“Hi, I’m Tyler and I’m from Lafayette and am definitely not from Freetown. I’m from Scott, Louisiana.
Not so much Freetown…but close.”
I know we talked briefly the other night about men getting more in touch with their feminine side.
“What I said was that I really appreciate you guys because of the fact that y’all are really in touch with your feminine side and like more receptive and compassionate and sensitive and kind of in tune with those watery ways.
And that’s really refreshing because many times when I meet men it’s that dominance-game. Sometimes they wanna be alpha-male instead of collaborating together; its like they’re above you somehow. Sometimes, most of the time, they kinda look like an idiot, I don’t say that but it’s really refreshing to meet people who aren’t immediately aggressive and are open to other peoples ideas, which is sweet. I think its something a lot of women do and are kinda just naturally better at then men.”
So you’d say women are generally better at that compared to men?
“Yea. I feel that men and women both have masculine feminine sides and I feel like a lot of men are in touch with that side themselves and often times repress it because of this idea of having to be a ‘man’ and all the things that that encompasses.”
Especially in the south, would you say that this is an issue? The whole you either have to be a coon-ass or a T-Boy?
“Yea, it’s just college life is all that bro fraternity kinda thing and I see the validity of frats, I love that whole ‘I’m chilling with my brothers mentality’,
But I dunno, it seems like it’s been warped into this weird dominance thing.”
Do you have any advice in getting more in touch with that?
“I feel like everyone has their own way. I guess everyone has specific things that are blocking that. I feel that overall diet, exercise, and meditation are always gonna open stuff up. Stretching hard, creative pursuits like music,
those are all things, actually doing charity and volunteering at places. The other day Ben and I picked up trash around Freetown. Just to get in touch with helping others. And just being receptive and especially open to other people and their ideas. No matter how different they might seem. Just being receptive to people. Giving everyone a chance.”
Do you directly correspond that with a feminine side?
“I feel like that’s more of a feminine trait that I see inherently in women than men. Its more of a motherly thing. You go to her instead because she’s the one who’s gonna listen to you when you get in trouble as opposed to your dad. And there’s a ton of those images in our culture. It’s a very real thing. And I feel like compassion is a very feminine thing. And that’s the weird thing, we live in a patriarchy, we live in a domineering male society.”
And guys are afraid to cry.
“And yea that’s a very valid way to release your emotions. As opposed to bottling that anger and exploding punching a window.”
Do you have any personal experience with finding yourself? Finding your inner compassion? Was there a moment of enlightenment in your life in which you were like ‘Aha! I need a change!’ Or have you always been this way?
“I don’t know man. I went through a pretty cynical, very rational, closed off, anti-receptive kind of nihilistic life for a while when I was a young teenager. And then eventually I dropped out of high school, started working and living on my own, and started having a lot of new experiences and opening my mind up to different things. But I was still pretty closed minded to anything beyond what I could prove by science. Which truly isn’t a lot. Honestly, there is a lot we don’t know so it’s hard, it’s a very small frame of reference It seems very realistic but cynical, so it’s depressing. I was very depressed for a while so I just left and went to Brazil and started traveling pretty much with 4 to 6 month breaks.”
How long did you spend there?
“I spent 7 months there and then I spent 3 months in India and then I came back and worked for my father in Baton Rouge for a while.”
You just traveled there or lived there?
“I went to Brazil. I met these chicks at a bar called the Wild Salmon. One I had already known as my friend’s cousin and the other was this Brazilian chick. And we started talking about our interests we started talking about permaculture and farming. And my rational mind was asking, ‘How do we save the world? We should grow our own food’. And we talked about that and had similar interests and we talked about going to Brazil because her father is a shaman and goes to this place in Brazil and goes to the beach and stuff. And they take volunteers and they were supposed to be totally sustainable eco-village. But it turns out that was all bullshit. I actually met a chick from DC who was going to college in Costa Rica for eco-village management and she was doing her senior thesis on traveling to eco-villages to do her paper on whatever and was going to these places and she came and was like this isn’t an eco-village at all.”
“It was really funny, they were very manipulative, they were super new-age people. There were Ayahuasca ceremonies going on and Aura readings. They were vegetarian and just like very new-age and very into all that Eckhart Tolle and every new-age book you’ve ever heard. They seemed very open and inviting but they also were kind of enslaving people ion these weird ways by peer pressure and work trade. They would give you these things and let you do this because you were volunteering here. And after you did that they would say that it would cost $1,300 and you’re gonna pay that off by working for us for $3 an hour.”
Is that why you were there for so long?
“I was doing that for a while and then some friends of mine that lived nearby who knew those people said, “Those people were fucking crazy right?” “And I was just like its not just me? Because a lot of people go in there and totally give in and go ‘Yes I’ve found the most beautiful place!’ But they were paying to be there so they treat them really lovely. But anyone who’s not giving these people thousands and thousands of dollars its very different for. The people running this are independently millionaires, they’re super rich. But yea, it’s crazy and its becoming this whole tangent to the other thing.”
“But after, I lived on this farm with this physicist and her boyfriend from Sweden and I learned a lot from them and I helped them start their farm. And then I lived with some friends that I had met when I was playing video games when I was 11. I got in touch with them. I was 11 years old and I met this lady playing this game YOHOHO Puzzle Pirates and we met and we had a good conversation. And I told her, “Dude, I’m going to Brazil!” and she had just moved to a city next to the city I needed to fly out of to go to India, so I lived with them for a while and that was awesome. I went to India, came back home, then went back for 5 months. Then I went on a tour of festivals in the north with my friend Ben for a couple months until I crashed his car and then we came back home. And then I hitchhiked to a Rainbow Gathering, then to Oregon, and worked in Cali and lived in Hawaii with my girlfriend.”
You met in Hawaii?
“We’ve known each other for a while and we just happened to bet there at the same time and it just worked out.”
What were you doing in India?
“Just traveling, I had met these people in this Ayahuasca community, they had this guru named Primmbaba and they were really cool. These cats are really legit and I hadn’t been opened to all these things. I was like, “What the fuck?!’ Because I had some crazy experiences on Ayahuasca and didn’t know what to believe anymore. But these guys seem legitimately nice and they seemed like what I was looking for. And now since I know what I’m looking for the first time they seemed comforting and closer to it than the people in Brazil. They told me to buy a plane ticket and so I did it and hung out there for 3 months and it was awesome. I went back and traveled around the country, which is huge, I didn’t see much at all but I got a lot more in touch with the culture and philosophy. And that’s what I would say was the period with the process of finding myself over four years.”
Traveling right?
“Traveling and really being receptive to the ridiculous other stuff that is totally different than here. I grew up thinking that. When I went to Colorado for the first time I said ‘Oh my god, the world can be clean and have public transportation and roads that aren’t broken.’ It blew my mind knowing this can exist in my own country.”
Were you receptive before you went to Brazil, or did it take you going there and having to immerse yourself in their culture?
“I was open-minded but extremely skeptical. I was open-minded to certain facets but only to certain facets, I wasn’t completely open-minded.”
So it wasn’t until India?
“I would say Brazil was the start of the train of that spiritual center getting introduced to all that stuff. I was like I’m here I’ll try it. I was working, I was going to learn about sustainable agriculture, but they weren’t sustainable at all so I ended up working in a kitchen.”
So I guess what you couldn’t learn in university you learned through travel and on your own?
“Yea dude, I was just thinking that. I’ve learned how I learn and how I can relate with the world and be part of it. Now especially since a lot of my friends are graduating from college. They have such a breadth of knowledge and information that I had no idea about since I didn’t go to university. I was talking with my girlfriend last night about going to college, just potentially. I found out you can go to college for free in Germany. So I thought if I can afford to go to college, I can travel to Europe and go to Spain on the weekends and its free and even if I don’t finish, even if I just go for two years, I get this great education as well as wonderful experiences.”
So to conclude, you would say that open mindedness is pretty much directly correlated with being in touch with your inner-feminine side?
“I would almost say receptivity, because when you say open-mindedness it’s a masculine kind of idea. “Oh my mind is open, my intellect is allowing you to be a thing.” When I’m being receptive I’m allowing you to take me in. It goes to an emotional level; people are more than their thoughts. They are more than their words. There’s a lot more behind what they are saying; that people can’t be themselves, or that they can’t be normal. It makes a barrier and you can’t perceive them.”
So you understood things, but you didn’t think deeply about them until you opened your mind. You listened to everyone and then listened on a whole new level?
“Its funny we understand the same things, it’s just two different journeys.”
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