like, just being like, okay. Yeah, once, I think when you get on the other side of the fear of the uncertainty of the darkness, it can be just like this calm, gentle, reflective space. And I agree that that dark, the medicine of the darkness is a really powerful one. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. I mean, it was funny for me, I don't know, people are probably used to you doing wild stuff, so they probably weren't very worried about you, and reasonably so. But despite everything I'd ever done, I'd never seen this journey trigger more fear in people than anything else I've ever done. I talk about my wild Iboga journeys and all of these things, everybody's like, “Oh, wow, sounds hard, but cool”. Everybody's like, “I would go insane”. I would go crazy. And it's like, what are you afraid of, bro? Are you afraid of your mind?

COLIN O'BRADY: I have such a similar experience with that with other people. I do a lot of public speaking. I'm in these corporate rooms, speaking, sharing all sorts of mindset tools, and I really enjoy doing that, meeting different types of folks. And I'm telling them, dragging a sled across Antarctica, rowing a boat across the most dangerous stretch of ocean in the world in the Drake Passage, climbing out, all these kinds of crazy adventures. And people are like, there's something about that. They're like, that's adventurous, that's interesting. They're still going like, that's crazy, that's hard, whatever. But I mentioned the darkness? And they're like, bro, I could never do that. And I'm like, what about the sled pulled across. It's almost like they can get there, interestingly enough. Like, not really, but like, there's something about the primal fear of the dark that people react to. I have the same thing over and over and over again. People, all the things are just like, but no, but like, that cave, man. I couldn't like, I couldn't go. And I think it is, to your point, I think it is that, it's a shame, I wish more people would have the courage to confront it, but like, people are like, afraid of their own self.

AUBREY MARCUS: It's like, it's like you're living with a monster. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Right.

AUBREY MARCUS: The whole time, every day of your life, and slightly running away from the monster. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. 

AUBREY MARCUS: By keeping a night light on to keep the fucking monster away. But you gotta fucking face the monster.

COLIN O'BRADY: So, in this vein, I've like over the last many years, I've been like, okay, 10 day Vipassana, I would recommend that to anyone, 10 days of silence, meditation, everyone's like, I don't have 10 days, or I've never meditated, all the things they can't do that, right? Or I can’t post across Antarctica. 

AUBREY MARCUS: But they're not afraid. But that's the interesting thing. Vipassana like, yeah, I'm not afraid. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Except I'm afraid, I just don't feel like doing that. Yeah, that sounds like hard work. But after being in Antarctica, after being in the darkness, after being in pods, I'm such a fundamental proponent that like, as human beings, I'm an incredibly social guy. But like, we need to spend a little bit of time looking inward at ourselves. And so over the course of the last couple years, with that in mind, having all these conversations with people, I'm like, come on, I would just say to people, like, spend some time alone, like, do this, do that, and it actually spawned this book idea that I wrote a book last year called The 12 Hour Walk, which is really from this vein. And it's The 12 Actually, not long after you and I were together, that COVID moment, I'm sitting in my house on the Oregon coast and I'm kind of in a negative. I was supposed to go to Everest with an expedition planned. Everything's canceled. I'm sitting around just like everyone else. Like, well, this is weird that people are overreacting and what's happening? You know, all this kind of stuff. I'm kind of in this funk. I'm like, man, when was the last time I felt super connected, like kind of back in my own body? And I was like, thinking back to those infinite love moments in Antarctica and just the bliss of just the stillness and the silence and the quiet. And so I said to my wife, "Hey, I'm going to go for a walk tomorrow all day long. Don't worry about me. I'll come back”. And she'd been making fun of me. She goes, “you haven't changed out of your pajamas in like four days. You're like sitting there like doom scrolling Instagram” and like whatever. She's like, “you're not like in the great version of yourself right now”. And so I go for this walk. I go for this walk, and my phone buzzes in my pocket like 20 minutes in. Like, I'm gonna text my buddy back. I'm like, what am I doing? I just put my phone in airplane mode and I end up just walking all day, quiet. And I walk back in the front door around dinner time. My dog jumps up on my lap, and Jenna says to me, she goes, “you're back”. And I was like, “yeah, yeah, I told you I was gonna go for this walk”. She goes, “no, like, you're back”. Like, I can see it in your face. You're back. She could just see the shift that happened in me. I was like, yeah, like, I do feel better than I felt. I was like, great. I didn't think anything of it. But it's COVID, I don't know if you do this, but like, you're on Zoom calls for the first time. And I think you and I FaceTimed, like whatever. Just like catching up with people. I'm like, what are you up to? And I was like, started telling people. I was like, I don't know, man, I just went on this walk. It actually felt amazing. And people had all this free time at this moment. So people were like. Man, I need to try something like that. Before I know it, friends, friends of friends, my mother in law, whatever, people start being like, I'm doing this. No phone, no podcast, no internal, I'm gonna go for a walk for 12 hours. They're like, do I have to walk the whole time? No, you don't have to walk the whole time. Take as many breaks as you want. It's about spending a day by yourself. Before I knew it, I had all the dozens of these data points, people, all different types of people, young professionals, fit, young, my 77 year old mother in law, she did it by walking one time around her block, sitting on her front porch for an hour, and then walking another time. She may have covered a mile. My ultramarathon buddy covers 50 miles, he's so proud of how far he walked, I was like, “but did you spend the day alone?”. And they're like, “yes”. Looking back, I realize I never spent more than 30 minutes by myself, ever. When you're in a room by yourself, with no music on, not looking at your phone, not having your kids, not having the TV on, like, people literally live their whole life never, ever, ever spending this time in silence, and so 

AUBREY MARCUS: When was the last time you went and took a shit without your phone?

COLIN O’BRADY: Right.

AUBREY MARCUS: So you could do something while you, like literally, like, I'm in the bathroom, and I'm like Damn. Forgot my phone. 

COLIN O'BRADY: You're like, I'll be here for three whole minutes by myself. So, I mean, I'm a fundamental believer of this medicine. And it’s easier to rant for people. So, anyways, I got this idea. I wrote this book last year called The 12 Hour Walk. And really, its essence isn't just the walk. There's a book obviously and it's about mindset and it's through these lens of the adventures I've been on and whatnot, but really it's a call to action and the call to action can be summed up in two sentences, which is set aside a day, take 12 hours, walk out your front door, spend 12 hours in silence. And that could be in New York City. It doesn't have to be on some quiet trail. It's your commitment to being with yourself for those 12 hours. Take as many breaks as you want. Anyways, it's been really fun to share that principle. And now I've had, and I have an app that supports it that tracks your walk that you don't look at. It's in airplane mode. And hundreds of thousands of people around the world have done this 12 hour walk and reflect back to me like, wow, that's exactly what I needed. I didn't have the time for this big retreat or this big medicine journey or they're not open to that or whatever that is. But like people are sending me videos crying cracked wide open and it's because of overcoming that fear. Like you said, like you're so afraid to spend that time by yourself, and then they do it and they go “Oh, I know myself better, now”. I let go of that fear. I broke free of that conversation I've been winding myself in about my spouse, how she did this or he did that or and just like, these arguments you have in your own mind, but the stillness of 12 hours opens people's mind to it. So. I highly encourage people to check it out, 12hourwalk.com or the book. But also one fun thing I've started doing is doing these global walk days. So you walk completely by yourself, it's alone, it's out your front door, but it's the collective energy of the whole because I've realized that there is a lot of power in the collective sort of, hey, we're all doing this. So the next one, we're kicking off the new year's with it on January 6th. That's the first Saturday of the New Year's. Just sometimes I realize it helps people to say, have a date. Not just, you can do this any day. Because people go, oh yeah, sure, I'll do that. Like, hey, come join us January 6th. This is you alone in a 12 hour walk, but there's a whole community around it. Connect with me, Zoom calls, et cetera, to just get people prepped and ready. And it's free. It's entirely free. This is just a public service out to the world of just saying the more people that could spend even 12 hours by themselves, I believe that there's a ripple effect of positivity that comes from that. And I think it's relatively low hanging fruit. People sometimes say to me like, 12 hours, that's so long, where am I gonna get the time? And I say, “Yo, have you seen Game of Thrones?”, “Yeah, yeah, man. I love Game of Thrones. It's so good, man”. I'm like, there are 77 episodes. They're an hour long of Game of Thrones. You watch 77 hours of that. Which, by the way, I love Game of Thrones too. Love it. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Time well spent. 

COLIN O'BRADY: Time well spent. But you've got the time. You know, you've got the time. It's what you said before. It's like, whether you want to prioritize that. Twelve hours is a full day, but It's a half a day and I've seen people invest this 12 hours in themselves and have a 100x, 1000x return on investment of their time, of productivity, of creativity, of depth with their relationships and love, and it has proven to be an on ramp for other people to take other journeys. But it's like I said, as simple as possible. Put your shoes on, walk out your front door, turn your phone on airplane mode. And tap in. So you can sign up on my website 12hourwalk.com if you want to do it any day but love to have people join for the Global Walk Day. Last Global Walk Day we had people I think in 50 different countries doing it simultaneously and sending out that energetic resonance to the community.

AUBREY MARCUS: That’s beautiful man

COLIN O'BRADY: So one of the fun things that I'm passionate about and up to, cause I think more in your message, all the things you've shared, I know you've opened so many people's eyes to different journeys and inward personal growth and passionate about, unlocking that for people in different ways, because that's the world I was selfish, man. But that's the world I want to live in, where more people are tapped and tuned in and empathetic to their own needs and the needs of others. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah. absolutely. What do you get your eyes set on, man? What are you looking at? Like, you've done so many wild things and tested yourself, seeing what's inside. What is, as you're looking out at the field, you gotta have your eyes on some things that are interesting to you.

COLIN O'BRADY: Yeah. I think actually by the time this podcast comes out, I will actually be in Antarctica again. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Going back! 

COLIN O'BRADY: Going back. And there's an objective that I have out there, which is a speed record from the coast to the pole. 750 miles solo unsupported, the fastest to traverse that, but that is the, I guess the external why. but I have been back to Antarctica in a couple different ways on this rowboat and some other things, but not like pulling a sled in five years since that infinite love experience. And I've, not The Twelve Hour Walk, but I wrote a previous book called The Impossible First that was a New York Times best selling memoir. The last chapter is called Infinite Love, and I speak about that moment, cause it was so impactful for me. And, I actually think Joe Rogan might have been the first person to say this to me. He's interviewing me after that Antarctica Crossing. And he says to me, this is interesting, man. He's like, I've interviewed so many of these like, Badass, athlete, fighter, David Goggins, whatever. And he's had so many amazing interviews, obviously. And he's like, there's something thematic about them. They all usually have, like, this messed up childhood, or this chip on their shoulder, or this, like, prove it mentality, and that's what, like, he goes, “I'm having this kind of weird feeling with you”. And he said it with a smile on his face. Joe's hilarious, as you know. He's a great, good friend of yours. And there's something, like, lighter, softer, might I say loving about this experience that you're describing and I laughed at, I took that as a compliment. Or at least an interesting reflection. And what I realized is I started burning that fuel at the end of that journey. And then I left the ice. And I've brought that fuel into my life over the last five years in many different ways and entrepreneurial successes and business and other adventures and whatever. But there is a deep curiosity for me, not because I'm trying to recreate that, but to see if I can go back to that white room. And touch that again and burn that fuel and perhaps burn that fuel from the beginning and not just touch it at the end. And so, I've given myself this external goal to essentially create a framework for the stakes that is to push my mind and body in a place that's difficult and challenging and requires a hundred percent focus because the stakes are real and if you make a mistake, you know, it could have fatal consequences. But the curiosity is to see, I think I know the answer, but to prove to myself, I suppose, that fuel, that visit from the universe or God wasn't just this random catching lightning in a bottle in a jar kind of moment, but actually, just like in the darkness, lives inside of me, and that I can touch and tap back into intentionally when I want to. And so I'm gonna go explore that curiosity in Antarctica soon.

AUBREY MARCUS: What'll be interesting to talk to you after you're done. Sometimes, like, I could see one way this plays out, and I don't know how it'll play out, you'll be able to determine it. But I could see this play out where you're trying, you're reaching for that infinite love, and in trying to reach the infinite love, you can't find it.

COLIN O'BRADY: Totally.

AUBREY MARCUS: And you get to this moment like, fuck, I lost the sauce, man, I'm like, I'm no longer the universe's most favorite child, and you get to this fucking dark moment in the white room, and then you let all that go. Just let it go and be like, all right, so be it, the infinite love's not there. And at the moment where you completely let it go, it just comes right back in. Who the fuck knows how it works, but it's sometimes, what I find is when I reach for certain things like that, when I really am reaching. I don't always get there, but when I let go, and I'm not reaching anymore, then I find that it's always there.

COLIN O'BRADY: Totally.

AUBREY MARCUS: You know what I mean? 

COLIN O'BRADY: Totally. 

AUBREY MARCUS: It'll be interesting to see how that goes. And you're probably aware of that, so you might hack the code right from the start. 

COLIN O'BRADY: No. But I think it's astute, and it's the same way, like I said, about the darkness. Like, trying to do the breath work, trying to do the meditation, trying to get into it, whatever.

AUBREY MARCUS: Right.

COLIN O'BRADY: And that's finally like, okay, here I am. Bring it

AUBREY MARCUS: Infinity love. Infinity love. Come on. 

COLIN O'BRADY: But yeah, to me, it's like creating the context and then also, like you said, being at peace with whatever comes up. Of course, there's that small attachment to the outcome of that curiosity, but also I try to leave that to more just the curiosity rather than “I'm going back there to extract the thing that I want”. I think that's, you reach for that and it's infinitely out of grasp. But it will be seen, I'm open to all possibilities. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Well, I’ll be sending you Infinite love on your journey my brother.

COLIN O'BRADY: I appreciate that brother. 

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah, I appreciate our friendship I appreciate you know walk in this path together in our own unique ways and it's great to see you, bro 

COLIN O'BRADY: Likewise, always a pleasure my friend.

AUBREY MARCUS: Yeah much love to everybody who's tuned in. We love you guys. Infinite love to all of you wherever you are at the time. We're recording this. This is a time where the world needs infinite love more than ever. So Hopefully by the time this podcast is released. We're in a better place, we may be in a worse place than we are right now. Maybe that's all subjective, but infinite love to everybody right now and when this podcast releases. Because that's our way through all the mess. Is finding that love and just pushing that love in every direction, pushing that love in a way that we no longer tell the difference between perpetrator and victim, good and evil, but just universal, infinite love to all life and all beings.

COLIN O'BRADY: Yes.

AUBREY MARCUS: Amen. Much love, everybody. Peace.