Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
The Quantum Journey: From Blueberry Breeder to Spiritual Explorer
A cannabis breeding legend steps out from behind his iconic Blueberry strain to share a deeply philosophical journey through consciousness, quantum reality, and his battle with cancer.
Daniel John (DJ) and host Joe Grumbine explore the nature of reality through the lens of scientific paradigm shifts, drawing from Thomas Kuhn's groundbreaking work. "The Structure of Scientific Revolution" DJ reflects. "What should be the rarest thing in science is conclusion." This framework sets the stage for understanding how our most fundamental assumptions about reality can transform when we're pushed to our limits.
The conversation ventures into fascinating territory as DJ articulates his understanding of human consciousness as "points of perception" that exist beyond physical reality. Using elegant metaphors connecting the human body to cosmic structures, he illustrates how we're directly connected to the universe in ways that transcend time and space. "There is a direct connection between the tip of my finger and the center of the galaxy," he explains, offering listeners a doorway into contemplating their own interconnectedness with all existence.
When DJ shares his personal battle with aggressive squamous cell carcinoma, the philosophical becomes deeply personal. Despite being in excellent health otherwise, a growing mass on his neck forced him to confront mortality directly. His journey weaves through conventional medical approaches, cannabis oil treatments he once believed could cure any cancer, and ultimately to profound healing experiences with indigenous medicine people. The kambo (frog medicine) ceremony that "literally cracked me open" reveals how ancient practices can access healing dimensions that modern medicine might miss.
What emerges is a rare conversation that bridges scientific understanding with spiritual wisdom, offering listeners valuable perspectives on navigating life's greatest challenges. DJ's journey reminds us that when facing our darkest moments, we may discover capacities for awareness and healing we never knew we possessed.
Intro for podcast
Here is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting
Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and I have a very special guest with me today. His name is Daniel John and he goes by DJ for short. And Dan, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I am well, thanks, Joe. How about yourself? Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:I am fantastic, better than I've been in a long time.
Speaker 2:There's a buddy with me too. He had to say hi.
Speaker 1:Awesome, Awesome, Little cat there. Awesome, he's over here. I've known Dan for a little over 15 years and we met while I was in the middle of my battle with the government and being a cannabis activist and advocate and all those many years. And a lot of listeners don't even know that chapter of my life, but it's all out there. And we had a mutual friend who was supporting me while I was going through my trial and she put together this event where we were doing all these workshops and I've got this botanical garden and she thought, well, we'll have this great event. And Dan came down from, I think you were up in Oregon and stayed in my guest house for a day or two and taught a workshop there. And that's how we met and you know we've just been friends. Easy to be friends with you, so welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. And likewise I feel the same show. Well, thank you. And likewise, you know, I feel the same way it's click, nice. So you know we've, we've.
Speaker 1:You are a cannabis breeder and you know you. You are one of the OGs, if you will, and you know, for anybody who knows the cannabis world, you know that immortal strain, blueberry. This is the guy that came up with it and all of its offspring, and we sort of got to know each other with that in common. But we always talked about other things. We always talked about life. We always talked about the journey that we're on and deeper things than just this plant that was so amazing and wonderful and at the time I believed it was the most safest thing in the world. It turns out life isn't always what you think it is, and before we get started, there's a book that I came in contact with fairly recently, by a guy named Dean or John Kuhn, and it's called the Structure of Scientific Revolution. Are you familiar with it?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got a copy here, Awesome.
Speaker 1:So so we're speaking from some common ground, and one of the premises of this is that we go through life thinking things are a certain way and things are there, that things are.
Speaker 1:There are constants that we count on and science progresses along and it builds on itself. And then, every once in a while, there are constants that we count on and science progresses along and it builds on itself, and then, every once in a while, there's a paradigm shift and everything we thought was one thing turned out it was something else and everything has to change. But life doesn't work that way. It's very difficult for that to happen and even though discoveries are made and things are proven, by the time it hits mainstream it's 15, 20 years down the road, maybe, if ever, and we live in that world right now with science and medicine and the understandings of things, especially things like cancer, and it's a crazy experience that I've had to learn the hard way to turn my experience into the real paradigm, which is truth, and that's always been my quest. You know there's facts and science and all this, but there's also truth, and I've always thought maybe we can find some of these truths. What's your thoughts?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I mean science is a work in progress. Yes, right, what should be the rarest thing in science is conclusion. Right, you know, I mean it's because there are always new variables, new ways to look at things. I mean just the human body, right, it's up to now. I follow this research. Now it's 38 trillion cells Right, 38 trillion cells. What can go wrong? Right, exactly, you know, I mean it's a miracle. The body in and of itself is a miracle.
Speaker 1:Right, it's a miracle.
Speaker 2:The body in and of itself is a miracle, right, I think. Also, as far as accepting and respecting science, you have to understand its limitations. Right, and there are, you know, a lot of things that we sort of intuitively know that we can't prove through some scientific method yet. Right, right, you know shamanism, sorcery, various, various things that ancient people knew, and what the ancient people knew, that was science too. Yes, all right, you know, it's just different than this proscribed way that we chose to go about it.
Speaker 2:You have to also understand our society and the limitations in there, and that's like huge, I mean the way we're conditioned, the things we are, you know, expected to accept and that I couldn't. And I think that, for me, anyhow, how you know people, how do you come up with a blueberry and those types of things? And I have all these other pat answers, but I think that it boils down to not being distracted. Yeah, and it's the 38 trillion cells. That's their mission. They're supposed to fool us into thinking that this is it right, which, you know, it's a big part, but it's not it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, in a broader picture, you know, stepping off just a little bit here is this well, you know how do I put it the one thing that is 100% certain in the future. There's only one thing that's 100 percent certain in the future, and that's death. Right, right, and so accept that, right, and you know, it's really, it's just as much of a cause for celebration as being bored. Yeah, but us that are left behind, you know, we miss who goes on, and so it kind of adds to the distraction a bit. But when you get to that point, especially with death, where you come to accept it oh man, so many distractions, just, oh, well, that's not it. Yeah, that's, that's the basis of sorcery.
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean, it's just that ability to pay attention. That's the basis of sorcery. Yes, I mean, it's just that ability to pay attention. Our attention is the most powerful, valuable thing we own. And then where we put it in these companies, you know the social media and what they know is your clicks have a value. And you look at all the time we spend has a value and it goes, you know, beyond the material right um, so I thought it was had enough of a shovel folded no, no, that's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Recently, I had an experience where I was probably as close to death as I've ever been and I was able to direct and I was able to direct more attention to this thing than I ever have before and I experienced some things that I've never experienced before.
Speaker 1:I walked in the quantum world in a way that I didn't know was possible without assistance and as I'm getting to the other side of this, I'm watching the distractions weaken that make it more difficult to go back. But I know it's there and you know I always struggled to meditate. It was always this difficulty and I spent an hour in a sauna and box, breathing and doing all the things, and finally get a moment you know or a glimpse. And box, breathing and doing all the things, and finally get a moment you know or a glimpse, and I'm like, really, is that what I'm made of? And but I tell you what you get, faced with the darkness coming at you and you have to make some decisions. All of a sudden, all your attention can go to that place and you can decide wisely or the way you really want to, and wow, there's there. Like you said, that's where literally anything is possible in that place.
Speaker 2:And you know, as far as the darkness, that whole thing, there's a great saying by Buddhists that I employ a lot of mantra everything is as it should be, yes, and so I cannot judge, you know, good evil, that whole nine yard, I don't know. My honest answer is well, I don't know. I I have an opinion about how, how certain things should be, but I again conclusion I can't come to a conclusion about what's right, what's wrong, you know what I have come to discover in this journey.
Speaker 1:I've been on recently in this journey. I've been on recently and only with the things that I've applied it to, obviously, but everything I've applied it to seems to have this element that everything cuts both ways. It seems that there really aren't, in my experience, anything that you could say is unequivocally one thing or another, because there always seems to be a way that well, but it could, or if you did it this way, and they're always, it's just everything I mean, from oxygen to water, to anything less necessary anything less necessary.
Speaker 2:It can cut both ways, yeah, and. And then the cutting both ways is still in terms of a duality, right. So the singularity aspect of it, and this is it's, it's, it's weird, I, I, I've carried this message for a long time and I've tried to tell these stories. You know, I'll attempt here again, I'm just kind of ahead of my time. And so, basically, what I find myself to be in my meditation and for, for whatever reasons, I mean, I've had a, I've had a very odd life. I've been in a constant state of meditation since I was a very small child, and so it's, it's a little different for me. But back to the point here, what's left of me when my body is no more and it passes in my deep meditations, what I found, and the deepest journeys this is the Buddhisthist quest is the point of singularity. It's, it's a point of perception, a point of perception that all of these 38 trillion cells are interacting and sending sensory information back to it's kind of organized. I, like you know, you look at the chakras, right, each chakra is kind of another point of perception. So, point of perception, and what goes hand in hand with that is center of gravity, if we're talking about a material realm and a point in a material realm. Then there's a center of gravity right and and I there's a little, I use my own body to kind of emphasize this a little bit Well, point of perception. Realistically, I'm made up of an infinite number of points of perception. So let's take the tip of my index finger on my left hand. I know that that's the tip of my finger on my left hand, okay, and it has its identity. Now, depending on where you lob it off, there's, there's really an infinite number. It's a fluid center of gravity in there. But that center of gravity is related to that perception that that tip of my finger on the left, index, whatever, um, so then we move on from that to the whole finger same thing, but the center of gravity now is different. So is the perception now this is my whole finger right different. The the tip is part of it. But this is now something else we move on to now my hands, and same with all of these, depending on where they got lobbed off, sure, sure, where the center of gravity is, it's fluid and relatively infinite in brain fart city. So we're going to go on to my arm Same thing Center of gravity, perception, that this is my arm, the whole thing onto my body. Okay, now, my whole body has this perceptual made up of all of these, these various parts.
Speaker 2:But here's the important gig center of gravity in my body is directly related and connected to the center of gravity of planet earth, and the center of gravity of planet earth is directly and immediately connected to the center of gravity of the sun. And the center of sun, center of gravity, and it of gravity and its point of perception, whatever, is directly connected to the center of the galaxy. So, given that little spiel, there's a direct connection. Direct, this is immediate, it's not speed of light, it doesn't take time. There is a direct connection between the tip of the finger, my index finger, on my left hand, and the center of the galaxy, right. It's powerful.
Speaker 2:My terminologies lately used to be mostly castaneda, you know, I I like just the terminology that that he utilized, which a lot of this is coming from. But now, lately, that's now being dovetailed with Rick and Morty. All right, because again, this concept of timelines, it's real. There are infinite timelines in a finite space right in front of me, going on and on, and on and on. Another great book yes, I have a copy right here. This one I recommend. Kuhn was great. He kind of set the stage for it.
Speaker 2:But if you're familiar with this one, oh okay, I haven't read it, but I know of it. You know the butterfly effect. Where that came from was a guy named Lawrence, studying the weather back in 1962, had to transcribe his data, which went out to nine decimal places. All right, he wanted to save time, so he chopped it down to six decimal places, which turned out the model didn't run. Oh, no A little bit of difference, and that's where he then came up. You know we're talking about nine decimal places right right temperature, humidity.
Speaker 2:so you know 70.12345678 decimal places chopped down to six, and that very tiny little difference he said well, that's the the subtlety of a butterfly, wow, wow. Wings in Brazil can invariably affect the weather in New York City six months down the road. So there are these subtle connections of everything and this book is so. It's 1987.
Speaker 1:Wow, I'm going to have to get a copy of that and read it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they're cheap. They're out there, you know, looking at sales, I pick them up and I pass them out all over the place because it's so significant. Yeah, it's, you know, I always just the one picture that we all know the Mandelbrot set, you know, boom.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And how they go down, and they magnified and they were, you know, to get, because, again, here's that problem in science that, oh well, we need a line, there's got to be an end to small. Well, you know, according to this chaos theory, when we went down, we're talking subatomic here. What do you get? Right? It just keeps going, yeah, yeah. So the term of self-similarity and that's what the cosmos is made up of on the micro scale is little bits and pieces of itself, right, and this is for me anyhow. I'm ready to die. You know who cares Once you know this stuff, right?
Speaker 1:Oh, I couldn't agree more. When I came to that place where I had to reckon with it, I said okay, well, if this is what I need to do, this is what I need to do. And I said I think I have more to do. But I was creeping on me in a in a slow and methodical way and there wasn't like every other time, was like something happened, you know, and you you're like whoa, that was close, but that you were forced to face your distractions.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, come to terms with them and realize these are temporary. Yeah, this is. This is not a permanence. This is not who I am. This is a ride I'm taking. You know rick and morty I brought them up, uh. Uh, how familiar you are. There's an arcade game he takes morty to play called roy. Okay, the headset on morty and morty becomes his child, roy, all right, and lives his whole life. You know, he's a high school football champion, goes to war, comes back, gets married, working in a carpet store before he finally dies. That's the end of the video game. And you know to point out the distraction that this is in. So I use that as a reference point to say, ok, somewhere I'm in the chits and blitz playing DJ, right, you know. But who am I Right? That as a reference point to say, okay, somewhere I'm in the chits and blitz playing dj, right, you know. And but who am I right? Even when we go deep into that, I have to turn off the distractions yeah, thing that is dj to get to that point.
Speaker 1:So see, there is a place where we have that ability to be aware, or to make a decision, or to say a word or think a thought.
Speaker 2:Do an action Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And I think that those are the things that, again, I don't begin to understand how it all works. It's okay when people start getting philosophical on me, I'm like, well, I am just way too small for that. I'm just going to go ahead and experience what I can and leave it at that. But there is that place where we exist.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't call it a place, because a place is putting a noun to it All right.
Speaker 2:There's a point of perception. There you go. All right, I like that. And geometry and the definition of a point. And a point requires no width, breadth or depth, okay, meaning it can exist in a state of nothing, but it has a single dimension. Well, but it has properties. According to the laws of geometry, once you define a point, there is a potential for an infinite number of lines to run through that point. Okay, each one of those lines can have an infinite segment of points along it and between any two given points. On any one of those infinite lines is a potential for infinite points, for infinite points. Simply by defining a point and coming to that place, I have at my disposal the equivalent of infinity cubed, which is what is necessary to create this matrix.
Speaker 1:Right, I like it. I like it, that's, that's that's good stuff.
Speaker 2:One one step further to get you know. One of the biggest distractions we have is this whole theism that people have gotten trapped in concepts of God and spirit.
Speaker 1:All right, put names on things and personalities and all this fun stuff.
Speaker 2:But for me they're very simple, very, very simple, simple. Both god, whatever, that is, the creative force, and me, my spiritual self or point of perception. We're not nouns, we're verbs. Yeah, verb, the word being. The word being is a verb. Yeah, so I use this noun to do god's work. Right, then, then you're, you're, now what happens is I like that that as soon as we, as human beings, turn that deity into a noun yeah it's not it's right that's being what it's what we say it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know you, it could be evil, it could be the demons, the devil, but again, I don't judge, you know. Play the story. Be evil, it could be the demons, the devil, but again I don't judge, you know. Let's play the story out right. Where did the devil come from? God created the devil. Why, that being doesn't make mistakes. So here's the devil's in charge of death and the dirty work. Right, god's job, but it's not evil. What's evil is human beings. We do things that make the devil cringe. You know we are the evil ones. What actions we do or we can be very good, you know beneficent, you know Christ-like and compassionate and empathy. Have it all at our fingertips and that's our choice.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly that's where it all comes down. You know it's wild. I didn't know where our discussion was going to go to. I love that it's going to this place, because I love this place and a lot of people I could talk this way with, so it's great. Yeah, yeah, same for me.
Speaker 2:I did. You know. I'm glad because again, this is sort of my dharma yeah, I might try and do this. It it doesn't pan out as planned, people have their distractions, they take this information.
Speaker 1:It kind of sends them off on a glaze off or give you the crazy look pretty quick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but it's. I plant seeds. That's it, that's it.
Speaker 1:That's what this is all about. That's exactly why I operate on this platform because it's out there and, at any given time, anybody in the world can access it, and who knows what will happen.
Speaker 2:So I'm curious where, how? Where are you at now? I talked to Liz yesterday. What an angel. Yeah, so you had another common thread we have.
Speaker 1:Squamish cell. Yeah, so two years ago or so, I noticed I had this lump. I mean, what you're looking at now is what it was about a year and a half ago. I it started to grow. Um, I, I, it started to grow and, uh, I, I'm very strong in the head and I believe that I can heal myself and I know that my body knows what to do. So I set my body to go solve this and, um, well, it it, it missed the mark and it kept growing and at one point I'm like all right, this isn't getting any smaller. I need to go look at it. I hadn't been into a doctor in 20 years, you know, but I'm like well, I need to go have somebody look at this and see what the heck's going on.
Speaker 1:Well, prior to that, my dad passed away about eight years ago and I had the awakening that I was going to become him. He was overweight, he had diabetes, heart disease, all preventable problems and I was heading down that road. I subsequently lost 50 pounds, changed the way I live and ate and began a journey to health, and so I'm strong, I'm in my best shape, I've been in many, many years, but I got this lump sticking on my neck and it wasn't huge. Again, it was a little bigger than it is now, but not to what it became. I go to the doctor and he goes huh, you got a lump on your neck. I says, yes, I do. And he says, but looking at you and your basic blood work, he goes man, you're so healthy. He goes, it's probably not cancer because of how healthy you are. If something that size was on your neck and it was cancer, it would be choking you out, you wouldn't be able to eat and you'd be losing weight and all this stuff. So I'm like, ok. So in my mind I'm like I'll still deal with it and eventually I'll get it cut out. But I didn't have any good insurance and I had to go and get all that solved and get some insurance and and so eventually, about nine months later, I come back. It wasn't getting any better and I'm still doing, you know, fasting and diet and exercise and doing all the right stuff that's supposed to fix all the problems. And it wasn't fixing the problems.
Speaker 1:And I get a CT scan and it comes back. Well, at first I had an ultrasound. It came back that it was a solid mass, not a lick, it wasn't a cyst. And he said, well, it's probably a fatty tumor of some sort. You know, it's probably nothing to worry about, but it's gross and you should probably get it taken out. And I'm like, all right, fair enough.
Speaker 1:So I get a CT scan nine months later and it comes back possible squamous cell carcinoma. And I'm like, oh shit, I don't like the sound of that, even possible. So I go back to him and he says, look, you should get a biopsy. And of course my paradigm says don't get a biopsy because it's going to spread. And my paradigm said well, I'm going to start on my cannabis oil because I know that that solves all the cancer problems. So I've been making oil for 20 years. I started dosing myself, building up to my dose, and it's not getting any better. And so finally I did research on the biopsy and I discovered that really the only way they're going to really know what it is for sure is to take a piece of it and look at it. And so I go to this other guy and he says well, there's three kinds of biopsies. You can get a teeny little prick and it may find what you need, but you may need to get another one, or you can get a bigger prick, or I can open that thing up and take a piece out. I says you know what? Take the piece out. If you're gonna do it, do it. That was the good news. I think it gave me what I need, especially for the future.
Speaker 1:Two weeks later and this is now October 14th I get a call. He says you have squamous cell carcinoma and it's very aggressive and you need to get moving. And he referred me to a doctor. Turned out my insurance didn't cover there. They sent me over to UCI. I began this doctor journey and again, I'm still taking my oil. I figured I'm going to give it a good solid three months evaluate. I was already on a no sugar, no carbs, ketogenic diet. I was again fighting weight very strong.
Speaker 1:I go see the surgeon first and he says well, this thing's, and meanwhile it's getting bigger. It's about the size of a half an orange sticking out of my neck at this point. And um, he says the surgeon goes well, it's really too big to operate. It's wrapping around your carotid artery and there's no way an operation can get it all out. And if I leave anything behind it's going to spread. And so he says what I recommend is radiation and chemo and then we'll do a surgery. When it gets smaller, I says all right, I'll consider that.
Speaker 1:You know, right at this point, right now, you know, I mean I'm doing the supplement sour soft tea. I'm doing all the things you know. You know me, this is now my job, and so I'm researching, I'm reading pub med articles, I'm I'm going down every rabbit hole and and I'm trying things one at a time. I just like I'm growing a plant. I didn't do 10 things at a time. I tried one thing, gave it some time. Do I feel a difference? And I'm relying on my intuition at this point I'm starting to become more and more in touch with my own body, because I had to, and so I'm starting to acknowledge and understand what this thing is.
Speaker 1:And the problem with cancer is it's you. And that's very problematic for me, because I'm a son of a bitch and I'm very smart and I'm very strong and I'm very strong willed. And I'm a son of a bitch and I'm very smart and I'm very strong and I'm very strong willed and I'm very cunning and I've gotten out of a lot of jams in my life and I said, wow, I'm up against a very formidable foe here and I came to recognize that it's not even necessarily a foe, it's just very confused and it got lost and it doesn't really know what it is or what it's doing, and it's just doing what it knows. And so I stopped being angry at it and I said, well, we're just going to unconfuse you. And so in this time so I'm going to take a step back About eight years ago.
Speaker 1:About eight years ago, I began to sit with peyote and I I connected with uh, some roadmen from the northern cheyenne tribe, got a tp, been doing that for a while. Covid came along and the two roadmen I work with died of covid, or one died of covid, one died of something else. I'm sort of without, you know, the ability to connect with this medicine and it's been very good medicine for me. And right around the time of this diagnosis, we had planned me and this guy who does mushroom stuff an event at my property and we called it the Holistic Health Symposium and I thought, well, this is where we're going to build my community. I'm going to get all these different people, these practitioners, different plant medicines, and we're going to get together and we'll do an event and through this event I met this team of medicine people, salvador and Florina.
Speaker 1:And Florina is a Navajo, amazing, amazing woman. She's a big part of my life now and connected through this event turns out she also runs ceremonies. She does a total different thing. So the Northern Cheyenne Arapaho tradition is very strict, almost like the Catholic mass. You do it this way, you sing these songs, you drum this way. It's very, very precise and strict. And she does a whole different thing. It's out in the open and it's very festive and yet very powerful.
Speaker 1:So I came to, I met her. She came out to do a podcast episode and just see the property and she ended up bringing Salvador Next thing. You know she's there till nine o'clock at night, shared a meal with my wife and I. We became connected just like that. It was just one of those things. Yeah, it happens every once in a great while. I subsequently experienced combo and she served me combo for the first time and that's frog medicine and combo is a. It's a purgative medicine that you get little burns on your arm and then they put the frog poison on. This stuff is amazing. It goes through your body and scans you and finds what needs to go Hamilton.
Speaker 2:Did I recall a piece on that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, powerful. Did I recall a piece on that? Yeah, powerful, powerful. So after that she did some energy work on me, literally cracked me open. I started getting weepy just even thinking about that Crazy. But I became aware that I hadn't acknowledged my love for myself in that moment and I realized, wow, I fucked up. You know, I am okay. And so these massive breakthroughs are happening in just a breakneck speed. Quickly after I did combo, within a couple of days, I realized I need to get rid of so many things and I started getting rid of things and and and and including people relationships that were I was propping up that just didn't serve my business. I had a. I had an office in a warehouse.
Speaker 2:One sec, let me get this yeah, no, go ahead, it's all good. I just want to let them know I'm doing this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all good. Cause when he will break the line, we'll we'll cut this in two pieces.
Speaker 2:This'll be perfect All right, let me get him on here.
Speaker 1:He'll, he'll call me back later. No, this is perfect. I'm actually going to stop the recording and then I'll start it again and we'll make this the second piece.
Speaker 2:Hey, how's it going, hey, it's going. What's going on with you?
