How do we pretend not to be whole people? How can we learn to embrace the full spectrum of our emotions, intellect, and intuition, to be fully embodied in the present moment?

In this episode, we journey deep into the Light Forest with William Wait, a musician, psychologist, and psychedelic elder, who shares many stories, insight, and techniques from his long life that started in California in 1941, and now in Bangkok.

Introducing William Wait and his journey…

• from the segregated 1950s playing trumpet in blues black bars in California and experiencing a moment of oneness on stage

• to dropping acid with 18,000 people and psychedelics pioneers like Timothy Leary during the “Summer of Love” in 1967 San Francisco,

• decades as a psychologist, and practitioner of Taiqi and Qigong, and meditation, spending time with Osho in Pune in the 1980s and 33+ years living in Thailand.

As a therapist, he developed his own approach which he calls Life Streams, integrating Eastern and Western techniques and philosophies, to help people do the inner work and experience wholeness of life that is our true nature.

William experienced a stroke earlier this year and in his words can feel death is imminent and is in his final chapter. He wants to share and pass on his knowledge and experience. and i’m super grateful to have the chance to bring this conversation to the podcast.

Chapters

• 00:00 - Introduction and Welcome

• 05:38 - The Four Life Streams: A Framework for Wholeness

• 08:15 - Stream One: Embodiment and Sensation vs mindfulness

• 10:36 - Stream Two: Emotionality and the Full Spectrum of Feelings

• 14:11 - Programming from Conception: Birth Trauma to Social Conditioning

• 17:00 - Stream Three: Mind as Tool vs Identity

• 18:34 - Stream Four: Intuition and Expanded Awareness

• 19:00 - Mind vs intuition

• 23:20 - Growing Up in 1950s California: Music as Gateway

• 26:46 - Stream 5: environment

• 29:07 - working with emotions

• 35:07 - pretending to not be whole

• 41:15 - The Mystical Experience: Merging with Music and Unity Consciousness

• 49:45 - Summer of Love 1967: Psychedelics

• 55:42 - The Shadow of the Psychedelic Movement

• 59:30 - From Musician to Psychologist: Spirituality and Eastern Practices: Transcendal Meditation, Tai Chi, and Buddhism

• 61:30 - AI and Technology:

• 69:30 - remixing wisdom for the modern mind

• 77:11 - Living in Bangkok: Choosing Life Over Monastic

• 82:45 - Death

• 84:15 - Marriage and the Yoga of Relationship

• 98:30 - Thailand as Teacher

  103:45 - Facing Death: Life in the Final Chapter

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  References

  • The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert

  • Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley - About his mescaline experience

  • Gestalt Therapy - The therapeutic approach William used extensively

  • Stanislaw Grof - Psychedelic researcher and birth trauma work

  • Ram Dass - "Be Here Now"

  • The Power of Now (by Eckhart Tolle)

  • Brave New World (by Aldous Huxley

  • 1984 (by George Orwell)

  • The Trauma of Birth by Otto Rank - A book from the 1930s by a psychoanalyst about birth trauma

    The Tao Te Ching

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  Connect with William

  You can email William at wmwait@yahoo.com. He is available to do 1 on 1 sessions, couple’s work, or speak to other podcasters that might like to have a conversation with him. I highly recommend you take the opportunity while you can !