Summary
Joe and Brett explore the profound relationship between death and aliveness. Brett shares his journey through base jumping — a sport where he was told upfront that his closest friends would die one by one — and how confronting mortality became a gateway to deeper living. The conversation turns intimate as Brett discusses his brother Scott’s stage four brain cancer diagnosis and how that reality has compressed and deepened their relationship.
Joe explores how acknowledging death — not just intellectually but viscerally — dissolves the stories and identities we cling to. When we truly face the fleetingness of existence, the ego’s constructs lose their power. The stories we carry about ourselves, our achievements, and our failures simply cannot survive the reality of death, and in that dissolution there is profound freedom and sweetness.
The episode weaves together Brett’s experiences with near-death in extreme sports, a friend named Case who had an awakening during terminal cancer, and the ongoing reality of Brett’s brother finding deeper joy and gratitude even as his body declines. The central insight is that the closer you get to death, the closer you get to life — and that this proximity is available to anyone willing to acknowledge the truth of impermanence.
Key Concepts
- Acknowledging death compresses and intensifies life
- Our stories and identities cannot survive death
- The abyss we fear is the place where we don’t exist
- Near-death experiences reveal peace that was already there
- Always say goodbye like it’s the last time
Key Quotes
“The closer you get to death, the closer you get to life at the same time.”
“There’s something about the reality of death that allows it — compresses life — and you can press it enough and it becomes everything and nothing.”
“First you jump off and you’re like I’m falling, then you realize there’s no bottom, then you’re like I’m flying — this is fantastic.”
“At your funeral, even in the full light of recognition that we cannot survive this life, we cannot help but pretend we are forever.”
“He’s just like, yeah I’m just lying in bed, some days I can’t even move, but when I just hear the door opening and closing with my kids running in and out of the house playing, I could never be happier.”
“What does it mean that you didn’t build a billion dollar business? There’s two people — one guy built a billion dollar business and he’s dead, and somebody didn’t build a billion dollar business and he’s dead. Like what the f*** — doesn’t make a difference.”
Transcript
we were going to go travel the world together and jump off of things together and he got married and then had kids and stayed stayed uh in Cleveland and for a lot of years I felt this story that I had left him behind and that he was missing out but the life that he lived was not a life where he stayed home yeah it’s the life where he dove in to to his family yeah and that flipped for me I I felt a sense of oh like wow that that life that he’s lived man welcome back to the art of accomplishment where we explore living the life you want with enjoyment and ease and that sounds in stark contrast to our topic today oh my God So Different yeah so the topic we go into today is on death and dying the death of the ego the death of self the imminent death of Brett’s brother and death of people we loved yeah living a lifestyle of people dying around you and living a lifestyle of being present to the death that’s happening in you and around you all the time in all the different ways yeah and the freedom that it can offer here we go let’s do it let’s do it so years years ago when I when I started Bas jumping I remember reading an internet Forum with a bunch of anonymous jumpers talking about the sport talking about what it’s like to live a life in the sport and I’ll never forget one of the quotes that somebody had made was that you’re going to get into this Sport and you’re going to meet some of the most amazing people some of the most incredible people you’ve ever met in your life diverse talented full of life and you’re going to become best friends with many of them and then one by one they’re going to start dying in front of you and when I first read that I of course was like whoa I got to like lean back in my chair a little bit and process this yeah and there was a part of me that was just like this is insane what are you doing and I also can’t deny that there was a part of me that was you know 18-year-old kid my entire adult life ahead of me and I was like you know what sign me up I don’t know what’s coming but sign me up something about that sounds like a life worth living and I want to find out what that is what was that yeah there’s layers to it I think maybe the first layer was you know growing up on you know Saving Private Ryan and War movies and like there’s there’s an experience that people can have together when it’s tough and when it’s hard yeah that can be really bonding and that people grow through yeah and I want to grow you know I didn’t want to live what I’d consider consider to be a kind of stale corporate lifestyle that like left me sitting in a box I wanted to get out there and live yeah and so one correlate to living life for me was to be risking it yeah it’s funny because I don’t even the idea that there’s a safe interior is a yeah is an illusion that doesn’t fully allow yourself to see the the reality of death yeah there is no everybody dies everything ends yeah I’m curious how so I’m listening to the story and I’m like fascinating and there’s something even more fascinating to me is that you’re brother has got brain cancer and he’s not doing well right now how does how does that like how does this oh I wanted to like risk my life and you’ve had many of your friends die that reality that you read was exactly what happened to you and you’ve lost many friends and You’ mourned many friends and you’ve learned to mourn many friends and to just to start off with like how is it right now to just how are you doing with the fact that your brother is close to death and not even fully here anymore yeah I mean first I question there’s there’s a way that he’s actually doing extraordinarily well right and it’s not medically um has nothing to do with his longevity yeah however he’s doubled so far the original prognosis of his lifespan for context he has stage four gasta brain cancer yeah diagnosed while we were on a retreat together in yeah May 2023 yeah how are you doing with the fact that your brother’s dying yeah it’s both facts it’s the fact that he’s dying and the fact that he’s here just like for all of us and I’ve been I’ve been learning this from from him in the way that he’s been experiencing it he’s as he’s been going deeper and deeper through this process he’s been finding more and more gratitude and more and more joy in whatever moment there is and so there’s there’s a way that it feels like the density of life is like compressing for him mhm in this really beautiful way Y and something that’s different for me about this experience than the dozens of people that I’ve known over the years who have died since that initial story yeah is that for most of them they were surprises they were accidents so maybe not a surprise like be like okay I can see this one coming from a mile away I just don’t know when it’s going to happen but when it happens you don’t have a chance to say goodbye yeah there’s no closure it’s just gone and so more of an earthquake less of a hurricane right right and this is the hurricane yeah Hurricane for me I’m sort of on the peripheral I live across the country I have you know I’ve I’ve lived a different life than my most of my family who lives very close to one another in Ohio and so for them there’s like that’s the eye of the hurricane and I’m sort of on one of the Spiral arms in some sense it’s like core like this is my older brother yeah this is my this is my family and I’ve never had had a loss in my immediate family before yeah I had a um I have a couple death stories I had a friend case who I’m sure we’ve spoken about on the podcast before and case uh got diagnosed with cancer lymphatic cancer non hogin I think it something like that and in that eminent death he woke up he had an Awakening where he saw through his personality and who he became who he saw himself as was Universal right one with everything he was stoked it was great then found out that he got cured of the cancer and it all went away and um and then I got to know him and then he got cancer again and was curing the cancer and died of a heart attack but I asked him you know when it came when you came back to being alive like and you knew you were going to live in the The Awakening went away for you how did you how did you like come back to the Awakening and he said oh it’s like when I found out I realized it was never gone and there’s something about what you just said in oh compressing of a life there’s a way in which when we acknowledge death not just the death of my brother’s going to die but the death of I’m never going to be who I was yesterday I’m parts of me die all the time my identity dies on a regular basis when we really acknowledge that everything is fleeting and I don’t mean it just intellectually I mean like physically viscerally acknowledge it there’s something that happens that is very much compresses life so to speak everything becomes sweeter or more vibrant or more meaningful yeah there’s a phenomenon often described by people in in the sport or in life in general who have a near-death experience where there’s that oh moment there I was and being eaten by the bear moment yeah yeah and often times as people reflect and I’ve had these experiences I I can reflect on in that moment what I would have anticipated feeling as I’m freefalling toward rocks and I’m not sure my parachute’s going to open cuz something’s anomalous or weird that I would anticipate feeling Terror and often what actually happens is a sense of Peace yeah and people describe that and they’re like well that that’s just kind of bizarre I had that experience and then you know they turn away from it because it was it was brought up in this like intense moment but there’s there’s ways that these intense moments can simply make us aware of what’s already there the way that you describe with case yeah and it what’s interesting is I I do see that the acknowledgement of our death the fleetingness like best case scenario the last person to remember me is going to be two from 2,000 years if you’re super lucky like 2,000 years yeah if if that’s even luck right but the most likely scenario is that like in 50 years there will be no memory of me with anybody ever and so like to fully allow that in to mourn that to feel that all the way really makes the self very unimportant and I think that that’s what death does on some level is like when we almost die when we somebody dies it it like rips a hole through what we think is reality and it says see there’s really there’s this big Abyss there’s this big nothingness you might not want to look at it but that’s that’s the deal and going into it is creates a can create a tremendous amount of relief and freedom it’s often when you hear me talking about going into the abyss when someone’s like scared of something and I say oh go into the abyss I’m not pointing at anything significantly different then it’s going into the place you’re scared of and the place you’re scared of is where you don’t exist MH where or what you think you are changes dramatically and it and it and it can be seen seen really in every moment every moment that we exist there’s a death there’s some part of me that’s not going to ever exist again so even if I’m remembered like is it the one that is speaking now that’s remembered or is it the one from five years ago that was remember I can’t even remember the one five years ago that walked around as Joe Hudson there’s something about the reality of death that allows it you said it really well compresses life and you you can press it enough and it’s it like it becomes everything and nothing yeah yeah we used always say the closer you get to death the closer you get to life at the same time right so what what’s the value in in in exploring this in recognizing the way that they’re dying every moment the way that their relationship is dying every moment the way that their company their vision is changing every second and is never what it was before like what what are the ways in which we can recognize and be close to and have a relationship with death in our daily life yep that isn’t say like morbid Naval gazing gazing you know that’s so funny yeah there’s nothing in me that feels like any of it’s morbid it feels like so life affirming but I understand the question or how somebody would come up with that thought process so the the way I would say it is if you’re in a business and you don’t want to see reality as it is you’re not going to do very well in that business doesn’t mean that you don’t want to change it it doesn’t mean that you don’t want to influence it but to just know what’s actually happening to really have the real data of the situation changes the way that you’re going to do that business and it changes how effective you’re going to be similarly if you really understand the reality of life and death if you really sit with the fact that there’s a truth that we will all die there’s a moment that’s like oh and then there’s a moment of great relief there’s a moment of seeing through the illusion and so for me my personal story around this was I Came Upon a question what am I and and in that there’s this recognition of oh wait there’s a way in which everything is fleeting everything is moving and if and I remember reading the story of Buddha’s Awakening and apparently the first thing he said so The Story Goes is coming coming going going everything comes and goes there’s a and the recognition of that may be scary at first but at some point there’s a piece to it because life doesn’t it it can’t be personal anymore when you realize you’re not your thoughts because you can’t even control them you can’t even decide what your next thought’s going to be you can’t even stop them so that that can’t be you right and I’m not my emotions because it’s the same thing I can’t control them they just come and go there’s a way in which there’s a like a peace that’s available because there’s not this constant struggle to maintain a life an identity a sense of self that inherently is flawed weak vulnerable constantly dying and to not take life personally is really an amazing an amazing feeling of freedom and I’m talking about an extreme but if you make it really realistic and like right away there was something that whoever is listening to got triggered by six years ago it triggered when somebody said something to them and today that thing that triggered them doesn’t trigger them anymore because they don’t take it personally anymore and so if you just take that freedom and you times it by a billion that’s the freedom you feel when you realize everything just dies everything moves everything there’s no such thing as some stability and instead of oh my God what am I going to do it becomes oh there’s a lot of freedom and first you jump off and you’re like I’m falling then you realize there’s no bottom then you’re like I’m flying this is fantastic yeah and so that’s that’s the situation is just that knowing of everything is d everything’s dead everything you can’t you can’t survive this yeah there’s also the there’s the aspect of like you don’t know what you’ve had until you’re at faced with losing it and a kind of fun Twist on that is you don’t know what pillars of identity for example your life is built on until you are faced with losing them yeah in many in many instances so for myself yeah I’ve had years of my life where my all of my activities and my thoughts were organized around a pattern of living that I wasn’t aware was actually meant to avoid the death of some aspect of myself that was Toast anyway right on a long timeline exactly even a short enough timeline you know like yeah the and and this can happen in a relationship too if you have the ideal of a relationship and you’re defending that that ideal is reality rather than discovering what reality is throughout the process and allowing your ideas of it to die yeah then more and more in your life has to be some form of swimming back Upstream against the tide yeah so make it real for me there’s this death happening in your life right now with your brother like what yeah part of you is being asked to die what part of you like what’s happening in that experience for you let me think about that right immediately what I notice is in you and me probably in the audience it’s like this happens this yeah like it’s almost a vacuum and that is the sematic experience of what we’re often avoiding yeah and one one of the first things that came to me that that that I had to die was uh I had had a story that you know years ago my brother and I got into skydiving together basically around the same time and had this you know we we started my business together we were going to go travel the world together and jump off of things together and he got married and then had kids and stayed stayed uh in this story that I had left him behind and that he was missing out and hadn’t recognized how subconsciously lodged that story had been yeah and some sense of guilt like I need to go back sometime and free him in some way I don’t know bring him into my business like there was just something going on yeah that was just nonsensical but it was in the background of my of my awareness for years and then very quickly upon hearing the news of his cancer immediately that flipped and I was like he now has two kids in their early teens that he never could have had if he was on the adventure we were on together if he stay maybe in some other machination that could have occurred but right but the life that he lived was not a life where he stayed home yeah it’s the life where he dove in to to his family yeah and that flipped for me I felt a sense of not envy but a sense of like oh like wow man like wow right I just so the the story fell away that that we were on some different level somehow and that like I had escaped and he hadn’t or that I had abandoned him and he all of that fell away it’s like the only thing that can be there is the now cuz it’s the only thing you know you’ve got he’s not dead today all you really have is like this moment with him and somehow or another our stories don’t get to exist in that moment and similarly when you acknowledge your own death your stories of yourself don’t get to really like what what does it mean that you didn’t get your house by the time you were 40 when you’re dead what does that mean yeah what does it mean that you didn’t make enough spiritual progress you didn’t develop enough you didn’t build a billion dollar business there’s two people one guy built a billion dollar business and he’s dead and somebody didn’t build a billion dollar business and he’s dead like what the or she’s dead like what doesn’t make a difference we don’t even know all the people who built billion dollar businesses today and they sure as how won’t be remembered any more than and and if you’re remembered what does that matter if you’re dead I’m dead but I’m remembered like who all of these things that the ego hangs on to the stories just don’t get to don’t get to survive death there’s something really sweet about the fact that that that’s that’s our reality that we don’t get to taste if we don’t acknowledge it and so I have this poem and so I was talking about case I think earlier and um this is what I wrote at his funeral I wrote um at your funeral even in the the full light of recognition that we cannot survive this life we cannot help but pretend we are forever we see there hasn’t been a second we have survived ceaseless and delivering are our every dying moments that we throw together and project into an unknown future I Fall to my knees in gratitude for this illusion of me it is what has allowed me to laugh and cry with you my friend and is what allows me to feel the endless depth of missing you now oh wellow yeah and there’s just a there’s just a sweetness that you don’t get to touch if you don’t acknowledge that the death the void the emptiness yeah reminds me of the last time I was with my brother yeah and my sister you know of course the the the plan is to miraculously cure brain cancer and also by acknowledging acknowledging the situation that we were able to have the moment where my brother held my sister and I close he’s the older brother both of us yeah and he was able to just say hey it’s been an honor to grow up with both of you yeah and that’s something I’ve never got with any of my friends who died they never had a moment to say something like that to me they just it’s like they went around the corner and never came back and having that happen so many times in my life is gotten me into the practice of always saying goodbye like it’s the last time because it might be and there’s a there’s a Sweetness in the reality that now when it is my brother my my biological brother yeah who’s facing death at any unknown time that that I actually do have time to have these moments with him yeah like I never had with many of my many of the people close to me yeah and if we were not acknowledging the we’ll call it the possibility that anytime I see him could be the last we wouldn’t be having the kinds of conversations that we’ve had we wouldn’t have we wouldn’t be having the moments we’re having together in the time that we have now yeah and when when he first told me about the cancer and I stepped away we continued facilitating The Retreat we were facilitating I remember that and then after it was done I like that’s when my processing really began and I called them back up and I was like Scott so realistically there’s a reality where we could have spent the rest of our lives seeing each other every couple of years and you know making small talk around the kids or whatever and having conversations about business and stuff going on in the world and then there’s a world where maybe you’re not here for another year and in that amount of time there’s a world where we can have a deeper relationship than we ever would have had otherwise yeah and so let’s lean into that yeah that’s the opportunity because when that acknowledgement is there then you get that deeper opportunity every every time every moment it’s almost as though the the way that that those words that I read on the base jumping Forum hit me was in that part where it’s like here’s a way that all of your stories can be ripped away right that’s the promise of of that kind of sport even if it doesn’t happen forever when you’re flying and there you’re near death and all the stories go away and there’s just this moment there’s just the now that you get to live in and all that’s required is you to just see the truth of what you are the truth of your fleetingness and then that’s life can become that flow yeah and it can be a one minute Wings suit flight or it can be a lifestyle it can awesome yeah yeah and and I’m just really sorry that your brother’s dying man me too yeah and he’s really living and he’s really living yeah yeah it’s changed my concept of what living might entail yeah you know when he when he told me a few weeks ago he’s just like yeah I’m just lying in bed some days I can’t even move I can’t get out of bed but when I just hear the door opening and closing with my kids running in and out of the house playing I’m I could never be happier yeah yeah so my my stories of what I require to enjoy my life gone like but my Tea’s too hot yeah yeah awesome yeah thank you Joe thank you man