Walking Your Talk In A World Built To Distract You with Doug Red Hail Pineda

Loneliness can hit hardest when you’re surrounded by people and still feel like nobody sees what you’re carrying. We slow things down with Doug Redhill Banada to ask a sharper question: what if a “spiritual path” is not mystical escapism, but the most practical way to live like a real human in a world that keeps training us to perform? 

We explore spirituality as daily behaviour, not a future trip or a past badge. Doug breaks it down into walking your talk, developing character traits like compassion, courage, honesty, humility, and integrity, and learning how to be present when your nervous system wants to run to the scroll. We also name the attention economy for what it is: a constant contest for your focus, from billboards and brands to social media and the subtle pressure to curate an identity that looks authentic but feels hollow. 

From there, we untangle religion vs spirituality. Doug explains why religion can provide helpful structure and metaphor while also becoming dogmatic enough to hijack genuine inquiry. If you’ve ever wanted to ask the big questions about meaning, purpose, death, divinity, or the unknown but didn’t know which doorway to walk through, this conversation gives language for that confusion and a way to start. 

We close with a simple “home base” to return to when life pulls you off-center: we are a spiritual being having a human experience. Doug also shares context on the Church of Psychedelics, plant medicine, psychedelics as sacrament, and the legal and protective frameworks emerging in Colorado. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who’s tired of performing, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Loneliness Behind The Persona

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Dearlessness, you know, like there is a particular kind of loneliness that comes with walking a path that no one around you seems to understand. Like you sit in the boardroom, you scroll through the feed, you show up to the dinner table, and somewhere inside you are holding something that is that's nobody's talking about.

Meet Doug And Set The Frame

SPEAKER_00 0:40

So, dear listeners, I'm your host, Abigail, and you are listening to Mind Meets Machine, a podcast where we slow down enough to ask the questions that don't have easy answers. And today I'm joined by a very lovely guest. Please welcome Doug Redhill Banada. So, welcome to the show. Nice to meet you. Thank you so much for the invite. Thank you so much for joining us, Doug. And dear listeners, like before we get into the discussion, I'll quickly love to introduce you to Doug. So, Doug, who has spent years navigating the tension between ancient wisdom and the modern systems, and who believes that walking a spiritual path in the middle of all this noise is not just possible, but it is very, very necessary. So I do not want to take much time dearlessness. Let's get started and let's have

Spirituality As Daily Human Traits

SPEAKER_00 1:22

a great discussion. So, Doug, like I think a lot of people they hear this phrase that spiritual path. Most of the time we also talk about, right? The spiritual path, and either picture something which is reserved for the monks, mountain troops, or kind of a kind of vague self-help talk, kind of. So, what do you think is the most common misconception here about what it actually seems or means to walk spiritual path today?

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Yeah, I think it's less esoteric. It is not very mysterious, it's not a mystical thing, it's not, you know, something that we have we do on the side. Walking the spiritual path is essentially the very foundation of just our human experience. Basically, it's the idea of are we walking our talk? Do we do do we say what we do and do we do what we say? Well, have we explored the human characteristics and the human behaviors and the human traits that make us a human? Yeah, have we looked into our ability for compassion and courage and empathy and sympathy and trust and honesty and humility and humbleness and integrity and all of these different things that are core components to a human behavior, our human traits, our human characteristics. Sometimes we're so driven and shaped by the outside world of what that outside world demands our attention, our family issues, our job, you know, our the people that we support, our communities. We're so drawn outside of ourselves that nowadays, any time that we have that's in the middle of all those other big responsibilities, it's spent on our phone. Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, look through. We live in the past and we live in the future. And walking a spiritual path just basically means that we're also taking time to develop ourselves on the here and in the now into that present moment, into that present moment so we can live life a little bit better, how we interact with the world a little bit better, how we how we are useful to the world a little bit better, how we're more true to ourselves. People talk about being authentic and genuine, and then you hear them speak or you see their social media posts and you realize they are neither authentic nor are they genuine. It's not that they're not good people, but we're on this big ro we we we've built all this pageantry around ourselves. We've built all of this persona and imagery around ourselves in order for us to manipulate the world to see us in a certain way. And we're setting ourselves up to create this image of ourselves versus actually just being ourselves. And the thing that separates the two is that inward journey, that spiritual path, spiritual development. Those are the things that help us really connect with who we are genuinely, authentically. And when we operate and we're we walk out in the world in that way, that's where we will have this integration of who we really are presenting to the real world. And when you come from that genuine standpoint, the world will see you in a way that's uniquely differentiated than anybody else because you are highlighting those things that make you uniquely you. And that solution that people are looking for to get the attention that they need from the outside world in today's very social media, very, you know, attention-grabbing society, that attention that we've learned that we think that we need, it'll come. And it'll come in such a greater degree than in the way that people are pretending to present themselves to the world. Because if you look at a lot of people that get that type of attention, that you really have at the very apex of who you consider genuine and authentic. They're not the most beautiful people in the world. They're not the richest people in the world. They're not, they're the most interesting people in the world. They're uniquely differentiated, and they have a something that makes them a defining difference of how they're different than anybody else. And everybody has that inside of themselves. So walking this spiritual path will accomplish a couple things. One, it will get them the attention they're looking for with no effort because they're now operating from a baseline or a center point of genuine authenticity. And the second thing they're going to get is a lowering of or a diminishing of those other things that don't work, don't really service in life, like the anxiety, the depression, the desire for something that you don't currently have, living or lamenting the issues in your past or looking forward to some sort of future of thing life is going to be better later on versus coming right into the here and present now. That's where I think that the the uh walking a spiritual path will help people in their everyday life. And I think that's where people also get when you said miscommunicated or they're they're not aligned with that. It's because they're living some sort of because they think a spiritual path is someday I'm gonna go do ayahuasca in Peru, right? Or I'm gonna go visit a bagram in India, or I'm gonna go visit this and that, right? I'm gonna go do something, and it's like always in the future, or they get their spirituality from the past. I did this one thing in the past. I went to this music festival, I went to this church, I went to this synagogue, I went to this mosque, I went to this, you know, whatever it is. They would they did something in the past to justify their present spirituality. And right now, the idea is how do we walk in a spiritual way every day? Yeah, to make it more human, to make it more accessible.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Oh, okay.

Choosing A Doorway Without Dogma

SPEAKER_00 6:42

And and like when someone first starts to sense that, well, maybe there's more to life than what they have been told, then what do you think stops them from actually stepping into that path?

SPEAKER_01 6:55

I would say not knowing where to start. Not knowing where to start is the thing that prevents people to start to begin a spiritual path. There's a difference. I think the idea is we I think we need to start categorizing ideas that are these big esoteric ideas, these big concepts that are mystical or vague in some way. What I mean by that is we're even talking about a spiritual path. A spiritual path is different than a religious path. Being religion, being religious, and being spiritual are two separate things. You can pick a religion and then practice your spirituality inside of that religion. Spirituality has a lot to do with relationships, right? It's usually the mystical part of the spirituality is, you know, the ability to like un like to study and to build a relationship and start to understand the relationships between these seemingly unrelated things, these things that are behind the great mystery, the things that are on the other side of the veil and our relationship to it. We came from there. What does that mean? How come we can't see into that? What does that mean? Right? Spiritual concepts and thinking and understandings, those that's a spiritual discussion. A religious discussion is separate. A religious discussion gives us the tools and the framework and analogies and stories and metaphors and an origin story and things to belong to and to study from, and to start to have these esoteric, vague, like spiritual, mystical, not really linear ideas to bring them into a religious, structured, you know, systems, processes, stories, understandings to relate them to to help us understand that. So religion and spirituality are two separate things. So when you ask the question, what do I think is preventing people from getting on a spiritual path? It is the confusion of what doorway do I go through? Because there's there's an endless, infinite thousands and infinite amounts of doorways to approach spirituality. And that's why people start to get into religion, because that religion creates a very system, systematized way for people to walk into a spirituality. But then their spirituality gets hijacked pretty quickly inside of a religion because that religion is demanding other things of you, demanding other things, meaning like a system of rewards and punishments, a system if you don't do we are this way, and if you don't think this way, everybody else is going to a bad place, you know, after this life. Or if you don't do this, you're gonna be ridiculed. Or if you don't do this, you're not one of us, right? Your spirituality, your humanness gets hijacked because you're not free. It's it's uh just very organized in those religions. That's why they have that word, they're dogmatic. So religions are dogmatic by nature because it's it provides a system and a process and a structure. So it's there's dogma, and then spirituality is more open-ended questions. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? What is my purpose? You know, what are the ancestors really available to me? Are there ghosts? Are there UFOs? Like, what does it where do I go when I die? Like the big questions of life, right? And so everybody's got some. You're resurrected. This is the only place you go to. There's other dimensions, there's a heaven, there's a hell. No, there's not. Yes, there is, right? It's that's where that's where I think that people get have a hard time jumping in because they don't want to get involved with that. And once they do get inside of a religion and they discover that's really what that religion has a lot to say, then they get disenfranchised and they lose, they get they lose momentum and they lose enthusiasm. So I think those are the things that keep people from getting onto a spiritual path is the staying away from something that they know there's a problem. Once they get inside of it, they kind of see that like this isn't what I was hoping for. I just wanted to ask the big questions. I wanted to go right to those. I didn't want to get caught up in I didn't want to get caught up in politics of the religion and all these other things. And then the other part is I don't know which doorway to walk through, which one? There's so many. Where do I start? And so I think that that's where it is, is like, where do we start is probably the end answer that I have to that question is that's what we need to help people is where do they start to jump in.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Exactly. It's really great, great. And like, you know, like I mean, um so I just definitely want to ask you one more thing here. It's like, I mean, I think I think that what anyone, anyone who who's just tried to live differently, they know that the hardest part is not about the beginning, but it is being with it, staying with it. The yes, walls pull you back, definitely there'll be doubts. And again, the old patterns will definitely come back for sure. So, how do you sustain a spiritual practice or maybe the way of being when everything around you is just designed to make you

Home Base For The Distracted Mind

SPEAKER_00 11:33

forget? Well said, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Everything around us literally created to manipulate our attention to make us forget ourselves so that they're at so they grab our attention so they can manipulate us into whatever they want us to do. Now it sounds nefarious, but that's just the world. You are in a very big city in this in the world. I also live in a very big city, not as big as yours, but Denver, Colorado. I live outside of Denver, big city in the world. And when you walk down the street or you ride or you drive down the road, everything you walk into a building, everything is meant to get your attention. Go here, walk there. There's the elevator, go over, here's the sign, buy this soda, buy this, buy this food, go to this restaurant, buy this electronic device, you know, join this social media channel. Like every the billboards, the the number of logos that we see on a daily basis, we it's so out of our mindset. We probably see 500 logos per day. And that's maybe an exaggeration, but I don't think it's very far off. We probably see hundreds of logos a day, but they're in our subconscious. They're just there in the background, but we see them. The your what you drink your tea from or your coffee from, or what you go to open your refrigerator to see what food there is to make dinner tonight, you know, to make supper tonight. You see ever all they are is just jars and boxes with logos on them. We drive around, we see the logos on the cars, we see the logos in everybody's shirts, we see the logos on this entire world is meant to manipulate grab our attention and manipulate it for us to do something. And so, how do we stick to a practice with all of the distraction in the world? And this, I think the question is you have to have a you have to have somewhere, you have to have a home base, you have to have a place to come back to, a central area. So, as the founder of the Church of Psychedelics, I understand that that is a very big, it's a it's almost how crazy is it, it sounds like to the outside world for somebody to create a religion, right? So when you structure something like this, you have we did it from a ver on a side note. The reason we did it is natural plant medicine psychedelics are becoming legalized in the United States, specifically in the state of Colorado. We I was part of a group that helped them get legalized. And that legalization has two routes. There was a licensing route through a department of regulatory agency, so the government is involved in the licensing of how natural plant medicine psychedelics are being coming back out of, they've broken themselves out of prohibition. They are now coming back into the hands of people to use, and so the government is involved in the management of that. In this same piece of legislation, the second piece is that there is acknowledgement of indigenous rights and religious protections. And so we went the route of indigenous rights and religious protections, and we build out our community our spiritual community under the framework in the United States of how you organize a spirit spirituality, which is under the framework of a church by the DEA, the IRS, and all these different types of government agencies. So that's where the structure came from. Now the audacity to build a church, right, has to like come from. So thank you for that allowing me to veer off just for a moment there, because it comes right back to how do you stick the landing of a sp of on your spiritual path. And that is we I set up one common phrase. It's been said for centuries in many different ways, but the way that we say it is we are a spiritual being having a human experience, and that's where we start from. So we have a starting point to whenever we get lost, whenever we get confused, we get manipulated away from the path. We come back to that one. We are a spiritual being having a human experience. And that starts to break the conversation into two conversations. What is my relationship to divinity? What is my relationship to the other side? What is my relationship to God, the creator, other other spiritual elements of source consciousness? What is my study and thinking and understanding and learning and what is in the relationship to who I am as a human? What is that? That is that the spiritual being side of things. Now the second part, we're a spiritual being, right? Having a human experience. Now we have what is my human experience? How do I walk my talk? How do I say what I say what I do and do what I say? And how do I be true to myself? How do I build an authentic, genuine core element of me and my humanness, my humanity? We talk about personal development. There's also human development. What is my human development? And we have to untangle all of those characters and traits and character and behaviors that just all jumbled up make us this human. And we start to break those apart and we have individual individual discussions about courage and bravery and humility and honesty. And once we break these characteristics and behaviors down in categories and we go deep on each one, when they come back together, they're more solid. They're not just jumbled up and locked up and log jammed into biases and prejudices and and and you know ways of seeing I'm different than you and you're different than me, and my religion says this and your religion says that. It brings it all together so we can break it apart, have easily understand discussions with full clarity, easy to understand where each other's coming from because we're talking about individual pieces. Because if you want to talk integrity, let's talk integrity. If you want to talk honesty, let's talk honesty. If you want to talk humility, if you want to talk humbleness, courage, bravery, all these things, right? We have to break them apart. Let's have individual discussions versus everything is just yours, I'm locked up, you're locked up, and let's have a discussion.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Versus let's have a discussion, right? So I think that's how we have we go back to sticking to a spiritual practice and not getting off is having one place to come back to. And so my discussions will always come from we are a spiritual being having a human experience, and from there I can answer, you know, or talk or discuss or think about what you have to say to me through though that lens. That's how I think that we can start.

Newsletter Invite And Final Reflection

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Exactly. Lovely.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

So if listeners want to connect with you, how they can yes, thank you for asking, and thank you for your amazing deep questions. They're not just shallow. I think that these type of questions are so necessary and needed for people in today because we are in a log jam. You know, we are jammed up with so many things. Things are stuck. It's like a piece of paper stuck inside of a printer. You know, when you take it, it rips apart and it's never, you're never gonna get that paper that's uncrinkled. You're never gonna get it out flat and perfect again. It's gonna rip, tear, it's gonna re wrinkle. And I think that that's a lot of what's happening in the world today. We don't give each other enough time. We don't give each other the the respect and the honor of our humanness in order to have these types of deep questions. So thank you for asking. And again, thank you for inviting me. The best way to remain connected is through just our our newsletter. Our newsletter goes out once per week and it has the most current information of everything that we're doing, the type of discussions that you and I are having right now, the blog articles that I personally write, our videos, our teachings, classes, workshops, courses. So, and that can be found at the churchofpsychedelics.com forward slash newsletter. Or if you just simply go to the church of psychedelics.com, just about on every page is a way to sign up for that newsletter. And then once you do, you'll have the ability to see what we're talking about for how do you use psychedelics as sacrament in a safe and protective and legal way. And uh anyway, you can follow that discussion there. So again, thank you so much for having me, and I appreciate it. And hopefully we'll see you guys and uh we'll do this again sometime.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Amazing. Thank you so much, Doug, for sharing your perspectives, details, everything. So, dear listeners, but I always put all the links, details, everything into the show notes for your easy reference. And thank you so much for being here, everyone. And I'll just say this it is all about learning. It is all about learning to live the questions with a little more grace. So if something in today's conversation just starts something in you, then don't rush past it. Just be with it, let it breathe. And maybe, just maybe like that's where the path begins, right? So, with this is the host of weekend. This is Mind Meets Machine. Until next time, stay curious, stay kind, and keep listening. Thank you so much.