Opening Ourselves to New Paradigms of Intimacy—Ezriyah Ben Ernst
Listen above, on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Transcript:
Alexa Ashley: I’m Alexa Ashley and this is Eyes Wide. In this episode we get to hear from, Intimacy Doula, Ezriyah Ben Ernst. Ezriyah is a poet, experience designer, energy healer and the founder of an organic cacao brand. We hear how he survived two suicide attempts, cancer, and seeing his mom pass through cancer. Today, he creates “space for people to drop more into the love that they are.”
Alexa Ashley: I'd love to start by hearing a little bit about what it was like growing up as Ezriyah.
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: Well, I can tell you that I didn't grow up as Ezriyah, but I've grown up in a sense. So I was born Derek Ernst Albert or pronounced “Al-brt” in the states, but it's “Al-ber” ‘cause we’re Haitian (via my father's side) and Cuban as well.
I was born in Brooklyn, New York, not raised in Brooklyn. Moved to Chicago, Evanston, which is right on the border, literally like four or five blocks from the border of where Evanston becomes Chicago and Illinois. And then I moved to Florida around the age of eight, closer to nine though. Close to nine years later, back up to Illinois for college. It was probably 2014 that I took on the name Ezriyah. It came to me in a dream. And so I'll share what it was like stepping into Ezriyah.
My journey was really growing up in a family, Caribbean family, in the States conforming to a lot of everything going on, witnessing harmony in some instances, and a lot of disharmony, whether it be due to lack of communication, machismo, some alcohol, some drug abuse on some sides, or just versions of emasculation and also I could say whatever would be the opposite towards the feminine. The term doesn't come to mind, but it's because it's so prevalent. Just mistreatment, but not necessarily towards my mother per se, but witnessing it in some of the culture. And of course, what I've experienced, what sticks out to me prominently, are like areas where prejudice has come my direction and me being like, “What's this about?.” Never really harmonizing with it, but witnessing it.
I'm feeling like “What is going on in this world? What kind of things are happening here?” and feeling like I don't belong in this soup, but also knowing that I came into this. And so like balancing that, because with that, there's always been a big curiosity. And I think along my journey, the hardest thing has been feeling so battle-worn by what it is to be here that I had lost the curiosity of living. Besides that it was fun. Mischievous. My nickname was “Dezòd,” which can sound like “disorder, chaos.” I was just very curious. I was close to my mother and my grandmothers, closer to my dad later. So just journeying and trying to figure out what's what, and trying to love as much as possible, but learning a lot of lessons and all of that. That's really been the big journey of growing up.
Alexa Ashley: I know you've talked about how things were hard with your dad and stuff. What was that like?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: My father is a beautiful man, but also a disciplinarian coming from a family that has political ties in Haiti. When I speak to that, I'm speaking to his grooming. And so his grooming in terms of how you show up in public and you know, how you carry yourself, there's a lot of good traits and ideals that are incorporated, but to bring that into a person sometimes can be harsh in terms of discipline. So of course I was spanked as a kid.
I was disorderly. And so part of the culture was to spank. But that created a viciousness within me. Violence creates violence. And so not until later, did I speak to him in that regard and learn about his relationship with his father and begin to mend our relationship. And it was fine because it was just a question of me saying, “Dad, I see that you're trying to look out for me. Can you not hit me anymore?” And for discipline, and “I'm going to try to listen to you,” and him looking at me and saying, “Okay,” and that was it. Never was there a physical exchange between us again.
Alexa Ashley: How old were you again?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: I was 15 at the time. I had a bit of an awakening to come to that because before that I was actually literally working out to prepare myself to kill him. I've shared this with him and I don't know how that would make him feel to hear it again. But this happens with kids. You know, when you beat someone who has a strong spirit and they come from a warrior-spirit family, it's either, you know, you cower and you become something else or you stand up for yourself.
And what was happening was I would get into fights in school. And I would say things that my father said to me in the fights, you know, and my friends joke about it, but that's actually like a traumatic response in my opinion, to come out of yourself and then just repeating what's been said to you as you beat on someone else. And so like becoming okay with the violent side of me, but also saying, “Hey, this is not why I'm here.”
One day, what happened was I was taking care of my grandmother, my father's mom. And I'd lost my mother's mom years ago and was thinking about death and life and it really dawned on me that, “Hey, my father is going to get old at some point. And I'm the first child, am I going to take care of him? Or am I here to take him out?” I looked at a picture of him, he was eight as well for his first communion in the Catholic church. So it was his first communion picture with him in a prayer stance, looking like an angel, and then another photo of him and his cousin, Eric in cowboy clothes. And I just remember sitting and looking at those pictures, thinking “He was a kid like me. I don't know who he is.” And then, you know, “Do I want to hurt him or take care of him?”
And I just started crying and then it dawned on me, like, “Maybe he's just trying to figure it out too,” you know? And so then I'm like, “I'm just going to have a talk with him.” And I knocked on the door. I was like, “Dad, can I talk to you? And he's like, “Sure.” And then he spoke and I just recalled like every time before I had gotten in trouble, he gave me a fair warning. It wasn't like, it just came out of nowhere. He would warn me, warn me and I just keep doing stuff. And so maybe there was another route and that's the route I took. It taught me a lot about life too.
Alexa Ashley: What did it teach you?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: One, communication is important and how easy it is to misjudge someone. Two, there are people who may be looking out for you, but they know how to look out for you in just their way.
If you have thought of some better way to navigate, and then you discard that, that's kind of your responsibility. So it taught me to take responsibility for certain communications. I can't say I'm great at it at all, but being able to stand up to my father, not stand up to him physically, per se, but to stand up to the image I had of him within myself and challenged that in a conversation, you know. And then see like, “Whoa, it was that easy?” Like I could have just spoken to him a long time ago. I could have just decided to listen and work with him. ‘Cause my thing was, “I'm going to work with you to learn what you're trying to teach me as opposed to fight you because you're older. You know better and you're gonna die anyways. So do I have to hasten it or will I be wanting to take care of you?”
Alexa Ashley: When you stood up to the character that he was in your mind, do you mean to challenge your idea of who he was?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: I didn't know those words. I didn't know to articulate something as “challenge your own perception” at the time. So what I realized is like thinking of how I see him. It's like, “Well, there's people that view me the wrong way. Could I be doing that with him? Who is he really?” That's the question I asked and I was like, “I don't know him. I wasn't there. I don't know if he's been beaten. He shared a little bit, but like, I really didn't know him.” He was a mystery to me, in a sense, he was someone who I loved who was there. We had fun sometimes, but also he abused me in his method of punishment for discipline.
And it made me want to kill myself. So I'm getting ready to kill myself at age 9, but it wouldn't work. And then I got punished on top of it. So it put a hopelessness in me, in a sense, towards myself and doing certain things and then towards the relationship, but there was never me speaking it, I didn't know to speak it.
He was a mystery to me, in a sense, he was someone who I loved who was there. We had fun sometimes, but also he abused me in his method of punishment for discipline. And it made me want to kill myself. So I'm getting ready to kill myself at age 9, but it wouldn't work. And then I got punished on top of it.
—Ezriyah Ben Ernst
So I guess I was challenging, “Well, what's the worst that can happen if I speak it?” because I already know what I want to do the other way, but I don't really want to do that. It makes me feel this way. I opened up a lot in me, in terms of wanting to be authentic.
Alexa Ashley: That's hard and also amazing that you were able to learn all that. And at such a young age to carry with you the rest of your life. Most people don't learn that stuff ever.
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: Lots of instances. That's an interesting one to learn.
Alexa Ashley: Yeah, that was like the first time that you were thinking about killing yourself?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: I thought about it probably around seven, but I tried to hang myself in the closet in the house and broke the closet. I tried it first off of a door. Cause you know, you're short at that age, but I'm like, “No, that's not going to work.” So then I tried it in the closet, in our new house and broke the closet. I broke one of the things and then I got in trouble for playing around in there.
So it was like, it didn't work. And then I felt like “I can't even do this right.” But I kept that within me. And I fought that for years up until 2016 when I was in Hawaii and my wife left and my mom died and I had the estrangement from my daughter and I came out of religion. A lot of things happen at one time. You know, to say goodbye to paradigms. So I've gone through a lot of pain, but I had kind of given up.
Alexa Ashley: So your life was almost taken by yourself, or we could say by the hopelessness and darkness that you felt. And then it's also been almost taken by like health things. What was that like?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: I had testicular cancer, diagnosed in 2008. Removed in the beginning of 2009. And then I went through the radiation beam therapy, electron radiation beam therapy in Hawaii at Queens medical center. And that was again, just something after say my first divorce after moving to Hawaii, getting in a relationship, but still like trying to heal everything.
It was just heavy for me to think like, “Wow, I could have never seen my daughter again.” If I didn't happen to check at the advice of my partner, you know, she had me watch a movie. She didn't ask me to check my health. She had me watch Fight Club and there was a testicular cancer thing in Fight Club and these interesting connections you know, happen. I watch closer to Thanksgiving and I'm thinking—or December—and I'm thinking, “Hmm, I think I should give myself a check the next day,” you know, just a testicular check, because I was an RA in college, a resident assistant. And we would have programs kind of like what we do here, but for health.
So we taught the women how to check the breasts and the men how to check the testicles. So I remembered, so I go to the gym. And I'm like checking myself on one side. I'm like, “That's a nice big testicle.” I checked the other one. I'm like, “This one's much larger. What the fuck?”
Then I could feel a lump on the top of it. And I just had like a bunch of STD checks before to clear myself for some drama that I had with my partner prior, you know? And it's funny because like, wow, all this stuff. It was like, okay, something's going on here. So I come back, chat with her, but I don't tell her what I'm doing.
And I go to the hospital and get an x-ray sonogram. They're like, “You have a rapidly growing tumor on your testicle. You need to get into a urologist.” And so all this stuff kicked off. It's been like a lot of chin checks on the journey. I was also working for the military. My career has been in health physics, which is radiation protection, chemical hazard, identification, removal, characterization, storage.
And so it's like I'm doing this work and working with bombs, the other guys were working with bombs, but they would check for us and then we'd go in and we'd kind of work in tandem with one another. So I was on a place that had chemical weaponry as well. Things that don't often….they get disclosed later.
Sometimes you go for a project and you're there for a couple months and you leave, you do your piece. But for me being there for seven years, you know, things get declassified and you're like, “Oh, it was Agent Orange where I was standing...” you know, so it was interesting, but it really made me look at how I'm living again. But it's like graduated steps of tragedy and paradigm changes, which is the same for all of us, but for me, some of them have had to be like that. Cancer again in 2017.
Alexa Ashley: The same or different?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: It was in what they call the retroperitoneal area, you know, but the same symptoms, beginning symptoms, that I didn't pay attention to last time. Change in my body odor. Sweat, a certain kind of sweat, more metallic. That's what I felt, a change in my energy and also people reaching out to me saying, Hey, something's wrong. And a massive release in terms of emotion. ‘Cause I went to Oahu at the time to go clear some old things that I had inside with my ex-wife, the recent ex-wife at that time.
So I was going, visiting all the spots that we spent time at. I had visited all those spots and kind of said my goodbyes. All this anger came up. I was camping on the west side...in Nanakuli, just by myself, you know? And then I'd go to the movies, come back raging...I started crying and then I went to bed and I woke up super sick and feverish. And so that was the beginning of me moving to get things cleared. My story is like super condensed. Super packed with some stuff.
Alexa Ashley: How did you get into the job working with chemicals and stuff?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: I would say three generations. So my mother and her mother worked in hospitals. My mother did x-ray technology. I think my grandma did x-ray stuff. And so I was looking to get in and to help people heal from cancer as maybe working in the radiology side.
But, you know, for like working to help remove cancer or to be a doctor to deliver babies, those were the two. So following my mother's footsteps, cause that was an easy end and that would give us a connection to one another. Since she did CAT scans, mammograms, you know, x-ray etc. And so there's a shared jargon that we can speak to each other in.
It's funny, cause I went to do that, but I would have had to go to school at another university after I graduated. And when I graduated, I took a job working for a place that is a nuclear fuel cycle facility. So the environmental side, as opposed to the hospital side. And then I ended up connecting with my first wife and, you know, having a baby. And so I ended up not going to school, but continuing in that field. And then later I ended up working in Tripler just for a little bit. Tripler Medical Center, the big pink hospital that you see when you come into Oahu.
Alexa Ashley: What did you do there?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: I worked with a health physics team. I was volunteering. I came in through the Red Cross to give myself an in, and then I volunteered with their department and they work in ablation. They do all the radiation safety protocols, as well as making sure that they're under the requirements for the government, as well as the military.
And then they deal with the substances and they do ablation. So like removal by using the means of radioactive material. Calculating the dose, which would be called the symmetry and then also training for everyone—and storage. It's a great group of guys.
Alexa Ashley: So it's like you went to school thinking that you wanted to get into healing and birthing new life or helping to bring about new life. And it feels like that's kind of a little bit of what you do now in healing and giving people new life and a new sense of themselves and love. Do you feel that?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: Yeah, absolutely. And it's nice to like, feel that echo too and feel seen in that way. So those are my originals then, because I wanted to have a stable job. This is my entry. You fall into the quote unquote “Muggle” way of things. Then it's like, it's just been a journey of stripping away and getting to the essence, you know, so there's a company I have called LOCOJI. LOCOJI, everything that I built up now are aspects of me on like step-by-step on the way of remembering.
So LOCOJI stands for love, courage, justice, and experiential integration, and justice can be looked at as wanting to create a balance that's fair in your interactions with people. And all of that culminates in intimacy. And so then I described myself as a “soul deep intimacy doula.” As opposed to say the midwife who goes to school to learn the medical side and the doula who's gotten possibly, likely, more traditional knowledge as well as some of that knowledge, but isn't so much like, “Oh, you're needed in the birth process.” Although they very much are, I believe, but also in what comes before the birth, during the birth, after the birth and how they manage all of the interactions and relations in the meantime.
So for me, it's the same as poetry. It's the same as chef-ing, as a recipe. Like I see intimacy as the core of my journey here and raising awareness in that. And so I say, “I do many things,” but really I'm only interested in doing one thing and that's creating harmony or at least being—because there's a totality and everything's needed—being part of bringing it into harmony. Hosting, holding space, facilitating, moving energy up. So I've come into a lot of different aspects of what I am as a being, but I'm still ever-trying to just make it clear.
Alexa Ashley: When do you feel like you were aware of energy and wanting to work with it more on an individual level?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: I think at the age of three, I can remember living in a house with three generations. My mother's mom lived upstairs, my father, me and my mom lived in a room downstairs. I had four uncles in the basement, which is like the bachelor pad. Two uncles in one room upstairs, like a family house. So maybe like what you know of an Asian family, the Haitian, and some of the Caribbean families who have multiple generations together. So I appreciate that experience.
And there I would—before I could talk—I could feel two things. I would know my uncles by smell. Which was really cool and aunties as well. And I had a very sharp sense of smell. I could smell so much on a human being before. But that's actually just energy—navigating a perception of energy—and then I could feel certain things and I would astral travel as a child. And there was an entity in the house called “Strife” that I knew by name oddly enough, and Strife looked like a sith.
And I'd have these dreams where Strife would be in the living room and I'd be venturing down in the darkness and it would pull me in and always get away, it grabbed me by the ankle and I'd get away. And then I'd make my way back up towards grandma or towards the uncle's room. And then I'd wake up and I'd be being carried downstairs into the bedroom where my parents are.
And so I was aware of that. And then having a common touch, I started off with giving my mother massages. And then when I was in high school, of course you wanted the opportunity to touch girls, but I'd feel drawn to touching a person and they'd be like, “oh, how'd you know, it's hurting over there?” or whatever.
So I massaged some of the ladies in school, but as I’d get into it, I’d disappear. And so I've had a couple of instances with my first wife and massage, where she just disappeared into somewhere else and she had Fibromyalgia. So like to really give her a massage where she could drop in was a beautiful thing to witness.
And then the same thing with my second one as well. And so when my mother was dying, in 2016, she asked me, she says, you know, “Sweetie,” by then I'm Ezriyah, she's like, “Ezriyah can you come up and massage me?” And, and just so that's mostly what I did. And I ended up one day, massaging her for like eight hours straight, like just sitting there listening, massaging. And I'm like, “Wow, I'm just starting to get tired now, but it's endless.” And she was like, “You have healing hands.” You know, and I'm like,” I'd rather be doing something with those,” so that was a catalyst after she died.
Alexa Ashley: And you noticed it at three?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: Also as a teenager in the beginnings of courtship, there was a deep, energetic connection with one of my first I would call them my first loves and so like, I would feel her like how we talked to feeling each other in tantra and having that orgasmic feeling. I could feel that over the phone, just breath and like that kind of thing I could feel in my body at a young age. And I've also noticed how it's been blocked off by, say, heartache. And so I've got to notice how, like you love someone and something goes wrong and you close up. And then some of those other faculties will close up.
Alexa Ashley: And at three it's like, maybe you didn't have as many blockages yet to close you off. You could sense it more. But tell me about astral traveling?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: So what would happen is I would—and I didn't know anything about a quote unquote astral realm until picking up some book that my dad had from Time Magazine that talked about different realms. More esoteric stuff, but I would leave my body and drop back in, but not just before bed and after bed, I'd be in class and I'd go above the town. I lived in a town called Palm Coast and I know what the town looked like, aerially, from me flying. It'd be like, I was having a dream on the bus ride to school, but then I dropped back on my body and drop back in right as the bus would arrive at school, but I'd get to see a bird's-eye view leaving me, leaving the body and flying up.
And doing this was pretty amazing to think back on it because it's like, I knew what this place looked like and I was doing it a bit in Hawaii too. So I've actually got to go up and skydive and fly. A partner bought me flight lessons. So I got to literally fly like a cool glider, you know, up above Kaʻena Point. It's just like, “Oh, this is what it looks like.” Granted there's maps. So I could prime myself with a map, but I have that experience of like being able to go into those realms and also dealing with Succubi and other entities.
So these are like, Demons who have sex with you and pull your energy. Or beings, entities, you know, that can take energy from you by manipulating you through sexual allure. And so that's something else that I've navigated within, through love for the person that I was with saying like “I'm so into her.”
And I was actually able to decipher that “You're not my partner,” and have one of them turn around and change its face. And I realized, “Oh, I'm in another realm right now.” And so that realm was a realm for me, it was one of testing of like, “Okay, if I can be in a place where I felt I could have any type of wild sex and do whatever. You know, hold to myself and my relationship, then it's just like no barrier. It's much easier here.” If you were in a place where there's no rules, you make up rules, you know, and things just happen. So, me being like, “No,” and then it's like that realm would test me and I'd notice things that were off. So it's just another aspect of our being that maybe we navigate and forget about maybe we're navigating, it's just less dense than here, for sure.
Alexa Ashley: It sounds like maybe from like, when you were a kid, and I'm wondering if you feel that now, if you feel like you're kind of rebellious or go against the norm?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: Definitely. That's definitely me even wanting to kill yourself as a rebellion. This is saying, you know, “I'm not feeling it here.” Granted, it was a defeatist attitude, but making the decision, I made it so seriously that, you know, there was a day that I had fallen into it and my brother was like, “Please don't.” And I thought, “Okay. I don't have to do it today. ‘Cause mom just died. Everyone else was grieving. And how would I explain this? I'm going to take my time. I'm going to take three years, explore life and then create a manifesto of information to share what's been going on within me. Then they'll at least have something. So when I go,” because I've had another family member kill herself and left books and stuff behind, but everyone was trying to piece it together. She left the note, but I still feel like, you know, that created a bit of...for everyone that didn't know.
So I wanted to create something. So my last two poetry books, but really the one called “The (W)rites of Passage” was the beginning of me—after my mom died—starting to write poetry again on the way to Ko Tao in Thailand all the way up to me arriving back in The States in 2019. But halfway through, I decided, “Life is epic. I'm not going to kill myself. Now i'm just going to share my experiences. If I die along the way, at least you have these memoirs of my journey in poetry form.”
Alexa Ashley: What do you feel like mainly contributed or helped you see that epicness of life or feel it more?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: I set some ideals. So to keep me here, I had to go back to ritual, I went back to let's say military physical training. Ritual in the morning and like a bit of a boxer, 300-type of training before work. And so that gave me the endorphins in the morning. To see it through. And then I changed my diet a bit, but then the thing that I did that I feel like stuck out besides ritual was just making the decision to chronicle what's going on inside and to express it.
I started to actually have visions of me, like, Remember Me, waking up and running around in the Kōloa area. But it was being willing to face the pain. And so I took words that were like ideals and I sought to obtain them within myself. So the first things that I had were priorities, principles, spontaneity, authenticity...was it sensuality or sexuality? Like I set these principles and then they evolved into, “Okay, what is it to be love? How do I navigate life and increase my capacity to be courageous? Okay. What is justice within me? How do I have a compensatory definition of justice?” Because it's not defined in the law books, you know, in the books that are used, say a legal dictionary. It’s vague.
And so, “How do I create my own justice? And then how do I integrate my experience?” And once I came to the integration phase, then the next thing opened up for me, which was intimacy. Then I realized, “Oh, that's my golden thread” was intimacy. And then I was like, “All right, good. Now this is what I'm here to do.” So it's been like, “Oh, I've been trying to uncover these things the whole time.” And I needed to set milestones that I could measure in my relationships and interactions and with myself. And then go from there.
Alexa Ashley: And It kind of gave you a feeling of some kind of grounding in this world?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: Yeah, definitely. ‘Cause then I could see like everyone's trying to attain something. We’re either being guided to seek for something or we're looking to...like we forget and we sort of try to remember and something comes along and says “now eat popcorn.” Or like, “No, do something else.” And we go, “Okay, okay.”
But me going against the grain, I was like, “Okay, this is really about me versus me.” In a sense, me versus the me that was going to give up, me saying, “Okay, where did I start to go wrong?” I fell off within my mind around 27. I became more depressed, but like, there was also the beginning of me changing and actually attaining a lot of things I had wanted, but then me finding out all those things that I was seeking to attain, weren't what I really wanted.
So like, “Okay. What is important to me? What are the principles?” And even if those principles aren't monetarily responded to, I was going to kill myself anyways. So why not build a life based on those things? Which has again, taken me away from a lot of people that I love. And so , that's one thing I battle with now, here and there, but also being willing to look at the fruit of that decision and weigh them against each other and have a future-sight to say, “Well, that doesn't mean I have to be away from them forever. It just means I get to take the time to cultivate something in myself that will benefit them when we're together.” Specifically, I speak to my daughter and I, but maybe even my ex-wife, wives and time and family.
Alexa Ashley: Sometimes when we choose us or choose happiness for us, it can at least, at the time or momentarily change relationships with other people because they're used to one version of us that we weren't happy in and didn't want.
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: Absolutely. What I found is people sometimes get used to, or cling on to a version of me that’s evolving. And think that is the full evolution or a version of me that's in a weak state. You meet me in a state where I've been beat up and battered and people are like, “It's cool. I got you.” But I'm like, “No, I know...I am so strong,” you know, in certain ways, but there are some things that I've learned about myself through the journey inside. You may meet me in a state of contemplation and integration of what I've been through. And because my life has been one thing after another, I'm constantly integrating.
Hence what I speak to as experiential integration is you. You speaking to your own experience. Like the unfoldment of your integration as the observer of your journey and creating spaces for that, not me dictating what your integration has to be. But that's a rebellion because I've had people say, “Oh, this is what happened to you. You're good now. Blah, blah, blah.” And me being like, “No, I'm not good enough. I'm not good just yet. I'm going to take some time to myself,” you know? If you're not used to doing that, and taking steps to move deeper in that, then things are going to continue to change in your relationships.
Alexa Ashley: Tell me more about integration and what you found did it for you.
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: So the definition can be like “the blending of certain things together,” and I'm paraphrasing because for me it's blending into harmony or at least the observation with harmony within yourself of what's going on and saying, “Okay, I went through this as a result of that, I'm going to operate differently because I've digested what's happened with me. I'm comfortable...or I've come to some conclusion about what's happening with me and I'm going to move forward.
And a lot of times, in my journey it's “This thing has happened.” And I move on to the next thing, because we put a timeline on how long you can sit with something. And so say when I went to Africa and did the journey with the Iboga. Well, what I was told was, “One journey with the Iboga is a two year integration,” blows my mind because I trained with it for over seven months. And so it's like, “Okay, I'm still going to be integrating the lessons that I've learned from that.”
Life is a continual integration. It's really learning the lessons of your journey. That's what experiential integration is. We come here to have an experience. So what is the lesson that I choose to take as there's ad nauseam lessons you can take. What is the lesson that I'm going to take from this experience? Whatever it is, it's fine. But I feel like I always feel better when I've come to the lesson and I can always do a retrospective analysis as I call it and pull more lessons from it.
Miyamoto Musashi is a samurai and there's a, I think in [The Water Scroll], which is a book of strategy, but it's like close to the Dao, but for me, I use it to navigate...I'll call it war with myself. I trust that I'm a warrior in some ways, but not that I'm trying to take blood from anyone.
A soldier takes orders, but can be a warrior depending on his willingness to use his own sincere, authentic spirit to discern things. Warrior is one who is doing what I just spoke to in the journey. And you can also be at peace by going to war with yourself. The reason people go to war is to create peace, which sounds funny, but I look at it in a different way, in that if you're working with a little bit more struggle towards bringing peace within. Sometimes I feel like maybe you have to go to war with a version of yourself that's not authentic. To hear it out. Going to war could even mean hearing it out and ending a battle before it starts.
Alexa Ashley: Like with your dad?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: Yeah, for sure. You know, because there was a battle going on within me, a battle going on within him, but we were fighting different battles. And so to gain clarity is what is important about strategy, which can end a war. So to say, one man can defeat 10,000. Defeating doesn't mean you've killed 10,000 men. Defeating can mean those 10,000 men had a false interpretation of something that's going on between you and them, and you bring the war to an end by bringing truth. And so it's getting out of the disharmony by bringing harmony, which is truth, but that can be a weapon as well.
Alexa Ashley: What do you feel like are the main ways that you've been able to find truths that have impacted your life the most?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: Through witnessing my disharmony, my darkness, through illness, through heartbreak, really like being broken down. Another book that I used to read a lot was Proverbs. And then I got into Ecclesiastes and in Ecclesiastes…there’s esoteric knowledge. But I'm not a quote unquote “Bible Banger” per se, but it had its place on my journey. So one of the statements is that there's, I'm paraphrasing again, “there's truth in the house of the dead,” meaning during the time of joy and jubilation, everyone could be puffing each other up, but when someone dies, people really reflect. And so having those paradigms of mine come to me through death, whether it be an ego death through medicine or the hard way of “Damn, I thought this was going to be this way to stay in the dream right now,” the end of what I thought the dream was going to be.
That's a death. The end of a marriage can be harder than a death because that ghost is still alive somewhere. So to say, and so like facing those things and doing it, you could say in a bit of sobriety, has brought me a lot of clarity and insight, but it's in the persevering through all those emotions that I thought would kill me or that I didn't want to live with. And to see them dissipate. I'm like, “Oh, okay, cool. I'm still here.”
Alexa Ashley: It seems like you've experienced many different kinds of realities within one reality. And is it freeing or confusing or expanding or exciting? How do you feel about that?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: It's all the above. It can be daunting, but it just depends on the state that I'm in. Right? Say I was ill with food poisoning in the past couple of days and I'm like, “Ahh,” but then I'm like, “Well, there's my breath. There's my body. There's something I can learn from this.” So it all depends on where you're at with your mind and with your spirit in this dream. And so I fluctuate, I just trust in the willingness to persevere.
Like if I wake up… and I'm still here. Then I’m a rich man. You know, I even mentioned it in the last one of the last poems that I spoke in that last Mellow Cello (event), when I said, “If you've woken up, take a breath. You're the wealthiest, richest, person alive, because really there's just you as a reflection, but you're breathing, you're here.”
Alexa Ashley: I love how you do so many different things that are all centered around healing, like Mellow Cello that integrates music and poetry. For me, space is really important. And I feel like you did that really well, aesthetically. Space is underestimated and not thought of as much, but it really, as you would probably say, facilitates a beautiful opening and expanding experience and then you write and do energetic healing. Do you feel like they all help each other or influence each other?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: Absolutely. I was in the beginnings of me doing workshops and stuff. I had a partner in Bali and if you work with the military, you do a talk or presentation in the dirtiest ugliest of spaces. And everyone's just focused on the information, but you come out of that side of things and granted you want places clean and whatnot, breathable, but I've been to various different locales and working with this partner in Bali, she was like, “You've got to make it pretty, Ezriyah. This is not sexy.” She would say this to me and I would think, “You're right. Okay.”
And I have an appreciation for the aesthetic, living in Hawaii, you get used to it. But for me, it was like, God, I'd wake up in the mornings. Say when I lived in Wailua and from my shower, there's the other side of Schofield Barracks on the North Shore. So I'm like taking a shower when the sun's coming up and I'm like, “Ohhh.” And so really be drawing it back, why not bring that into your environment? And so I take that to honor the women. I try to make it pretty and also the feminine in our brothers, because they're not used to it. And it affects them, but they may not realize it, but to come into a place and have flowers.
Yeah, I spend a lot more time than it may seem. It seems like Mellow Cello starts at this time, but even like, the way you cut up the fruit adds so much to the Mello Cello for me. I saved the picture of it, because it's like, wow, you have all this beauty here and it's just up to us to craft it.
Creating audible, sensual...working with the senses helps me also because when I was wanting to leave, I'd been numbed. I couldn't feel. So that's the reason I want to be here is to feel. So if the words can help you to feel, these are my feelings coming through words—that's all I had left at one time. That's why there's so much in those poems. It's alchemical, because it was also anchoring me back here. Me being able to express and share my feelings to me so I could hear what I was feeling. Those were my journals, my daily journals, on the way to saying, “goodbye.”
Alexa Ashley: Those journals, do you feel like they help you feel?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: Absolutely. Yeah. I felt through them and some of them were downloads, I'll read you one, maybe after this it's called poems, downloads journals and something else. Yeah, it helped me immensely. Those poems are what kept me here. And then also having some funds to travel and deciding to explore and I put myself at risk a lot. I was actually kind of scared of going deep in the ocean when surfing big waves and I pushed myself to do those kinds of things in Bali. I've been out on days where nobody else was out and come back to an ovation because people thought I was going to die. I was so far out.
Alexa Ashley: Maybe that also helped you feel too.
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: Bigtime. I would have big downloads after that. Like a big shake and release from the adrenaline and then also from surviving and you saying, “Wow, that was pretty hairy.”
Alexa Ashley: What else do you feel like you've done that you didn't think you'd do?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: I went to Cambodia and I did a survey. So for the whole time, when I was working in the industry of health physics, I worked for a company. I felt a bit unsung. Not that I wanted to be honored in some way, but I did feel unhonored by the company and I felt like I believed in an ideal of cleaning up and doing this work and showing up for the company and believing this certain company's ethos.
And then to see the structure above change leadership. And it be BS, that was really disheartening for me because it was yet against something else I believed in. Rectifying that within myself was to say, “I'm going to go to this place.” I did recon. So as part of me before I died, I was like, “Well, I'm going to go.” I quit my job. Took a job for a company that I could work remotely for. And I went to Southeast Asia to do recon, to see if there was nuclear material, anywhere or bombs to be disposed of because we know about the killing fields in Siem Reap and in these other areas. So I went through Cambodia, I went to Thailand to connect with the university there and say, “Hey, we have a company that you can come work in America with.”
I went to Cambodia to see about doing cleanup. And then I found a place where it seemed like there was weaponry that possibly the US hadn't disclosed, but used ahead of time, there. It wasn't the case. Thank goodness. But there was other stuff there that was of hazard to people. So I went to The War Museum of Cambodia, and I did close to a $40,000 survey for free, pro bono, because I gave my word.
And the last day I found material that people were putting their faces on, people were able to climb towards. And I quarantined the material, but I was lied to by the Adjunct Director who told me he had passed it up his chain, but he didn't. So because it's a private company, you can get killed.
So I kept in mind, I'm in another country. So I evacuated myself the next day. Once I felt the heat and then he ended up leaving the country as well, but ended up coming back and working for them. So everything cooled out and I had quarantined the material. I don't know what they'd done with it, but I cried the day that I found that material because I felt like I was going to kill myself, I stayed alive long enough, and now I'm in another country and I'm actually getting to save lives in the way that I want to do it. I also purchased an instrument at one time, $10,000, but I got it for two, but it's like top-notch gamma spectroscopy. Portable device. And so, it's better than anything they had in the country.
So I rolled up in there like a Ghostbuster and like I surveyed the entire grounds, all the stuff, all the machines, all the tanks, all the gunners, the guns, the weapons. The artillery and then found that material, made them a little report and said, “If you want anything else done, it won't be pro bono.”
I left and went to Thailand and then finished everything there and contacted them from there. But it was special to me. I cried leaving because I realized “Wow, I actually did what I've been wanting to do in the industry,” as opposed to “We cleaned up a little bit, planned obsolescence, leave some there, come back.” Or we're not doing it right. I did the best job that I could do with nobody in my way. And, I found something that I know is going to benefit people because they were putting their faces on it. And that meant something to me. And then it was like, I could leave the industry at that point and I did go back and forth, but I felt like I did something.
Alexa Ashley: Some people would be like, “Oh, now I want to keep doing this forever.”
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: Yeah. It's a little bit dangerous for me in that instance. And then also to see like, oh, these guys, as opposed to me being able to say, no, we can put a good press spin on this because you're self identifying. They were like all about the money, because that could also negatively impact them. And here's some dude, some American, some black guy coming into their country, doing all this stuff. And so I was just aware of it and I was like, “I'm out, I'm gonna go do some yoga, peace out the next day.” And I haven't been back since, but I'd like to go back.
Alexa Ashley: I've heard from multiple people that you have this ability to make people feel...kind of like you described before, like disappear and to feel like you're in another realm together and in this…supreme love…is what I would say. Do you sense that about yourself?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: That's beautiful. I haven't heard it described like that. It’s not really me, it’s them. I disappear and then they let themselves disappear. Whatever I'm able to do is because someone's opening themselves and allowing. So I try not to force anything on someone. But if you want to be here and you're open to going into that zone, I'm just willing to navigate it with you. This is also doula-ing. It's not about me saying “You need to do this or do this,” but it's “What do you want to do? Are you willing to dive into that with me?”
Because I try to keep my intentions pure. Can't say it's always like that because I mean, I’m human, right? At the core, because I'm about some ideals. And I realize ideals do drive me and that is the fairytale nature of the heart of man. Which makes his heart so sensitive that I'll speak to now. The fairytale nature of the heart of man is what makes his heart so sensitive. This is what makes men beautiful to me. Men and women. But I see that fellows, they believe in a fairy tale, then their heart gets hurt and then everything is tough, tough, tough. And they look to the next fairytale, football, movies, basketball, sports. And so it's like just witnessing that and being like, “Oh yeah, I dig it. Let me love you in that space.”
Alexa Ashley: If you'd like to be known for anything while you're here or after, what would you want to be known for?
Ezriyah Ben Ernst: There's such a thing as leaving a legacy of love. That's what my mom told me and I did a past life regression and it was supposed to go to the womb, but I went further back. I'm like, “Well, I actually took myself further back” and I was hovering above her. And it's funny because before she died, I had this moment where I held her in my arms and I rocked her and I realized she had never been held like that. That's something that she wanted. So I wanted to give that to her.
I used to do this with my ex-wife. And so I'm like, “Let me try something with you, Mom.” And I picked her up and I rocked her until she just collapsed. And then the day that I was getting ready to leave, to go back to my wife in Pahoa, she says to me, “Son, I want to tell you something. Before you were born, I wanted love in my life, like a pure love, and this is what you are.”
She never talked to me like this before. You know, she was always sweet to me. Chill with me, made fun of me for being over romantic or whatnot, or metro-sexual. She was like, “You’re metro-sexual,” and tease me. But she never got serious, you know? I received it, then when I did the past life regression, I felt what it was to be something someone was calling for vibrationally and knowing that I was going to enter her life and share whatever it was that I am, that is connected to her—through her. And I just felt so much for her as I was hovering above her bun, she had a bun and she was in a rocking chair. Super cute.
I created a love legacy. That’s it. But like, what is the love that I am? Creating space for people to drop more into the love that they are, which we could call intimacy.
What is the love that I am? Creating space for people to drop more into the love that they are, which we could call intimacy.
—Ezriyah Ben Ernst
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