Shadowing Practice: Almost lost my mind - Learn English Speaking with Video

What's good, my boy?

Been a minute since I've made a video of any kind, and I didn't want to leave the few people that do enjoy my channel in the dark,

so I figured I'd come on here and just be fully transparent about where I've been.

Your boy almost became Sid Barrett.

I went full Van Gogh there for a second.

I deleted over 100 videos, burnt half my paintings, burnt half my library of books,

and all to say preachers were preaching, demons were fishing, and your boy was under the sea just wanting to be.

A little poetry for your ass.

Yeah, I went to a mental hospital.

I almost lost my mind there for a second

and it was really chaotic and it was based all around this research that I was doing, really primarily centered around Gnostic texts,

trying to prove the trinity to myself seeing the trinity

and everything exploring a little bit of occult

and nothing really defines it truer than

that clip there's a clip online of christopher uh lee the guy who played dracula

and count dooku there's a video where he's asked about his library of the occult right

and he's like i do heed warning to those you might you not only lose your mind

but you lose your soul

that type of thing your boy didn't lose his soul I still have my faith in Christ

but I did almost convince myself

that I was a messiah there for a second family had to intervene

and I ended up going to basically a mental hospital

and uh yeah it was as if I opened up from all of this research

and all of this stuff I opened my mind up like a wound and I got super paranoid,

super scared, it was, it was honestly insane, and there's tons of events, my mind is still cloudy, as it is right now,

I'll be fully honest, I ain't afraid to say it, they hooked your boy up with some SSRIs, and if you know me,

you watch my channel, I used to make my videos in red light, because I'm, that's how hippie holistic I was,

and And I'm on a tapering off protocol of these now, so it won't be a permanent thing.

But it did, it has helped me.

I mean, I went off the deep end.

I went to a car dealership with my grandpa.

I saw through the veil, if you will, of scammers.

And I blew up, I put a paper bag on my head.

Thought I had to pick a lock with chuelers, screwdrivers.

And just made an all around fool out of myself.

It was quite the adventure, if you will.

I fell down the rabbit hole, was in Wonderland for a little bit, but I remembered I had red shoes on, tapped my feet three times, and I came back out on the other side.

My family, I couldn't be grateful for anything more than that.

My family is my rock.

I have an extremely, extremely supportive group of people around me

that it's even hard to put into words how appreciative I am for them.

If it wasn't for them, your boy really might be Sid Barrett.

And this was the craziest thing.

So it all started from lots of Gnostic text.

Lots of Kundalini wisdom and sacred secretion, new age stuff that I was trying to disprove as being stupid.

And I was trying to prove orthodoxy to myself.

I started seeing the Trinity and everything.

I got on this gemantria.

And the way gemantria works is it's like a Kabbalistic thing in Jewish mysticism.

where you attribute a number.

And I started getting into numerology and astrology, not the phony side where they ask for your credit card to give you a reading,

but mainly the deeper rabbit holes surrounding it.

And there's this thing online called the GE Matrix Calculator

where it has four versions of a word and numbers, okay? it has the words,

which is like, it can be either a sentence or a word.

Then from that, you have the English version, which is the letters from 1 to 26.

Then you have, or no, you have a Jewish version, which this is where my research went crazy.

I saw lots of numbers being changed and numerical values being changed that are not just 1 to 26.

So it has its own little thing.

Then it's the English version, which you could consider like Catholicism, whatever, just English language 1 to 26, A to Z.

And then you have the third one, which is a simple.

And you have a simple.

So you have basically four variables here.

And then there's a fifth variable, which is how many times it had been searched.

And I convinced myself with this calculator that, holy cow, this is, this is, you have the word, which is like,

all of my bottlenecking of my mind came from the Bible.

So in John, it says the word was with God and the word was God.

So I'm like, there's the word.

and then you have 6,000 years ago or whatever, you have 6,000 or 4,000, I don't even know, the numbers are so jangled up,

but you have Jewish, the Jewish faith being revealed.

I convinced myself, and this might be true, this isn't where I really lost my mind, but I thought like, okay,

God chose to reveal all of these specific religions to us at a specific point in time for a reason

and it was based on the zeitgeist of the times how

people digested the information i was talking about the zeitgeist of

the sword where people had swords versus guns being an incredibly tumultuous time

so and so forth just lots of things all at once

and like i said i bottlenecked my mind with all of this knowledge

and i still have my memory it was crazy I mean, not only did I go to the dealership,

I got exercised by a couple close family friends, if you will.

One guy was speaking Hebrew over me, the other one was raining Jesus on me, and I was telling him that I might be the Messiah.

It was really crazy.

I go to this hospital, they do EKG, blood work, all this stuff, and they realize, well, this kid really ain't on nothing.

He's just high on life.

No, I just, I stayed up for three days.

That was the real bottleneck.

You got to have your sleep.

You can't be on this grind set, hustle culture thing.

You got to, sleep's the most important thing.

And I literally lost my sober mind with, because I didn't get sleep.

And I was cramming in all this information.

And it literally turned your boy crazy there for a second.

so after I got exercised I was just kind of laughing

like what are y'all doing this weird code code code religious

religion I was just spewing this trinity out three triads three faiths revealed just all of this stuff

and then I go to the hospital they do all those tests

and people were coming up to me with hives on their face with a mask on asking me why

I put cedar trees in their yard, why they had allergies.

That hospital, again, was very out there.

I mean, I guess they had their own beliefs or who knows.

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It was very weird, but it was, it happened.

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My grandpa was there with me whenever it happened, and he verified that all that weirdness happened, and that just added to my, what the professionals deem as a psychosis.

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So that added to it, that turned into me coming back home more on my little GE matrix calculator.

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It has the simple, I'd convinced myself, this is the easiest way to put it, that you have the word, then you have the Jewish version,

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which is really mystical, magic involved, lots of things like that.

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Then you have the English, which is like the Catholic Christian view of things.

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And then you have the simple.

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And I convinced myself that the Muslims has to be the simple

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because they get so caught up on verbiage and errors in text and just kind of silliness.

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And then the searchers.

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So you have five variables there.

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And I convinced myself that the God number was five or five.

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And it was just, a lot of it was interesting.

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It was really interesting.

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But it was, and I don't even remember half of it.

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I burned my damn notebook on top of it.

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I mean, I really went out there, boys.

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It was something.

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The only case that reminds me of this is this YouTuber that I used to watch named Brandon Buckingham.

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he got real big on YouTube at this time at a time

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and all of a sudden he lost his mind halfway through it with a bunch of drama

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and a bunch of different things and I basically had

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that I mean I even went to the asylum and

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that was a whole adventure I go in this place my

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pawpaw who's my pawpaw my mama her are some of my biggest supporters I have such a strong family unit that

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it's the main thing I'm grateful for.

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I mean, I have so many amazing people in my family.

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It's unreal.

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But I go to this place.

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I'm convinced that I have to make these crazy sacrifices by going in there and still paranoid.

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There's I'm seeing so much symbolism.

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This is what threw me for a loop.

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I started seeing so much extra symbolism and music and movies and books that I go in there,

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this is how crazy I was.

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I go in there and I see a sticker from the security guards up front called the Paladins.

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I start talking about Johnny Westerns have gun will travel.

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I start explaining about World of Warcraft, how they want to encase Arthas in stone.

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They want to freeze them in ice.

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They have to have a Lich King.

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I'm the Lich King.

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Just crazy stuff.

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Literally insane stuff here, okay? So that happens.

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I go in this place.

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they helped me to a degree they were testing me

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so much that it was messing with my head

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and i just wanted out of there uh i finally got some sleep

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which was good but they would do weird stuff like white noise

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while you're while you're trying to sleep big security guards at night with masks on

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and stuff like that just weird stuff

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and uh halfway in there i convinced myself

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that i might be a werewolf it just I mean I'm

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telling you boys it was I was out there for a second

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and then finally the last day I was in there again I'm the only patient in here I was me

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and this kid Peter were the only two people in there

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and he left after some time

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and they told him it was really weird this place

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but I'm in there coloring mandalas doing spider-man puzzles and whatnot and on the very last day,

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they're like, okay, there's going to be three women with you tonight, watching in garden, or whatever they do,

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the counselors, and it's just me and this whole facility, at least where I see, and I'm like, all right,

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I go to bed, and I wake up at six in the morning, they confused me with names, so there was like two, two ladies had the same name, and I was supposed to meet with one of them in that morning,

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and they, they're acting like they don't know who I'm talking about, and there's this kid named Jamar.

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I walk into this place.

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I wasn't freaking out, but I was like, well, y'all told me I was supposed to meet with this person, blah, blah, blah.

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I'm not freaking out, but I'm kind of anxious, right?

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This kid just cold cocks, punches me in the mouth, like as hard as he can, like a right hook.

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And I'm just looking at him like this, and the Charles Bronson in me wants to like act like I was

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so tough but no I walked back I backed up from him

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and I kept feeling like this place was testing me like the only way I could stay here is

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if I did something wrong right or if I

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if I fought back or I freaked out so I walked back

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and I just let it be and they took him off somewhere

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and that day they kept asking me if I want to press charges on him,

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and I didn't, and this is part of the beauty of Christianity,

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is truly understanding forgiveness, so in my heart,

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I saw that how, I saw how my little mini freak out of confusion of people's names went into,

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or could have affected him, so they kept, they asked me like three times, a sheriff even came in at one point, and was like are you sure son you don't want to press charges

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and I was just like no I mean I saw in

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his heart goodness I mean he was just it was like he did

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that out of fear and like I know I believe in judgment

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and all that

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but they were just kind of acting weird towards me after

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I didn't press charges there kept telling me I'm too nice they kept saying like I wouldn't do

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that you need punishment for your actions, but I just went off a three,

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a week-long research bender to the point where I convinced myself I was the Messiah, and I want nothing close,

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I didn't want anything close to having to judge anybody for anything, I just wanted to get better, so that was that whole fiasco in a basket,

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and I got out of there, I spent about a week over there near Austin, hanging out, just resting my mind trying to get better

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and I feel back to myself for the most part I

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still have this this is the weirdest thing is I have this sensitivity towards things whether it be movies or books

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or art in general I just feel really sensitive towards it

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all still like my mind is still kind of fresh

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or like the wound is still kind of fresh

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so I don't know if I'll be back I'm not going to be back on my daily videos, I don't believe. Who knows?

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Maybe I will, maybe I won't.

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But I just wanted to get on here and just rant and give like a little brief synopsis on what all happened.

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I convinced myself that my 12 friends that I grew up with were like my 12 disciples.

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Just out there stuff.

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This is the most ironic thing of all.

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all of my research was based around how this new age spirituality,

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that whole trend, it was based around how that's half of the pie, how these people, you see hippies that, I don't know, I fit the bill,

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you see hippies that stop short with drugs, whether it be acid or whatever,

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and they get into this new age stuff that they're God of non-duality and all of this.

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And I thought it was so silly because I saw the Trinity.

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I saw grand liturgies and the architecture of these buildings that people created with the domes underneath just all of it.

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There's so much stuff to delve into in the future.

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But I saw all these great things that made Christianity so beautiful.

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I felt the Holy Spirit.

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I fully understood the Father, the Son.

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I understood how the Son is two parts, and it just spiraled from there.

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I got into platonic solids.

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I got into dimensions.

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I was talking about religion as dimensions, how you have the first dimension,

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which is like antiquity of people believing in ancestry and passing on their memory.

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and then you get into Judaism which is monotheistic direct relation to God then you have Christianity which is more like

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it's kind of like the duality of the sun

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and then you have after that Islam

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which is more the simple version of just very complicated I really threw myself for a loop there

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and I guess if anything I can say is a lesson in this video

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just be careful about your passion because it can become a double-edged sword.

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You...

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That's the best way to put it.

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Your passion can be a double-edged sword.

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On one hand, you feel like you're chopping through the weeds of really getting to truth and really understanding things.

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And don't get me wrong.

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Your boy has not become a pacifist.

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Your boy has not become a hippie.

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I still hold a lot of my views.

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I still remember a lot of the things that I was going at with the podcast.

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I just realized how that double-edged sword, as you chop those weeds back, you can rubber band off something and hit yourself in the face with the sword, if you will, metaphorically speaking.

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You can absolutely forget about your resources, forget about your family, forget about what's truly been given to you as a blessing.

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And you're trading all of that for what exactly? For knowledge?

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Well, I would choose my family over knowledge every single day.

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So from here on out, I guess with this channel, I really want to seek wisdom over knowledge, if you will.

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And I know that's kind of an oxymoron to say, but wisdom is things that have always been.

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Knowledge is you trying to come over, like there's a reason why ancient texts are so read and so revered.

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And timelessly, forever, expanded upon,

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you know, I mean, these books have been around for thousands of years and there's a reason.

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And my distinction between knowledge and that is knowledge is the Protestants,

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how they have 50,000 different denominations getting into these texts and creating this whole new thing based off of these things.

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Look, there's things in these churches

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that have been there for thousands of years they don't use any deviation from the original text for a reason,

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because you go so deep down these rabbit holes of meaning and all of this, you drive yourself crazy, and I didn't even have any drugs,

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no acid, no molly, no any of this stuff, it was purely, I smoked a little cannabis here and there,

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little, little Afghan kush, but it was, I'll dive deeper into these things in the future,

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But it was truly a lesson.

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And who knows, maybe this was a good thing because I'm a lot more sensitive to art.

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And I really appreciate the deeper meanings and things a lot more.

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So that's the video.

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I'll dive deeper in this in the future.

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That's what I've been going through.

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Just want to be transparent.

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I talk about my autoimmune disorder.

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I talk about all these things.

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Because the only way truly to be yourself is to not be afraid to talk about the things

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that you truly deal with.

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that are unique to you.

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And I don't think this is entirely unique to me, which is why I've kind of spun it into a lesson.

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But just a brief warning.

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Your boy almost lost his mind from too much research.

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Value the things that you truly can identify, like your family, your friends.

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It's the holidays.

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Put the phone down and just listen.

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Listen to the stories of your relatives.

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Listen to your uncle's stories, your grandpa's stories, and truly appreciate them and appreciate the time you have with these people.

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Because I gave all of that up briefly for something that drove me insane.

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So anyway, boys, Christ is King, and have a good one.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

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