This week we go deep in part two of my epic four-hour conversation with documentarian and gonzo journalist Charles Shaw – one of this show’s most requested return guests.In part one, Charles laid out the map of the problem: a world in crisis, an age of epidemic trauma and addiction. In this episode, we get into his self-experimentation with sleep deprivation to understand the hallucinatory reality of America’s homeless, his journey of healing and recovery working with entheogens and military veterans, and how facing and embracing our darkness with humility and courage may be the only way we can prepare ourselves to make a meaningful contribution to our world. Get ready for a heady brew of grit, dark humor, grief and relief, and the luminous truth that awaits us on the other side of suffering…Support these vital conversations with a small monthly contribution:http://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldSubscribe on Apple Podcasts • Stitcher • Spotify • iHeart RadioJoin our Facebook Discussion Group––––––––––––––––Part One:https://www.patreon.com/posts/16862172Charles on Youtube & Vimeo:https://www.youtube.com/user/UnheardVoicesArchivehttps://vimeo.com/nomadcinema“Meeting The Self You Aren’t,” excerpts from my talks with Charles on the 2010 Light & Shadow Tour:https://evolution.bandcamp.com/album/meeting-the-self-you-arentIn October and November 2010, I traveled to thirty cities across the United States with journalist and documentary film-maker Charles Shaw on what we called "The Light & Shadow Tour." Half our time was spent filming interviews for his documentary about the War on Drugs and prison industrial complex; half our time was spent engaging audiences in deep discussion on the role of what psychologists call "the shadow" in personal and cultural transformation. The shadow is the part of ourselves so profoundly disowned that it shows up not as a quality of the self, but a trait of other people - not a choice that we are making, but a fate that imposes itself upon us. And to whatever degree we continue to refuse acknowledgment of our shadows, we remain the desperate victims of life instead of its joyous collaborators. It isn't easy to write a new story of the self - and to constantly re-write that story, when new truths come to us in the form of disarming companions, rude awakenings, and other surprises. But it is the work set out before us, if we are to live as whole people and give the most of ourselves to the birthing of a new and better world.––––––––––––––––IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:- How seeking validation for his work made him miserable, but he moved through the crisis and the victimhood into a new sense of completeness;- How service to other people in the trauma and addiction healing process as an intake and integration facilitator at ibogaine clinics accelerated his own healing;- The puzzle of figuring out how to use psychedelics as part of the healing process for people with diagnosed mental disorders, for whom the action of psychedelics is still poorly understood;- The homelessness and drug addiction situation in San Francisco, a city in crisis and an “open-air asylum”;- How he took a personal journey into the insanity and delusional states of America’s growing homeless population through a gonzo journalist’s approach of firsthand speed use and sleep deprivation (up to nine days at a time, under clinical supervision);- What he learned from three years of intense work with entheogens about the experience of death and the emotional process of moving through epochal transitions;- Hanging out with the “shadow people,” the characteristic hallucinations that externalize our own repressed internal voices when we start to lose our minds;- Our resistance to treatment and medicine, because keeping things the way they are is easier, because healing is an ordeal that challenges our identities;- Getting to the heart of the inquiry of “Why am I doing what I’m doing, here?” and “What do I WANT?”- What it is to lose touch with the young