16. Qigong in the Year of the Dragon with Austin Muhs

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[00:00:10] Austin: the NPC is the person in the video game or whatever that just isn't real, but you think is real. it's a matrix person. So laugh about that because look, it's my job. It's your job.

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[00:00:41] Austin: You know? Like, man. It's not, it's not gonna happen, you know?

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[00:01:14] Meredith: Welcome to the most powerful of all the 12 year cycles representing the metaphysical power of the heavens. This 2024 Year of the Dragon. In this episode, we discuss the Taoist practice of Qigong, and how we can leverage and integrate the healing power of this year for our own transcendence. Before we dive in though, I want to thank you for having the bravery to face your shit and heal yourself.

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[00:02:02] Meredith: So thank you for having the bravery to like, share, and subscribe to this content far and wide to help me break the algorithm and help others heal themselves. Join the fishy movement with a one off donation. Or become a member for as low as 5 a month.

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[00:02:43] Meredith: My experience inspired me to actually live my art. So, I created an ongoing art series about it called Every Phase, where I illustrate how I healed myself as I lived by the phases of the female hormonal cycle. The artwork shows what's happening in the brain and in the body during each phase, and reveals how to biohack and leverage this energy in your life.

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[00:03:40] Meredith: Capturing all the images from the Every Phase series, and be sure to pick up a signed copy of my award winning augmented reality book, Face Your Shit, Heal Yourself. Also, speaking of art books, if you're thinking of creating one, I highly recommend checking out Snap Collective, where you can create and sell your book for basically free.

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[00:04:27] Meredith: From selecting the most compelling pieces to designing the layout and choosing the finest materials, Snap Collective takes care of it all. So you can focus on what you do best, creating breathtaking works of art. Contact them today with the link in the show notes and explore the endless possibilities of publishing your own art.

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[00:05:10] Meredith: Today we are chatting with astrologer, numerologist, animal rescuer, veteran tarot card reader, and Qigong practitioner, Austin Mews. Austin's spiritual quest began at 19 when his father died. This tremendous loss filled him with grief and led him down a negative, self destructive life path. After immersing himself in the way of psychology, philosophy, and spirituality, he discovered meditation and the hermetic arts and was guided out of the darkness that had befallen him.

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[00:06:07] Meredith: This holistic approach gave him a thirst for self improvement, led him to become a Tai Chi and Qigong practitioner, and instilled in him a deep love for nature. All his life experiences and accomplishments gave him a personal philosophy. To make life rewarding, he needed to do his part to make the world a better place.

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[00:06:53] Meredith: I have a couple of narc clients that are like really good, well paying clients now.

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[00:07:10] Meredith: That's the best part. When they think they're playing you. They think that the loose feeding. It's happening. Well, they must know on an energetic level.

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[00:07:33] Austin: weird part is I think that in their minds, they're getting closer to spirituality by hanging out with someone like me.

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[00:07:54] Meredith: Yes, you're so right. They're like, I will be, I could get away with being a better person if I go see Austin. And then.

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[00:08:16] Austin: Austin Lane is a perfect country singer name. It is!

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[00:08:22] Austin: You know, like, it would work. It

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[00:08:32] Meredith: Awesome.

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[00:09:00] Austin: But anyway, Awesome. But he didn't like that feeling. Well, he does now.

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[00:09:15] Austin: is more like Country is just where the money's at. Yeah, his label was like broke. You want to actually make some money,

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[00:09:25] Meredith: It never hurts to be good at what you do.

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[00:09:27] Meredith: The title of this show, face your shit, heal yourself. That is a narcissist's worst nightmare to actually face themselves. And that is actually the first step of all healing is to face the truth, face the music, face or acknowledge whatever the problem is in this world where we live in, it's completely.

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[00:10:06] Austin: who you are today? I think I tried everything possible to avoid facing myself, and then by like a process of elimination, I circled back.

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[00:10:49] Taoism, Astrology & Anger

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[00:10:59] Meredith: That takes something to keep going. It takes something to be motivated by it and inspired by it. So what would you say, inspired you to really face those hard truths and hard realities of this world and keep yourself motivated? To keep serving those areas.

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[00:11:24] Austin: to me, I came to astrology because I was so confused about my own life. I was like. Oh, there's like a thing out there with a roadmap of fate or you know This type of thing and like it can I can just look at it read it and it's like a book about my life Oh, maybe I should use that, you know, it's like astrology just seemed common sense and Even though I was loosely raised christian.

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[00:12:09] Austin: And so then I read my chart and I was like, Oh, I'm supposed to be here and there I am, whatever this is. so it just strikes me as a tool to help other people do the same if they feel confused is to look into that and it kind of branches into Taoism where astrology is a high art because, you know, you're not just looking at the stars as fixed.

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[00:13:02] Austin: So even though Astrology is good it's it's only half the story in my mind because the other half is the spiritual practices that allow us to actually shift Our fate, you know, if we just feel like life isn't going the direction we need to go at that time

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[00:13:32] Meredith: Like people argue it's one or the other, it's actually both. And I, in my opinion, astrology, I see that just so evidently in astrology, as well as, you know, in like the Taoist philosophies, as you're talking about, but it totally is more of okay, I incarnated here with these skills, or this is like a natural propensity to me, or maybe this is like a naturally something that I'm more interested in.

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[00:14:25] Meredith: It's actually on the Demon Star, which honestly makes a lot of sense because it's only been until I've gotten to a certain level of pissed. That things change in my life, things actually manifest, it's been how I've healed myself through an eating disorder, through endometriosis, healing through sexual abuse, I get to a certain level of I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, a certain level of pissed with something, and then, shit changes.

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[00:15:11] Austin: And I think some people are just straight up scared of looking at their chart cause they maybe don't want to know or don't want to, but I never really had that particular fear.

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[00:15:45] Austin: It doesn't really, it's just holding onto it for too long. That's the problem.

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[00:16:07] Animal Disaster Rescue

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[00:16:14] Austin: yeah, it's, for anyone in your audience who doesn't use Substack, I really love it. I think everyone should have a Substack that writes. So that's a random weird plug, but it's been like the past month on Substack has been so cool because I just, you know, I don't relate to most social media.

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[00:16:57] Austin: It's really cool So I encourage people to check that out, but like it's just a curse of the Gemini thing I always try and explore thing new things and try and see how far they can go And for me, the reason I got into animal rescue was because before that I was doing national, rescue teams for hurricanes and fires and stuff.

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[00:17:36] Austin: I ran away into doing National Hurricane Rescue and whatever. And you know, it was great, like it gave me like a reason to, be happy and whatever, but Mhm. It But yeah, it just was ultimately unsustainable. There was obviously no financial benefit for me and, it just conflicted with my work life and my stability in the longterm.

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[00:18:19] Austin: Even in the beginning, you'll get pings that you're supposed to go that way.I just have tried so many things where I just didn't get that ping or didn't get that, Little bit of success at the beginning and you just. You just realize you're just trying to beat on a brick wall, so I think that it's important to follow the natural course of fate in that sense of if you see things are going in a good direction or at least progressing for you personally, then just keep going down that path and see where it goes.

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[00:18:53] Meredith: I just I've known a lot of people who like want to be career entrepreneur type peoples And they just keep they'll go down a path. It's not working for five years. I'm like, I would have known a year one Not gonna work. Yeah.

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[00:19:13] Meredith: Yeah

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[00:19:23] Taoism & Qigong

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[00:19:40] Meredith: Can you share a little bit about the Taoist philosophy and also the Qigong practice, Taoist practice?

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[00:20:47] Austin: And that's where, things like Qigong and acupuncture became very intensive studies that, really require in depth, finite intuition to even approach. the problem or why Daoism never became super widespread is because the barrier to entry is a, like, you have to have a base level like intuition a little bit going on.

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[00:21:34] Austin: which just means observe natural events and try to go with the natural events and don't try and swim upstream. that's as simple as it gets in Taoism. And I think a lot of people are. raised in America to swim upstream. For instance, you want to have maybe, in your teen years, you want to have like true love, or you want to have success in your career, or you want to have these things.

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[00:22:25] Austin: For sure. Even though we like, it's like a boomerang effect, even though we throw that boomerang as hard as it, it just comes and slaps us right back to where we were. that's where you get like internal growth as opposed to external effort. The Western philosophy is if I just work 16 hour days, I'm going to make more money than the next guy.

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[00:23:06] Meredith: That's really good. I think there's this idea of of course there's free will in your life, but I think people collapse and kind of synonymize, that's a word, free will and resistance, you know, go swimming upstream. And it's like, those two aren't the same thing all the time.

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[00:23:52] Meredith: And I have some other plans, too, and it's like the marriage of that, in that current

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[00:24:14] Austin: You know what I mean? But sadly, reality tells us that sometimes that price is our own life, or sometimes that price is a very high price, whatever that may be. So I think that humans just need to be real with themselves and realize Oh yeah, I could be a billionaire, but At what cost type of a thing. So that's where the going with the flow Is just saying, whatever you want, you just need to analyze why you want it and then make a clear spiritual choice about it. I think is more about what it is. It's saying, because everything we do is going to have some costs, you know?

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[00:25:23] Austin: Putting more effort. It doesn't always result in more result

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[00:25:26] Meredith: it doesn't I? Something my brother in law said is the juice worth the squeeze. I think that's so Perfect for this is the juice but you're gonna get actually worth the effort that you're putting in And I think it's a really good question to contemplate in this year of the dragon I'm a dragon I can't wait.

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[00:26:01] Austin: yeah, in essence, the dragon year is to put it lightly, or to put it, you know, bluntly, it's the most powerful of all the 12 year cycles, because the dragon really represents the metaphysical power of the heavens.

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[00:26:41] Austin: They just had new body styles. They really look like a wave, a future wave. And I noticed it like halfway through. I'm like, this is. This is quite interesting. I've never seen this dramatic, stylistic departure in terms of automobiles as I did last year. And it wasn't that I liked or didn't like the cars.

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[00:27:27] Austin: Of course, some people are, in long term relationships that they're happy with and careers that they're happy with, but at the same time. it could be even opening up the door to where you have a broader reach within your relationship or a broader really reach within your career to have a more long term effect on society or bigger positive impact on society.

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[00:28:09] Austin: obviously a lot of people go into it for just strictly the spiritual growth, third eye. energy type of a, a reason, but it can be any combination of those things. Taoism is very practical in the same sense Buddhism is where it's sometimes you just need something right now in life and you need to make it happen there's some big problem and you need to fix it, or maybe you don't have any specific.

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[00:28:52] Austin: they've had a corporate job for 20 years and they just, they become NPCs, without meaning to be NPCs, they're NPCs, And from thTaoistas angle, At least I've heard it talked about that people can become too ghost like. You know, where they're not really human anymore, they're more ghost than human.

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[00:29:32] Meredith: Exactly! They're like, fulfilling their like, branded, humanly role.

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[00:29:43] Austin: basically. Yeah, the NPC is the person in the video game or whatever that just isn't real, but you think is real. It's a matrix, you know, it's a matrix person. So laugh about that because look, it's my job. It's your job.

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[00:30:20] Austin: You know? Like, man. It's not, it's not gonna happen, you know?

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[00:30:26] Meredith: Sadly, but hey, listen, you could try telling him about your new class. What could the guy at Dunkin Donuts, what could the NPCs out there? Or anyone listening, what can people expect when they sign up for this? What are they getting into?

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[00:31:00] Austin: It's a little bit like You know, like you get like a body rush when you, have caffeine or smoke a cigarette. You get those kind of sensations when you do Qigong, at least the higher level Qigong. So you're getting some kind of bodily sensation stuff. So I think that people who are in it for the, Oh my God, is it like mushrooms?

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[00:31:40] Austin: And then also, whoever attends the class, he'll intuitively read the room and see what they need to hear at that time and talk about some of that too. But, you know, Taoism has a very rich, pretty intense history dating back to, basically Genghis Khan. and before because the guy who started the white cloud monastery who's the You know monastery that the lecture is being taught under or doctor who studied there for his whole life younger life that guy was a guy named chuchu g and he was actually the astrologer fortune teller for genghis khan And he was the guy who you know convinced him to stop like just raping and pillaging randomly there's you know, that was a very intense moment in history, right?

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[00:32:55] Austin: And he kinda had a reputation. And so he just basically showed him like, Look, I'm a fortune teller. If you keep going down this path, this is what's gonna happen to you. You might wanna, you know, try and chill. And it wasn't an immediate stop to his conquest, but within a year or two, he started realizing, some things.

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[00:33:38] Austin: If you go on YouTube, you'll see the Mongolian people, they still do falconry to this day. And that's from the legacy of Genghis Khan. So it reaches back a long time and spirituality is. Nothing new. It's just changed forms a lot, you know, obviously modern Christianity is way different than Christianity in the 1800s, which is probably way different than Christianity was in the 1700s.

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[00:34:23] Austin: And that's why, you know, there's never been a preclusion for, banning gay people or banning transgender or anything like that. Daoism is actually very flexible. The OG Daoists back in the day to test people would actually dress up like women and then go and do some begging or do some random stuff and kind of see if people would treat them like dirt.

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[00:34:54] Fight for yourself

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[00:35:07] Austin: And then once you create something new within yourself, then it. Branches out into society. That's what's new. Society's never gonna present you or give you something new. You create the newness with them.

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[00:35:39] Meredith: Fireside Chats with Genghis Khan and Gigi

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[00:35:47] Austin: it's really hard to sum that up, other than, maybe fight for yourself. maybe it's just because it's on the top of my head because I wrote about it the other day, but I think a lot of people just give up on life, just completely.

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[00:36:24] Austin: But you just have to just keep going. What's the worst that happens is, death, right? But, even if that's the worst, would, you know, you don't wanna die just having just, been on the lazy river. Going around and around, you know, on your little raft. It's just, it's not a good way to do it. I've seen a lot of people in their absolute worst, most dire of circumstances and disaster zones, and the sad part about it is the trauma does force them to become zombie like.

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[00:37:25] Austin: So just realize like you can be in this instance in life and it's not the worst thing that's ever happened. Other people have had to come back from that shell shock, from that PTSD and regain, their faculties, but it's tough to do. And that's why it's great that, podcasts like yours exist.

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[00:38:01] Meredith: And there's many things like you were saying that are worse than death, like living in suffering or living like completely numbed out. So you don't even get to experience the joy. Yeah. You don't experience the pain, but you don't experience the joy. To me, that's worse than death, you know? Yeah, it really

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[00:38:20] Austin: And, people who take antidepressants and anti anxiety, from the Daoist perspective, it's like putting demon energy into the body to try and subdue a different demon that's already in the body. So it's not the way you want to deal with it. You know, you want to try and get dark energy out somehow, not keep putting more dark energy in.

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[00:39:05] Meredith: So that it's not just The perpetual cycle of hell.

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[00:39:32] Austin: Yeah. People who don't cry at all usually do have health issues down the line from not crying, Obviously I don't want to make people feel bad if they can't cry, but for the most part, if you're able to, it's not a bad thing.

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[00:40:02] Qigong as a song - Biohacking with Art

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[00:40:13] Meredith: Are you ready? Okay,

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[00:40:35] Austin: It's probably like a song, you know,

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[00:41:06] Austin: You're like, come on, cut me a break! I'm playing a song here! Give me, throw some, couple shekels in my, uh, my guitar case

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[00:41:28] Austin: Cause 270 is more approachable than 540. So if you want to come, just email me or DM me or whatever. I'm sure all my socials will be in the link she puts out. so just get in touch with me and I'll help out if I can. And, it's on March 10th. It's a seven hour class. And it's just a special thing.

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[00:42:06] Austin: So he's just a well respected guy. He's very practical down to earth, I'd be happy to extend that to your audience just so it's not as crazy for a bar of entry, so to speak.

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[00:42:23] Meredith: it really matches though, the whole energy of what Qigong really even is, which is that Marriage of the heavens and the universe and the co creation of you. so it's basically like you're dancing with the universe through these different positions and different movements.

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[00:42:53] Austin: think about this, when we communicate with each other on cell phones. a hundred years ago, we'd have been like, yeah, whatever, I can't talk to this person way over here. But we figured out with signals and, you know, all this crap that we can, technology that we can communicate halfway across the world in the blink of an eye,

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[00:43:34] Austin: This technology they had to develop their own kind of technology and it just happened to be very different But it's not a bad thing and it's very interesting. I feel like i'm someone who gets bored easily as you can tell from my 50 000 activities that I do but qigong it's kept my interest for, I've been practicing over 12 years and it never gets boring cause there's always something, some new experience or some different kind of information that you gleaned from, just doing it,it's like you're downloading information from the heavens, would be the way I would put it.

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[00:44:38] Austin: If you just type in my name on Amazon, my books will pop up. It's Austin and then last name M U H S. I wrote two books on economics One book on philosophy and one book on astrology and tarot and then I ghost wrote Another book, which is my fifth book, which I won't name. And then my sixth book that's coming out is a Taoist book that I co wrote with Dr.

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[00:45:28] Austin: An energizing, feel good documentary about that type of stuff that I met, directed and produced. I'm most excited still right now about my sub stack. So just search my name on sub stack and I'm literally writing basically an article a day right now. just cause I'm having fun doing it, Sweet. That's what I'm doing.

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[00:46:14] Meredith: And remember as always, the truth will set you free. We will see you all next time. Thank you so

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[00:46:23] Meredith: Bye.

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[00:46:34] Meredith: family and friends, or subscribe with the link below to receive exclusive perks. And if you're feeling really generous, please leave a review on Pod chaser dot.

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