The Everyday Mystic

The Shadow of Success: Confronting the Wounds Money and Fame Couldn't Heal w/ Adrian Grenier

• Corissa Saint Laurent • Episode 53

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Join me and actor, producer, founder, investor, environmentalist, farmer, husband, and, most recently, father – Adrian Grenier as we discuss his more recent spiritual journey and what spurred it. 

You’ll hear how a big loss in his life made him question everything about himself. He spent two years contemplating his behavior, lifestyle, thoughts and feelings, and facing deep childhood wounds he'd avoided for forty years. 

Adrian shares the distinction between the spiritual and metaphysical pursuits of his early adulthood, and the inner path he's been on over the last five years. He talks about embodying truth and how opening up to that fine-tuned his inner knowing. 

We talk about the joys of parenting and what he's realized about himself along the path to fatherhood and how living on the land has helped him heal. He shares how, without this growth and transformation, his life would have remained empty and meaningless despite all the fame, recognition, wealth and success he’d achieved.


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Corissa Saint Laurent:

Hey, beautiful souls, welcome to the Everyday Mystic, where we demystify the mystical and transform your everyday life into one of greater meaning, higher purpose, and true joy. Today we're going deep with Adrian Grenier. And for those of you who are fans of Adrian from Hollywood, from his movies and TV, you're going to be sad to hear that I did not record video on this particular recording. I meant to. We were camera ready. We were going thinking that video was being recorded. However, it was not. So this is just going to be an audio-only podcast, but a really juicy one. You're going to hear about Adrian's journey, his spiritual pursuits, and really his finding himself, his true self, his coming home to himself as essentially a child of God. We talk about God. We talk about what it took for him to get to this place where he has surrendered into this beautiful knowing that he is part of this miraculous creation. And accepting that role just in time for him to earn back the love of his life, have a beautiful life with her, and now welcoming his son into the world with her. So this is such a special episode, both for me and for the podcast, because you get to hear from someone who's well known, but maybe not their well-known side. And you get to hear from a beautiful soul who is a friend of mine and someone who is so cherished in my life. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this wonderful episode with Adrian Grenier on the Everyday Mythstime. Hello, Adrian, my friend. Here we are.

Adrian Grenier:

Glad to be here. Finally.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

I've talked about doing a podcast for so many years, and I've always reached out to you to be like, hey, I'm gonna do this podcast. Will you come on to my podcast? And then I finally did it. I started a podcast, and I'm just so happy that we can have this conversation and go deep, talking about your own spiritual journey and you know how that's evolved over time for you and you know where it even may have started for you. So thanks for coming on and getting deep with us about your your own journey within.

Adrian Grenier:

Yeah, that's my favorite thing to get deep.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yeah, exactly. I know, no shallow conversations. How was that for you being such a young, you know, young man in Hollywood around what I would assume is a lot of shallow conversations and topics? Did you kind of just like float over the top of that? Were you like immersed in it, or was it something that you had to like get away from as quick as humanly possible?

Adrian Grenier:

No, I'm very adaptable. My wife always refers to me like Swiss cheese. Things just sort of pass right through me. Uh, and that's um it's a survival mechanism, I think, on some level, where I don't let things um settle or or or affect me, uh, for better or for worse. You know, and and I think to some degree, uh, even though I'm protected from dark energies or you know, a lot of a lot of destructive elements at the same time, I I also don't necessarily or talking in the past, it didn't allow me to necessarily uh be present and and go go deep. So I've had to actually um adjust for that. Um but it did it did it did allow me to survive Hollywood and New York City you growing up.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

No doubt. I mean, two of the harshest environments really from a a human perspective to to live within those those energies. So you um you were steeled to these things through your upbringing, and then when did you start really getting introspective and and knowing that oh okay, I I want more. I am deeper than maybe the the the places I'm playing in and the things that I'm um mixing in.

Adrian Grenier:

Yeah, um I mean it's tough. This the you know, this language thing, deeper.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yeah.

Adrian Grenier:

I I was al I've always been deep, I guess, right? But it's it's all relative, right? I was deep, abstract, uh philosophical. You know, I read all the all the the philosophers and uh really enjoyed pontificating and exploring ideas, but that was more of an intellectual pursuit, ego-driven, really wanting to know, I wanted to grasp, I wanted to have a handle on things, and also really enjoyed the rhetorical uh playfulness of language and being able to communicate. Uh, I at one point I wanted to get into linguistics, was really just blown away by the the idea that we are limited by the words that we command. And then at the same time, when you don't have language, you can't necessarily express or communicate something, but also when you have language, it limits what you're able to perceive. So I was just really into uh intellectual pursuit and all that, and so I was deep in those ways, all the abstract ideas and and philosophies, but it wasn't until later that I really recognized that there was a I guess more of a I wouldn't even say it's deep, it's more expansive aspect to my spirit, my soul, that was that was beyond language, beyond intellect, that was a a feeling and a uh somatic relationship to self. And I and for the most part, my whole life I was cut off from feeling. My intuition had been offline. There was a whole uh capacity to interact and perceive the world that I hadn't been utilizing for so long. Because I was all head, frankly, I was all head and growing. I was, you know, I was operating on on two speeds, intellect and sexual. I really understood the sexual part, made sense, felt good, and it was a drive that kept me, you know, motivated and going and gave me a lot of uh energy. Yeah. But uh finally, uh after 40 years, I I started to pursue my heart and my my gut and my intuition, and I would say something bigger than my ego myself. And uh that was more of a spiritual and and interestingly enough, when I was younger, I was quite spiritually minded. You know, I was pursuing a lot of um Buddhism and meditation. Uh, I did my first vipassana meditation when I was 20, which you know it's pretty young. I was into the idea of the occult and telekinesis and the powers of that we that are intangible, the things that we can't uh necessarily, the science can't explain. And then um I took a very distinct turn into hedonism and and and sex, drugs, and rock and roll when I couldn't quite reconcile the two because I was living in New York. I needed to survive that. You know, the the the pursuit of uh spiritual uh abnegation and discipline just didn't really, it didn't really reconcile. I couldn't, I couldn't figure out how to do that while still being in New York and being on the scene. So I made a faithful choice at that moment. I was like, okay, I'll do spiritual enlightenment in another life. This life, I'm gonna go, you know, the the way of the world. The way of the world.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Well, you yeah, and you got pulled in deep too. Not everyone has the same that same opportunity that you had to be in the limelight, to have lived truly in the material, like so, and and with you know, be things being handed to you and being like carpets being rolled out for you, and like that that lure to the to materialism and away from spiritualism is um you got it, you got served up big time with that. So my was really hard to step away from or to say no to.

Adrian Grenier:

Yeah, it was a it was a a long extended feast of the flesh.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yeah, but it made me interesting that you were exploring all of those other spiritual pursuits before that. So maybe do you feel like that gave you some at least foundation that you could return to that you that maybe that helped to bring you back?

Adrian Grenier:

Yeah, I'd say um I but then again, I think we are all walking each other home. We are all returning to that from which we came, which is spirit and source. Some of us just take longer to get there, or are having too much fun with the play of life. So I just really believe it's it's we all have that somewhere deep down inside. That's just my belief system. I have really embraced Christianity and all religions, really, as of late. I don't necessarily believe that it's such an imperative that God has said, look, you have one life, and if you don't get it right, you know, you go straight to hell, and that's it. I don't, I believe that we are infinite beings and that we always have a chance to come to God. We always God will always give us an opportunity to choose our higher potential.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

I I agree. And so you made this choice, you made this return, and you said when you were 40. So what happened? What what was it 40-ish that occurred for you then that uh called you back home?

Adrian Grenier:

You know, my life was really, really good for for for a long time. I was making money, I had lots of girlfriends, I had uh all the material indulgences. I was winning at life. I was I was royalty of the American dream, a celebrity, I had attention. Attention is is probably the most um sought-after uh you know, uh riches of of of our culture. I had attention, I had money at all the things. But there was this lurking dread. Like, I don't know, man, something can't be it can't be good this good, right? There's gotta be something. When's the other shoe gonna drop? Can't like something's gotta happen, right? Bad has to happen. Isn't that how it works? And I didn't know what it was. Was it sickness? Was it gonna be a death? Was it something something? But I just kept winning. And it, and then it finally it happened. Finally, I I I I realized that I was I was closer to rock bottom than I really had ever, like I that I understood. And it was really a breakup. My my uh girlfriend at the time, she dumped me in um out walking out the door, essentially she's like, You're the worst. You're like a terrible person. You you know, you're abusive, you're all these things, you're and I was incensed. I just didn't, I didn't see it, I didn't buy it. I thought she was crazy. But then I I really sat with it. I contemplated what she had said, and she, and I'd always trusted her and I loved her, and I, you know, I I when she told me these things, I was like, you know what? Like the there's she she's always right, she always knows something that I don't. So why would it be different in this moment? But my ego wasn't really quite allowing me to accept what she was saying. So it it really set me on a path of taking it a two-plus year journey of trying to understand her and why she saw me in that way. And the more I peeled back the layers, the more I explored it, the more I realized she was right, the more I got to know my treachery and my capacity for malevolence and destructiveness and selfishness and cruelty and ignorance and blindness and all the things. And I was floored, I was so gutted and taken aback because holy shit, my whole life, my whole amazing great life was just one big distraction from something more expansive, deeper, heart, love, my ability to take care of myself and others, to grow up and become a protector, to become a man, to have children, to participate in the most beautiful part of what it means to be alive, which is to become a father and give a better world to your children than you than you had. And to heal, to heal all the the parts in myself that were wounded from my parents and my father, and to really help correct and metabolize the fear and the traumas that are keeping us playing small and keeping us from cultivating a better world for myself, for the for my family, for humanity. And that's the greatest adventure ever. Like I thought I was on the best adventures, floating around the world, going to the best parties, and it was exciting, but it it was definitely not hard. It did not challenge the greatest parts of me.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Why do you think that it has to be hard in order to reach these most expansive places or the deepest places in us, you know, what what's the struggle all about?

Adrian Grenier:

I mean, I think God designed the universe to um be extremely robust and hearty and powerful. So life, if if you look around and you notice life, life always finds a way. It just its tendency is to to come back stronger, to be resilient. And I think that that's because we are all challenged, all life forms, all humans, everything that's alive has to rise to the occasion to adapt to new circumstances, to become again, to be renewed better. Um I think that that's just how we're designed. And if you if you take the easy way out, the lazy way, the you know, you're you're you're choosing in many ways weakness and you're choosing decay and entropy and you're you're just resting into annihilation.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

In a little bit, but let's go back for a moment because you mentioned, you know, dealing with and healing childhood trauma and the ways of your parents, transmuting that within you so that you can become the parent you want to be. I find that really fascinating that a lot of people on the spiritual journey don't heal themselves, you know, that there's a lot of spiritual bypassing and and and that could be within your traditional religions, it could be somebody who's practicing, you know, something esoteric, but there is a tendency for people who are quote unquote spiritual to bypass the body and all the shit and the hell that's stored in there and just be like heaven, I'm gonna go to heaven and ascend, and and they they leave this this plane and don't deal with that. Um, but you're talking about essentially expanding into the the spiritual, but through and going through the the mud, going through the darkness, going through the the sifting and sorting of all of those wounds, right?

Adrian Grenier:

Yeah, yeah.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yeah. What is it that took you down? I mean, obviously Jordan breaks up with you, rocks your world because you think you're unbreakable in that way, right? Um unbreakupable. And and so that like what an incredible catalyst that she provided for you to go on this journey. But then what invoked the well, now it's time to deal with childhood, deep trauma, and these things. Did you just know intuitively that this is where you had to go?

Adrian Grenier:

Yeah, but I mean, I had always known, and it was that dread. There's a saying, uh, tap tap two by four. Have you heard this one? Right?

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yes.

Adrian Grenier:

So your your fate, right? Like what you what your soul was is is asking for will always be tapping you on the shoulder until you're not into if you don't respond, it'll hit you with a two by four eventually. And um, you know, I delayed, I delayed, I delayed. Got away with, I mean, I survived a lot of mismanagement of my life. And I'm so blessed that I did because you know, you know, a lot of people aren't so lucky, they don't make it out alive, they get lost in the sauce. And I was lucky enough to. Have a revelation in time. And really, what it required for me is to strip away, right? That's that ego death where all the things that I had built up, all the sense of self, my identity, my status in the world, all the material items that they were an extension of my identity and my ego, I had to let it all go. Like really strip it away. The acting, the jobs, the real estate that I was buying, and the clothes and the money and the houses and the women and all of the things. And let it go. And so I did. I moved into a small camper, maybe like 25 square feet. I don't know, a small camper.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Oh yeah.

Adrian Grenier:

And I lived there for a year. And I gave up sex, I gave up alcohol, I just all the things that gave me pleasure and kept me numb, um, that were uh creating a state of narcosis and just numbness. And that's when I started to have to feel all the things that I'd been numbing. I had to start to feel the the wounds that I'd been carrying around, that I'd been protecting myself from, that I'd been bearing down deep. And then as they started to come up, you know, I started to realize uh, wow, there's there's a lot more down there. Am I gonna, am I, am I gonna take this opportunity now and to just bring it up? Let's go, let's confront, let's face the music, let's really um see what it is that um I've been avoiding. What's that that dread that I'd been perceiving? And that just brought me on a long journey of personal awakening and and growth. And I I did all the things. I did the the shamanic breath work, I did the meditation, I did the tantra, I did a lot of reading, a lot of exploring of teachers and guides, ayahuasca, entheogens of all sorts. I was celibate for a long time. And then most importantly, I got into the earth, I got into the soil. I started gardening and um getting my hands dirty and grounding myself in into the earth instead of grounding myself in women or escape or other people consuming food. I was grounding myself in service, and that just brought it all up. And I just had to sit with it and be with it and metabolize all of that grief and suffering and sadness and father wounds, abandonment wounds. And that process brought me ultimately to God and to my spirituality, and it really was a um a quiet surrender, you know, to your point. It wasn't an exalted peak experience. I mean, I had those, I did have those experiences, but I didn't allow myself to become attached to them. It was like, okay, I you know, go into an exalted experience, get the downloads, but come back to earth and remain grounded, get back into the soil, and then start to do the work to integrate the lessons. Because true transformation doesn't happen in here or up there, it happens in the body, in the in the actions, in the habits that you create, that you conjure, that you define, that you choose. And so um I I started to just practice the things that I knew I needed to do to be the man that I imagined that was possible. And it was just an idea because I didn't know if I could.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Right. And you didn't have a model for it either. So you're not having a model father growing up to a model stepfather. I mean, you didn't have that. And so when you're looking, or I guess working from this ideal place or or what I hope to become, it's almost, I mean, on the one hand, we can get lost in the fact that we didn't have the models to follow. And poor me, like I'm starting in a in a worse place, but there's almost something freeing about that. It's like, oh, I can actually, I don't have any want to even like let's say you had an amazing dad, but you know, you're always trying to like reach their state, and because you look up to them so much, and that can be almost limiting to what you end up becoming. So there's almost this freedom. So you have this like you don't have a mold, dude. You just are creating the the sculpture right in front of you to be like, what what am I gonna be? What am I stepping into?

Adrian Grenier:

Absolutely. Yeah, I think you do God gave us free will so that we can choose, you know, and I do believe that we get to choose right from wrong. You know, uh we get to decide. You know, we I've been having this argument, not argument, but just discussions um with a friend about whether there's God or what is right, what is wrong, right? These moral ethical questions. And I believe that God is a choice for something to be the better version, to orient yourself towards a higher order of being, right? I mean, everyone wants to define God, newsflash. God is way too big and too amaz in expansive and infinite for you to ever define it. So I have a great amount of respect for religion and all religions because they are the humans' attempt to at least attempt to understand what God is. So I used to be very um atheistic, or I was agnostic. I was like, well, I just don't know. And like I'm not gonna uh hang my hat on any religion because look at all the the terrible things that religion has been responsible for, the crusades and you know, uh all the things in the Catholic Church, and you know, so I would always reject religion wholesale. But really, I see now, like knowing that I can't know God and his, her, they, their full capacity, I can only be humbly attempting to touch just a little bit closer to what God might be. And so I I choose to embrace all of the attempts to to know God because there might be even just a little bit that would get me closer to knowing God. And because I need all the help I can get. You know, and so I take it with a grain of salt. I don't just blindly throw myself into any dogma or belief, but I'm always open to hearing somebody's interpretation or um or approach to understanding God, knowing that these are just words and words are limited, and you know, the Bible is is just a book and all that thing, but if there's something that will get me closer, I want to be open to it.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yeah, and and I think we once we open ourselves to the the exploration, we then also fine-tune the intuition, like you were talking about earlier, to sense and know whether, oh, this is the divine, you know, I oh, this does actually feel like I and I call God the energy of all that is because again, words are so uh limiting, right? So many people have, I mean, I use the word God, but I think people have so many preconceived notions about that word from a Judeo-Christian sense that it's it can rattle some people because I was like you too, agnostic, I don't believe in God, but it was essentially the Judeo-Christian God that I didn't buy into. But the essence or the energy of all it is, creation itself, divinity itself, and our part and peace in all of that. I I can't not believe it because I've experienced it. And I think once you do, once you actually experience it, feel it, understand it from not the words, not the mind perspective, like you were saying, but you absolutely understand it from a knowing, right? Just a pure knowing in your body, a pure knowing in your being, that's when you it's like you can't deny it anymore. It's hard to be like, it doesn't exist.

Adrian Grenier:

Yeah, part part of my um growth journey has been embracing truth and honesty, and really that being a pillar of righteousness, right? Like in order to do the right thing, you have to first tell the truth. You have to be honest with yourself about the world as it is, and be honest with your behavior so that you can take accountability for your actions and you can hold other people accountable for your boundaries or what you think is uh important or righteous. And I always used to think that truth was me saying the words, you know, like if I'm being honest, I have to tell the truth, say the words that are true. And I realized words can so easily manipulate, or they can also, like we were saying before, they can hide the truth, you know, because language itself can be limiting. And I used to get away with lying, but believing my believing it was true so that I could successfully manipulate and gaslight the world. And it was it was twisted because as long and as an actor, right, that's what we do. We believe things that aren't true as if they're true, so that other people believe that we believe it, so that we become a real a realistic representation of the fiction. So I was really good at that, and then I realized that real truth, really truly being honest, is not the words you say. It's not even the thoughts that you think. Because this is just the story, this is just the the abstraction, you know, the reflection of the thing, or the projection of the thing. The real truth is what's felt, what's experienced. That is undeniable when you have a heartbreak when you have a heartbreak. That's there's nothing more true than that that feeling. When you feel love, when you feel safe, you know, when you feel scared, those feelings cut to the the heart of truth more than the thoughts that you think or the words that you say. So when I made that connection, like you were saying, to speak the truth or to to embody the truth through what I feel and what I intuit and what I can perceive through my heart and my somatic sense senses, then I could be more accurate about how I operate and navigate through the world. So when my intuition was on, now I can see the world more accurately than when I'm perceiving the world and judging it and interpreting it through my thinking brain. So totally agree with that.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yeah, and we're, God, I mean, our our life, especially well, at least here, you know, growing up in the United States, and I I can extrapolate onto other countries too, even though I didn't grow up there, but certainly Western world and any developed nation. I mean, we grow up with so much distraction and externality that is taking us out of our body, right?

Adrian Grenier:

Yes.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

I mean, we're obsessed with the mind and the intellect and intellectual pursuits, as you were talking about earlier, right? And we all are like, oh, that that's our measure of our worth if we get a PhD, or we know we we get to the highest levels of intellectual pursuit, and yet be devoid in the pursuit of truth, the pursuit of actual knowing. And that comes through that sense, the felt sense in the body. Why do you think we're kept away from that? I mean, I don't want to like say from a conspiratorial sense, but it seems like you know, there's so many ways and means of distracting us and just like pulling us out of the body out here that keeps people from exploring that until they hit a rock bottom and they are fortunate enough to be able to pick themselves up out of that rock bottom. Because, like you said, so many people, so many friends that never got back out of the rock bottom. But the ones who do, who have the either the courage, the resilience, something that just like pushes them out of rock bottom and and gets them on the path. But it seems like we've got to get there first in order to then go back in and into the body. So I mean, do you have any thoughts on that? Of like what why is it that we are so so pulled out of that experience?

Adrian Grenier:

Uh you know, I think life is pretty challenging. And I think there is a survival benefit to deceiving oneself. You know, that it definitely serves its purpose. And I don't know, I I see things very holistically in that nothing's a mistake. Everything is by design. And again, we are sort of, you know, how whoever, God, whoever designed the world didn't make any mistakes. And it is really all of our opportunity to evolve and become what we're intended to be, and this is part of the process. You know, I could philosophize about how this was a necessary turn in human evolution for us to become all sort of blind automatons to help serve this particular stage in our development as a civilization so that we can create these cities and these big buildings and have uh all this wealth accumulation so that we can build rockets and so that we can one day maybe get off the planet because ultimately human life or or life itself wants to expand out into the universe. So um I could make that argument, and I think that there's probably some truth to that, but I don't know what evolution has in store for us. Um, and I don't I don't look, I'm a I'm an optimist, I don't look at it pessimistically. Even my own stint in ignorance and selfishness, that was part of it's like I work here on the farm. It's like if I were to shed tears over, you know, some grass that was decaying and some leafy greens that we didn't eat, and now they're becoming compost. I could cry, be like, oh, they never made, they never had their full, you know, potential as a salad, you know, and now they're just rotting and becoming compost, soil for new life. So I see the the cyclical nature of it, the the the life-death process. And in order for us to evolve, we must die and be reborn. And that's either the physical body, where we die and become reborn into a new physical body, or even in this lifetime, we have lots of many deaths if we learn to embrace them and um go through those those periods so that we can be reborn again and again in this physical life as well. I I realized that I did when I was younger and I rejected spiritual pursuit for sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And I was like, oh, I'll I'll I'll pursue spirituality in another life. I realized that other life came now. It just came. I was I have been reborn. So yeah, I guess I'm not so daunted by it all. I mean, even the darkest things in the world, I'm like, okay, there's there's a reason, there's something good is gonna come of that. Some something's being worked out. Some and there's and there's lots of trauma that has been that's been passed down generations to generations to generations. And it really is up to us, and it's an opportunity for us to transmute that into good. I just don't don't know if it's just hard. And we just want it to be, we want to excuse it away so that we can just jump to the next step, but you gotta go through it. You gotta break down, break through, like as a necessary, you know, step by step.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

I love that you have the land, it's like a living metaphor for this whole process. You get to watch and experience the the cycles of growth and decay and death and transformation, you know, in your compost pile. I think that it's one of the most beautiful things about living on land and living with the land in the way that you are to teach like a true teacher to people about our own processes. And if it's not something you already knew, it's like you get to witness it. And I was just talking maybe it was one of the podcast episodes with someone about how you know you've got a seed and a Seed has a beautiful life in it, has what's going to be a tree, let's say. And if you were to just like crack that seed open to try to get it to become the tree, you kill it. It's not going to become the tree. It has to struggle its way out of that pod, right? It has to push and struggle and do, you know, go through this process that, you know, is hard, just like childbirth, right? It's not easy to birth a baby and just get that out into the world. But it's necessary. It's necessary for there to be all of this pushing. And we, I don't know, maybe we don't even call it struggle, but it's just there's tension. There's going to be activity. It's not just like boop, there you go, tree, baby, new, new life, new lease on life, right? It's just there is a a process that is this pull, push, like stretching that happens that is really beautiful. And if you've ever, you know, I think artists also, visual artists or or artists that work in a medium really understand this too, because it's like you're working with something that becomes something incredibly beautiful, right? Most likely if you're a good artist. And um, but the the work to get there too, struggle. And you might be like, you know, stretching a canvas or or working some marble, and and it's not easy, but it is beautiful. So let's talk a little bit about the beauty that's come into your life recently, which is why I also believe in divine timing and why um our conversation got brought to this time period because we had talked about recording, you know, earlier in the year, but now we get to do it post baby, post now you're a dad, like the most beautiful thing has just occurred in your life, yeah.

Adrian Grenier:

Yeah, I mean, I I don't know what to say um without sounding cliche, but uh Seiko, my son, is uh just such a gift, and I'm so very proud of myself because anybody could be a dad, right? Anybody I mean I could have been a dad a million times over, but to be a father, to be a father is is something quite different, and I know that four or five years ago when my when I first started my journey to self I would not have been able to step into this role quite in the same way, and so I'm so proud of him for just being perfect right out of the gate. Like he's just it's just an amazing young little boy growing, just doing all the the cutest things and learning and and absorbing, and and I'm so but I'm also just proud that I was able to show up for him as a as a present, committed father. Because I know that that's going to benefit him. You know, and these are things that I never got to experience, you know, from my father. So yeah, that's why the timing is so so important. You know, you have to you have to do the work to become your highest because in parenting is not the kind of thing that you play catch up on, right? You you you're not teaching through words, you're you're showing through embodied action and just presence. So all the things that I can share with my son is not anything I can share intellectually or verbally. It's he's just watching me and feeling my nervous system. And he's feeling my ability to protect my my wife and her interests and her needs so that her nervous system can settle down and he can witness her in her her most stable place as a mom. And and he'll do the rest. He's gonna be exactly who he needs to be as long as we don't get in the way with all of our neuroses and all of our shadows that we haven't dealt with, and all of our anxieties and hang ups. So I'm very proud that you know my wife and I, by the way, for those listening who don't know, the girl that dumped me is not my wife. So also proud that I got to a place where she she brought me back and and decided that I was worthy of being her husband. Whereas before, I was just worthy of you know being a douchebag. Um so yeah, this is quite a quite a beautiful ride. And you know, I've been watching you. You've been a mom for how eight years now. 12 years. Oh my god, see so long. Yeah, time flies. So you know, you know, you you know these lessons. I just and and I witnessed you, but I still couldn't appreciate it back then.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yeah, and I don't I fully appreciated it either. You know, it's it's been such a journey. You know, there were certain decisions I made when I decided to have a we were very con we consciously decided to have a baby. It wasn't like, oh, we're married and I guess we'll just have a kid, and or it just happened because we're married and it might happen. We were we held off for many years and talked about it a lot. We were very contemplative about it and didn't weren't sure. And then once we decided, we're so we're so sure. And for us, it was we like just got off of you know, two weeks in Europe, we're like gallivanting all around, doing all the hedonistic things, right? Like just just um you and I've had such a like a parallel journey, and in many ways, me like without the celebrity, but the like the life journey of like early interest, curiosity in the metaphysical and in the unseen, and in these things that like I I know there's more, I know there's more than what I'm seeing here. Um, but then just like went into typical shit hedonism, materialism, you know, addiction, all sorts of like the easy path, the easy road. And so I honestly wasn't sure if I would be fit to be a mother. And uh, and it wasn't until I knew that I would be fit that we were like, okay, let's do it. But yeah, two weeks in Europe, and then the end of that trip, we were in Zurich and we were watching these. Um, this little it was this one little boy. He was riding on a balance bike along the lakeside. Um, his parents were just casually, you know, chilling on a blanket, having a picnic and watching and just smiling at this little boy. And it hit us. Mark and I just turned to each other and we were just like, uh, we're ready. Like we're ready, like we can do that. Like we can, you know, because the model of parenting for us was of struggle, was of lack, was of, you know, it was just these things that we didn't want. We're like, I don't want to be part of that, and I don't want to recreate any of that, but we saw into our future. We're like, we don't have to create recreate any of that. We can create this and live into that, and um being conscious about that decision was big, but then I had to like fully step into the role, fully step into the shedding, the letting go, the facing my deepest, darkest trauma. And that's been a journey over the last 12 years that I don't know. I mean, I think when it comes to parenting, well, our philosophy at least is we're very honest with, you know, Sam's so mature, but I don't think it's because it's not just only because of who he is, but it's because we've treated him that way. We haven't infantilized him. And some of that maturity is about being honest about human relations, about life, and about, you know, what what goes on here? It's not just like, oh, you come out and you you just um have this like very narrow kid experience. It's like, oh, this is life, this is what the world is is about. Um, so we've been honest and but at the same time, obviously age appropriately, I would say, yeah, honest with him about what life is. And um, but that's all come through, like as we expand, and as Mark and I grow and become more of who we are and get to share that with him, he's living it with us, I guess is the the best way to put it, rather than like parenting from a we know everything, right place, and now we're gonna like instill that in you. It's like, oh, we're on this journey together, and here we go.

Adrian Grenier:

Beautiful.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

So where's your journey taking you next and nearest?

Adrian Grenier:

Uh, Christmas, Christmas, first Christmas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're um my mom's coming to town. Fingers crossed, she's she's been pretty busy, so um yeah, hopefully she'll get here and we'll we'll we'll have our very first Christmas with grandma and Seiko and family.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Baby's first Christmas, so much fun.

Adrian Grenier:

Baby's first Christmas, yeah. Suddenly, all I like suddenly I love all the Christmas songs. Like last year I was like, ah, and I can't hear another Christmas song. Now I'm like singing, like, do you know this one? You know, bells on bobtails ring.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Totally and kids just invite that silliness out of us and fun and joy, like really joy about that. As you expand in these emotions. We talked about love and intuition and you know, feeling into these types of things, which are feminine energy. They're not, you know, people I think who listen to this podcast understand what I'm saying. They're not, it's not feminine from the female sensibility, but you know, what we would consider feminine aspect of self. And the feelings, the feeling body really is that feminine energy. And that expands even more with the kid because I I used to say this when people ask me about parenting, I would say it's like feeling all of everything in 10 10 times, like the feeling of hurt and pain because like empathy, all of a sudden, all of a sudden, I'm like feeling his boo-boos. I'm like, ah, I can feel it in my body. And then I'm also feeling the joy and the excitement when he's like trying something new and and able to accomplish it. It's like feeling just gets amplified big time. Have you found that like when just experiencing Seiko?

Adrian Grenier:

Oh, yes, yes. I mean, it's expanded capacity to feel love and joy, but then also there's some there's some fear there, you know, there's some protection and and and some sorrow, you know, it's just like that mortality piece, which is just you know, part of the human experience, to know that nothing lasts, nothing's nothing's permanent. And so just to know that there has to be coupled with the love and the the s the the squeezes and the hugs is is a letting go as well. As he grows, and he's no longer a little cute baby, now he's a almost a cute little toddler, you know. So you're letting go of the phases and the stages and and yeah, feeling his discomfort, he's teething, feeling the discomfort of not getting enough sleep and having to wake up and deal with the baby and what he's going through, and try not to make it about you, but but try and just remain present with what he's experiencing and feeling and and allowing yourself to feel him so that you're not so self self-involved about what you're feeling.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yeah, they need us so much, they need us to understand and be there for them in that way. Oh yeah, so beautiful. Well, I gotta come down and meet him before he's uh running around too much when he's a little package.

Adrian Grenier:

Yeah, he's he has he's rolling, he'll he'll he'll roll, but he's um not running yet.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. Any final thoughts, any final words on your heart that you want to share before we leave today?

Adrian Grenier:

Um, yeah, well, I you said you you you tipped a hat to it earlier. I, you know, moved from the city onto land. And the land has been such a great teacher to me. But most importantly, I it's been a huge support system. It's like almost a third parent for Seiko. And Seiko just loves, love, loves the I mean at night if he can't sleep, the the frogs will put him to sleep, you know. Um if there's no toys, because we you know we're we're being very mindful about bringing in too many material items, hand him a branch and he loves it. So I'm just really I feel blessed about that. And I I guess I would encourage everybody out there to spend a little more time in nature for yourself and for your family.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yeah, and nature comes up on literally every single episode that we do, even though we're talking about spirituality, and this makes sense, everyone brings up nature because nature is our, I think, our closest representation of God. You know, we get to see creation outside of us. I mean, we're also that, and that's amazing, but sometimes it's hard to see all of that or experience it all of that within ourselves, but you get to witness it in nature and get to feel into that, and like you say, ground into that, which is so important to actually be part of it, whether it's putting your hands or your feet in it or spending time sitting in it. So, yeah, 100%. Get into nature, get into feeling your connection to self and to source. And like you said earlier, it just connects us more deeply to each other and to to the planet as a whole.

Adrian Grenier:

Amen. Yeah, beautiful.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

All right, I'm gonna go out there and uh Me too. Thanks, Adrian.

Adrian Grenier:

Thank you. Take care, everyone.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

And thank you, beautiful soul, for tuning in today. As a big thank you, there are gifts awaiting you on the Everyday Mystic website. Beautiful offerings like complimentary sessions, discounts on programs and products, and special events and experiences. I'm so excited to see you over there and help you live into your everyday mystic life.