EvolutionFM Transcript: Spiritual Growth Is Harder Than The NFL (Eben Britton)

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Eben Britton is not your typical ex-NFL player. Once a powerhouse on the field, Eben has since become a seeker of inner truth, spiritual healing, and radical self-discovery. In this soul-baring episode, he opens up about the chaos that followed his football career, addiction, identity loss, and a moment of crisis that forced him to confront the man in the mirror. What followed was nothing short of a transformation: 12-step recovery, meditation, breathwork, plant medicine, and a complete redefinition of purpose.

With raw honesty and grounded wisdom, Eben shares what it means to walk away from what the world says you should be and move toward who you truly are. From parenting to purpose, from breakdowns to breakthroughs, this conversation is a guidepost for anyone navigating life’s heavier moments and a reminder that even after the fall, there’s always a way to rise.

Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 1+ hour, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!

Eben Britton (00:01.806)

Hey man, great to be here.

What's up, brother? It's great to have you here, man. It's great to be amongst another Briton. Yeah. know, my aunt or something like that.

Same dude, same.

You know, and I really wish, one of the things that came up for me as I was preparing for this is I remember when I got on my consciousness journey, and we didn't really talk about my background. I was a college football player as well. I just remember looking around and being like, I don't know any guys that kind of look like me that are doing this. You know, everybody's like an old guy who's

been a spiritual teacher his whole life. You there wasn't a lot of archetypes for me to relate to. And let me just say, think it's really awesome that all the things that you put out and created and maybe you to frame this up to give people a little bit more background on you. When did your spiritual journey and consciousness journey really, really start to get serious?

Eben Britton (00:51.893)

Eben Britton (01:14.722)

Well...

Eben Britton (01:21.39)

I came out of my football career in 2014. I was in the NFL for six years.

And I was done playing last season, it was 2014 and moved my family from Chicago back to LA. My wife at the time, now ex-wife, was from Los Angeles area as well. I grew up in Burbank. I was born in New York City. Lived in Brooklyn till I was 10, but kind of formative years were in Burbank, middle school, high school.

So that felt like home. LA always felt like home, felt like the, a creative capital of the universe, you know? LA is definitely a place where you can, at least at the time, and my understanding of it always, and this kind, this has changed over the years, especially through COVID, but,

know, LA always felt like an incredible place to be an artist. There's a lot of opportunity. It's a place where you can really express yourself and grow in a spiritual Mecca for sure. know, so felt only right to move back to LA after my football career and kind of set up shops, see what was next. and,

The journey, you know, I came out of football, knew right away I wanted to get my body in order. I'd had a number of surgeries, concussions, you name it, the laundry list of injuries, shoulder, back surgery. Left the NFL at 328 pounds.

Eben Britton (03:13.838)

I'm done being this fucking big. It's exhausting. Yeah. And it's hard. know, it's hard to be that big. So one of the first things I thought was I'm ready to be lean and mean and, you know, get down to like 250, which I did slowly, but surely not that slowly. Actually a couple of years probably it took really disciplined with ketogenic diet and training and all of that stuff was good.

The reason I bring that up is I got my body in order, you know, but what I realized was my mind was still a fucking mess and my heart was still a mess, you know? I was still living in chaos and using all, any escape valve I could get to get out of the moment, to escape myself, to escape my reality, the discomfort of being me. Whether that was alcohol or cannabis or...

porn or fucking lifting weights or whatever it was. I was like scrolling Instagram, anything I could do. would hit that escape valve and one day all the escape valves just stopped working. They started, the escape valves were, became gateways to the reality that I was choosing.

if that makes sense, they became this screaming realization of, I'm not addressing the real issues here, which are somewhere deep down inside that I really wasn't in touch with at the time. Now I should give some context. You I come from a family of alcoholics and addicts and my mom had

Eben Britton (05:17.326)

A lot of years in recovery and 12 step programs and my aunt had a lot of recovery and 12 step program. My brother had just kind of started his journey into 12 step programs. So my whole life is coming crashing down on top of me. You know, my, my ex wife and I are just like, it's felt like really a difficult time, a lot of fighting.

Mostly because I just didn't know how to relate. I had no idea how to be in relationship with myself, let alone anybody else. We have our, now she's 13, our amazing daughter, but at the time she was a little kid.

Eben Britton (06:10.158)

You know, I got to this point where I just couldn't stand who I was looking at in the mirror anymore. And so that culminated in a fight with my wife where I'm yelling into the phone, I'm going to kill myself or I'm going to kill somebody. And I'm driving to work. I'm driving to Chatsworth.

Chatsworth, if anybody's familiar, it's like at the time, it was like the porn capital of the world. I was driving out there to this office where I'd started a CBD company with these people. It's in a whole other podcast. And, you know, I get in there, I walk into the office and the sweet, sweet, you know.

23 year old girl who ran the front desk. She's like, hi, Eben. And I was like, just sneered at her. And I'm the kind of guy, if I'm not in a good mood, everybody can tell. My energy just, I'll fucking decimate a room. I can lift it up, I can make everybody feel really positive and good and inspired, and I can totally demolish it too. And...

whatever the interaction was with her, remember her just feeling, looking this, having this look on her face, like she was just totally flattened and scared. And I went into my office and I was like, what am I doing? You know, what's going on here? I was just like, I was just suffocating. And not long after I sat down, I got a call from my mom. was God bless her. You know, my wife had called her.

and just said, I don't know what to do. Like, Ebb's really struggling. I don't know how to help him, it seems like. I just don't know what to do. So my mom called me up and she said, Ebb, how you doing? And I was like, could barely talk. She's like, why don't you come over for dinner? I was like, all right.

Eben Britton (08:14.476)

So it felt like an easy starting point, you know. And went to dinner with my mom, my aunt, and my brother that night. And they just said, look, this is a family disease that we come from. And there are tools for dealing with this stuff.

And my brother was going to this men's meeting, this men's Al-Anon meeting. And I said, why don't you just come with me? It's on Friday morning. just check it out. Just see how goes. So at that point, I was totally surrendered. I was just like, God, give me something. I need some relief. can't. I have no idea where to go, how to be, who I am, anything.

So I went to this men's meeting and walked in there just cloaked in shit, darkness, black cloud, whatever you want to call it, however you want to articulate it. was all of that sat down. And the lead share, the lead speaker started talking about his childhood. And the way he was talking about it, it just felt like he was talking about my life, my childhood.

you know, the things he dealt with, trying to make sure his little brother was safe in this chaotic environment. And I was like, holy shit. And it was just, I just burst into tears. I spent the next hour just crying. And it was like, you know, the clouds parted, a beam of sunlight came through, and I felt like I could breathe for the first time in maybe my whole life. And so that was really just the beginning of the journey, you know? That was the beginning of...

learning how to live in a new way. And it started with getting this context around where I'd come from, being from a family of alcoholics and addicts, which is such a, it's a very limiting label, the slap on it, because you think it's just you're surrounded by fall down drunks and it's not really like that. It's a very specific psychological framework that you come up in.

Eben Britton (10:36.076)

that I think a lot of people spend a lot of time in and don't even realize it and are maybe adverse to something like a 12 step program because they go, that's for alcoholics or that's AA or that's Al-Anon, that's not me. When it's really a lot, it's much more than that, you know? It's an oversimplification for something that is, I think, in our society, a pretty ubiquitous

way of relating.

And so that was just, that was the beginning of the journey, man. I ended up in therapy and therapy. learned I, my therapist turned me on to meditation. I started meditating, been meditating every day for, you know, the last eight years, got connected to two very important mentors who brought me to my first, you know,

plant medicine ceremonies, experiences with ayahuasca and combo. And it just kind of, you know, started gaining momentum. And it was all just this interesting experience of being turned back to myself, learning how to...

Learning how to go inward, learning what that meant, what that looked like, learning about who I was, what I am, who I want to be, what I want to align myself to, the decisions I'm making, the thoughts I'm giving energy to, brought me back to yoga. You my mom is a very powerful healer.

Eben Britton (12:23.626)

Somatic body worker, Yogini. I mean, she was taking my brother and I to yoga when I was 10, you know, that was, that was the seeds. Yeah. The seeds were there, man. You know, my dad is also, you know, my dad was a D one athlete and has his own, his own, spiritual framework. would say that's been highly influential in my life. And, you know,

And it's taken many forms, man. it's been an interesting ride to say the least. Felt like I had really climbed out of a lot of, climbed out and up to the top of a pretty high mountain around 21, 22, and then had a divorce, went through a divorce.

which was simultaneously.

miraculous in how you know amicable and

Eben Britton (13:36.878)

cooperative it's been and it was really difficult. You spend a lot of time, a lot of energy, there's a lot of love and life between you and another person and it's like inevitably there's gonna be a lot to untangle there. around 22, went through, beginning of 22,

We got our divorce and then a whole new thing started, a whole new journey started and went back into the cave, Had to do some regrouping for a couple years.

which led to me ending up in a treatment center, end of 24 October, because I just really, I had hit critical mass on...

on some behaviors and patterns that just weren't working for me anymore, namely my use of cannabis and kratom. Things that, nobody would look at me and go, Ed, you're a drug addict, you need help. It was like, this was all just internal me going, fuck. These things I've been doing have replaced my desire for living, essentially. And everything I'm doing now is just like checking a box.

That's what my life kind of felt like it became. And I was just dying to figure out like I lost total sense of my purpose and what I was interested in and all in these substances, it just sort of replaced that. and I know there's a lot in between there that I'm leaving out, but you know, just to kind of give a gist of the journey that it's that I've been on. so, you know, spending 30 days in a treatment center, which

Eben Britton (15:32.108)

you know, by the grace of, of God and, and my own higher being, I would say I had the willpower to pick up the phone and ask for help and get myself to that treatment center and spend 30 days, you know, deep in therapy, group therapy, trauma education, and all of this stuff. And, and really was able to get to the bottom of some things that had never, I had never touched, you know, since

since being on the path of reconciliation, self-realization, whatever you want to call it, personal excavation. These were things that I hadn't yet had the ability to see clearly. And finally, you know...

in that space, having surrounded myself with really loving and supportive people and getting to a place where I safe and secure enough to look at some things that were like the axiomatic, the prime insider for all the violence I had caused to myself and my relationships throughout my life.

It was a really powerful and important thing for me. And it's been an interesting journey, because it's brought me tons of clarity. At first it was like, fuck this sobriety thing. Like, why are we doing this? This is dumb.

Like life's short, might as well enjoy it, you know. But slowly but surely, you know, you're gathering momentum and you're like, this is, I see the fruits of this, you know, and starting to see the fruits of it, little by little. And having made that commitment to myself, it's like, okay, well, there's no going back because we know that's just, that's a dead end road over there, you know, to go that way. And not that I think there's anything wrong with substances. I mean, I've talked about it on that.

Eben Britton (17:42.05)

you know, that pod coming back to, I recognize in myself, I have a real gravitation towards altered states of consciousness. Like, it's in my fucking astrological chart, you know? It's like, I enjoy experiencing and playing in other realms of consciousness. And so how do I do that while I'm honoring this?

new path that I'm on, which I find in meditation, breath work, exercise, going out into nature, getting myself on back on the field, like we talked about earlier, which for me is like podcasting. It's my men's group. It's, you know, working with people, connecting with people, getting out there and, know, being in contact with other human beings where I have a sense of accountability to other people, you know,

Because for me, it's not, if I have too much time in the cave in isolation, which I also enjoy solitude, I enjoy being alone, however it's important for me, I recognize to get out there, share my experience, my message in the various.

ways that that emerges teaching yoga, breath work, know, facilitating a men's group, doing my podcast, et cetera, that keeps this momentum going in the direction of living, living in my purpose in a way where, you know, there's stakes to it. If that makes sense.

It does, it does. know, one of things that strikes me about what you just shared is...

Scott Britton (19:37.07)

First off, I think there's a lot of people that are getting the crap kicked out of them right now. Like they're having all their stuff brought up. You they just got to some place like you did in 2021, 2022. We're like, I'm good. You know, I'm like, I'm like high on the mountain. I'm feeling pretty good about myself every day. And then it's like, boom. Yeah. Right. And I think that's happening for a lot of people right now, myself included. How do you, how do you relate to that?

you know, these kind of major bumps in the road that come up when you're on this path.

You know, that's a great question and one of the things that's come up, because during my time in the cave, as it were, I would look back and I'd go, God, man, I was on top of the mountain. What the fuck happened? Like, what happened, dude? And what I realized was...

.

Eben Britton (20:31.66)

Back then, when I thought I was on top of the mountain, I was still living under this illusion that I was getting somewhere. That something was going to happen, you know?

And it's funny to think about like, did I think was going to happen? I don't know. I was going to dissolve into light and just become one with everything. you know, I was going to be on the throne and white robes with followers kissing my feet. I don't really know like what that was, but I was living under this illusion. This, this perpetual illusion that like something we were getting somewhere else, you know, and what.

You know, my journey as of late has shown me is getting out of that illusion and into the moment by moment process of being and living and finding the divine in the moment, finding the divine in the breath by breath process of being a human being. You know, I think that a lot of it has to do with this

cultural, societal, fucking social media driven conditioning that says you've gotta get somewhere. There's a finish line, there's a mountain top, there's somewhere that we're all going that's gonna be the place where we find God or Elysium or whatever the thing is we think that's gonna be there, you know? And then what is it? I mean, you hear it all the time. You talk to...

Any of the greatest athletes in the world, the greatest artists in the world, whoever, anyone who's ever achieved anything, you graduated from high school, college, you've gotten the diploma, you got the promotion, you got the car, you got the trophy, whatever it is, no matter what it is, you wake up the next day and life goes on. And everybody's looking at you like, now what?

Eben Britton (22:34.862)

and somewhere inside of you is going, now what? And if you can get to a place, like I've really just made it my practice to enjoy all of it and not get sucked into this illusion of when I get there, it's gonna be X.

And rather, it's all here now, dude. Like, anything that I'm looking for is happening right here, right now. There's nothing over there. If I'm getting anywhere, actually, this was where the, you know, this epiphany came for me. It was like, if I'm getting anywhere,

The only destination I'm getting to is a clearer and clearer perception of myself, where there are fewer and fewer illusions veiling my perception of reality. And if you can get into that, so it's not so much a getting anywhere, but a clearer and clearer view of what's happening, what is.

And that's the perpetual destination that's always emerging. know, this clear and clear view, you're just polishing the crystal little by little, you know, through various means. I mean, I was listening to your pod talking about your new business venture and I loved it. I loved so much of it. And, you know, there was something you said in there that made me think about this of

You know, business being your dojo, your business, your workplace being your spiritual dojo. You know, that's the motto that I've come to live by. It's like every relationship that we're in is an opportunity to get clearer and closer to God, you know?

Eben Britton (24:31.554)

And it's not about, it doesn't matter if you're fucking going to the Ayahuasca retreats or you're meditating or you're doing breath work. I mean, you know, there's an old lady down in Mississippi somewhere who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day and drinks diet cokes and is a fucking sage, you know, has nothing but wisdom to share.

So it's like, doesn't really matter the pathway because it's all the path. Everything in front of you is an opportunity to get clear and closer to this thing we call reality, whatever that is. And that's really the only place we're ever going. And if you can get out of this, this idea that when I get there or when I get this, that idea, you're going to be able to.

manage those the ebbs and flows of life it's gonna keep happening you know there's no way to game the system of being a human you know I feel like that's me too brother I've tried my ass off yeah you can hide you know I've tried my ass off to fucking game the system like okay let me

I know that's true.

Scott Britton (25:35.598)

again.

Eben Britton (25:42.21)

Let me just take more mushrooms, that'll fix it. Or let me do more breath work. It's like there's no way to see around the corner and get a one up on life. You just can't. So for me, it's really been about getting good with what is, which is fucking difficult, man. It's not easy. I agree.

It's not, this isn't, you know, this isn't like something that I can say is just like, yeah, just get good with being bored, you know?

Do you ever have the feeling, I mean maybe in the NFL where you're like, you look back and you're like, and at the time you thought that was really hard, what you were doing. And then you look back now and you look at this stuff that we're talking about and you're like, yo, being good at football was actually easy mode.

Totally, man. So, I mean, yeah. It's, course, dude, of course. You always look back on like when you were a kid or yeah, playing football. It's like, dude, I woke up every day and just knew exactly where to be, what to do, how I was gonna do it, you know, didn't have to think about anything. And life is just not like that for most of us. You you gotta get up every day and you gotta make it happen. And it was interesting, you know.

I was just outside just before I saw you and there's seemingly a homeless guy there, which I'm fine with. I'm always interested in homeless people. And, you know, he comes up to me and he said, I like your hat. My hat says life is a miracle, which is kind of like a motto that I've come to share.

Eben Britton (27:28.034)

through my events and everything I do and it's something I believe, know, life is fucking miracle. He's like, I like your hat and he's kind of rambling about he's a poet.

He's getting to the point where he's going to ask me for money and I'm just trying to pay for my parking spot for the next couple hours. I'm like, dude, I don't have any, I got some coins. Like I, and at that, I think they're euros because of my last trip to Italy. Like I don't, I've got a quarter maybe, you know, he's telling me like, haven't had a, I've never had a bank account. And the first thought that came to my mind was like, why haven't you had a bank account? You know, and.

Because it's really important that people take accountability for their lives, you know? And I'm not judging this guy. I know I spent literally 90 seconds here just listening to what he had to say. But most of us, we spend a lot of our lives trying to scapegoat our circumstances onto something else, you know?

And if you're a guy, I actually wanted to stop and just have a conversation like, why have you never had a bank account? Like, why is that a choice you made? That's a choice you've made, you know, because of something I was interested to hear. What's your reasoning behind that? Now that's a choice you've made, which has led you to standing on the sidewalk, talking to people about asking them for money.

asking them to give you money to get you your next meal. And I don't have money, so now you're gonna say, you're gonna give me the guilt trip of like, yeah man, I need a miracle. Yeah, me too, brother. We all need a fucking miracle. And at the end of the day, dude, it's on us to make decisions that move us in the direction of the life we wanna live.

Eben Britton (29:33.686)

So something in you said, I'm never opening up a bank account. You made that choice. Okay, here you are living that life. You decided to do that, right? And he seemed like, you know, he had it together. And again, this isn't a judging thing. It's just about understanding and recognizing that we have to be accountable to the life we're living given the decisions we've decided to make.

You know, the choices we've made, the actions we've taken, the thoughts we give energy and attention to. And a lot of people have a hard time doing that. Now, if you can get really honest about that, your life circumstances, if you're living a life right now where you feel resentful, you feel uninterested, you feel like something's missing or lacking,

The only thing you can do is start to look at what are the decisions I've made to get myself here because I have created this reality. I am God and creator of my life as I want it to be. And if you can do that, if you can get really honest about that, man, you've got the power to do whatever the fuck you wanna do, but not until you get honest about it. And the honesty is uncomfortable, It is.

When you're getting your ass kicked by the universe, you know, when you're in that chaos, like, man, that's a good place to be because you're becoming fucking acutely aware of the things that need changing. And they're starting to change, you know, whether you like it or not. You lose the job, you lose the relationship. We've all been there, man. And you look at your life and you go, whoa, dude.

God, this is not what I was asking for. And God's like, what are you talking about? This is exactly what you were asking for, dude. You made decisions that led to this happening. This is you. You're creating this. I'm just here to give you what you want.

Scott Britton (31:35.502)

I have a very, know, something that's been big for me over the past year is forgiveness of my parents.

Mmm, yeah.

And you know, I think when you get into this, lot of this inner work trauma, you start to see why, like where a lot of this, these ideas came from that weren't serving you. And I had a lot of that and I had, I had become such a good repressor of anger and certain types of emotions for years that all of that just started to come up and be redirected towards my parents. And I'll never forget one day my spiritual teacher was like, you know, you set this up, right?

Like, you're pissed at your own setup. And there's some thoughts around cosmology there of like, why do we think our life is the way that it is, and what is karma and all that, but what I came to is regardless of what you believe about reality and why your life looks the way it is,

It's just a much more empowering way to live, to take responsibility, even for things that you struggle to even see. could remotely be responsible for like why my parents were the way they were. If you just, if, if, if the choice is I'm going to be pissed at them for something that they did under their best intention, like however many years ago, or I'm going to just kind of take responsibility in some way, like a hundred percent more empowered.

Scott Britton (33:10.818)

to just own that and own it on your side.

Yeah. Absolutely, man. You have to. You have to. Because what are you going to do? Walk around going, my parents fucked me, Get in line, brother. Yeah.

Parents have it and we're both parents now and it's yeah, know I'm gonna do things and my daughter is gonna be she's gonna be salty at me

Oh yeah dude, of course man. I think there's a great poet, I think he's Irish, Irish poet, maybe it's Yeats. He just talks about, know, our parents fuck us up and it's inevitable. And as parents we're gonna fuck up our children. Like it's just, even as we try to...

better manage the situations that we feel our parents didn't do a good job of managing with our kids. There's going to be other things that, you know, we, we don't do right or that, you know, fall through the cracks or, you know, because it's a totally new, it's a totally new position of perception from our kids to us and us to them. And, you know, so it's just like, it's an inevitable fact of the matter. And

Eben Britton (34:27.433)

So the solution being everybody, all of us, at some point, now I don't think that spiritual bypassing doesn't get us anywhere. I think that's something that anybody who's been on the path of whatever, personal evolution, personal self-realization, whatever you want to call it, this thing of...

of getting clear and reconciling oneself. We can all fall into the trap of, well, that wound, that thing, that doesn't matter because I'm higher than it. You can use the spirituality to not deal with the problem at hand.

I done that.

yeah, of course dude. I think we've all done that, you know? Yeah, so I think it's necessary and fruitful to understand and heal those wounds and bring context to it and forgiveness, you know? But then, you know, at some point we've got to be willing to let it go, you know, and move on and take accountability for how we're showing up in the world, you know?

to write a passage.

Eben Britton (35:55.15)

Which is just, to me it's the ultimate task of this moment of time that we're in. There's a real shift going on. There's a real evolution of humanity of consciousness happening right now. You probably feel it whether you're...

you're inclined to this type of language or you've done any sort of, you know, spiritual research of your own or, you know, whatever philosophies you follow, even if you're, you know, a more orthodox religious, you know.

on a more orthodox religious bent like Christianity or Judaism, you know, you're going to, you're feeling these shifts that are taking place. And to me, what it's all about is honesty and truth. And truth has been something that's come up a lot over the last couple of weeks in particular, in groups that I'm in and conversations and, you know, I think in the spiritual community, mean,

I don't know, it doesn't totally make sense to me, spiritual, like labeling these things in these ways, but it is what it is. If everything in life was social media and Instagram, you've got like the spiritual club, you've got like the fitness club. This term living in my truth, which I've used and I've encouraged people to follow,

many times has evolved for me into living in truth, period. Because we can all do that. When you say living my truth or this is my truth, mean, depending on where you're at, your truth could be kind of a little bit convoluted, depending on the amount of work you've done, where you're at.

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