Deathly Ill to Vitally Alive with James Guldan

In this Episode

• [02:38]James Gulden describes suffering from a range of symptoms after getting a divorce, including a goiter, difficulty breathing, and a lung collapse.
• [14:28]James recalls when he found a solution through a holistic approach and started getting completely functional.
• [18:23]Stephan and James discuss Lyme disease, with James sharing personal experiences and resources for healing.
• [23:15]James describes how he realized the value of life and the importance of kindness to oneself.
• [38:23]James emphasizes the value of vulnerability in relationships, citing suffering as a catalyst for joy and a learning journey.
• [45:05]James elaborates on the significance of finding the right medical professional to help with your illness.
• [49:34]James offers practical advice and resources for listeners struggling with similar issues.

Jump to Links and Resources

James, it’s so great to have you on the show.

It’s great to be here. Thank you so much, man.

We know each other through the Genius Network. I love Joe Polish and what he’s done. I’ve had him on my other podcast, Marketing Speak and on this podcast, Get Yourself Optimized, to talk about his new book. I’ve met many amazing people, such as yourself, through Joe.

Yeah, shout out to Joe’s Genius Network. Let’s plug that in there for a second.

Let’s start talking about how you got to where you are now. There was some hero’s journey that you went through. I’d love to hear what that is.

Some would call it. Do you want me to start with what happened and then go to the transformation?

I’d like that. Please walk us through the story.

Suffering is a catalyst for joy. The amount of suffering you can handle expands your capacity for joy. Click To Tweet

I was blessed with about 70 ER-related symptoms over three years. It started when I got a divorce. I thought a lot of the stress of getting a divorce was causing me some health issues. I’m sure that was part of it. My throat would close up. They call it a goiter in my throat. It would close up about once a day, which was really scary.

It happens for about 60 seconds a day, which doesn’t seem like a lot. But it’s very intimidating and scary when you can’t breathe, especially when you don’t know what’s happening. I started to go to the doctor. Everybody said I was fine. They said, “Oh, we have no idea what it is.” I started getting really sick, like a flu that wouldn’t disappear.

I started going to a couple more doctors. Everybody said, “Hey, we have no idea what you have.” I had a lung collapse. I went to the ER, and that was the first time they had done an x-ray of my body. My lungs lit up like a Christmas tree. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a doctor and you get the test. As you leave, they call you, saying, “Oh, no, we need you to come back.”

It’s a very scary moment when you feel the urgency in their voice. You hear it from them: “Oh, no, we can’t schedule an appointment next week. You need to come back in.” I had a bunch of nodules in my lung that had created holes. They found out that it was caused by something locally called valley fever, but I didn’t have any typical symptoms.

They tried to treat me, and while they were treating me for valley fever, I would get lightning bolts that would go down my body. The left side of my body would go numb, and I started to get vertigo. I couldn’t really drive anymore. It’s very disabling not to be able to walk in function. Plus, when you’re sick for an extended period of time—I don’t know a lot of people who’ve been sick for longer than a couple of months—it’s hard to explain, but it’s really tough. You end up really freaking out. 

I think it’s a tough place to be because your limbic system and your amygdala just light up, and the victim mindset comes very quickly when you’re in massive pain and suffering. From there, I started seeing more specialists. Once I had vertigo, I started to take it more seriously.

At that point, for the next year and a half, I would see a specialist or two specialists a week. The majority of my time was spent scheduling appointments, doing a lot of just the robustness of the sauna in the morning, meditation, and just trying to map the mental health side of the physical symptoms out. But, like most entrepreneurs, I wanted to solve the problem. That ultimately led me to the biggest problem: it didn’t need to be solved; it needed to be enveloped.

From there, I had quite a few more symptoms. I had my legs go out. One of the medications they gave me was-I don’t remember what it was called-basically would hit a tendon. My tendon exploded in my right leg, and then I had an L5 that got seriously disrupted and had some issues. I lost my ability to walk for a total of about seven or eight months, which is how you get to see the best of humanity when you are fully disabled. You get to see how people help. Everybody’s holding the door for you. 

Sometimes, health issues don’t need to be solved; they need to be enveloped.

It was a cool experience but limiting, especially because I didn’t have my eyesight with the vertigo. Vertigo eventually went away, but that’s your brain’s way of dealing with it. Once I started to get major failure points, I had some major liver issues with the medications they were giving me for valley fever, and it wasn’t working, so they decided to double the dose. Instead of looking into it further, they decided to continually double the dose until I was urinating blood.

My eyes would turn yellow. The doctor would be like, “Oh, how yellow?” You’re like, “Well, I’m calling you. It’s pretty yellow.” I had renal failure, then major thyroid issues, and then the brain edema. I would get brain fog that lasted for three years. I don’t know if anybody’s had brain fog, but it’s like you’re hungover every day. You get to experience life in a different filter. There’s a lot of pain and suffering involved in massive brain fog.

I was saying that I hated my bio because it says more about the business angle than it does about the real reason we’re here and the life angle. I had to go three years without working in my business. I was completely disabled and couldn’t work in the business. That caused a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety.

I eventually got to the point where I sought the best specialists in the world to understand what was happening. I found a couple at the Johns Hopkins Longevity Institute. There is the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). There are a couple of different foundations that I reached out to to get an understanding of what happened.

Eventually, I probably invested millions of dollars at this point. I’m embarrassed to even look into what it was. But after millions of dollars of tests, they found out that I had Lyme disease, a couple of different types of mold, H. pylori,  valley fever, and SIBO. My body was just freaking out.

At one point, I was on 98 medications, and my body would just shut down. I would have these cytokine storms, and my body wouldn’t work that day. You wake up at 6 AM, and that is the end of the day. Figuring out the solution was a tough option.

I probably talked to 30 or 40 different doctors, and none of them had a solution for what I had. It amounted to, “Good luck. We hope you get better, but modern medicine doesn’t have a solution for you right now. Hope you the best.”

Much of it was around the terminal angle of not getting better or worse. Terminal would have been the best-case scenario. I was praying for death for at least 90 days straight before my wife and I decided to look into the suicide option, euthanasia, and figure out how to end my life in a kind way. I was going through a lot of symptom-related issues that may have lost my mind.

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Most of your core relationships don’t stay with you when you’re having a really tough time. Of course, if you have a heart attack or something small, you find that your family is very supportive. But over a long period, people get tired of it. They don’t really understand. I don’t think very many people understand chronic illness in any way, shape, or form. But when it happens for years and years, it’s a very lonely place to be.

The biggest thing was when I went through and talked to my wife. I was like, “Hey, I’m thinking of killing myself.” She goes, “I get it, and I understand.” It was probably one of the first times I’ve ever felt seen and heard when my wife said, “No, I get it.” This is the pain associated with it.

We decided to make a 30-day plan of what that would look like. I got my bucket list together. At that time, I was pretty handicapped. I wanted to watch every movie, an extended edition of The Lord of the Rings, which doesn’t sound like a big deal. But at the time, it was the biggest deal. My wife went out to the dollar store and got all these The Lord of the Rings things for the rooms, got it all set up for the day, and we watched every single movie of The Lord of the Rings—a huge day.

After that, we decided to go through and write my letters to people about what I wanted them to know about me and how I care about them. I don’t know if many listeners have done that, but it’s an incredible experience. It’s very powerfully positive to see, understand, and be able to communicate to somebody from a different perspective, from a perspective of potentially never seeing them again.

One of the biggest issues with death that most people have is that they’re curious about the stories and how the stories continue, how their daughter’s going to get married, how their parents are going to die, or all these other things. But the reality is all of us are going to die. Getting calm, cool, and collected with that was one of the coolest experiences. I was looking forward to death. I was in enough suffering that it would have been a massive kindness to take my life at that point.

The big thing was, after I started writing these letters after I had made my bucket list and done a lot of these, it was like, “Hey, let’s just stop going to the doctors. We’re done with that. It’s very obvious that we’re on another path.”

It’s very powerfully positive to see, understand, and be able to communicate to somebody from a perspective of potentially never seeing them again.

In the doctor community, there’s a lot of stress. It was 17 hours a day I was spending either on insurance calls or fighting the insurance company. I had calls to my senator to try to get the insurance to pay for specific stuff, but it’s a lot to try to save your life. It’s time-consuming and energy-consuming, and it didn’t serve me.

During the 30 days that my wife and I had decided that we were going to take, I started to get 1% better. That was all I needed at that point. I wasn’t looking to die. I was just looking to end the suffering. I started to get 1% better, and that’s all I needed; I just needed some upward trend.

Of course, there’s no scientific explanation for many of these pieces. But the big thing for me was that I opened up space to let myself calm down because I had a solution. The solution was in my life. My body wasn’t freaking out as much, my brain wasn’t freaking out, and it gave me the ability for my body to heal. I think a lot of the meds had just taken me down, and I wasn’t able to properly get any healing.

From there, I went for 30 days and started feeling better. I’m like, “What’s happening?” Of course, anybody would be curious about the commitment that they’re making. I went back to do some tests, and the mold was methylated out, or at least 98% methylated out, which was very difficult at the time because the methylation process is very painful, and you just have a lot of weird symptoms. The mold was the biggest thing. I was like, “Okay, I’m feeling better.”

When I went to see some specialists about the rest of the items, I ended up doing some pretty strong therapies for Lyme and got rid of Lyme disease. I went in and got the H. pylori taken care of, and SIBO handled itself. Over the next year or so, it took me to get the brain fog away, but it eventually just went away.

Dr. Joe Dispenza was powerful in reality creation, and Dr. Annie Hopper was powerful in her Dynamic Neural Retraining System (DNRS). If anybody has any chronic illness, DNRS is incredibly potent and effective. However, mastering my mental health and mastering my emotional regulation was the most helpful thing I could have done. In that way, my body and mind aren’t fighting. They’re trying to co-collaborate. That was the biggest transition.

Wow. When did you get 100% better, where you’re completely functional, back at your business, and fully present in your relationship, with your friends, and everything?

It was July 16th, 2022. I got a tattoo as my first 90 days of consecutive health. It was one of the most meaningful things that I’ve ever done in my life. This isn’t just a money problem. It was a lot of pretty much everything. It took up my mind, body, spirit, and soul. A lot of stuff was tied into my identity around being sick and being able to get 90 days of consecutive health.

That was the first time in my life I had Lyme disease throughout. It was very apparent that I had not dealt with a lot of the foundational stuff, but the pain didn’t outweigh the problem for long enough in my life to be able to deal with it. What a gift to be able to get the rest of the symptoms and the rest of the problems that I had to deal with instead of limping it out for the rest of my life.

I got this amazing opportunity to solve some pretty long-standing problems. I had a lot of health issues growing up, but not as bad as I did the last four years. But it was cool to be able to kind of put a bow on that and get my 90 days of consecutive health. Now, I get to experience what full health looks like. To be honest, it feels really good.

The big thing for me was that I opened up space to let myself calm down because I had a solution. The solution was in my life.

Joe Polish likes to share the–

1000 wishes?

Yeah, that’s an old Indian proverb. “He who has his health has a thousand wishes. He who does not has just but one.” What were some of the Lyme therapies? You said there were some strong therapies that you went through. What were those?

I saw a couple of specialists. There’s the antibiotic route you can take, but there’s also a lot of alternative medicine. For me, it wasn’t just the antibiotics. The antibiotics tied in because I tried the antibiotic cycles several times, and they didn’t work. Am I allowed to talk about psychedelics on this?

Sure, of course. I’ve had episodes just about psychedelics.

Okay. All right.

We won’t be doing psychedelics while we’re doing the interview, but we can talk about it.

Yeah, good. I ended up doing some psychedelics tied in with the antibiotics to try to get my mind and body in alignment with healing. I think that was the most effective. It took a couple of rounds. I had a lot in the line for it to work. My alternative was ending my own life. It was a powerful experience to go, “Let’s try to tie in different modalities.”

There are a lot of alternative medicines that I don’t think many people take as seriously as they could. The allopathic community is very limited in their understanding of health. Doctors have a lot of trust and credibility that could lead you wrong. A lot of it was trying alternative medicine.

Again, every day, I was doing a sauna for a couple of hours for methylation. It was red light therapy, cold tub therapy, hyperbaric oxygen, cryo, steam, and powerful meditations. I’m spending my entire day working on the mental health side to augment the limbic system, which could then help me solve the rest of my problems because you get into something called a limbic loop, where your body is just continually freaking out, and then it won’t heal itself. That was one of the biggest healing modalities I learned about with Dr. Annie Hopper.

That’s DNRS? What does that stand for?

Yeah. Dynamic Neural Retraining Program. It’s very in-depth, so I wouldn’t do it unless the pain outweighs the problem because you will invest a long time. It’s one of the most effective tools I can think of, but you need to be doing it to save your life because the pain has to be strong. You’re talking about several-day commitments, then it’s an hour a day for six months. A lot of people have a tough time committing to something that long without having a big why behind it.

Do you have any idea when you picked up Lyme disease? Because that’s from a tick.

I grew up in the Midwest. That’s where I was from. We did just a lot in the woods. I was probably super young when I got a tick. If you don’t see the bullseye, the symptoms are so crazy for Lyme that you don’t test for it.

Also, environmental illness wasn’t a thing. Most places never test for Lyme disease. It took me two years before a doctor ever went—It was two and a half years, where some of the best specialists in the world went, “Hey, have you ever gotten a test for Lyme disease?” I was like, “No.” They go, “Yeah, let’s just run it quick.” Of course, it was that. That was probably at least a million dollars in testing before that, and Lyme disease was not on that list. It’s just interesting.

Mastering my mental health and mastering my emotional regulation was the most helpful thing I could have done.

It’s almost like the allopathic establishment discounts Lyme disease.

Yeah. That was very obvious. There isn’t a path there, plus it isn’t covered by insurance. It’s not seen as a legitimate disease. Also, I went to the Mayo Clinic, and the Mayo Clinic said they don’t support mold or Lyme disease.

That was a tough hit, too, when you’re like, “Cool, the Mayo Clinic is supposed to be the number one hospital in the world.” And they’re like, “Yeah, we can’t help you.” You’re like, “Okay.” But I was blessed to be in many networking groups where I got contacts. JJ Virgin connected me to some doctors who legitimately saved my life.

There’s a lot of networks that were involved in it. Also, I was in a group with people who had what I had, like a mystery chronic illness, and two of us survived out of 30. I would contribute most of that to being of high socioeconomic status and having a network.

Wow. I’ve had a few guests who have had Lyme disease and have taken different modalities or paths to get through it. One just pops into my mind. She was a phenomenal guest and a phenomenal person. It’s Katie Beecher. She’s a well-known medical intuitive and psychic. She has a book called Heal From Within. I think it was published by St. Martin’s Publishing.

She’s an instructor at Omega Institute. She’s amazing. I’ve gotten medical intuition readings from her and my wife; they are spot-on and amazing. She had, at about age 45, Lyme disease. This was before she had explored the whole medical intuition side of her abilities. This made it an imperative.

She eventually was cured of it or no longer experiences any of the symptoms of it. Somebody in the allopathic establishment would probably say, “Well, there is no cure because it wasn’t a disease.” It’s crazy. It feels like this would be a good book for you to check out: Heal From Within.

Yeah, I’ve definitely read it.

You’ve read it? Okay.

Yeah. Also, I forgot the ozone treatment was really big. As much ozone treatment as I could possibly do was a really big deal.

There’s another person to look at, and I have not had him on my show. He’s on my wish list. He just spoke at Genius Network: Steven Kotler. He had Lyme disease and was barely able to walk.

I didn’t know he had Lyme.

He was in such bad shape with Lyme disease that he was suicidal as well. He needed help to walk anywhere. At one point, he wanted to try to surf, which sounded ridiculous to everybody because he couldn’t even walk, but he insisted. He shared the whole story in this Genius Network interview with Joe. They accommodated him, helped him get on the surfboard, and figured this would not end well.

Once he was on the surfboard, he got into a flow state and could stay on. When he was in flow, he was able to access something inside himself. It just turned all the light switches on. It’s what cured him. He kept going on the surfboard, no matter how bad he felt. He’d be exhausted after the surfing session, but he’d do it day after day, and it cured him.

A lot of people don’t understand how powerful a weapon your body is. This is genetically engineered to solve and heal, priming it for the right time. Speaking of the allopathic stuff, it’s really tough. When you get a terminal diagnosis or something finite, and it isn’t as black and white as that, I think it can be a very tough thing to handle.

If someone you trust, like a doctor, says this can’t be solved, I think it’s very tough. As entrepreneurs, it’s much easier to say, “Watch me try, and I’ll be the one to figure it out.” It’s just a very dangerous path to get down when you’re giving advice to people around you that you can’t get healthy. There are tons of stories like that. I’ve experienced it firsthand.

It’s incredibly interesting because even a lot of the healing that I did, I can’t explain some of it. You know what I mean? Of course, I can give you the stuff I took or what I did, but the reality is that I’m very blessed to be healthy right now. I don’t know exactly what worked, but something did.

Seeing people for who they are and how they express their love to you is a very powerful experience that I would not have been blessed with in any other way.

I’ve been 100% for almost a year now. It’s life-changing. There isn’t a day where I’m not crying in the morning; I’m just so blessed to be able to see my family again and interact with them. It’s tough when you’re trying to communicate with somebody, and you’re in a severe amount of pain. That takes over a lot of your life. Especially if you’re disabled as well, you feel your usefulness going away. It’s interesting to learn.

One of the first things you learn is who loves you for who you are versus what you do. That was a very powerful component that I got to experience when I went through this. You’re not exactly in a position to help anyone outside of empathy, and maybe it would be a great case study for somebody to enjoy their life a little bit more. Seeing people for who they are and how they show their expression of love to you is a very powerful experience that I would not have been blessed with in any other way.

Would you have done this differently if you had the opportunity to do this over again?

Yeah. I’ll probably talk about this a lot. I would put a bullet through my brain. I would end it much more quickly. I have a different relationship with life and death than I did then. If I knew what I knew now, what I would go through, man, it is a tough position.

It’s very interesting to be in a spot where life doesn’t have the value it once did. Just experiencing that amount of suffering changes you. It changes you in a big way, which changes you for the positive. If I knew I would make it out of it, I would go through it again, but I would have the mental fortitude.

The reality is that being attached to this life caused me a lot of suffering. Listening to the universe, if this were the 1400s, I would have just died immediately. That would have been the end of it. But I think I show kindness and love to myself. The way that I fought it was because I was scared, and I was very scared. I wouldn’t be nearly as scared now as I was then.

On one hand, you would have put a bullet in your head, knowing the suffering that you were destined to go through. But on the other hand, you also said, “Well, if I also knew that I would make it out and be 100% with all the lessons and everything, I guess I would go through it again.” Which one is more true?

It’s a very different equation. When you have 200 medical professionals, you know what I mean? Unlike NPs, these are the best doctors in the world, telling you there’s nothing they can do. It’s a very terrifying place to be. At that point, it’s around being as kind to yourself as possible.

I have a belief in something bigger than right now; the reality that we’re in is the reality that we’re in. I’m really excited to see what’s next. I’m just not as tied to these stories as I once was. Of course, I live an incredibly joyful life.

I’m in the best part of my life right now. But again, that amount of suffering was tough. It affected a lot of people around me. You become a burden for a long period that is very tough on the people around you.

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Do you believe that you end up with a lot of karmic debt from committing suicide?

It depends on what you’re doing and if you do it with kindness. It’s like euthanasia. Going through what I went through, I was very against it for a long time. Now, I’m very much for it. I think that the kindest thing you can get is a quick death. I think that everybody deserves it. It’s a tough spot to be in because I think it’s interesting that many people are tied to this experience.

Do you mean being in this body suit and having this lifetime?

Yeah, right, where they’re willing to do anything. I don’t mean to bring a business analogy here. But if you saw a business cutting down all the other businesses, you’d get rid of it. The logistical choice would be the easiest. That would be more logistical this time around than it would last time.

Do you believe you chose this challenge to go through as part of your life plan before birth?

Everything was directed in a big way. As entrepreneurs, we feel we have more control over the universe than we do. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is submission, listening to what the universe wants and doing more of that.

The second you get out of alignment with the universe, you end up suffering. The frequencies of joy and optimizing your mental health are powerful experiences.

The second you get out of alignment with the universe, you end up suffering. It’s one of the best mechanisms to get back to understanding what matters and creating a life worth living. The frequencies of joy and getting and optimizing your mental health are powerful experiences.

My understanding of how this reality works for us is that we get to choose our life plan before we’re born and incarnate. It’s like a script for a movie. This was one of the biggest challenges. Probably the biggest challenge for you in this incarnation for this lifetime was what you went through. And you were meant to make it through. That was the whole point.

You’ll go through hell, but you’ll keep on going. And you’re going to make it out. You’ll have some incredible lessons and war scars from it, but it will be an incredible gift. That’s my hallucination as to what the way it works.

You’re given this plan. You’re not just given one plan or co-writing the script with the Creator. It’s not just one script. You have a whole lot of them. You can jump in timelines to different scripts, depending on your vibration, preference, and where you focus. You could have one that ends in a spectacular outcome and an amazing full life, and then there’s one that ends with a sputter and stop. It’s just like, “Ah, that was a miss.”

I remember attending a Kabbalah class once where they were teaching reincarnation in that particular session. We did a closed-eye process. We’re tapping into a past life. I don’t remember any other comments from anybody, but I remember this lady raising her hand and sharing her experience.

She was sobbing. She was like, “I was a farm lady in the 1700s. I had wooden shoes. All I remember about this, other than the scenery and stuff, was that this was a wasted life. I did nothing with it. And I feel so ashamed that I wasted that life.”

That’s powerful. I aligned with that. I think I aligned with it more than I don’t. A lot of the plant-based medicine journeys I’ve done are very much in alignment with that. We’re all one, and there are multi-dimensional components to it and separate lives. Coming back and figuring that out, I was curious for a long time. My curiosity got the best of me when I was praying for death and getting to figure out what was next because I thought I was just so interested. I’m very curious.

Have you gotten a glimpse of what happens next, between lives on the other side of the veil in the upper worlds, or whatever you want to call it?

I have some experiences, but they’re hard to describe. Like many things, I don’t think there are words to describe it. There were a couple of days where I would have arrhythmia, or my heart would fail, or my lungs would fail. And it felt like I was dying. It was a very euphoric experience.

By the way, this is an important distinction: We don’t die; the body dies.

Right, the meat suit? Yeah. It’s an interesting thing to see what chemicals hit. It was very similar. I don’t know if you’ve ever done DMT.

No. I’ve experienced the psychedelic nature of it without taking it. I got high on my own supplier. I did breathwork.

Yeah, which is more sustainable. It’s very similar to that. Like ego death, you go through a lot of different arenas. You get okay with it. It’s a very euphoric experience, making me so excited to get to the other side. The feeling was overwhelming love.

And that’s universal for most people who have near-death experiences and these different kinds of transformations and awakening events. They report overwhelming love—non-judgmental, unconditional, pure, complete, and everywhere. They’re washing it.

It’s a beautiful experience. I suggest everybody goes through it. I wouldn’t suggest my way, but it’s cool if you get to experience it. It’s very transformational. It drove me down into energy healing. It got me into that very much in the vibrational energies of finding real, sustainable healing for our bodies. I did a lot of energy healing that was incredible and very powerful.

What kind of modalities?

I wouldn’t know the modalities, but many of them are. Have you ever worked with Dr. Willie through Genius Network?

I know her. No, I haven’t.

We got a couple in Genius Network that I worked with, and that was incredible. Also, intuitively, I found things that I would feel better after going through my gratitude practice, just energy healing myself and going through and trying to operate at a higher vibrational energy to show up for myself. The healing factors are so much better in different states.

What kind of gratitude practice do you do?

I used to write a love letter to myself. When I first started it, it was really hard. I had many words in it, like, “I love you, but I wish you could. I love you, but this.”

Throughout the last couple of years, I could write a love letter to myself for days if I wanted to. It became a lot better. Most of my journey led me to be more kind to myself. Most of your bottlenecks are internal, meaning you can only love somebody as much as you love yourself.

You can only be as kind to others as you are to yourself. You can only emotionally regulate others as much as you do internally. This stage of my life has been more around the internal journey than the external one. It’s been really fun. It’s been really fun.

If you were to say some things as a love letter spoken aloud right now to yourself, what would some of those things be?

I’m so proud of myself for getting through what I did and for showing up in the way that I did. I was proud of how I communicated to others and myself about what was happening. I was proud of not giving up. I was really proud. I am really proud that I got to do some great things in the world.

You can only be as kind to others as yourself. You can only emotionally regulate others as much as you do internally.

After I got healthy, I was able to work with some very talented people who are changing the world in a very powerful way. I get to do many cool things, but I’m also really proud of just taking my journey internally. My lessons this year are around listening better, especially since I have a new son. That was a really big deal. He just turned one last Saturday.

Showing up as the best father and husband I can has been a really good journey that I’m very proud of. My wife was very sick before her pregnancy, and a lot of it was mold-related, and then she got a parasite. It wasn’t able to fully heal.

She had a tough pregnancy. I was really proud of how I showed up for that. She had a really tough healing journey to get back to being able to support herself and Easton. I did a really good job of supporting her. What a cool gift to be able to support somebody else who supported you in such a big way.

She was your rock, and you were hers.

It’s the best gift you can give somebody. She’ll always have a place in my heart for that. A multi-dimensional love comes from something like that. You get to see somebody at their absolute rawest, most vulnerable form. They’ve seen you in that absolutely vulnerable raw form, and you get to solve many problems doing that. It gets rid of a lot of the vanity and ego issues that are associated with a lot of relationships.

Your relationship is much deeper because of what you both went through.

Yeah. I think suffering is such a catalyst for joy. The amount of suffering you can handle is also the capacity for joy. To experience very powerful joy, you have to experience very powerful suffering.

With oneness, they teach that there are two states that you can be in: one is a suffering state, and the other is a beautiful state.

To experience very powerful joy, you have to experience very powerful suffering.

Both are beautiful, but I’d prefer one over the other. One is learning, and the other is exploring. I’m really glad to be out of the pain now. The pain was a tough learning lesson. Pain is always the best teacher. That was really tough.

Earlier, you mentioned, “The real reason we’re here.” What is the real reason that you’re here?

My reason for being here is to just explore, be an adventurer, really understand the depths of life, how amazing the fragility of life is, and how beautiful we have it here. This is such an adventure. I meditate with my son a couple of hours a day, and he and I just explore the world. I’ll do a 10-milligram gummy of edibles, and he and I just go out into the desert and explore. Everything’s new to him. It’s such a beautiful experience to learn from him what’s new and what we take for granted.

I found such joyful experiences in changing a diaper. There was a long time in which I didn’t think I would get the opportunity to spend time with a version of me that started from nothing. What a cool experience it’s been. I found a much bigger mission, a much bigger why. It is a beautiful experience to be alive and experience what we experience every day. A lot of people just take it for granted. It’s amazing, and it’s beautiful.

What was on your bucket list?

It’s a great question. We had to be practical about it. One of the big things when you’re going through anything that you feel you have to close up in your life is that you play small. It’s going to sound funny, but it wasn’t anything crazy. I’ve lived a legendary life. I have done incredibly legendary things. I’ve lived as an extremist for most of my life. I’ve done some really cool stuff.

I’m not somebody who makes a bucket list. One of the things that I wanted to do was experience another adventure; my favorite adventure of all time is The Lord of the Rings. I’m a big fan of The Lord of the Rings. I wanted to end my final days with that adventure, so it made sense. The poetry of going to Mordor and throwing a ring in there is very similar to the experience I felt I was going through to have finality to my suffering. It was a cool alignment with what I wanted.

My reason for being here is to just explore, be an adventurer, really understand the depths of life, how amazing the fragility of life is, and how beautiful we have it here.

The reality is my bucket list is done. What more do I want? I have a wife who would die for me. I have a beautiful life. I have my health. I have everything I want. At least I have everything I need. But the reality is, I got a lot more calm, cool, and collected on what matters to me by getting it filtered through the process of suffering.

That being said, what you probably wanted to hear was I want to do space. I wanted to go to space. At some point in my life, I would love to go to space.

That was on my bucket list, and now I don’t care. You’ve expected to do those. You see your multidimensionality. “I’ve already done this.”

Yeah, I feel like I’ve already been there. I understand the journey of going to space and the uncomfortableness of going to space. I feel like I got that checked off with a lot of health problems. I pushed myself through my comfort zone so much in that journey. Again, I feel like I’ve aged quite a bit going through that journey and that amount of suffering, not in a bad way, but in a wise way.

You learn a lot of great life lessons. I don’t think you can learn any other way by that amount of suffering, like not having a lot. I remember Joe Polish in one meeting. He was like, “For a $100 million, would you lose your legs?” I said, “Yes, 100% for $100 million. I’ve experienced not having my legs. I’ve never experienced $100 million. I would be very open to that.”

That’s hilarious. No way. There’s no amount of money because it’s all an illusion.

A hundred percent, but that’s the point. I think many people there were like, “This guy’s crazy.” But the reality is, I think they’re crazy. They’re tied to a narrative.

I remember when you were the only one.

Right. They’re tied to a narrative that may or may not be serving them. The isness of life matters, but it would be more around the life experience of, “I would love to have $100 million at some point.” It will be very fun for me to be able to do that. I did get to find out the power of money with the health challenges. I didn’t respect money as much as I do. It is a very powerful catalyst for change.

Money is energy, just like everything. Even matter is energy; it’s just slowed way down.

From a practical standpoint, it was very powerful to make certain decisions. It breaks my heart that many people are limited by health insurance and the different modalities they can try because they’re very limited. It’s a very limited spot.

Most of the great doctors do not take insurance. They can charge a lot more by not taking insurance. You pay a doctor $60,000 to assess you, and you’ll get a much different doctor and a much different assessment than going to a hospital where everything has to go through insurance.

Tell me what’s going on. I haven’t read your chart yet. Just tell me.

It’s a lot more of that than you think. They don’t say that obtusely. When I would go in there, you’d consult with them. They wouldn’t solve your problem. You’d consult and say, “Hey, here’s what I think is happening. What do you think?” They say, “Oh, yeah, maybe you’re right.” I looked into that a bit more, but they were not solving my problem. I was solving my problem.

I say, “Don’t delegate three things: your health, accounting, and legal,” because they are unforgiving if you do not understand those three things in your life.

You mentioned earlier that the mold was methylated out. I’m guessing that that’s not something that you could have done with insurance. Tell us more about that. I know we have to wrap up in just a few minutes, but what did that entail, and what modalities did you use?

The best doctor in the world for mold is Dr. Neil Nathan. JJ Virgin, I don’t know if you know who that is. I’m assuming you do.

Yeah, she’s been on the show.

JJ connected me to Dr. Neil Nathan, who then connected me to a doctor in the Midwest. Her name is Dr. Rajka. Dr. Neil Nathan recommended her because he is not a practicing doctor anymore. He’s more in the scientific arena of it, but he coached with her on my process.

I got a lot more calm, cool, and collected on what matters to me by getting it filtered through the process of suffering.

It’s very complicated. It’s a lot of pseudoscience. Most functional doctors think they know what they’re talking about with mold, but they don’t. You have to be very careful with the different binders and a lot of the methylation process because if you do it wrong, it tears apart your body. You have the symptoms that you want to die versus a slow process, just taking it easy and methylating out what you need. There’s ozone.

There’s a lot of alternative treatments. Obviously, fluconazole and miconazole from the medication standpoint, but also doing the right things. The infrared sauna is incredible for methylation. A lot of my meds went up the rear end, not the mouth, but it was great for methylation and being able to clean out specific areas of your body. But it’s a very complicated process.

Did you get colonics?

I’m debating saying this next statement. I didn’t take a regular number two for about a year. That’s how often I was getting them. One of the things that could keep me sane was doing that because you do all the methylation process, and then you have to do a lot of different stuff to handle the symptoms of methylating and getting this stuff out of your body. You have to be careful because, from my understanding, it moves to different parts of your body, and you have to ensure it doesn’t stay there. Because if you move it to the brain, there are very few brain-soluble methylation tools that you can use. It becomes more difficult if you’re doing it incorrectly.

It’s very expensive. I think the cheapest mold doctor I saw was $8000 a consult. None of that’s covered by insurance; they’re usually not the first doctor you see. You don’t have money because you’re usually pretty burned out by that point.

This was Dr. Rajka?

She’s nuts. She’s incredibly good. If you have mold and Lyme, I don’t know anybody better in the world than her. I’ve spent a lot of money on different doctors.

Her main thing is weight loss, which is interesting. If you go to her site, it’s about weight loss. But she’s number one in the world at something else. Many mold patients are very, let’s say, crazy. When they got to her, it was tough. It’s a tough business to support somebody with mold because they’ve already gone through so much, and they’re broken.

Especially with mold and Lyme, some of the stories with the groups of people, first, you lose your family because they take away your kids because you lose your mind. Then you have so much suffering that you lose your job. Usually, it’s a job first. But once you’ve lost your kids at your job, you usually have a really tough time from there because your why is taken away. That’s where people find Dr. Rajka at that stage, so they’re slowly losing their minds.

Actually, one of the guests who reminded me of this is Fred Diamond. One of his loved ones was a chronic Lyme sufferer. He wrote an entire book about how to support a chronic Lyme survivor as a caregiver and a family member. Love, Hope, Lyme is his book. It’s great. He was a great guest. If anybody wants to learn more about how to help somebody with Lyme, check out that episode.

Self-kindness is the key to unlock internal bottlenecks. Recognize that the depth of love you have for others mirrors the love you show yourself. Click To Tweet

This was fabulous. Thank you so much for sharing with such candor, vulnerability, open heart, and everything. I’m so glad that you made it through. I’m glad you’re here. I’m grateful for you. If our listener wants to talk to you more or follow what you are doing now, where should we send them? How do they get in touch?

If anything is tough, reach out to Stephan, and I’ll get a hold of them. Otherwise, not just to be blunt, my email address is james@jamesguldan.com. If you’d like to reach out even to support, I do a terminal group I help with locally. I’m just there to talk, listen, and see somebody who’s made it on the other side. It’s sometimes just very powerful. A lot of people did it for me. It’s always just very powerful to be seen and heard. It’s a very powerful gift to give someone.

Amazing. You’re a light in the world. Thank you so much for what you do and for sharing this incredible story of struggle and conquering what you had to conquer to make it out and through life, so thank you. Thank you, listener. We’ll catch you in the next episode. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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About James Guldan

James Guldan is the owner of Magic Agency, a growth agency that has generated more than 1 billion dollars for clients like the Dalai Lama, Peter Diamandis, Frank Kern, and many more in the information product and physical product space. He has a proprietary system that helps customers scale to 8 figures using custom funnels and omnichannel traffic strategies.

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