🌟 Bridging Spirituality and Science with Crystal Cassidy 🌟

[00:00:30] Jay: By the way, I have always been a legit fan of your hairstyle, since I was a kid, I always thought the girls that had the undercut were like the coolest girls that ever walked, like they intimidated me a little bit because they had that extra boldness to them.
[00:00:53] Crystal Cassidy: that is true. Yeah, I've got a little bit of that.
[00:00:56] Jay: I believe
[00:00:57] Crystal Cassidy: me.
[00:00:59] Jay: I can see it from here. Welcome to the Tragedy Academy show, created to bridge societal divides in a judgment-free zone using candor and humor. My name is Jay. Today, you heard Crystal Cassidy, CEO and founder of SoulPod mobile app for spiritual wellness. Biotech innovator with two decades in pharmaceuticals, Reiki breathwork meditation guide.
[00:01:20] Jay: You got quite the resume. How are you doing today, Crystal?
[00:01:23] Crystal Cassidy: I'm doing so, so well. Happy to be here with you, Jay.
[00:01:27] Jay: I'm super excited to [00:01:30] have you. I like you when you find people on your path who have a marriage of two different sides of the coin. It's very rare because a lot of people can be pulled in by the knowledge of the other, get ego attached to it, and not allow themselves to see what the other side is as well.
[00:01:50] Jay: Thank you. In my mind, I've always thought spirituality and science were simply two different descriptions of the same existence.
[00:01:58] Crystal Cassidy: I totally agree. I think they're just two different languages and two different ways to understand the same thing.
[00:02:07] Jay: Absolutely. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you come from and how you got to where you are now?
[00:02:13] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah, so CEO and founder of SoulPod, like you mentioned, but I have really two sides to my coin, which is the, the science side of a degree in biochemistry. I worked in pharmaceutical development, genomic diagnostics, [00:02:30] cancer research, some really cutting edge stuff in the Bay Area here in California.
[00:02:35] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah. Yeah. And then I have the spiritual side. I studied martial arts growing up for about 15 years. I traveled internationally competing in the martial arts space. I taught for a number of years. So it was a huge, part of my life. And that's really where I picked up meditation. And that was my entry point at a young age, around 12 years old, into understanding the mind, at first.
[00:03:02] Crystal Cassidy: I think I was really Fascinated by, if I could find this spaciousness in my mind, my outer performance would be, I could find that flow, and that was very interesting to me. and then as I got older, I discovered meditation opens the
[00:03:15] Crystal Cassidy: doors
[00:03:16] Jay: That's an amazing insight for such a young age.
[00:03:20] Crystal Cassidy: yeah, I was a, I was an odd kid,
[00:03:24] Jay: No, I absolutely love it. odd kids make the coolest adults.
[00:03:28] Crystal Cassidy: I [00:03:30] agree. I agree.
[00:03:31] Crystal Cassidy: I was, that girl, I was the martial artist, and I was really fascinated with the mind pretty young, but then discovered that meditation, yes, it helps you with mindfulness and focus and finding flow, but there's a whole nother realm of consciousness that opens up and that's what I started to get into as I got older.
[00:03:55] Jay: Meditation practice has been, bastardized here in the Western world, right? what it's so ultimately used for. I like to think that the anxiety, depression and small ins and outs of daily life can get soothed by meditation, but that's really just scratching the surface.
[00:04:22] Jay: understanding of reality as a whole comes from within. you live from the [00:04:30] inside out, not the outside in
[00:04:31] Jay: People just don't realize it. they live reversed in their mind. And once you find that you have a practice where you can be with self alone and look at the bigger picture, you really start to see concepts of time, concepts of characters and willingness to participate and weird, just idiosyncrasies in everything around you, starts to open up.
[00:04:59] Jay: it's a really fun process. it can also be terrifying too.
[00:05:04] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah, I like that you mentioned that. There, it's a very, I think there's many different entry points into meditation. I kind of honor all of the different ways people may get into it. but you're totally right. It's, you quickly discover that. The more aligned you are internally, the more you have that relationship with your, you can [00:05:30] call it your inner being, your highest self, source, God, whatever you want to call it.
[00:05:34] Crystal Cassidy: But the more you develop that relationship, it's interesting in that surrender, in that relationship to the inner self. Your outer world starts to change too, and you realize okay, maybe it's not the pushing and the, hustle, which in Western world is, definitely, more highly valued than the inner work and creating from a place of centeredness rather than from a place of stress and
[00:06:02] Crystal Cassidy: forcing. and that, that takes some practice to find that trust within yourself. but yeah, there's also, like you said, there's, it's beautiful, it's glorious, and then it's also terrifying, like this, the spiritual
[00:06:18] Crystal Cassidy: journey.
[00:06:19] Jay: very that holds the tapestry of your mind and unravels it. Sometimes it's fast. Sometimes it's slow. And [00:06:30] to put yourself in the face of that is take strength in my mind, right? Because you're challenging the status quo. Nobody wants you to look inside. They want you to look outside because that keeps you consuming.
[00:06:44] Crystal Cassidy: Oh,
[00:06:44] Jay: So just go against the status quo and look in really opens up a lot of doors from inside. I like to imagine myself when I meditate as well, started about six years ago, and it just became a fundamental aspect of my entire mental health, my life, the way I pursue things. And for me, I don't have the ability to visualize, which I know seems odd to a lot of people.
[00:07:13] Jay: but more recently they've come up with the explanation for or the fact that there is a phenomenon It's called aphantasia I lack a mind's eye, right? for [00:07:30] me, I always had a lot of trouble with, Hey, imagine you're on a beach and there's a palm tree and blah blah blah. And I'm like, sure.
[00:07:40] Jay: I thought everybody was just hypothetically coming up with some weird thing. thought, but I didn't know that you guys had like a movie theater in there that you were sitting back reclining and watching with popcorn. So I just thought my entire life I didn't realize and I read this article on an architect that lost his mind's eye under anesthetic because of a routine surgery, woke up and was no longer able to see all of the things he could see and it crippled him, obviously, but.
[00:08:09] Jay: For people that do have it, I think that it opens a different door into meditation because I couldn't see, but I found myself in a room of feeling.
[00:08:22] Crystal Cassidy: Yes.
[00:08:23] Jay: for me, meditation was allowing myself not to grab a hold to [00:08:30] any of the feelings in the surrounding circle. And existing with them at the same time. Like I had to imagine that right and just sit in it and let it go past me I like to say have lunch with my lion
[00:08:46] Crystal Cassidy: I love that. Yeah. Absolutely. I think there's a difference between visualization and sensing, which I think is what you're talking about. It's that experience of feeling, rather than visualizing in the mind's eye. So with students, I oftentimes will play with different levers to connect.
[00:09:09] Crystal Cassidy: And one of them is visualization for sure, but one of them is also sensing. Can you sense the space at the very base of your spine? and that's the feeling, that's the connection, and it's, but it's also helping you can you sense the space around your spine, outside of your body, like that ability to sense and connect and explore [00:09:30] with your consciousness in that way is, just as powerful, I think, as visualization.
[00:09:36] Crystal Cassidy: But yeah, you also talk about the courage that it takes. And I think that's. underappreciated and not talked about as, as much in the spiritual development circles, which is that you'll come up against yourself. You'll come up against parts of yourself that you didn't even know existed, that you're maybe a little bit surprised by. I did a four hour meditation once, and my body was fighting me in ways that I didn't expect. I felt like I was having a heart attack. there's the physical, difficulty you have to work through. There's the mental, obviously the thoughts, which, Many of us are familiar with, there's the emotions.
[00:10:16] Crystal Cassidy: So it requires a degree of, intention and courage to move through that. And it's, it is challenging at times, but so
[00:10:28] Crystal Cassidy: worth on other side [00:10:30] of
[00:10:30] Jay: orange with your worst fears
[00:10:33] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:36] Jay: You just have to take it in with your eyes wide open until you just don't care anymore and you're like, okay Let's move on desensitization if you will
[00:10:46] Crystal Cassidy: Yep, absolutely.
[00:10:48] Jay: gonna happen
[00:10:51] Crystal Cassidy: You're safe. Ultimately, you're safe. Yeah.
[00:10:55] Jay: Exactly Someone like yourself has two years in the pharmaceutical industry, working in genetics, studying the human genome, DNA, getting to see the art and the very building blocks that create us while walking a spiritual path. I would like to understand, or maybe you can share with us, what it looks like to have almost Two paths next to each other where [00:11:30] you step on each stone to confirm itself.
[00:11:33] Jay: And I wonder what it would be like to, because I know me, I'm skeptical. I'm the inner skeptic before I was spiritual in any way, shape or form. So I have to check blocks and nobody can tell me what I'm going to find out. I absolutely despise that. I won't believe what I figure out at the end because you painted it.
[00:11:54] Jay: it
[00:11:56] Jay: way. So
[00:11:57] Crystal Cassidy: No, that makes, sense.
[00:11:59] Jay: thinking you may have a mind similar to that Because in order to stay on both sides of the path, you have to reconcile things Can you tell me what that's like looking at, chakras, kundalini energy and then looking at a double helix Right in the is not something that most people do in their entire life it creates a very unique lens with which to view reality and life through, and I want to get to the root of that and see what it is [00:12:30] that you saw. What are the correlations?
[00:12:32] Crystal Cassidy: That's such a cool way to frame it. There's a, few things there. I think on the science side, the more you work in science and biochemistry and genomics, there's a lot that we know. There's a lot that we have discovered. Thank you But you also, as you get deeper and deeper into something, and I think this is the same for spirituality, you will start to realize how much you don't know.
[00:13:03] Crystal Cassidy: And you get further and you're like, there's so much here. The way that our bodies operate, we're still on the precipice of, a lot of that from neuroscience to. the, our foundational genomics to our endocrine system, our nervous system, like it's, there's so much that we're still discovering and will be discovering for a while.[00:13:30]
[00:13:30] Crystal Cassidy: And so for me, and this is the same way that I think about spirituality, that means that there's so much possibility. So for me, both on the science side and on the spirituality side, I really stay connected to the awesome, truly awe inspiring, discovery and exploration that requires curiosity, both on the science side and how we explore, how is this gene, how does it work?
[00:13:58] Crystal Cassidy: What is it influenced by? and in spirituality, it's all for me been first person experience. I had a Kundalini awakening and I didn't know what Kundalini was. I didn't really have a connection with my chakra system until it happened. And now I have a direct experience, and in science we know direct experience or observation is a data point.
[00:14:23] Crystal Cassidy: And so you start to collect these, data points in your spiritual journey that you can then [00:14:30] replicate that experience. You can see what influences activating your kundalini or not. So every day in my practice, I still view it on the spiritual side as being. Explorative, and I view myself as a spiritual scientist.
[00:14:47] Crystal Cassidy: I'm testing things, I'm seeing, what influences what, and that's the same thing that we do in science.
[00:14:55] Jay: I think that's beautifully explained. the word kundalini, confuses a lot of people. It has, like, All of these memes and now TikToks that'll spin by that say like all of these if you do this then you will receive this and I don't know if you don't forward it's gonna like chain mail and then you'll have
[00:15:19] Crystal Cassidy: Oh, I know, yeah.
[00:15:22] Jay: and i'm only familiar with that word for one reason and one reason only [00:15:30] because I had to go look up what the hell had happened to me.
[00:15:33] Jay: I don't even, I've never talked about this on the show, ever, talked about it because when I started meditating, I had left the corporate world. And I was on my knees, I feel like in order to plant a tree and to grow, you have to be on your knees, it's just a requirement, you have to shed the old in order to grow something new, and for me, it was meditation, it was, going to the gym, and then meditation combined, and when I say meditation, I went down the rabbit hole, I've done the four hours, I've done the, Lock yourself in the darkest room possible with zero light entry And stay there with your eyes open and a deprivation scenario You know just because I needed to know What meditation was where is this go?
[00:16:28] Jay: But [00:16:30] initially what had happened to me and I can't believe i'm talking about this on the show, right?
[00:16:33] Crystal Cassidy: Oh, I'm so excited.
[00:16:35] Jay: meditated for probably
[00:16:37] Jay: You Eight
[00:16:39] Jay: Eight months close to a year at that point and I was starting to feel movements
[00:16:50] Crystal Cassidy: hmm.
[00:16:50] Jay: inside of me. And I didn't like it. I basically jumped up, ran inside the house and thought my Southern Baptist grandfather was right about everything I ever believed.
[00:17:01] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah.
[00:17:02] Jay: struck me. That's why I say it's terrifying. Because if you do put in the time, there's going to be a threshold that you have to cross, and it's going to require you to believe or have a certain amount of faith and what is going on around you. And I firmly believe you cannot be led through it.
[00:17:22] Jay: That it's got to be yours to trip over when it happens. And I think anybody's capable of it. And I don't know what the F it [00:17:30] means. All I knew is at the time was initially, I just started having a lot of movement throughout my body. Hands would start moving. I would start circular moving. And I was like, Oh my god, it's the Antichrist or whatever in my mind.
[00:17:42] Jay: I'm like, I have the serpent, you know That's the first thing I'm thinking because it was demonized obviously, Southern Baptist kid has heard everything about the serpent, right? Yet. It's on the medical staff, which that really blows my mind, right?
[00:17:57] Crystal Cassidy: And, I know.
[00:17:58] Jay: imagine that right? We don't like what's in front of us and we don't even like that We give ourselves clues That said, I sat there We do I decided to push through
[00:18:11] Jay: it, it,
[00:18:14] Jay: with the practice and I decided to continue to sit down. And I think I mentioned this in the last episode meditation is where I found the word faith.
[00:18:21] Jay: right? I didn't believe anybody that ever told me I have faith in whatever.
[00:18:26] Jay: And I'm like, ah, bullshit.
[00:18:28] Jay: I'm like, I can see in your eyes. [00:18:30] You don't even know. what the hell you're talking about. And you're just saying this word so that you think you can slip through some kind of pearly gates later or whatever weirdness you're trying to sell me. right?
[00:18:39] Jay: That's the
[00:18:39] Jay: way I'm interpreting it.
[00:18:41] Jay: But faith for me was the first time I used my breath as an actual metronome and I didn't breathe for myself.
[00:18:49] Crystal Cassidy: Mm.
[00:18:50] Jay: The moment that I didn't. arrogantly breathe, which is what most of us will do. If you're told to watch your breath initially, you will take it over.
[00:19:05] Jay: that we do that. It's weird that we say, catch your breath.
[00:19:08] Jay: Like what the hell else were you going to do? That's it. for me, it was. A holding of the breath
[00:19:17] Jay: for about 30 seconds and a release and a natural inhale and then let it take over
[00:19:23] Jay: And then actually watch it and then it occurred to me. I do have faith I have [00:19:30] faith in the return of breath.
[00:19:34] Crystal Cassidy: Beautiful.
[00:19:35] Jay: It allowed me to start a foundation for what will be what it is, but about Kundalini, for me, after meditation, I was out walking my dog and getting ready to go to the gym. And the only way I can describe this situation was one second. I didn't know something the second after I knew something completely different.
[00:20:00] Jay: And I knew what was true if that makes sense and i'm
[00:20:04] Jay: not saying like some kind of genius download or whatever But it was like somebody grabbed the curtain and ripped it open and allowed me to see behind it for a second And come back out and then realize The words that I could put on it at the time were everybody is mentally ill,
[00:20:23] Jay: right?
[00:20:24] Jay: Like humanity. And then I
[00:20:25] Jay: was like, no, it's weirder than that. Everybody [00:20:30] is playing a pseudo game of make believe.
[00:20:35] Jay: We have perpetuated It over time. This is why I like your duality in that I believe that we suffer from a genetic And hereditary insanity, the further we've gotten from who we really are.
[00:20:51] Jay: it's A
[00:20:51] Jay: combined
[00:20:53] Crystal Cassidy: A forgetfulness. Yeah.
[00:20:55] Jay: It is a willingness to forget
[00:20:59] Jay: a willingness to forget. And I'm sorry, I jumped on that. I just never talked about it before, but it
[00:21:04] Jay: changed my perspective on everything. Allowed me to forgive, allowed me to forget, allowed me to just walk through things and go, it's not your fault.
[00:21:13] Crystal Cassidy: Mm.
[00:21:14] Jay: on a roller coaster, how can you be in control of the turns,
[00:21:18] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:22] Jay: Last time I checked nobody remembers where they came from.
[00:21:26] Jay: They just woke up on the ride. And if that's the case, [00:21:30] then until they know that they're on A ride, I got to give them a bye.
[00:21:35] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah. I love that. I love that analogy.
[00:21:38] Crystal Cassidy: Thank you.
[00:21:38] Crystal Cassidy: I, really appreciate you sharing that, that experience because, when we have these spiritual moments where something opens up and it moves from a belief or a philosophy or an inkling into a knowing, I find that process of moving from belief and you've brought something that was out here, unmanifest, the field, whatever you want to call it, and you brought more of that wholeness, that awakening into this dimension of being human, which in my mind is what the awakening process is all about. It's not necessarily to come out of your body, although that certainly can be a part of it.
[00:22:27] Crystal Cassidy: It's also about how much of [00:22:30] your remembering you can activate in this. time and space in, in this incarnation of being human and to your point, and I love the rollercoaster analogy. The waking up to the fact that you're even on the ride, That, I think is, a very powerful visual.
[00:22:53] Crystal Cassidy: and when you first do wake up to that, you're like, holy shit, I'm on the rollercoaster. and, And maybe there's people around me who are still asleep and that breeds so much compassion because I also think the spiritual awakening, it happens, it's an infinite onion. You never get it done.
[00:23:18] Crystal Cassidy: It's never over. If you're expanding, I think a lot of times we think enlightenment is like, oh, we've
[00:23:22] Jay: The
[00:23:23] Jay: infinite onion sounds like something I would have done to my little brother with my armpit. I'm, sorry, like [00:23:30] I can see myself holding him down giving him the infinite onion
[00:23:36] Crystal Cassidy: Don't do that at home, kids.
[00:23:39] Jay: Please do go have fun, but sorry, it's just i'm not mature at the same time as i'm, mature
[00:23:47] Crystal Cassidy: makes it
[00:23:48] Crystal Cassidy: very fun.
[00:23:53] Jay: please proceed with your beautiful explanation
[00:23:57] Crystal Cassidy: I
[00:23:57] Crystal Cassidy: just saying that with this infinite onion, that you're constantly peeling off these layers. To get to your core, your whole self. I really like to think of that as an infinite process. Because that way you don't get too tied up in where you're at on the process. everybody's going to be a different kind of,
[00:24:21] Crystal Cassidy: the
[00:24:22] Crystal Cassidy: different end of the spectrum.
[00:24:23] Crystal Cassidy: But everybody's still moving in the direction of awakening. There's this natural, I think, universal [00:24:30] pull to wholeness. And so whether it's in this lifetime or another lifetime, each one of us is going to go through that process. It's what I think is cool about meditation and spirituality is that you can do it consciously and be a willing participant.
[00:24:49] Crystal Cassidy: And that process, you can start to access, I think, so much magic and, it's a whole nother realm to start to dance with when you realize that world is, that realm is available to you.
[00:25:03] Crystal Cassidy: So
[00:25:03] Crystal Cassidy: I love the idea of being a conscious participant rather than going through it lifetime to lifetime, but it doesn't really matter ultimately either.
[00:25:15] Jay: something called a slider, and I just thought about this. Once I began to meditate, and once I began to see the disconnect between reality and people's eyes in certain moments, those that are [00:25:30] just entranced within the human experience, I found myself becoming the slider, in and out of the room, around the room, watching people consume it.
[00:25:42] Jay: From within. It's amazing. Like they'll just sit there and I was doing it to like you could have 10 people in a room. Phones are not. People are still not in the room. They're literally thinking about what happened to him last year, last week, or what's gonna happen tomorrow or whatever. Dude, these are all things that actually do not exist in any way, shape or form anymore.
[00:26:08] Jay: You're literally sitting there creating a false reality in your head, ignoring everything going on around you. Which, by the way, is a slap in the face of whatever made us, right? To not be paying attention and just looking inside, right?
[00:26:24] Crystal Cassidy: hmm. Yeah.
[00:26:25] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah Yeah
[00:26:25] Jay: that we do this. We sit in a state of [00:26:30] non awareness, like a fog.
[00:26:31] Jay: We're walking around in a fog. And I love sliding in and out now. And, I like my job is to drop clues when I have a chance to drop clues, right? Otherwise, I got nothing else to do because you're not going to convince anybody to walk a path
[00:26:49] Crystal Cassidy: right
[00:26:50] Jay: them keys to open up the lock that is the next one before the step onto it
[00:26:55] Crystal Cassidy: absolutely. Yeah. And I think, I like that idea of sliding. I think of it as, if you, I know we all have different relationships to the, symbol of the cross, but I like to think of it as the horizontal dimension. I think Eckhart Tolle talks about this. And this is like the doingness of life. This is, the past and the future.
[00:27:18] Crystal Cassidy: This is within the confines of time, which is an illusion.
[00:27:22] Jay: Correct.
[00:27:23] Crystal Cassidy: a lot of that in our minds. We're, time traveling. We're moving into our past, which is only in your imagination [00:27:30] at this point, and your future. And a lot of people are moving into their future through the vehicle of worry,
[00:27:36] Jay: Worry is preposterous. It's a Chinese philosopher said that.
[00:27:42] Crystal Cassidy: for what you don't want.
[00:27:44] Crystal Cassidy: Is, I can't remember who said that, but
[00:27:52] Jay: You're literally manifesting shit.
[00:27:55] Jay: go. Way
[00:27:57] Jay: to go. Way to order that. You're in a drive thru and you ordered what you don't want. who does that?
[00:28:05] Crystal Cassidy: a lot of us, a
[00:28:08] Jay: I do
[00:28:08] Jay: every day Like i'm
[00:28:10] Crystal Cassidy: absolutely.
[00:28:11] Jay: called life.
[00:28:12] Crystal Cassidy: Same, I'm always learning and I do try to remind myself, worry, prayer for what you don't want, and oh my gosh, how your life will change when you start to orient to your future in a way that is, of positive anticipation and creation. that's a huge, and [00:28:30] meditation gives you the vehicle to build awareness that you even have that choice.
[00:28:35] Crystal Cassidy: So I think that's a
[00:28:38] Jay: have to do with all of this?
[00:28:39] Crystal Cassidy: oh, everything, absolutely everything. It's, it starts with self love. It starts with being able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, I appreciate, and I love you.
[00:28:52] Crystal Cassidy: And
[00:28:52] Crystal Cassidy: that's whatever kind of, resistance you feel to that truth. That is where your work is, whether you have shame or guilt, which we all do.
[00:29:05] Crystal Cassidy: We all have to wade through that lower chakra or lower energy system, block, and I don't, know if I like to call them blockages, but opportunities to let more energy flow.
[00:29:17] Jay: that was your corporate side Opportunities i'd like to think about the opportunities in this With you, but you're not wrong They are opportunities
[00:29:27] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah,
[00:29:28] Crystal Cassidy: yeah
[00:29:29] Jay: thing to be able to [00:29:30] clean that particular lens and get a new view You know From what you had before, so I apologize, but the opportunity, I laugh all the time because Gary, my co host that comes on periodically.
[00:29:40] Jay: he always gets me for corporate speak. He gets mad because I say onus a lot. The onus is on you, and they're like, he's who the hell says onus?
[00:29:48] Crystal Cassidy: It sneaks in there, Onus is a good one. But yeah, I think of the energy centers, I also think of having their own consciousness. So you're working with, yes, it is all, it is you, but it's also this bridge between the physical and the nonphysical you. And so there's these, I think of them as little mini brains. And I don't know about you when you felt kundalini start to move, or if you don't like the word kundalini, think of it as.
[00:30:21] Crystal Cassidy: The gates are opening to your energy system being able to sustain more energy, [00:30:30] more power,
[00:30:30] Crystal Cassidy: more
[00:30:30] Crystal Cassidy: consciousness. It's, it, once it starts, it's never stopping. Yeah.
[00:30:35] Jay: No, it's always there at your disposal and that is for you out there to figure out because if I tried to explain that you would Probably put me in a straitjacket because the odds are against me and who understands it So i'm just going to let you know Go out there have your experience and then look at what it's like to have the faucet open from then forward and then learning how to open and close it, which is another whole battle, right?
[00:31:06] Jay: And it can be like drinking from the side of a fire hydrant. Let me tell you,
[00:31:10] Crystal Cassidy: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And as that shifts, your outer world will shift for sure because your energy is changing. And How you interact with the world is changing. I think that's what some people talk about when this happens. Their lives dramatically change, but to your point, [00:31:30] each person has a very unique experience.
[00:31:33] Crystal Cassidy: So my experience is not necessarily going to be the same as your experience or other people out there. so that's where the curiosity and the spiritual scientist concept really comes into play. It's like you're saying, go out there, meditate, see what happens, see what opens up and you'll discover it, for yourself.
[00:31:51] Jay: everybody's got like their own prize in their own cereal box and no one, no, no two people have the same prize, right? What happened to that? Like, why don't they put, a tangible prize in a cereal box anymore? That disappoints me.
[00:32:09] Crystal Cassidy: the greatest joy.
[00:32:10] Crystal Cassidy: I
[00:32:13] Jay: it tumble out into your bowl, it's like you weren't allowed to stick your hand in there first, and you couldn't go get an absurd sized bowl and eat one bowl of cereal out of a box.
[00:32:23] Crystal Cassidy: I definitely
[00:32:24] Crystal Cassidy: tried that. Yeah. I
[00:32:25] Jay: had to be civilized about it. There were rules that had to fall into your bowl, but [00:32:30] seriously, everybody's got their own prize in there.
[00:32:33] Jay: And what's cool is they're all equally valuable. They're all equally beautiful, and they're each one unique to you, just like self is, right? I think
[00:32:45] Crystal Cassidy: Absolutely.
[00:32:46] Jay: of the biggest keys to what it is that we're discussing right now is authenticity. None of this happens if you are not willing to go against the status quo.
[00:32:57] Jay: And that doesn't mean against society, that means against the masks that you've been given over the years of your life preceding that, right? Each one of those characters, each one of those different things require you to remove them one at a time and put in the effort. but the cool thing about it is the more you remove the lighter life gets right it gets so much easier to not remember Shit, that's not you
[00:33:28] Crystal Cassidy: To and surrender [00:33:30] those aspects of yourself that no longer apply. Yeah.
[00:33:33] Jay: carrying like a sack of garbage over your shoulder and complaining about the smell
[00:33:40] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah.
[00:33:41] Crystal Cassidy: and it's, such a liberating experience and I think we're talking, I think we're talking about both sides of the coin here, which is both the challenges, but also the other side of those challenges. our breakthroughs and our portals that open up that you can step through if you're ready, you don't have to. And just life gets much more interesting and much more magical and much lighter to your point, I think.
[00:34:08] Jay: really does I believe that all Science should study religion and all religions should study science,
[00:34:18] Crystal Cassidy: I 100 percent agree.
[00:34:20] Jay: I think that we would figure out that I like to use the pizza analogy when I talk about religion. I say that it's, each religion is just a different topping on [00:34:30] another slice and it's all pointed to the center at the Mesopotamia River Valley, that kind of thing.
[00:34:34] Jay: But if I were to take religion and science, I would say that religion is the ingredients and science is the brick oven, the pan, the measurement of those ingredients and all those things, but it's still a GD pot.
[00:34:47] Crystal Cassidy: Mm
[00:34:48] Crystal Cassidy: hmm.
[00:34:49] Jay: but those are the building blocks that we're studying that prove that this is why this exists when in reality, we could just sit back and watch it exist.
[00:34:57] Jay: That would be ultimately the most fun. But
[00:35:00] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah.
[00:35:01] Jay: we like hands in things and
[00:35:04] Jay: right?
[00:35:05] Jay: I got to know why? That is the question though.
[00:35:09] Crystal Cassidy: I am guilty of that for sure.
[00:35:12] Jay: That is the
[00:35:13] Crystal Cassidy: amazing things happening too in quantum physics. as many people are talking about and that intersection with the science of consciousness. it's such a fertile area right now and
[00:35:27] Jay: talk
[00:35:27] Jay: about
[00:35:28] Crystal Cassidy: let's talk about it.
[00:35:29] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah.[00:35:30]
[00:35:32] Jay: I'm excited because now I have somebody on here that really understands this. And I want to break this down because I think people are confused or they're being misled in an effort to keep them in a consumption situation, right? Versus seeing the. Advantages of such a plethora of technological advances that are proving both sides of the coin, but I'm curious where you see all of this going.
[00:36:06] Jay: What is this next step with quantum physics and the understandings behind it or AI being able to help us with analyzing data in the background and hypothesizing at Mach 1?
[00:36:20] Jay: A
[00:36:21] Crystal Cassidy: AI, from the science perspective, it's always been a big data problem. Always been a big data problem. And so [00:36:30] now we're able to look at incredible amounts of data and pull out patterns that as humans we just would not have been able to do. So I think you're going to see in the next decade, real massive.
[00:36:43] Crystal Cassidy: advancements in biotech and pharmaceuticals, and how we approach disease and diagnosis and treatment. I think it's going to be completely revolutionized, and I think personalized medicine is going to become truly personalized down to your unique, genomic signature, genetic signature. So
[00:37:04] Jay: Wow.
[00:37:04] Crystal Cassidy: exciting, and I think that's well on its way.
[00:37:08] Crystal Cassidy: when it comes to Neuroscience and the study of consciousness, and there's been this debate for a long, time, but is consciousness limited to the brain? Is consciousness the communication between neurons? And up until I would say probably the [00:37:30] last,
[00:37:31] Crystal Cassidy: even
[00:37:31] Crystal Cassidy: five years. The leading hypothesis or the leading theories were really centered around that being true.
[00:37:40] Crystal Cassidy: Consciousness is limited to the brain. But it's starting to shift in the last few years and, physicists and neuroscientists are starting to have more productive conversations around consciousness not being limited to the brain tissues and to neurons. And maybe the most recent conversations are around microtubules. which are composed of tryptophan in the brain, which create a crystallized structure that create certain vibrations and frequencies in the brain that seem to be linked to consciousness because of a study they did, of anesthesia. And anesthesia was affecting these microtubules and the quantum states within them.
[00:38:28] Crystal Cassidy: So now we know. [00:38:30] The brain can sustain quantum states in these microtubules. Previously, they thought the brain too warm, too hot, too wet to sustain quantum states. And now they're like, actually, it might be possible in these microtubules. And on top of that, these quantum states might be linked to consciousness.
[00:38:53] Crystal Cassidy: more to come on those topics, but I find that incredibly fascinating and makes a lot of
[00:39:01] Jay: I like,
[00:39:02] Crystal Cassidy: experiences, personal, experiences
[00:39:05] Jay: we got, I think we got,
[00:39:08] Crystal Cassidy: oh, did
[00:39:08] Jay: please go ahead. Sorry. We had a small delay, but please continue what you're saying.
[00:39:12] Crystal Cassidy: yeah, but it gets me very excited that, maybe consciousness is not limited to the brain, that it is. Non linear, which lines up with my personal experiences, where it doesn't seem like that could be [00:39:30] true.
[00:39:30] Jay: Yeah. I'm inclined to agree with you because once you remove time, everything kind of becomes suspended at that moment. I like to think that we're all individual fireworks, in place of everything at once. and it's just simply that we're walking around it and viewing it through a lens of different experience over and over again. we're talking about the advancement and we're talking about quantum physics and a lot of people are going to get caught up in all of those terms and the minutiae of what we were just saying.
[00:40:22] Jay: And
[00:40:22] Jay: I don't want anybody to be overwhelmed. With the key that they pick up from this episode, [00:40:30] right?
[00:40:32] Jay: what
[00:40:32] Jay: I would ask, after we've heard that we are on our way, if you could give somebody an actionable item today to help them join us moving forward, or recognizing that they're beautiful in place. What would that be?
[00:40:54] Crystal Cassidy: It would be to follow your curiosity. I think your curiosity will always lead you to the right modality, the right type of meditation, the right teacher. Whatever it is, learning to listen to that, the whispers of your curiosity and inspiration. Because if you're curious, that'll lead to inspiration and you'll sustain whatever direction you're going in. I could say more practical things like start doing [00:41:30] 20 minute meditations. There seems to be 15 to 20
[00:41:34] Jay: going to do it.
[00:41:35] Crystal Cassidy: in a day. I know, but there's a gate, gateway, a portal that opens, around, once you get past those five minute meditations, I know, but once you do,
[00:41:46] Jay: Once you get past itching,
[00:41:49] Crystal Cassidy: yeah,
[00:41:51] Jay: dude, I'm serious. Like for me, it was the longest time, like my nose itches or my eyebrows doing something or, and you think most people will get past that timeframe and they just assume that meditations are forever avoiding an itch when in reality, that shit means nothing now doesn't exist.
[00:42:08] Jay: Even in the slightest. unless, something legit bites me in the middle of it, I'm not going to care anymore. Which is super odd because initially you think meditation, oh, dude, like you're sitting there oh, my feet hurt. Oh, this is weird. Oh, I can feel my ear twitching, whatever the hell it is.
[00:42:27] Jay: And that does disappear.
[00:42:29] Crystal Cassidy: [00:42:30] It does. It absolutely does. so that can give people hope that it's not going to be this infinite itch. You will get past it.
[00:42:39] Jay: It's not, dude.
[00:42:40] Crystal Cassidy: yeah. But follow your curiosity. Have fun with it. It doesn't have to be, So serious, although we are very serious at times about our growth, also like just explore, have fun, try something, see how it feels, go to a sound healing, try something new.
[00:43:00] Crystal Cassidy: And like I said, follow your curiosity.
[00:43:02] Jay: Yeah,
[00:43:02] Jay: Throw some binaural beats in your ears. Listen to, some, really brilliant minds like totally. Or, get in there and try, the, try shamanic drumming, maybe that'll resonate with you. There's, no telling, there's so many different ways to access that part of self that, again, you start to like in the beginning, you find all [00:43:30] these doors that literally open up the same ring.
[00:43:34] Crystal Cassidy: Exactly.
[00:43:35] Jay: keep popping them open only to find out you're in the same room. It's beautiful But it's just another way to get in there. you can get through it and exercise meditation in you know any kind of love There's purest forms of love can release this kind of thing. You know right?
[00:43:56] Jay: But I think curiosity is probably nature's purest intuition,
[00:44:01] Crystal Cassidy: hmm
[00:44:02] Jay: If you think about it, a child is the most curious. They walk through without any inhibition. They haven't been told what not to look for or what to look for yet. And if you don't have yourself being tainted by other people's thoughts, you're probably gonna find what you will truly believe in.
[00:44:20] Crystal Cassidy: Yes. Agreed. You'll find your way there. Trust that.
[00:44:28] Jay: I believe it. I believe it. It's just [00:44:30] a matter of turning the lights on, and then you can see the trail in front of you, oh.
[00:44:36] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:44:39] Jay: a moment to tell people about your app because we did not talk about that yet, and I think that's very important because that's also something that people could benefit from when they start a journey like this.
[00:44:53] Jay: And can you explain how they wouldn't be alone and what this can do for them?
[00:44:58] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah,
[00:44:59] Crystal Cassidy: So really the reason I built SoulPod was for people who were on this journey, they had turned on the light of their awareness, realized, They were in this journey at all and want a little bit more structure around how to navigate it. And so SoulPod is for people who like both the woo. and a little bit of grounding in science as well.
[00:45:25] Crystal Cassidy: We have equal measures and it's, for [00:45:30] people who instead of a big catalog of practices, thousands of different things that you can do, we take you through a personalized experience and pair you on a path of spiritual immersion. So 30 day sets of practices. This is breath work, meditation, little mantra, spiritual some space to explore on your own.
[00:45:50] Crystal Cassidy: And we do this in small groups of people. So one of the reasons I built SoulPod is because it was a lonely journey for me when I was awakening. I was calling up ashrams, trying to understand what was happening to me. And there weren't a lot of people I could talk to, so that was, that's another aspect of spiritual development that we want to support in SoulPod is connecting people who are also on a similar path as you.
[00:46:20] Crystal Cassidy: And you can share all the weird, the challenging, the, blissful things in, that community. And so we're continuing to build and we're having just a [00:46:30] blast. A pod is at least three to ten people. So small groups of people who are on a similar journey as you are as far as where you're at in your spiritual development.
[00:46:42] Jay: and how do you match them?
[00:46:45] Crystal Cassidy: Secret sauce. Yeah.
[00:46:51] Jay: for the Whopper? Cause they, I already figured that out. Or not the Whopper, the Big Mac, that's Thousand Island. We all know that. What secret sauce are we
[00:46:59] Jay: talking about
[00:47:00] Crystal Cassidy: No,
[00:47:01] Jay: Island, dude.
[00:47:02] Crystal Cassidy: Thousand Island. Yeah, We, simply look at, It's Thousand Island. In the onboarding process, what, people might resonate with other people the most as far as where they're at.
[00:47:17] Jay: like a journey evaluation, if you will.
[00:47:20] Crystal Cassidy: Yeah. yeah, journey evaluation, are you working on maybe worthiness? as your top kind of focus, are you working on [00:47:30] self love as one of your focuses? Are you working on expression, on connecting to your intuition, on just feeling safe in your body and this experience, the foundations? So there's different ways that
[00:47:45] Crystal Cassidy: we can, pair users.
[00:47:47] Jay: do you find yourself pairing people at times with that are at the beginning of their journey with someone that is more seasoned or has gone further into it, just for some kind of external or additional guidance or support, if you will, or is it like.
[00:48:06] Jay: All of us are thrown into squid games, and we get to figure out who's the best in the situation.
[00:48:15] Crystal Cassidy: that's funny. No, right now, it's, a mix on how that happens. And, sometimes somebody who is, you could call it them experienced, but they are currently working more on their foundations. Like even for me, [00:48:30] I'm constantly vacillating between different things that I'm focusing on.
[00:48:34] Crystal Cassidy: so I think it ends up being a mix. but I, in the future, I think we're really interested and there being maybe SoulPod, could call them facilitators. I don't, really like expert, but like people who could really support these groups as we grow. Yeah.
[00:48:54] Jay: Nice. I think it's beautiful that you have used your time on this rock to help other people find their way. So I want to thank you for that.
[00:49:06] Jay: I like to usually end on pointing out that, we have a duty to be a lighthouse.
[00:49:11] Jay: once we discover our authenticity or our pure self, or who we are, we should stand up and be who we are as hard as we possibly can so that
[00:49:21] Jay: those around us are given the license to be themselves.
[00:49:25] Jay: And they can take their cues and create their own lighthouse and show people that it's [00:49:30] not about doing things the same. It's about having license to do things the way you were made to do it. right? Unapologetically be yourself.
[00:49:42] Jay: So
[00:49:42] Crystal Cassidy: it
[00:49:42] Jay: appreciate you for being that for lighting the way, on all those waypoints for people to see that there are opportunities out there to grow and, you're welcome back anytime.
[00:49:55] Jay: Smartest
[00:49:56] Jay: woo I've ever sat with.
[00:50:00] Crystal Cassidy: thank you.
[00:50:03] Jay: I appreciate you, so much. I see you.
[00:50:05] Jay: and, If you're, you've always got to see here,
[00:50:08] Jay: come back
[00:50:08] Crystal Cassidy: Oh, thank you. Thank you, Jay.
[00:50:10] Jay: Tell so much fun. Yeah, absolutely. It's
[00:50:13] Crystal Cassidy: been so much fun chatting with you. This was a blast. Would love to stay in touch for sure. And I
[00:50:20] Crystal Cassidy: appreciate what you're doing with your platform and really bringing this light And this permission slip to people [00:50:30] to, to explore and find their authentic self, I
[00:50:32] Crystal Cassidy: think is, very powerful right now, given where we're at as, a species.
[00:50:38] Crystal Cassidy: I do think there's an increased opportunity.
[00:50:40] Crystal Cassidy: time for this expansion that's special and I hope people take advantage of it. but you can find me, at soul pod app.com. We're on Instagram. We're on YouTube. You can find us on the iOS app store as well, and we'd love to
[00:51:02] Crystal Cassidy: support you on, your spiritual journey.
[00:51:06] Jay: Generally appreciate that. All right, everybody. Remember, be cool and keep learning.