Cory Allen is a sound-smith, meditation instructor and the host of the Astral Hustle podcast. Cory has taught thousands the practice of meditation through his guided workshops and delivers lectures on mindfulness and the expansion of consciousness.
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Every time I talk to my friend Cory Allen it’s a tastier Swiss Cake Roll™ of absurdity and profundity. Ever since he came on the show a few months back, we’ve been keeping in touch and something has blossomed. Some sort of playful ping pong of creative scheming, insight and wild degenerate goof sessions that would probably get us banned from everything for life if they ever leaked out.
I like this recipe. If I’m not laughing enough in a conversation, it’s like there’s a very important spice missing or something. I've found there's absolutely Goldilocks zone of high highfalutin idea slinging and satire and (at least as from my perspective) Cory and I wiggle right into that nook.
Musings in this mind meld -
- You don’t really have free will unless you exercise and sharpen it
- Another rap on simulation theory
- Michael’s ridiculous daemon/mason/Price is Right synchronicity
- Synchronicity
- The Buddhist parable of the arrow in modern terms
- Insufficiently melted cheese and other jaded first-world disappointments
- If you want novelty, inspiration and a juicy life, don’t expect to find it sitting around
- Visions of quantified social media burrowing into your biology and the algorithms that will map your psyche
- The phrase “third eye” is heavily overused and ambiguous. Is it really a useful term and what does it mean?
- How sound and binaural beats profoundly alter your state of consciousness
- Why it’s hugely beneficial to let someone else drive your experience regularly
Of course, none of them fully cut it. How could they? They predate the mass of data and stimulation that has become the stuff of everyday life.So we're really left with two choices- isolate ourselves in an echo chamber of like-minded thinkers and information where our philosophies won't be challenged (a tactic that seems to be more popular than ever), or we can sacrifice some sacred cows. We can actively create a more nuanced, adaptable philosophical scaffolding that's suited to the ever-intensifying blasts of information that have become the norm.This actually feeds right into the central theme of our conversation and guest, Daniele Bolelli's book, Create Your Own Religion, a task that we should all be embracing. 
I posed this question to the oracle: "Are we anything more than fancy apes? Is there a higher consciousness or purpose that we are connected to?"
I don’t even know how or why I came upon this fact, but if you google "philosophy is,” the two first suggestions are “dead” and “bullshit.” Unfortunately I couldn’t resist the carrot, so I followed through with the "philosophy is dead" search. 
Discussions about the future are almost always framed in terms of a tug of war for tomorrow between the forces of utopia and dystopia. Prognosticators love to promise us either the apocalypse or immortality, but when have things ever never been that cut and dry? For a more realistic vision, you've got to leave room for plenty of gray area (though I'd love to believe 
For the status quo to die, at some point, the subversive needs to overtake the dominant. It would be fantastic if we could topple all of society's flawed, corrupt models and power structures in one sweet swoop of rebellion, but that's not how it usually works. For systemic change to occur, you've got to play the system’s bureaucratic game. You've got to dot your T's, cross your I's and be a force for gradual seepage into the cracks of society’s ideological ivory towers (a lot less sexy than a philosophical coup d'etat, I know). 
Sometimes it’s hard sticking to that mindset. Existing in a multidisciplinary, subjective, reality-tunnel-acknowledging mind-scape isn't all agnostic bubblebaths. When shit hits the fan, or somebody passes away, it’s hard not having solid beliefs to hang your hat on. That and if someone comes up to you and says, “hey did you know Earth's molten core is actually hell and the devil really does live there?", you’ve gotta be comfortable with only being 99% sure that that person is a nut.
The forces that coerce the persistence of the bleak paradigm referred to in the quote above are numerous and complicated. So much so, that it’s worth discussing whether or not it’s even possible to shake off the shackles of culture's dominant power structures. Perhaps we should just recognize the game for what it is and play it to the best of our ability. 
His show, 
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Or, maybe a little bit of both.