281 - Sacred Economics

Program Notes

Guest speakers: Eileen Workman and Matt Pallamary

Matt Pallamary interviews Eileen Workman, co-founder of the Universe Project who spent sixteen years working in the financial services industry, most recently as a First Vice President of Investments with a major Wall Street investment firm.

Her new book, Sacred Economics: The Currency of Life has been praised by many, including Barbara Marx Hubbard, co-founder and chairperson of the board of The Foundation for Conscious Evolution who says of it:

Occasionally in human history a clear voice of good sense and compassion rises from the multitudes caught in the memetic mud of obsolete ideas about current reality. Thomas Jefferson was such a voice when he stated: “All men are created equal” at a time when there was no equality, at all. So now Eileen Workman sends a clear and intelligent message: We can live beyond the current monetary economy better, longer, kinder and more joyfully, and here is how to begin. Even though it might seem impossible, as the system continues to breakdown and the inequalities grow, her voice increasingly serves us as a guide to the next stage of evolutionary economics. We should all read it and place our faith and actions in the good sense it offers us, guiding us toward the next era of economics in the coming age.

Eileen’s Blog

Transcript

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Greetings from cyberdelic space.

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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.

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And I’d hoped to get this out to you yesterday, but just as I was getting ready to record it,

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we had kind of a blackout here in San Diego County, in the south and east of here.

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And so we didn’t have power for a while.

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But being prepared for such an event, actually it’s earthquake preparations usually,

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both my Kindle and my Magic Flight batteries were all fully charged,

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so I spent a very relaxing evening reading and went through the blackout with no problems.

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And so let’s get started for today now, huh?

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See if we can make it through without the power going off again.

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And to begin today’s program, I’d like to thank Michael S. for his donation to the salon

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to help offset some of our expenses.

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I really appreciate your help, Michael.

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And just now, as I was about to record this podcast, I was pretty much stunned to discover that we’d received a sizable donation from a surprise source. from longtime salonner Dr. Cameron Adams, who sent it in on behalf of the Breaking Convention,

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a multidisciplinary conference on psychedelic consciousness

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that was held earlier this year at Kent University in the UK.

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And Cameron, along with all the volunteers who worked on the conference

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and the hundreds of people who paid to attend the conference,

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well, you have all made me practically

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speechless. I simply can’t thank you all enough for your love and support. And as much as I

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appreciate you saying how much you get out of these podcasts from the salon, I hope that all

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of our fellow salonners realize that these in-person conferences, like Breaking Convention,

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are the real key to finding the others and extending

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our worldwide community, the loving group of consciousness explorers that I like to

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call the tribe.

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Us podcasters all do what we can here on the net, but getting together in person is the

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real key to our forward progress, I believe.

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And Cameron, you and your friends are the best and will always remain very dear to my

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heart.

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And Cameron, you and your friends are the best and will always remain very dear to my heart.

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So, I guess that I’d better start singing for my supper, as the saying goes, and introduce today’s program,

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which is something quite different from what we’ve been hearing these past few weeks.

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A little while ago, my good friend Matt Palomary, who you’ve heard from here in the salon on quite a few occasions, asked me if I’d be interested in podcasting an interview he was wanting to do with Eileen Workman about her new book,

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Sacred Economics, The Currency of Life. And if you are also a listener to KMO’s most excellent

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podcast, From the Sea Realm, you may think that you’ve already heard an interview with the author

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of this book, but that’s not the case.

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As it turns out, there are now two new books out just with very similar titles,

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and while I’m sure that the book that KMO previewed on his podcast a few weeks ago is also an excellent work,

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what I think sets the one apart that is the focus of today’s podcast is that it was written by one of our fellow salonners.

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And, of course, I’m a little biased in favor of us salonners, as you might guess.

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Now, while I know Eileen and I trust Matt implicitly,

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I have to admit that I was a little hesitant when he first proposed this topic for the salon.

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After all, I wondered, what does economics have to do with the things we’ve been talking about here in the salon these past few years?

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But Matt assured me that Eileen had something to say that would most definitely touch many of our fellow salonners.

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So I agreed, and he did the interview that we’re about to hear.

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And my guess is that you are going to discover, as I have, that Eileen’s message is not only timely,

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it also goes right to the heart of many of the

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problems the world is facing right now. And I’ll have a little more to say about this after we

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hear the interview, but as you listen with me to Eileen’s story right now, there is one thing that

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I’d like you to keep in mind, and that is how important, how down-to-earth, everyday important,

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the proper use of our sacred medicines can be if we are to heal the wounds

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caused by life in the 21st century here on planet earth. These sacred medicines have been the major

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catalyst in my own life transformation, and properly used, they can also bring about much

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healing in your own life, should you be so fortunate as to learn how to use them safely

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yourself. And as you are about to hear, they can reach out and touch people

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who are even deep in the mainstream of economic life in this land.

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Surprisingly, many of the outwardly successful people we see around us every day

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are also beginning to question the system that they have become entangled in.

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And when that happens, well, sometimes help comes from unusual places, as it did for Eileen.

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If this hasn’t already happened to you, what would you do if you came to the conclusion that everything you were taught as a child wasn’t true?

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Well, that’s the crossroads that Eileen came to after first becoming an extremely successful businesswoman.

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businesswoman. And I suspect that if this has happened or might happen to you one day,

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that you will find her solution of exploding the frame quite useful in your own situation.

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So now let’s join Matt and Eileen and hear about sacred economics.

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Hi there, gang. It’s Mateo. and she’s been working. She’s done a lot of work,

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which I’m going to get into her bio here in just a second.

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I do want to, before I forget,

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I want to say hello to some of our brothers out there.

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Hello there to KMO and Brother Clint,

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Birdwing Butterfly from Down Under and Adrian in Romania

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and Cody and Sancho from Black Light in the Attic,

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and all you other brothers and sisters out there,

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all you guys who have been supporting the salon

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and girls

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and sending in emails and things.

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We really appreciate hearing from you.

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I personally appreciate the comments I’ve gotten.

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It makes it all worth it.

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So keep up the good work, you guys. Donate when you

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can. Listen when you can. Share it when you can. We’re all on the same page here in the tribe,

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and we’re all working together. And we’re looking to change the world, which is part of what Eileen

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is about and Eileen’s message is about. I’m going to get into her bio here in a minute, but her book is Sacred Economics.

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And Eileen has a financial background.

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I trusted her with all my life savings for quite some time,

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and she did a good job for me.

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And she’s really gone through a personal transition

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from being very deep within the system.

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I’m always proud to say she really was a success

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as a woman in a man’s world. And she knows her stuff. So through what she’s learned through her

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explorations of consciousness and spirituality, she was in a position where, and she’ll tell you more about this when she

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gets a minute, but she’s been in a position where she was very much deeply embedded in

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the roots of the system, money-wise, financially.

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And when she started to see a different perspective, I might say.

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You might say that.

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I might say that.

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She got a whole different outlook on things and she realized

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that what she was working with and she really was not only no longer viable in terms of where it’s

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going you know the whole capitalist system but even personally for her she just really couldn’t

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do it once she realized and really saw the big picture she couldn’t do it anymore, simply out of conscience.

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And the conscience, I like to say, came from consciousness, expanding consciousness in her case,

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which we’ll talk about a little bit.

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Before I formally introduce her, I do want to just read that Eileen, Eileen Workman,

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is a co-founder of the Universe Project, and she spent 16 years working in the financial services industry, most recently as a first vice president of investments with a major

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Wall Street investment firm.

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She lives in Southern California, here with the rest of us Californians, and she lives

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on an avocado ranch, which we happen to be at right now, doing this interview with her

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husband, Dave, and their are three dogs and a cat

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and a very raucous

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parrot. I think raucous is the proper

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pronunciation. And I tell you raucous, you’ve been pecking

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on my head all day.

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There is that.

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Eileen has a blog and they have

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some publishing

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which you’ll see Lorenzo posted

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on the website. But I wanted to give you

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her sort of official bio background there.

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And then I want to talk about, she has a wonderful introduction here.

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Many of you have probably heard about Barbara Marks Hubbard.

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She’s been a leading consciousness researcher for years.

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20 years? 25 years? I don’t know.

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40-something years she’s been on the cutting edge.

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she’s done a lot of real groundbreaking work.

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She’s worked with a lot of big

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names. Houston Smith, I believe.

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She’s worked with Gene Houston.

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She worked with Timothy Leary.

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She worked with, oh my gosh,

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the names are escaping me.

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A lot of people.

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Jonas Salk, Bucky Fuller, Buckminster Fuller.

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There you go.

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Those were her peers.

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Bucky Fuller, her peers.

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So she’s very much been on the bleeding edge for years,

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even probably before I even knew what LSD was or anything else.

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So she wrote a wonderful little intro for Eileen’s book here, and I wanted to read it to start things off.

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She says,

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Occasionally in human history, a clear voice of good sense and compassion rises from the multitudes caught in the mimetic mud of obsolete ideas about current reality.

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We all know about that, don’t we?

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reality. We all know about that, don’t we? Thomas Jefferson was such a voice when he stated, all men are created equal at a time when there was no equality at all.

00:10:51 ►

So now, Eileen Workman sends a clear and intelligent message. We can live beyond the

00:10:57 ►

current monetary economy better, longer, kinder, and more joyfully, and here is how to begin.

00:11:04 ►

And here is how to begin.

00:11:11 ►

Even though it might seem impossible, as the system continues to break down and the inequalities grow,

00:11:17 ►

her voice increasingly serves us as a guide to the next stage of evolutionary economics.

00:11:23 ►

We should all read it and place our faith and actions in the good sense it offers us,

00:11:27 ►

guiding us toward the next era of economics in the coming age.

00:11:29 ►

And again, that’s from Barbara Marks Hubbard.

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She’s co-founder and chairperson of the board of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution.

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So this is about evolution. This is about conscious evolution as individuals.

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This is about conscious evolution, dare I say, as a race.

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But as all you homies and homettes out there know,

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we’re the bleeding edge in the conscious evolution of the tribe.

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So without further ado, I’d like to formally welcome Eileen to this podcast of the Psychedelic Salon.

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Thank you, Matt. It’s a joy to be here.

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I’ve listened to the Psychedelic Salon off and on for quite some time,

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and I’m really joyful to have the opportunity to speak to your audience

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and share the insights that have come to me

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and that I’m hoping to bring forward into the world.

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Wonderful.

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I’m going to get into a little bit of your background

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in terms of how you’ve come to your current mode of thought.

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Before I do that, why don’t you give me your, off the

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top of your head, definition of sacred economics, you know, as much detail as you’d like.

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Okay. Basically, where sacred economics comes from is the understanding, which I arrived

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at through a lot of pain and suffering, that what we call economics is a for-profit, monetary,

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I’ve-gotta-get-mine kind of a system.

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And my sense of it is that this is what’s killing humanity

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and it’s destroying the planet.

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And when I talk about sacred economics,

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what I’m suggesting is that rather than look at the world

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through an economic lens that is a monetary lens, that life is the lens that we do should be done in honor of life, in gratitude for life,

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and with the recognition that without life, nothing else matters.

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And I see everything as alive and everything as sacred.

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And so from that base platform, economics, which is the understanding of how we’re in relationship with one another,

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needs to arise from that space.

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And if we can come from there, then I think we can change the world.

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Wonderful. For those of you who are really paying attention, in essence what she’s talking about

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is shamanism, specifically in terms of the connectedness of all things and the fact that

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everything has life and it’s all connected and how one thing connects the other.

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Eileen and I have shared many experiences together.

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And even in separate times and places, we’ve had major breakthroughs in consciousness,

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which she mentioned about the painful part.

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Those of you who have read,

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plug, plug, plug, my book Spirit Matters,

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I talk about particular breakdowns that I have had

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where, in essence,

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the contents of my mind

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exceeded what my mind could hold,

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and I really had a breakdown

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where everything didn’t make sense

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anymore, and I went through some very difficult times of confusion. And when I came out, dare

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I say I was more conscious, I’ll never dare say I was smarter, but more conscious and

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more aware of things I hadn’t been aware of before because the old paradigm that I was living under broke down

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and it no longer worked because I knew too much to be able to follow that train of thinking and consciousness.

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And so after a period of painful confusion,

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I broke through and suddenly found myself in an expanded mode of consciousness that continued

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and changed my life in a profound way. And my whole perception of reality or realities changed.

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And nothing was as it seems, as those who have been on the path know that the great mystery is

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truly and indeed a mystery. So Eileen had a similar

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situation

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in her own way and when she went through it

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I was kind of sitting back on the sidelines

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with an understanding of what she was going through

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because I’ve been through it myself

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and it had to do with pushing

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the boundaries of consciousness

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and expansion. Do you want to

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give us your two cents on that?

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Oh yeah, I mean for me I would say for probably anywhere from six to ten years before

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I had what I would call a spiritual breakthrough, which was initiated by a breakdown, I had

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been seeking answers, studying consciousness, asking the very difficult questions, and challenging

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the conditioned programming that

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I had been raised with my whole life. And I had done everything right. I had, you know, this

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incredible life. I was extraordinarily successful the way that the outside world measured success.

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I had a great business. I made a lot of money. I was, you know, doing all the things that movers

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and shakers are supposed to do. And I was profoundly unhappy, which created a lot of cognitive dissonance. And so as you begin to explore the cognitive dissonance and say,

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what’s happening here? You know, for me, the real challenge came, it’s like what you were saying.

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I felt like I had built a framework, like a puzzle. If you’ve ever done a jigsaw puzzle,

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you build the outside frame first, and then you gather all these pieces and you fit them in and everything fits really nicely. And that works fine, except when you’re in reality

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in the framework that you’ve built, you suddenly start accumulating pieces that don’t fit in the

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frame. And for a while, you can sort of set them aside and say, well, maybe they’re going to fit

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somewhere. I’ll just keep building my little puzzle. And then the pile that’s outside the

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frame starts to get bigger and bigger and bigger, and it starts to make a sort of sense that doesn’t fit with the framework you’ve created.

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And now there’s just a real challenge inside, for me, a psychological challenge of what do I do?

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I can pretend like those pieces aren’t there,

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even though they make more sense to me than the pieces inside my frame,

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or I can just explode the whole frame and start over again.

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And for me, that was the experience that I had.

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I really felt like I had no choice.

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I could not ignore the things that felt truer and more real to me

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than the things that were part of that original framework

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that I had been taught as a child and that I had carried through my whole life.

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So what some people called a psychological breakdown,

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I called exploding the frame.

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And I just threw it all away, went down to ground zero, decided that there was nothing I had been told,

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or almost nothing I had been told as a child that was true.

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And I had to do the hard work of deciding for myself what was true and what was not true,

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what was real and what wasn’t real, and what sang to my heart and what didn’t.

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So that was a very painful climb back from sort of going to zero, as one of my friends

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said, you go to zero, and then from zero you figure out how to emerge as a more conscious,

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more whole, more integral human being.

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And that’s been the journey I’ve been on for the last four years.

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So what Eileen is describing, by the way, for your edification and edumacation,

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is what Stan Groff characterizes as spiritual emergence or spiritual emergency,

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where you kind of lose it.

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It’s also, in shamanic terms, in essence what they call facing the jaguar.

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You face, you know, one of the greatest mythologies, so to speak, of shamanic terms, in essence what they call facing the jaguar. You face, you know, one of the greatest mythologies, so to speak, of shamanism is a shamanic dismemberment.

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And this is in actuality a psychological dismemberment where you face the jaguar.

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All these fears that you’re avoiding come and they swallow you and you do indeed get dismembered.

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I mean, you lose your bearings.

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You think God’s coming or you’re rapping with the aliens, you know,

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and the next minute the Mad Hatter shows up.

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I mean, it’s pretty nuts.

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But when you come out of it,

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you have a clarity that is really difficult to articulate.

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You can’t really articulate it because it goes into a lot of non-rational areas

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because your whole paradigm has shifted in a big way

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and expanded.

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Let me ask you if I could step out

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of the line here.

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Eileen

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had done some

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inner exploration with the help of some things

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and she

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got the opportunity to do

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a few ayahuasca sessions.

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Maybe half a dozen, I don’t know. I was probably close to 10 or 12. 10 or 12 ayahuasca sessions, maybe half a dozen, I don’t know.

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Probably close to 10 or 12.

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10 or 12 ayahuasca sessions, and I think I was present at all of them.

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I think probably.

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And correct me if I’m wrong here, but from my observation, by working with the ayahuasca, you were very much, prior to these breakthroughs, you were very much an intellectual person,

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very much in your mind.

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Yes, yes.

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Which is why you were a success in a man’s world.

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Absolutely, absolutely.

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And then, after having experienced ayahuasca a number of times,

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in essence, it opened up your heart, which had been denied.

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My heart had been closed down for many, many, many years, yes.

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I had been wounded as a child and wounded as a young person,

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and I shut down that part of myself.

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So, yes, to reopen it was terrifying and beautiful and wonderful all at the same time.

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Yeah, which was similar to my experience.

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My heart was as hard as it get, and it shifted things for me.

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So, and again, please correct me if I’m off base here at all,

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but in the essence of getting out of your head and into your heart,

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you really connected to a greater wisdom that opened you up

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to give you this whole new perspective of looking at things,

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of interconnectedness and your whole idea of economics.

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Is that a fair assessment?

00:21:24 ►

I think that’s a very fair assessment.

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My entire worldview shifted.

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My perspective on reality shifted.

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I can tell you my first LSD trip

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was the most heart-opening experience I ever had

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because it was the first time in my life

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that I ever saw myself as not a separate being.

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Up to that point, I had been incredibly separate. I felt

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isolated. I actually remember at one point beating on my head and saying, I’m tired of being in here

00:21:51 ►

all alone, you know, pouting on both sides of my head, like, why do I have to be all alone inside

00:21:56 ►

it? And these experiences, both the LSD experience and ayahuasca experiences, moved me into a state of awareness

00:22:06 ►

where I not only saw, but I knew

00:22:10 ►

from the deepest part of my psyche

00:22:14 ►

and my experiential truth

00:22:15 ►

that I was inextricably interconnected to all things

00:22:19 ►

and that all things were alive

00:22:21 ►

and that I existed not as a being,

00:22:28 ►

but as an interbeing and that I would not exist at all if everything else did not exist too and recognizing that and coming to grips with what

00:22:34 ►

that meant there was a responsibility that I suddenly felt toward all my kin my brethren the

00:22:40 ►

rocks the stones the trees the squirrel, let alone other human beings.

00:22:46 ►

I saw every other human being as if the world was, if you wanted to say humanity was a giant hand

00:22:53 ►

and there were seven billion fingers on the hand, and I suddenly saw every other person as another finger.

00:22:58 ►

And for me to do harm to another finger on the hand seemed absurd,

00:23:03 ►

because I knew we were connected by the hand.

00:23:05 ►

And the hand was invisible to most people,

00:23:07 ►

but for me it was extraordinarily powerful and very much present.

00:23:13 ►

So would it be fair to say that through the experiences,

00:23:16 ►

maybe a little more so with the ayahuasca,

00:23:19 ►

because it really opens up,

00:23:21 ►

that it really connected you to what I would characterize as cosmic consciousness.

00:23:26 ►

Absolutely.

00:23:27 ►

So now you have a cosmic perspective

00:23:31 ►

that you can apply to humanity,

00:23:34 ►

which you have applied to humanity in your book,

00:23:36 ►

Sacred Economics,

00:23:38 ►

that gives you, for lack of better words,

00:23:42 ►

an expanded perspective on the monetary system

00:23:44 ►

and the ills of

00:23:46 ►

capitalism and the world and trying to

00:23:48 ►

work together as one.

00:23:53 ►

Absolutely.

00:23:54 ►

So if you could elaborate

00:23:56 ►

a little bit on

00:23:57 ►

some aspects

00:24:00 ►

00:24:01 ►

I don’t know if I want to say your theory is correct, but your ideas behind it.

00:24:13 ►

Like, you know, I’m glancing here at the table of contents from your book.

00:24:17 ►

I want to pick a few subjects, and if you could give us a little riff here and there.

00:24:21 ►

Like, let’s talk a little bit about humanity and the money game.

00:24:25 ►

Yes. I think one of the things that I find so fascinating is that we were all born into

00:24:33 ►

this system. None of us chose it. So we were born into it and indoctrinated into the belief

00:24:40 ►

that money was the resource that we all needed and that in order for us to be successful or accomplish anything,

00:24:47 ►

we had to first get money.

00:24:49 ►

And it became this be-all and end-all in everybody’s life.

00:24:54 ►

This is what we’re out to do.

00:24:55 ►

We don’t think about what am I going to bring to the world

00:24:58 ►

or how am I going to manifest the best part of myself to the world.

00:25:02 ►

It’s what am I going to do? I’ve got to get a job.

00:25:03 ►

How am I going to make money?

00:25:01 ►

the best part of myself to the world.

00:25:03 ►

It’s, I’ve got to get a job.

00:25:04 ►

How am I going to make money?

00:25:07 ►

Because money is the conduit by which I get the things that I need.

00:25:11 ►

And this is a game that’s been going on

00:25:13 ►

for thousands and thousands of years.

00:25:17 ►

And there are a multitude of problems with the game,

00:25:19 ►

not the least of which is the fact

00:25:21 ►

that money has no intrinsic value.

00:25:26 ►

It’s a marker. It’s something that we’ve created that it really doesn’t have any meaning whatsoever, other than the fact that,

00:25:33 ►

you know, for me, here’s a good example. If I have money, I can’t wear it. I can’t eat it.

00:25:40 ►

I can’t sleep in it. I can’t do a single thing with it unless I can convince you

00:25:47 ►

to take it off my hands so that you will give me something I can actually use. So it’s a Ponzi

00:25:53 ►

scheme in that sense. It’s not a real resource. It’s a way to convince other people to give you

00:25:59 ►

their resources in exchange for this thing we’ve created. And we all value the thing we’ve created,

00:26:06 ►

ironically, more than we value the resources.

00:26:08 ►

We’re in fact destroying our planetary resources

00:26:11 ►

so that we can get more of this stuff,

00:26:14 ►

which is man-made, by the way,

00:26:15 ►

and can be made in limitless supply,

00:26:17 ►

so that we can all play this game

00:26:18 ►

of let me give you this fake stuff

00:26:20 ►

so I can get some real stuff from you.

00:26:23 ►

It’s absurd on its face,

00:26:26 ►

but we never stop to think about what we’re doing because we’ve been doing it since we were born. And the challenge

00:26:32 ►

that I put forth is, can we step back from that for just a minute and look at what we’re saying?

00:26:38 ►

We’re saying we value this paper product that we’re exchanging among ourselves more than we value the resources

00:26:45 ►

that we’re decimating and that we’re exploiting and that we’re using in incredible supply to make

00:26:54 ►

garbage so that we can make money. And I’m saying we don’t need to make the money at all. We need

00:26:59 ►

to make stuff that has value, that really does stuff for humanity, that is beneficial for the

00:27:04 ►

planet, that’s done in a way that is cognizant of for humanity, that is beneficial for the planet,

00:27:05 ►

that’s done in a way that is cognizant of the life force that is moving through all of us and

00:27:09 ►

moving through planet Earth, and that honors the resources that we’re taking from the Earth and

00:27:15 ►

uses them respectfully. And that’s a different game altogether. The money game is a win-lose

00:27:21 ►

game. And another thing I’ll say about it is that because money is a relative process,

00:27:30 ►

it doesn’t have any tangible value, so it’s relative.

00:27:33 ►

The only way my money is valuable is if I have more of it than you do.

00:27:37 ►

Because if there’s one item on the table and we both want it,

00:27:40 ►

if I have more money than you, it’s mine.

00:27:42 ►

It doesn’t matter how much I have.

00:27:44 ►

If you’ve got a dime and I’ve got a quarter, the item is mine.

00:27:47 ►

If you’ve got a dollar and I’ve got five dollars, the item is mine.

00:27:50 ►

So the relativity of the game in and of itself

00:27:53 ►

indicates that there have to be winners and losers.

00:27:56 ►

We can’t both win.

00:27:58 ►

If we were to change the system or reconfigure a system

00:28:01 ►

where it wasn’t about money or relativity,

00:28:03 ►

but it was about let’s make sure everybody has what they need.

00:28:06 ►

We can design a win-win system

00:28:08 ►

where we’re not having to do that competitive thing

00:28:11 ►

and worry about the relativity.

00:28:13 ►

We’re kind of seeing that in the world today, I think,

00:28:16 ►

in an extreme manner,

00:28:17 ►

like the whole Middle Eastern uprisings in Egypt and Libya.

00:28:23 ►

The class separation has been so great there

00:28:27 ►

that the masses are revolting.

00:28:30 ►

Yes.

00:28:31 ►

Because it’s just too much of a gap there.

00:28:34 ►

I fear that’s a prelude

00:28:35 ►

for what we’re going to see in this country.

00:28:37 ►

The gap in this country

00:28:38 ►

has never been as wide as it is today.

00:28:40 ►

Yeah.

00:28:40 ►

Literally 10% of the people in this nation

00:28:43 ►

own 90% of this nation’s wealth.

00:28:46 ►

Isn’t that amazing?

00:28:47 ►

90%.

00:28:47 ►

Yeah.

00:28:48 ►

So that means the other 90% of the people are fighting over 10% of the nation’s wealth.

00:28:54 ►

And that’s an enormous disparity in terms of wealth.

00:28:57 ►

And the system is structured to make sure they get more, that 10% gets more and more and more.

00:29:03 ►

And if you look at what’s happening in the political arena today,

00:29:06 ►

what you see is we’re cutting all the basic services, all the safety nets.

00:29:10 ►

We’re cutting education, funding for teachers.

00:29:13 ►

And you take it to the extreme, and I heard Ann Coulter on TV the other day

00:29:17 ►

say that anyone that worked for the government was a drain on society.

00:29:22 ►

The assumption is if you’re not doing a job that’s generating a profit for somebody,

00:29:27 ►

you’re useless.

00:29:28 ►

That’s how far we’ve taken it.

00:29:30 ►

And I like to say, you know,

00:29:32 ►

I liken that to the notion of,

00:29:34 ►

that would be like a man saying, you know,

00:29:36 ►

my wife who’s a homemaker,

00:29:38 ►

she’s a useless drain on me

00:29:39 ►

because she’s not generating a profit.

00:29:41 ►

But she’s doing incredible things for that home.

00:29:45 ►

The government does the same thing.

00:29:46 ►

I mean, the government does the homemaking side of the nation.

00:29:49 ►

It makes sure that the water is clean.

00:29:51 ►

It makes sure that the land is taken care of.

00:29:52 ►

It makes sure the kids are educated.

00:29:54 ►

Everybody has a bed.

00:29:55 ►

The elderly and the sick are taken care of.

00:29:57 ►

It’s doing the job of the homemaker.

00:29:59 ►

And we’re denigrating that and making that into a bad thing

00:30:02 ►

because it’s not generating money.

00:30:04 ►

In fact, not generating money.

00:30:09 ►

In fact, it costs money. And the dad is the corporations. And right now he’s beating his wife and making her look really bad in front of the children.

00:30:13 ►

So in essence, what I’m hearing is that the dad is the pimp.

00:30:17 ►

Yeah, exactly.

00:30:18 ►

And the bitch ain’t bringing home the bucks.

00:30:19 ►

Exactly, exactly. And so he’s beating her up. And again, now this goes, there’s a deeper element here that’s at play.

00:30:26 ►

But if you look at it, the corporation is playing the father role.

00:30:29 ►

The corporate environment is playing the daddy role.

00:30:31 ►

The government is playing the mommy role.

00:30:32 ►

And who are the kids?

00:30:34 ►

The citizenry.

00:30:35 ►

We’re the children.

00:30:36 ►

And I think part of when we talk about this current evolution in consciousness,

00:30:41 ►

I think we’re moving from a juvenile species into our young adulthood

00:30:45 ►

to where we don’t need to be kids anymore. We don’t need mommy and daddy, especially

00:30:49 ►

because they’re fighting and it’s not very pretty right now. We don’t need them to take

00:30:52 ►

care of us anymore. What we need to do is step into the truth of our own adulthood and

00:30:57 ►

discover how to be self-governing and self-disciplined and self-aware and self-actualizing beings.

00:31:04 ►

And that’s what the evolution of consciousness

00:31:06 ►

is about.

00:31:07 ►

Very good. It’s funny, I’m listening and making my own little sort of connections and putting

00:31:13 ►

it in different contexts. And one of the things about shamanism is that in the end, when you

00:31:20 ►

understand shamanic thought, you come to understand that absolutely everything is energy.

00:31:27 ►

So in the beginning, prior to a monetary system,

00:31:32 ►

Kruk the caveman would go out and take down a mastodon with his homies, right?

00:31:36 ►

And then they’d bring it home and everybody would eat.

00:31:38 ►

And he was going out and he was basically getting a resource.

00:31:41 ►

And it was a direct thing.

00:31:43 ►

And then the women would gather the berries and the

00:31:45 ►

nuts and and everybody got along in their own way and then um the monetary system came into play

00:31:54 ►

and we think initially that money um is an energy and so we’re taught as you said we were all

00:32:04 ►

you know present day we’re born into this

00:32:06 ►

we pursue this energy which started out to be and i want to this is what i’m leading at because i

00:32:11 ►

heard you do a lecture on this uh it started out to be backed by gold and then you know there was

00:32:17 ►

paper money and then they were building printing presses and running the you know they’ve been

00:32:22 ►

running the presses over time for God knows how long now.

00:32:26 ►

And now I keep thinking about it,

00:32:28 ►

and it’s even gone from that into bits and bytes.

00:32:31 ►

It’s digital now.

00:32:32 ►

It’s digital.

00:32:32 ►

So it’s still energy in a way.

00:32:34 ►

It’s digital, but it’s still energy, but it’s electrons.

00:32:37 ►

It’s bits and bytes, which are, you know, nebulous

00:32:40 ►

and based on faith and all that.

00:32:42 ►

So maybe you could just give us a little bit of,

00:32:44 ►

I heard the lecture you did,

00:32:46 ►

a little bit on the monetary system

00:32:47 ►

and how it started

00:32:49 ►

and why we’re so screwed now.

00:32:52 ►

Not that we don’t know that.

00:32:53 ►

Yeah, if you go all the way back

00:32:55 ►

to some of the earliest incarnations of money,

00:32:58 ►

when human beings became creative,

00:33:00 ►

and this was in the agrarian days

00:33:01 ►

when we suddenly had surplus,

00:33:03 ►

we had the capacity to create more.

00:33:05 ►

And people began doing, oh, I’ll do pottery and somebody else will do furniture

00:33:08 ►

and this person over here is going to do weavings or whatever.

00:33:12 ►

And as we tried to barter those things, it became more complicated to do a bartering thing.

00:33:17 ►

If you wanted to go five people down the line and you wanted this thing

00:33:20 ►

and the other person wanted that thing and you couldn’t make the trade happen,

00:33:28 ►

using money as a placeholder to value the things you were putting into the collective pot, you took your money out and then you could go take something else out of the

00:33:33 ►

collective pot. That was the way it was supposed to work. And at that point, it didn’t really matter

00:33:38 ►

what you used for money. It was simply a representation of the good or service you were

00:33:42 ►

offering into the whole so that you put your thing in the hole, you take out your value, then you go get something else out of the hole.

00:33:48 ►

That was fine. As the world got more complicated and distances got greater and people began to

00:33:54 ►

produce more and more things, there was less of an amount of trust around what’s the value of

00:34:01 ►

this thing that we’re using to measure everybody’s value that they’re putting in?

00:34:05 ►

I don’t know Johnny from three towns away.

00:34:08 ►

How do I know that he really got his money by putting something in the collective kitty?

00:34:12 ►

So let’s use something that we all can control and we all can define and that’s very, very scarce.

00:34:17 ►

And that’s where gold came into being.

00:34:19 ►

And they minted gold coins and they put faces on them.

00:34:22 ►

And everybody knew that that meant that the person had actually done something productive.

00:34:27 ►

So it was our way of checking and balancing,

00:34:29 ►

making sure people were genuinely productive

00:34:31 ►

if they were going to buy something out of the system.

00:34:34 ►

That was fine.

00:34:35 ►

But again, as the population exploded

00:34:37 ►

and we made more and more stuff,

00:34:38 ►

there wasn’t enough gold available

00:34:40 ►

to monetize all the productivity of human creativity

00:34:44 ►

because we’re infinitely creative

00:34:46 ►

beings and the more people who come into the world and are building on the creativity that’s

00:34:51 ►

already been in existence it begins to snowball it mushrooms so time goes by more more citizens

00:34:57 ►

do more things and suddenly there’s not enough gold so what did we do we said well let’s let’s

00:35:02 ►

just start to print promissory notes that the gold we mine in the future will be represented by this paper.

00:35:09 ►

And then we can put more stuff into the system so that we’re not driving down the capacity of people to exchange things.

00:35:16 ►

Because that’s really what money is. It’s a currency. It’s an energy flow of exchange.

00:35:21 ►

It’s designed to facilitate the energy flow between people so we can all produce

00:35:26 ►

to our maximum capacity and trade as good as possible, as freely as possible. So as that’s

00:35:32 ►

going on, and human beings are now up to a couple of billion people, let’s go back to the 70s,

00:35:38 ►

suddenly even the promissory notes became dangerous because people were turning them

00:35:42 ►

in for gold and there wasn’t enough gold to back the promissory notes and we knew we couldn’t mine enough gold in the future

00:35:47 ►

to back the promissory notes so we just threw the gold away altogether and said let’s not even worry

00:35:51 ►

about gold let’s just make these promissory notes so we’ll just say that this is the full faith and

00:35:57 ►

credit of the u.s government whatever that means and now we can make an unlimited amount of it

00:36:01 ►

but we were making it not simply to monetize the goods and services that

00:36:07 ►

were in the system. We were producing the money and borrowing it from ourselves. This is where

00:36:12 ►

the first real break with reality came. We began to borrow money to create the capacity to produce

00:36:21 ►

the goods and services we were putting in the system so that we could then exchange them.

00:36:23 ►

to produce the goods and services we were putting in the system so that we could then exchange them.

00:36:25 ►

And as we’re borrowing money,

00:36:28 ►

and money only comes into existence as debt,

00:36:32 ►

it doesn’t exist any other way.

00:36:34 ►

It’s loaned out, and that’s how it comes into being.

00:36:36 ►

It’s birthed as a loan.

00:36:38 ►

But we never loan the interest.

00:36:40 ►

We only birth the principal.

00:36:42 ►

So every loan that’s ever made is made with principal

00:36:45 ►

plus interest. So when you add those two things together, what we wind up with is this enormous

00:36:51 ►

amount of money that gets produced, but nobody has the interest to pay it back because the interest

00:36:56 ►

doesn’t exist. So if I’m going to pay back, if I take a loan from you and you charge me interest,

00:37:00 ►

I have to pay back the principal that I borrowed from you. Plus I have to get somebody else’s principal from somewhere else to add it and call that interest. And if I take principal

00:37:09 ►

away from somebody else, they still owe that principal back, plus the interest on their own

00:37:14 ►

loan. So the more loans we produce, the deeper into debt we go. There’s no way around it. It’s

00:37:20 ►

an incredible hole that we dig for ourselves. And money more, and money is changing hands over and over again,

00:37:26 ►

and every time it changes hands, it changes hands as a loan with more interest attached.

00:37:30 ►

So right now, the amount of debt in the system far exceeds the amount of principal in the system.

00:37:35 ►

We’ve got a tremendous amount of interest that we all owe each other for the sake of borrowing,

00:37:39 ►

and there’s no principal to cover it.

00:37:41 ►

So this is part of the problem, And that’s how the whole debt system came

00:37:45 ►

into being. And to make matters worse, if we look at how the Federal Reserve works and how the

00:37:50 ►

banking system works, there’s something called a 10% reserve requirement rule, which is the Federal

00:37:56 ►

Reserve lends money to banks. And when it lends that money, it allows the banks to lend out nine

00:38:04 ►

times the amount that they borrow from the Federal

00:38:06 ►

Reserve. Well, they don’t have it. It doesn’t exist. So they digitize it by creating a mortgage,

00:38:13 ►

let’s say, for somebody. So if they have a million dollars they borrow from the Fed,

00:38:16 ►

they can lend out nine million dollars and keep that million dollars in their vault.

00:38:21 ►

And that’s what they do. They make up nine million dollars out of thin air,

00:38:24 ►

and they charge interest on it. And so you’re paying interest on invented money that was never

00:38:29 ►

borrowed from anybody. It was created by the banks. And they’re lending this imaginary money to you

00:38:35 ►

at a high rate of interest. But if you default on it, they’re going to take your very real

00:38:39 ►

possessions. That’s the way it works. So it’s kind of a crazy system, and we don’t even understand it well enough to realize

00:38:46 ►

that we’re being had by the banking system.

00:38:49 ►

We never had to borrow money in the first place.

00:38:51 ►

We could simply monetize the creative capacity

00:38:54 ►

and the productivity and the resources of this nation,

00:38:58 ►

put a value on it, say, how much is that worth in every year?

00:39:01 ►

Let’s make sure we have that much money in the system.

00:39:03 ►

We’ll give it to ourselves, spread it out, and let’s move stuff around.

00:39:08 ►

Let’s create energy flow.

00:39:10 ►

We could do that, but that’s not the way that we’ve backed into it.

00:39:14 ►

And is it correct?

00:39:15 ►

I know I’m pretty sure it’s correct, but I want to hear it from you.

00:39:17 ►

The Federal Reserve is a private institution?

00:39:21 ►

It’s a hybrid, but for the most part it is a private institution.

00:39:25 ►

The stock of the Federal Reserve is owned by private banks. Private banks have a guaranteed dividend as a result of

00:39:31 ►

the Federal Reserve. It does give some money to the federal government, but it is not beholden

00:39:36 ►

to the federal government in any way for its policies. In fact, its books are secret. Nobody

00:39:40 ►

really even knows who owns it. You’re not allowed, because it’s privately held,

00:39:49 ►

you’re not allowed to know who the bankers are who own the Federal Reserve. And the Federal Reserve came into being back, I think, in the 20s. And it was a result of the J.P. Morgans and the

00:39:56 ►

Rockefellers of the world who got together. The little cabal of them sat down and said,

00:40:00 ►

we need a private banking system to manage all these booms and busts that are happening.

00:40:05 ►

And the booms and busts weren’t happening

00:40:06 ►

because of the money issue.

00:40:07 ►

They were happening because of capitalism itself.

00:40:09 ►

The problem with the underlying equation,

00:40:12 ►

which I’ll be happy to go into.

00:40:13 ►

If you want to understand where the jobs are,

00:40:14 ►

I’ll tell you where the jobs are.

00:40:16 ►

So it’s about the Wizard of Oz

00:40:17 ►

and pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

00:40:19 ►

You don’t even want to know who the man behind the curtain is.

00:40:21 ►

Right, right.

00:40:22 ►

So this private institution is basically inventing

00:40:27 ►

nothing and we’re all trading on nothing because we’re so far removed many times over from

00:40:34 ►

from the gold standard yeah which is something solid and tangible that it really is kind of all

00:40:39 ►

based on faith and the irony is and the sad is, is that what money was originally intended to do,

00:40:45 ►

which was to be a flow facilitator of human exchange, of productivity, of goods and services,

00:40:50 ►

it’s now become a barrier. Because without money, I can’t even begin to create a product.

00:40:57 ►

I don’t have access to resources anymore unless I can pay for them. And how do I pay for them?

00:41:01 ►

I have to get money. How do I get money if I don’t have any resources and I don’t have any goods to sell in the open market? I have to borrow it. So I have

00:41:08 ►

to dig a hole to be able to become a productive citizen, to climb back up to the ground and then

00:41:13 ►

hopefully get up in the tree. It’s an insane setup. That’s why kids go into $100,000 in debt

00:41:18 ►

before they even get out of college. They’re digging the hole so that they can become productive

00:41:22 ►

members of society. I say, why don’t we just start at the ground? Why do we have to digging the hole so that they can become productive members of society i say why don’t we just start at the ground why do we have to dig the hole first why are we putting every single human

00:41:28 ►

being alive on the planet today through the agony of having to dig a hole and climb out and the

00:41:33 ►

deeper you dig the higher you’ve got to climb but that’s the way we’ve structured our system

00:41:38 ►

it’s it’s absurd eileen for president i got too many skeletons in my closet.

00:41:46 ►

Of course, I’m honest about them.

00:41:47 ►

That’s the whole point, isn’t it? I inhale. I admit it.

00:41:48 ►

Yep, she inhaled.

00:41:49 ►

She wasn’t hanging around with Bill Clinton, that’s for sure.

00:41:52 ►

So, dancing around the subject a bit more,

00:41:58 ►

we have this vaporware monetary system of smoke and mirrors that is initially

00:42:05 ►

originated from

00:42:09 ►

energetic exchange.

00:42:13 ►

Yes.

00:42:14 ►

And now, obviously,

00:42:15 ►

it’s way out of control.

00:42:18 ►

So the key is to,

00:42:19 ►

I think this is somewhat

00:42:21 ►

the basis of your theory,

00:42:23 ►

and you can elaborate on this,

00:42:23 ►

but I think the key is to

00:42:24 ►

find a way back

00:42:26 ►

to an honest energetic exchange.

00:42:27 ►

Is that a good way of characterizing it?

00:42:29 ►

I don’t like to use the word back

00:42:30 ►

because I don’t think anything we should do

00:42:32 ►

on evolutionary is regressive.

00:42:34 ►

So I don’t believe we want to go back

00:42:35 ►

to a barter system or back to an old way.

00:42:38 ►

I want to find a way through

00:42:39 ►

and a way forward.

00:42:41 ►

And to me, the way forward

00:42:42 ►

really starts from a higher level of consciousness.

00:42:46 ►

It starts from the recognition

00:42:48 ►

that at heart, we’re all connected.

00:42:52 ►

And that anything that I do to elevate you

00:42:55 ►

and enable you and empower you as a human being

00:42:58 ►

benefits me.

00:43:00 ►

And anything that I do to make your life harder

00:43:03 ►

or diminish it in any way diminishes me as a human being.

00:43:08 ►

Starting from that place is a really helpful place to begin.

00:43:12 ►

And I think this notion that we’ve all attached to is this idea that we have to get something out of life, that we’re here to get.

00:43:22 ►

And that’s part of the capitalistic system.

00:43:24 ►

What’s a for-profit paradigm?

00:43:25 ►

I profit at your expense.

00:43:27 ►

I take something that has a certain tangible value

00:43:30 ►

and I give it to you or sell it to you

00:43:31 ►

and take more than it’s worth. That’s what a profit is.

00:43:35 ►

Treating me as a serf.

00:43:37 ►

I’m treating you

00:43:38 ►

as a means to an end.

00:43:39 ►

I’m not seeing you as an end unto yourself.

00:43:42 ►

I’m not honoring you. You’re a means

00:43:44 ►

for me to get wealthy. I don’t even care what I sell you. You’re capitalizing on me. I’m not honoring you. You’re a means for me to get wealthy.

00:43:46 ►

I don’t even care what I sell you.

00:43:47 ►

You’re capitalizing on me.

00:43:49 ►

I’m capitalizing on your need.

00:43:51 ►

And in fact, that’s how the system works.

00:43:52 ►

It capitalizes on people’s needs.

00:43:55 ►

We’ve designed a system that’s so integrated now and so advanced technologically

00:43:57 ►

that people can’t get by without money.

00:43:59 ►

You used to be able to.

00:44:01 ►

A hundred years ago, if you didn’t like living in the city,

00:44:03 ►

you’d just go out into the woods, you’d stake a claim, you’d build your little log cabin, and you could live perfectly well. You can’t be able to. A hundred years ago, if you didn’t like living in the city, you’d just go out into the woods, you’d stake a claim,

00:44:05 ►

you’d build your little log cabin, and you could live perfectly well.

00:44:08 ►

You can’t do that anymore.

00:44:09 ►

You have property taxes.

00:44:10 ►

There’s no free land.

00:44:12 ►

How long can you live without having cash in your pocket to fund the system?

00:44:17 ►

Because the system is always picking your pocket.

00:44:19 ►

You have utility bills.

00:44:20 ►

How are you going to run your iPod?

00:44:22 ►

You can’t run these things for free.

00:44:24 ►

utility bills? How are you going to run your iPod? You can’t run these things for free.

00:44:33 ►

So rather than freeing ourselves up to be more creative and be more social and be more loving and be more engaged, we’re enslaving ourselves to the need to earn money to pay our bills to live.

00:44:42 ►

And that feeds the system, which is all about for-profit, but it’s harmful to the

00:44:46 ►

human condition. It’s not what we really want to do. Most of us don’t want to have to work from

00:44:51 ►

the time we’re 12 until the time we’re 90, and now they’re talking about raise the retirement age.

00:44:56 ►

Ironically, we’re going to raise the retirement age at a time there’s no jobs.

00:45:00 ►

So we’re going to keep the old people in the workforce, keep the young people out of work.

00:45:03 ►

How are they going to save for retirement

00:45:05 ►

if they can’t get a job until they’re 35

00:45:07 ►

because the old people have to work until they’re 75?

00:45:10 ►

It doesn’t make any sense.

00:45:11 ►

And they’re not hiring the old people either.

00:45:12 ►

They’re not hiring the old people.

00:45:14 ►

No, they’re trying to get rid of them.

00:45:16 ►

And so now what are you going to do?

00:45:17 ►

The safety net goes away and there’s no job for you.

00:45:21 ►

And it’s sort of, well, too bad.

00:45:23 ►

That’s the way that the system is working.

00:45:25 ►

And I would challenge that at every turn. The system is not designed, or it was designed,

00:45:31 ►

and it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be focused entirely on making money. We should be making

00:45:35 ►

money, if we’re making money, to better the human condition. Not just better the self.

00:45:41 ►

Again, going back to the getting. I have to get for me.

00:45:44 ►

And the planet. Yes. I Again, going back to the getting. You know, I have to get for me. And the planet.

00:45:46 ►

Yes.

00:45:46 ►

I mean, because it’s all connected.

00:45:48 ►

It is all connected.

00:45:49 ►

And that’s just it.

00:45:50 ►

You know, we have so distanced ourselves and disconnected ourselves from the planet

00:45:55 ►

that we actually think it’s okay to destroy the planet in order to make money.

00:46:00 ►

You know, we’ve overfished the oceans.

00:46:02 ►

We’ve polluted the oceans.

00:46:03 ►

All the things we’re doing, the oil and gas that we’re destroying, we’re going to go through oil and gas reserves

00:46:09 ►

that took 250 million years to create in less than 200 years. We’re going to blow through those.

00:46:15 ►

Now, what is that doing for generations from now? Do we even have a right to tap into those

00:46:22 ►

global resources and swallow them all up in a couple of generations.

00:46:26 ►

So we can get a new big screen TV?

00:46:27 ►

Exactly. And the fact is

00:46:30 ►

there are probably ways

00:46:31 ►

to do free energy, but it’s not

00:46:33 ►

profitable. If we were to come

00:46:35 ►

up with a way that people could tap into energy

00:46:37 ►

out of the air, nobody would want to fund it

00:46:39 ►

because the capitalists can’t figure out how to make money

00:46:42 ►

on that. Until we can figure

00:46:43 ►

out how to harness the sun in a way that we can get it into a company

00:46:48 ►

and they can control that energy and sell it,

00:46:51 ►

they’re not going to want people to put solar panels on their roofs.

00:46:54 ►

They’ll make them too expensive.

00:46:56 ►

It’s interesting, too, because you had me thinking also about the way that the Internet has changed

00:47:02 ►

the whole structure and paradigm.

00:47:06 ►

I mean, like the music industry.

00:47:09 ►

It’s a level playing field now, more or less,

00:47:12 ►

and publishing is going the same way.

00:47:13 ►

Yes.

00:47:14 ►

And so just this one piece of technology

00:47:16 ►

that everybody jumped on,

00:47:18 ►

and then you had the whole dot-com thing

00:47:19 ►

and the dot-bomb thing, right?

00:47:21 ►

Because everybody was jumping on board,

00:47:23 ►

and who would have ever known

00:47:24 ►

that it would have such an influence

00:47:26 ►

on the music industry and the publishing industry

00:47:28 ►

to basically level a playing field?

00:47:32 ►

The Internet is the Gutenberg press of our generation.

00:47:35 ►

Yeah.

00:47:36 ►

It absolutely is.

00:47:37 ►

When it first came out,

00:47:38 ►

nobody knew the Gutenberg press was going to change the world.

00:47:40 ►

But look what it did.

00:47:41 ►

Right.

00:47:42 ►

And if you look at the Internet, it’s the same thing.

00:47:44 ►

I’m sure if people had a clue, certainly if business interests had a clue what the

00:47:48 ►

internet would do, they never would have let it out. But they didn’t know. And what you

00:47:52 ►

see now, what the internet enables us to do, which is the most phenomenal thing that the

00:47:57 ►

internet has to offer, is the whole notion of a business enterprise is matching buyers and sellers, product and resources, and putting these things together.

00:48:09 ►

And in a very, very large, unconnected world, that was hard to do.

00:48:13 ►

But with the Internet, I can now match directly.

00:48:17 ►

I can put my book, and I can talk to people who want to buy it.

00:48:20 ►

I don’t have to go through these giant publishing behemoths

00:48:23 ►

who take the biggest piece of the pie for themselves.

00:48:26 ►

That’s my point.

00:48:26 ►

They’re cutting out the seller and they’re screwing the buyer and they’re taking all this profit for themselves simply for the sake of making the marriage.

00:48:33 ►

We can make the marriage ourselves on the internet now.

00:48:35 ►

We don’t need the behemoth.

00:48:37 ►

So we can render them irrelevant.

00:48:39 ►

We don’t even have to fight with them anymore.

00:48:40 ►

We can make them irrelevant.

00:48:41 ►

Exactly.

00:48:42 ►

And that’s what’s happening.

00:48:43 ►

Banking is the one industry where that has not happened yet

00:48:46 ►

and I’m going to put this out there for anybody

00:48:47 ►

who wants to start their own business and become the next

00:48:49 ►

billionaire. The first person

00:48:51 ►

who does an internet banking system

00:48:53 ►

where they match borrowers and

00:48:55 ►

lenders for really reasonable rates

00:48:58 ►

and they bypass the banking system

00:49:00 ►

altogether by using the internet, sort of

00:49:01 ►

like an eBay for lenders and

00:49:04 ►

borrowers, so that you can fund

00:49:05 ►

people’s creativity and bring that genius

00:49:08 ►

to market, and the people who have

00:49:10 ►

money and don’t know what to do with it and are tired

00:49:11 ►

of losing it in the stock market want to go play

00:49:14 ►

that game. I swear that’s

00:49:16 ►

going to be an enormous business. Nobody

00:49:17 ►

has stepped into that breach yet. They’ve stepped into

00:49:20 ►

the breach in the internet and other services,

00:49:22 ►

but that’s one that hasn’t been tapped, and

00:49:24 ►

it’ll be phenomenal when somebody steps in and does that.

00:49:27 ►

So, on some levels,

00:49:32 ►

I don’t want to say that the Internet’s adding to the death knell of capitalism.

00:49:37 ►

That’s too much of an over-the-top statement,

00:49:39 ►

but it is helping to level the playing field in its own way,

00:49:44 ►

helping to narrow the gap between… Yeah, and I

00:49:46 ►

think what it’s doing,

00:49:48 ►

and this I get from Barbara Marks Hubbard,

00:49:50 ►

is that crisis precedes transformation

00:49:52 ►

and that typically

00:49:54 ►

the tools that you need

00:49:56 ►

become available as you need them.

00:49:58 ►

And I think what the internet is, it’s

00:50:00 ►

going to be the tool that will help us

00:50:02 ►

through the chaos of the inevitable collapse

00:50:04 ►

because the collapse is inevitable.

00:50:07 ►

I said I would tell you about the jobs.

00:50:08 ►

Do you want to know where the jobs are?

00:50:09 ►

I’ll tell you where the jobs are.

00:50:11 ►

China, right?

00:50:11 ►

No.

00:50:12 ►

I mean, that’s a part of it.

00:50:13 ►

I know.

00:50:13 ►

I’m being funny.

00:50:13 ►

The truth is that the contract, the basic underlying contract of the current capitalist

00:50:21 ►

for-profit paradigm is that as an individual, you take your man hours, your energy.

00:50:26 ►

Again, it’s about the energy.

00:50:27 ►

You take your energy, you sell it to a business.

00:50:30 ►

That business gives you capital,

00:50:32 ►

which you then use to buy the collective fruits of human labor.

00:50:35 ►

And that’s been the contract for thousands of years.

00:50:39 ►

But what’s happened in the last couple of hundred years particularly

00:50:41 ►

is the acceleration of the industrial age

00:50:44 ►

and technology and computerization

00:50:47 ►

and productivity gains.

00:50:49 ►

All of that says we need less and less human energy

00:50:53 ►

to build the things that we all need

00:50:56 ►

and that we’re all using.

00:50:57 ►

So that breaks down the contract.

00:51:00 ►

Add to that, now you’ve got 7 billion people

00:51:02 ►

trying to sell their energy into a system

00:51:04 ►

that doesn’t need it anymore or needs very little of it, and you’ve got a huge problem.

00:51:10 ►

Because what is it that bought the goods and services was the wages of the people that were working.

00:51:14 ►

Machines don’t earn wages, and they don’t use goods.

00:51:18 ►

So you look at that, and you see the paradigm is broken down.

00:51:21 ►

and you see the paradigm is broken down and because corporations

00:51:23 ►

tap into the free market,

00:51:25 ►

if you look at the global free market

00:51:27 ►

for energy right now,

00:51:28 ►

human energy,

00:51:29 ►

they can immigrate

00:51:30 ►

anywhere they want to go in the world.

00:51:31 ►

I’ll immigrate to China

00:51:32 ►

if I’m IBM.

00:51:34 ►

I’ll immigrate to India

00:51:36 ►

if I’m Apple.

00:51:37 ►

And I can tap into

00:51:38 ►

a very, very cheap labor pool.

00:51:40 ►

But you as a person,

00:51:41 ►

you can’t follow that job.

00:51:43 ►

You’re not allowed to immigrate.

00:51:45 ►

So you’re stuck here surrendering your job to that cheaper labor force,

00:51:50 ►

which is a very small part of what most of Apple and those other companies

00:51:53 ►

are all technologically machine-oriented anyway.

00:51:56 ►

So the jobs are gone.

00:51:57 ►

And they’re also avoiding a lot of taxes.

00:51:59 ►

Yes.

00:52:00 ►

Well, here’s the irony, is that for the last probably 50 or 60 years,

00:52:04 ►

the only thing that’s kept the illusion of corporate profitability alive

00:52:08 ►

is the fact that the government has been creating safety nets and social programs and subsidies,

00:52:14 ►

and they’re funding billions and billions, trillions of dollars into the economy,

00:52:18 ►

putting it into the pockets of the unemployed, the underemployed, the elderly, people who are poor.

00:52:25 ►

And that money goes right into corporate coffers because those people need stuff.

00:52:29 ►

So they buy stuff, the company makes it, and the government’s paying for it.

00:52:33 ►

And that’s what’s been keeping the illusion of corporate profitability afloat.

00:52:37 ►

So the irony now is what are we talking about doing?

00:52:40 ►

Cutting government spending.

00:52:42 ►

The minute you cut government spending, the illusion will be revealed for what

00:52:45 ►

it is, because nobody has any money.

00:52:48 ►

And what is the government?

00:52:49 ►

This is the other funny part. Where does the government get

00:52:51 ►

its money? It taxes wages.

00:52:54 ►

What’s collapsing?

00:52:55 ►

Wages. So that’s why the government’s

00:52:57 ►

borrowing money. That’s why it’s going into debt.

00:53:00 ►

It’s trying to fund all these programs

00:53:02 ►

to keep the citizens alive. Not

00:53:03 ►

thriving, just alive. And it’s borrowing that money, and now the keep the citizens alive not thriving just alive yeah

00:53:05 ►

and it’s borrowing that money and now the business interests are saying we can’t keep doing this it’s

00:53:10 ►

not profitable they’re so disconnected from the understanding of their own system they don’t even

00:53:15 ►

see that right they have no idea that when they force the government to stop spending money and

00:53:20 ►

stop taxing that the whole thing’s going to collapse. They’re killing themselves, and they don’t even know it. I love it. Which is funny. I mean, it is funny. And I just sit back

00:53:29 ►

and like Buddha, I’m going to wait for it all to come down and see what happens next. This is

00:53:33 ►

really kind of interesting. The only bad part is there’s human beings involved with real suffering

00:53:38 ►

and real pain. And that’s the part that hurts my heart to experience. If it were just a mechanical

00:53:44 ►

exercise, it would actually be kind of amusing amusing but it is causing a great deal of suffering

00:53:49 ►

so i’m kind of going back to the same point um in a different way but it’s all about energy exchange

00:53:58 ►

the model got completely distorted yes and. And so removed from its roots.

00:54:06 ►

And then through all of that,

00:54:08 ►

and even fueled by the,

00:54:10 ►

for lack of better words,

00:54:11 ►

the greed and stuff,

00:54:12 ►

the Internet came into being.

00:54:14 ►

Yes.

00:54:15 ►

And because the Internet in itself

00:54:17 ►

is a more efficient energetic system,

00:54:19 ►

energetic exchange,

00:54:20 ►

I mean, even emails,

00:54:21 ►

you can instantaneously,

00:54:22 ►

you guys, this podcast is going on right now.

00:54:25 ►

And, you know, Clint down under there in Australia, Birdwing Butterfly, brother.

00:54:31 ►

He’s going to listen to it like instantaneously.

00:54:33 ►

Right?

00:54:34 ►

Because it’s like that.

00:54:34 ►

It’s like that.

00:54:35 ►

It’s like that.

00:54:36 ►

Monetary Exchange.

00:54:37 ►

I’ve always been blown away at the fact that I could be sitting on my couch with my laptop

00:54:42 ►

on wireless.

00:54:45 ►

Tap a few

00:54:46 ►

keys, sit on my couch,

00:54:48 ►

and God, an hour later a pizza can show up.

00:54:50 ►

Right? I mean, it’s magic.

00:54:52 ►

But,

00:54:54 ►

it’s also,

00:54:56 ►

because it’s leveling the playing field,

00:54:59 ►

it’s been undermining

00:55:00 ►

some key aspects of capitalism,

00:55:02 ►

particularly, like I say, in the entertainment

00:55:04 ►

industry and books.

00:55:05 ►

So, in terms of a better energetic exchange,

00:55:10 ►

that is where we’re evolving towards

00:55:13 ►

whether we like it or not,

00:55:14 ►

even when we’re trying not to.

00:55:15 ►

We’re doing it to ourselves.

00:55:16 ►

Yes.

00:55:16 ►

Because that’s a necessity.

00:55:19 ►

Yeah.

00:55:19 ►

So, this is a basis for your…

00:55:23 ►

I don’t want to say theory.

00:55:26 ►

Well, yeah.

00:55:27 ►

In fact, it’s deeper than that.

00:55:29 ►

To me, you’re touching on the spiritual piece of it.

00:55:31 ►

Right.

00:55:32 ►

Which is that it’s not an accident.

00:55:33 ►

Right, exactly.

00:55:34 ►

And it’s not happening by chance.

00:55:35 ►

It’s not random that all these things are happening together.

00:55:38 ►

Right.

00:55:38 ►

I believe deeply that there is a consciousness underlying all of this.

00:55:44 ►

There’s a collective consciousness.

00:55:46 ►

There’s a spiritual nature to the cosmos.

00:55:49 ►

And it knows what it’s doing.

00:55:50 ►

Yes.

00:55:51 ►

And it is evolving to a higher order.

00:55:53 ►

It’s changing us inside at the same time

00:55:56 ►

that we’re faced with these enormous problems on the outside

00:55:59 ►

so that we can deal with the problems.

00:56:01 ►

Right.

00:56:01 ►

But it’s giving us a choice.

00:56:03 ►

Evolve or die.

00:56:04 ►

It’s a very simple choice.

00:56:06 ►

I love that.

00:56:07 ►

You know, I’m going to get just a little bit off

00:56:08 ►

into woo-woo land here for a minute.

00:56:10 ►

But there’s a wonderful sound healer

00:56:13 ►

by the name of Tom Kenyon.

00:56:16 ►

Tom, K-E-N-Y-O-N.

00:56:18 ►

He’s out of Seattle.

00:56:19 ►

If you get a chance, check him out.

00:56:22 ►

He channels the Hathors,

00:56:21 ►

get a chance, check them out.

00:56:24 ►

He channels the Hathors,

00:56:27 ►

which are, they claim to be interplanetary consciousness beings

00:56:33 ►

of sort of a non-physical nature.

00:56:35 ►

Everything I’ve read about them,

00:56:37 ►

everything I’ve read that they’ve said,

00:56:39 ►

has been bang on for me.

00:56:42 ►

Now, interestingly,

00:56:43 ►

because some of the wording you’re using, it’s made me

00:56:46 ►

bring this into the discussion here. They say that right now, we’re at a point of what they

00:56:51 ►

call a chaotic node. And a chaotic node is a choice point where you have multiple

00:56:58 ►

choices that you can make. Now, also what you said,

00:57:06 ►

in essence, you were saying that,

00:57:08 ►

and Barbara Hubbard said this,

00:57:10 ►

chaos precedes birth.

00:57:13 ►

Just like you personally went through

00:57:15 ►

and I went through,

00:57:16 ►

we had to personally go through

00:57:17 ►

our own very painful chaos and birth

00:57:20 ►

in order to come to a new level of understanding.

00:57:24 ►

So, these Hathors say we’re at this chaotic node where we can choose.

00:57:31 ►

We can choose to try to hang on to what has passed and go that way,

00:57:37 ►

or we can stay highly aware and conscious and put our energy toward moving forward,

00:57:47 ►

conscious and put our energy toward moving forward and that if we do that in a conscious manner then we will really be tying into the cosmic paradigm that is of a higher order and we will flow with

00:57:55 ►

it and though it may be painful and uncomfortable it’s going to bring us forward as opposed we’re

00:58:00 ►

going to be swimming with the stream instead of against it. Yeah. I would even say, if you were to ask me

00:58:06 ►

some of the principal tenets of this shift in consciousness,

00:58:10 ►

I would tell you that one of the tenets that I see happening

00:58:12 ►

is that for, probably since we’ve existed,

00:58:18 ►

human beings have existed,

00:58:20 ►

in order for us to change, we’ve had to be repulsed by something.

00:58:24 ►

Again, energetic repulsion. This is so bad, I have no choice us to change, we’ve had to be repulsed by something. Again, energetic repulsion.

00:58:25 ►

This is so bad, I have no choice but to change.

00:58:29 ►

And I think because consciousness is expanding

00:58:32 ►

and human awareness is growing

00:58:34 ►

and the interconnectivity is becoming more apparent,

00:58:38 ►

what’s going to be happening is we’re moving toward an attractor field.

00:58:41 ►

Rather than me having to be kicking and screaming,

00:58:44 ►

forced out of the current way of doing things, moving toward an attractor field, rather than me having to be kicking and screaming forced

00:58:45 ►

out of the current way of doing things, I’ll be okay with what we’re doing, but I’ll be

00:58:50 ►

able to say, hey, let’s try that because that might work better.

00:58:53 ►

Let’s go forward.

00:58:55 ►

So I think we’re on the edge of that shift too, and that this may be the final experience

00:59:01 ►

that we have to go through where we’re forced because we have no choice

00:59:06 ►

to change. And we’re going to move

00:59:08 ►

into the capacity to change

00:59:10 ►

choicefully. So from a spiritual

00:59:13 ►

metaphysical perspective,

00:59:15 ►

in essence, if

00:59:16 ►

you knock on spirit’s

00:59:19 ►

door

00:59:19 ►

long enough with

00:59:22 ►

a good intention

00:59:24 ►

and an open heart,

00:59:26 ►

at some point,

00:59:28 ►

the knot gets answered.

00:59:30 ►

Oh, absolutely.

00:59:31 ►

And so…

00:59:31 ►

Maybe not in the way you expect.

00:59:33 ►

Oh, never in the way you expect.

00:59:35 ►

But it does.

00:59:37 ►

And as you say,

00:59:38 ►

I love that expression you used

00:59:39 ►

about the attractor field.

00:59:41 ►

Getting back to basically basic energy

00:59:43 ►

and energetic dynamics of energy,

00:59:45 ►

which is, again, what shamanism is all about.

00:59:49 ►

If you’re in that place of openness and awareness,

00:59:54 ►

it will start coming for you and drawing you in.

00:59:58 ►

And if you are hanging on to the old paradigm,

01:00:01 ►

you’re in deep shit

01:00:02 ►

because you’re going to get, in essence, torn apart.

01:00:05 ►

Because it just doesn’t work anymore.

01:00:06 ►

It can’t.

01:00:07 ►

It’s getting overcome by something far greater and far bigger than what we can comprehend.

01:00:11 ►

Is that a good?

01:00:12 ►

I think so.

01:00:13 ►

And I think even, you know, I would go so far as to say that with sacred economics,

01:00:19 ►

the intention of sacred economics is to add to that attractor field.

01:00:23 ►

To set a vision of the highest vision

01:00:28 ►

of the greatest version of ourselves,

01:00:30 ►

is how I would phrase it.

01:00:31 ►

That humanity is due to step together as a species

01:00:36 ►

and collectively design our grandest vision

01:00:39 ►

of our highest version of ourselves

01:00:41 ►

and aim for that.

01:00:43 ►

Instead of simply reacting to the things that aren’t working,

01:00:48 ►

coming to a place and saying, you know, this is what we need to do.

01:00:51 ►

And then you’re not clinging anymore.

01:00:53 ►

You’re reaching forward.

01:00:55 ►

And that gives us the momentum to flow with creation,

01:00:59 ►

to move with the impulse of evolution,

01:01:01 ►

and to step into the flow of cosmic design.

01:01:05 ►

Whereas if we’re trying to cling to the past

01:01:07 ►

and fixate on it

01:01:09 ►

and rigidly hold on to it,

01:01:11 ►

it doesn’t mean there aren’t things in the past

01:01:12 ►

that aren’t wonderful

01:01:13 ►

and that shouldn’t be carried forward.

01:01:15 ►

But we carry so much baggage forward

01:01:16 ►

that we’re weighting ourselves down

01:01:18 ►

and we’re going to drown

01:01:20 ►

if we don’t let go of some of this.

01:01:22 ►

Exactly, which ties in with the whole Hathor thing

01:01:26 ►

I guess

01:01:27 ►

one more thing I want to hit upon a little

01:01:30 ►

bit is we’ve gotten esoteric

01:01:32 ►

and we’ve gotten financial and we’ve

01:01:34 ►

gone back and forth

01:01:36 ►

I’ll go all over the map with you

01:01:37 ►

you too baby

01:01:39 ►

I’m wondering if you

01:01:42 ►

could give

01:01:42 ►

you gave us in the beginning,

01:01:45 ►

you gave us the definition of sacred economics.

01:01:48 ►

I was wondering if you could give us a bit of sort of an example of sacred economics in action

01:01:54 ►

or a situation that in that situation can define how sacred economics works.

01:01:59 ►

How it works.

01:01:59 ►

Yeah.

01:02:00 ►

Yeah.

01:02:01 ►

And I draw a lot on biology and nature.

01:02:04 ►

Absolutely.

01:02:05 ►

That to me, you know, we’re always waiting for the aliens to come down and tell us how to be.

01:02:08 ►

I say the aliens are right here.

01:02:10 ►

They’ve been here.

01:02:11 ►

We’ve got two billion years of alien life forms living on this planet

01:02:14 ►

that have been interacting in sacred way for all this time.

01:02:18 ►

I’ve met some of them.

01:02:19 ►

We just start looking.

01:02:20 ►

So I have taken, you know, deep inquiry into how nature functions and what is the feedback

01:02:26 ►

loop of life. And to me, genuine sacred economics is an indirect gifting system. That means that

01:02:34 ►

my role, my responsibility is to activate the highest potential within myself based on my

01:02:41 ►

passions, my skills, my talents, my abilities, my creative capacity,

01:02:47 ►

that which is calling me. And when I step into service to that, it’s not work anymore. It’s joy.

01:02:53 ►

And I want to bring that forward. And I want to give that to the world. And I want to give it to

01:02:58 ►

whoever needs it. And my role is to put that into the kitty and give it away. And then take back from the kitty whatever it is that I need to feed that process.

01:03:09 ►

And that’s how reality works.

01:03:11 ►

Human beings were the first ones that said, this is mine.

01:03:14 ►

Mine?

01:03:15 ►

Mine.

01:03:15 ►

I wrote this book.

01:03:16 ►

It’s mine.

01:03:17 ►

I made it.

01:03:18 ►

Nobody else can have it unless they pay me for it.

01:03:20 ►

And I’m giving my book away wherever I can.

01:03:22 ►

I really truly am.

01:03:23 ►

And I’m trying to make it as cheap as possible in the avenues that I have to sell it because I really am not interested

01:03:29 ►

in earning money. I’m interested in having these ideas out there and be a facilitation for

01:03:34 ►

discussion and an opportunity for people to have an attractor field and start to look at some

01:03:38 ►

different opportunities and ways we can do things. And I think the only way we’re going to get

01:03:43 ►

through this is to begin to realize that we have to run our society

01:03:47 ►

the way we run a family.

01:03:49 ►

I don’t let my kids come to the table and say,

01:03:52 ►

okay, there’s a steak here.

01:03:53 ►

Who’s got the biggest allowance?

01:03:55 ►

The teenager says, I’ll take the steak.

01:03:58 ►

Give Johnny the baby the potato skin.

01:04:00 ►

As a mother, I wouldn’t run my house that way.

01:04:03 ►

Why would I run a world that way?

01:04:04 ►

Yeah, very good. Why would I run a world that way why would I run a world that way

01:04:06 ►

so your

01:04:09 ►

indirect

01:04:11 ►

paradigm makes me think

01:04:15 ►

as you say of biology

01:04:16 ►

where I’ve spent

01:04:18 ►

days and days and weeks

01:04:21 ►

in the jungle

01:04:21 ►

and I can see that

01:04:24 ►

an animal dies

01:04:27 ►

and the bugs eat the

01:04:30 ►

animal. And then

01:04:32 ►

bigger bugs eat those bugs.

01:04:34 ►

And then the frogs and

01:04:35 ►

the snakes eat those. And then

01:04:38 ►

the bigger animals eat those.

01:04:40 ►

And then at some point

01:04:41 ►

it gets eaten and eaten up to the food chain until the

01:04:43 ►

big animal dies again and the bugs eat it.

01:04:45 ►

And it goes right back.

01:04:46 ►

It goes right back.

01:04:47 ►

It just keeps going.

01:04:48 ►

Everything balances because it’s reached a natural balance in the jungle

01:04:55 ►

between all these different forces that you may not have seen.

01:04:57 ►

You know, the bees get the honey and they’re pollinating the flowers.

01:05:00 ►

All that, and it’s all indirect.

01:05:03 ►

It’s an orchestra.

01:05:04 ►

It’s a symphony.

01:05:05 ►

Exactly. And there are two things that we have been taught to believe that I think’s all indirect. It’s an orchestra. It’s a symphony. Exactly.

01:05:06 ►

And there are two things

01:05:07 ►

that we have been taught to believe

01:05:08 ►

that I think are utterly false

01:05:09 ►

that make it hard for us to buy into that.

01:05:12 ►

The first thing that we’re taught to believe

01:05:14 ►

is that there’s never going to be enough to go around.

01:05:17 ►

That if we all try to give things away

01:05:19 ►

we’re going to get taken advantage of

01:05:20 ►

and there’s never going to be enough to go around.

01:05:22 ►

The second thing we’ve been taught to believe

01:05:24 ►

is that if people aren’t working for money, for reward, they won’t work at all.

01:05:30 ►

And those are the two underlying, I say, false beliefs that make us afraid to let go of the

01:05:38 ►

monetary system and the need to measure and make sure that, I got to make sure you’re putting your

01:05:43 ►

work in the middle. I don’t trust you to actually work if you’re taking stuff. And you might take too much.

01:05:49 ►

I’m afraid you’re going to take too much. So there’s a lack of trust in each other.

01:05:54 ►

And that has been exacerbated by the capitalist system, which is all about trying to get more

01:05:59 ►

from you than I’m really supposed to. That’s how I profit. So we’ve fostered that lack of trust in

01:06:04 ►

the system. And it’s time we turn that around. We have to learn’s how I profit. So we’ve fostered that lack of trust in the system,

01:06:05 ►

and it’s time we turn that around.

01:06:07 ►

We have to learn to trust each other.

01:06:08 ►

If we’re going to work together, we have to learn to cooperate.

01:06:10 ►

We’ve got enormous problems as a species that we’re facing,

01:06:13 ►

extinction-level problems.

01:06:15 ►

And the only way we can fix those is if we work together.

01:06:17 ►

Not compete, but work together to really address those fundamental issues.

01:06:22 ►

And I think the economy is one of the first places

01:06:24 ►

we have to start to turn things around

01:06:26 ►

because it’s creating a lot of the problems.

01:06:29 ►

So to me, that’s the linchpin.

01:06:30 ►

If we can fix how we’re doing business with each other,

01:06:33 ►

change the nature of our relationship

01:06:35 ►

and how we’re working together,

01:06:38 ►

then we’re free to change the world.

01:06:40 ►

Yeah, how much, in the end, as individuals,

01:06:45 ►

how much do we really need? I mean, I know for myself

01:06:47 ►

personally, one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned

01:06:49 ►

in the jungle is how little I need

01:06:51 ►

to survive. And

01:06:53 ►

I know people there who

01:06:55 ►

basically live hand to mouth

01:06:57 ►

every day and they’re eating good, wholesome

01:06:59 ►

food and they’re working hard.

01:07:01 ►

And they’re happier than people with mortgages

01:07:03 ►

and insurance payments and doctor’s bills and all that they they live in that way and it’s a happier and a simpler life so

01:07:12 ►

this whole idea of you know 90 have not 10 have is really ludicrous because how much do you really

01:07:21 ►

need to be comfortable and happy i mean you don’t But if you’re greedy and you’re raised into that

01:07:29 ►

and you think you have a privilege

01:07:30 ►

and you’re running away from yourself

01:07:32 ►

and you can’t understand why life is,

01:07:36 ►

then you’re constantly trying to escape.

01:07:39 ►

Then you’re caught up in this illusion.

01:07:41 ►

It’s fear.

01:07:41 ►

It’s fear-based.

01:07:42 ►

It’s all fear-based.

01:07:42 ►

It’s all fear-based.

01:07:44 ►

And that’s one of the things that

01:07:45 ►

they, quote-unquote,

01:07:48 ►

try to keep you in is that fear mode

01:07:50 ►

so that they can keep pulling the strings

01:07:51 ►

and taking advantage.

01:07:53 ►

And they have more fear than anybody.

01:07:55 ►

The they’s we’re talking about. That’s right.

01:07:58 ►

Those! Them!

01:08:00 ►

And it’s all us. I mean, ultimately, that’s

01:08:02 ►

what I come down to. There is no

01:08:04 ►

them and us. It’s all us. The mean, ultimately, that’s what I come down to. There is no them and us.

01:08:05 ►

It’s all us.

01:08:06 ►

The other is an illusion.

01:08:07 ►

The other is just ourselves looking back at us.

01:08:10 ►

It’s a reflection of what we all are inside.

01:08:12 ►

Right.

01:08:13 ►

So I think this has been a really great interview.

01:08:17 ►

Maybe you can give us some final words of wisdom.

01:08:22 ►

Again, Eileen’s book is Sacred Economics, and

01:08:26 ►

it’s soon to be

01:08:28 ►

available, or probably by the time

01:08:30 ►

of this podcast. No, actually it is available, isn’t it?

01:08:32 ►

It’s available on Amazon.com

01:08:34 ►

in Kindle format, in Nook,

01:08:36 ►

in the iBook store, and it will be available in paperback

01:08:38 ►

sometime in early

01:08:40 ►

August. Yeah, it’s from

01:08:41 ►

RightWorks Publishing. RightWorks Publishing. Yes.

01:08:45 ►

So yeah,

01:08:46 ►

if you want to give us

01:08:46 ►

some closing thoughts

01:08:47 ►

and some brilliant gems

01:08:48 ►

that we can all take home

01:08:49 ►

when we go into

01:08:51 ►

our little mushroom journeys

01:08:53 ►

or whatever we’re doing,

01:08:54 ►

some thoughts to take with us.

01:08:57 ►

I would say

01:08:59 ►

if I had to define

01:09:00 ►

one of the most

01:09:01 ►

freeing moments of my life,

01:09:04 ►

it was the moment

01:09:04 ►

after my spiritual breakdown and breakthrough when I quit my job.

01:09:11 ►

And it’s what you were talking about, how much does one really need.

01:09:14 ►

In that moment, I had to walk away from all the security, my future, my retirement account, my stock.

01:09:22 ►

I had all this stock and stock options, and

01:09:25 ►

I had to surrender all of that. And the question I asked myself very seriously is,

01:09:32 ►

you know, if I have to spend the rest of my life doing this, I’m going to die. But the option,

01:09:37 ►

if I don’t spend the rest of my life doing this, is I may have to eat out of dumpsters.

01:09:41 ►

Could I do that for the sake of my freedom? And the answer I finally

01:09:46 ►

came to was yes. If I have to be a bag lady and live on the streets and eat out of dumpsters,

01:09:51 ►

I would rather live that way than spend another day living the way that I’m living. And in that

01:09:57 ►

moment, I was free. In that moment, I was free. When I surrendered it all and said, I don’t care

01:10:02 ►

about any of this stuff anymore.

01:10:07 ►

What my heart is telling me I need to do,

01:10:11 ►

which is bring this kind of information forward to people and live my own life according to this belief system.

01:10:15 ►

Give away as much as I can.

01:10:17 ►

And I do that.

01:10:18 ►

I’m extraordinarily joyful

01:10:22 ►

about giving things that I can to other people. And we can all do these things.

01:10:27 ►

There’s so much we can give away that isn’t monetarily oriented. We can give away our wisdom.

01:10:32 ►

We can give away our love. We can give away our compassion. We can give away the capacity for

01:10:37 ►

somebody to come stay in our home when they have nowhere else to go. We can give away, you know,

01:10:42 ►

fruits of our gardens. We can give away our old clothes that we’re not using anymore

01:10:46 ►

all these things that we have

01:10:48 ►

that we rarely think about

01:10:50 ►

we can begin to exchange with each other

01:10:52 ►

just out of love

01:10:53 ►

and as we begin to make those tiny little practices

01:10:57 ►

and shift our attitude

01:10:58 ►

toward other beings

01:10:59 ►

not looking at them in terms of

01:11:02 ►

what am I going to get in exchange

01:11:04 ►

but in terms of simply saying by I going to get in exchange,

01:11:06 ►

but in terms of simply saying,

01:11:09 ►

by giving this thing to this person, I feel joy.

01:11:10 ►

Yes.

01:11:13 ►

This makes me feel good, just to give it away.

01:11:14 ►

No attachments.

01:11:15 ►

Unconditional.

01:11:17 ►

Unconditional love.

01:11:18 ►

No designs on the other being.

01:11:20 ►

And the more we practice that,

01:11:23 ►

and the more joyfully we anchor in that as individuals,

01:11:28 ►

the more abundance our society will naturally begin to have.

01:11:30 ►

And that’s really what I think it’s all about,

01:11:32 ►

is letting go of manufactured lack,

01:11:34 ►

because the lack is manufactured.

01:11:35 ►

It’s man-made.

01:11:37 ►

We have plenty, because we’re all here.

01:11:38 ►

If we didn’t have plenty, we wouldn’t be alive.

01:11:40 ►

So there’s plenty here.

01:11:43 ►

Very good.

01:11:45 ►

I can say that Eileen does indeed practice what she preaches.

01:11:48 ►

It is unconditional love.

01:11:49 ►

I guess I can put my own little closing thought

01:11:52 ►

in here based on what you just said.

01:11:55 ►

You guys have probably

01:11:55 ►

heard me say this before, but

01:11:57 ►

if you break it down to the bare bones

01:11:59 ►

basic,

01:12:02 ►

fear is contraction

01:12:03 ►

and love is expansion. Exp expansion by its very nature is unconditional

01:12:09 ►

because it just keeps going. And if you think about the broken paradigm of capitalism and

01:12:18 ►

the whole thing of gimme, gimme, take, take, that is a contraction. It’s taking in, it’s

01:12:21 ►

taking in. It’s selfishness as opposed to selflessness.

01:12:28 ►

So in the end, if you’re always taking and you’re in that fear mode of contraction,

01:12:32 ►

you’re going to more or less implode.

01:12:35 ►

And if you’re in a loving, giving, compassionate mode,

01:12:39 ►

you’re expanding.

01:12:42 ►

So I think that’s a really good note to end on.

01:12:45 ►

I’d like to thank Eileen for taking the time

01:12:47 ►

to do this interview for the salon.

01:12:51 ►

And once more, her book is Sacred Economics.

01:12:55 ►

It’s Eileen Workman.

01:12:57 ►

You can find it on Amazon and Kindle

01:12:58 ►

and all that good stuff.

01:12:59 ►

And I’m sure Lorenzo’s going to post it on the website

01:13:01 ►

as he’s so good about doing.

01:13:03 ►

So thank you everybody for tuning in to this edition of the Psychedelic Salon.

01:13:09 ►

And we really appreciate your support.

01:13:12 ►

And keep at it, everybody.

01:13:15 ►

We’re keeping at it.

01:13:16 ►

And believe it or not, as my good friend likes to say,

01:13:20 ►

there is light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s not a train.

01:13:26 ►

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,

01:13:28 ►

where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.

01:13:34 ►

Well, I thought that I was going to be able to get through today’s podcast

01:13:38 ►

and not say anything about Burning Man,

01:13:40 ►

the festival that just came to a rather spectacular end a couple of days ago.

01:13:45 ►

But just now when Eileen was talking about how good it feels to give something away with no strings attached,

01:13:51 ►

as you probably did yourself,

01:13:53 ►

well, I couldn’t help but to think about how successful Burning Man is in its feature of being a gifting economy.

01:14:01 ►

If you’ve been there, you know what I mean, and if you haven’t been there, well, all you

01:14:05 ►

need to know is that Burning Man is not a place where barter is how things work. At Burning Man,

01:14:11 ►

it isn’t unusual at all for a complete stranger to come up to you, give you something cool, and

01:14:17 ►

then simply blend back into the crowd. It’s an amazing thing to experience, and very beautiful,

01:14:23 ►

I should add. So, when Eileen was talking about gifting just now,

01:14:27 ►

I had a flash of the whole world being like Burning Man, but without the heat and dust.

01:14:33 ►

Well, at least I can still dream, huh?

01:14:36 ►

I guess that the only thing that Matt and Eileen left out just now is a plug

01:14:41 ►

letting you know that you can obtain a copy of her book at a discount

01:14:44 ►

if you

01:14:45 ►

go to right works publishing that’s w-r-i-t-e works publishing right works publishing.com

01:14:52 ►

and enter the discount coupon number one one zero zero two p s s and those are capitals. That’s 11002PSS.

01:15:07 ►

And I’ll put a link to that on the website along with the program notes for today’s podcast,

01:15:12 ►

which of course you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us.

01:15:16 ►

And also, as she mentioned, you can get a copy of her book on Amazon in Kindle format

01:15:22 ►

and on the Nook at the Barnes & Noble site.

01:15:26 ►

Now there’s one more thing that I feel compelled to comment on. It’s a brief statement that Eileen

01:15:32 ►

made. And if you recall, at one point she said that she had been wounded as a child. And that

01:15:39 ►

is something that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about lately, namely the difficult experiences that

01:15:45 ►

we all go through as children. It was just two days ago that the thought came to me that

01:15:51 ►

everyone, and I mean everyone, you, me, all of our friends, relatives, and fellow salonners,

01:15:58 ►

all of us have had some kind of difficult experience or two, or maybe many difficult

01:16:03 ►

experiences in childhood.

01:16:10 ►

Granted, when I look at the children in Africa who are starving to death, and the young people all over this planet who are unable to find ways to become the people they came here to

01:16:14 ►

be, well, from that perspective, my childhood seems like a happy fairy tale.

01:16:20 ►

And yet, there were some things that happened along the way that have scarred me deeply, scars that still fester and hurt sometimes.

01:16:28 ►

So I’ve come to the conclusion that every childhood is difficult, uniquely so, but difficult nonetheless.

01:16:36 ►

And I don’t know if there is an answer to this eternal dilemma.

01:16:39 ►

Maybe difficulties as a child are an important part of our growth into joyful adults.

01:16:44 ►

But first we have to somehow come to terms with the events that brought us to where we are today.

01:16:50 ►

You know, I keep telling myself that past is past, so I try not to go back there very often.

01:16:56 ►

And when I do, I try to remember those old motivational speakers preaching that it doesn’t matter what happens to you,

01:17:02 ►

the only thing that matters is what you do about it, how you react to it.

01:17:05 ►

And yes, I know that’s just another platitude.

01:17:09 ►

But press on, my friend, and my guess is that one day you will be astounded at where you are and how your life has turned out.

01:17:17 ►

Never in my wildest dreams as a child could I have conceived of the life I’m living now.

01:17:22 ►

And largely thanks to you and our other fellow salonners,

01:17:26 ►

I have at long last found my own bliss,

01:17:29 ►

and so I plan to keep on following it for as long as I can.

01:17:33 ►

Like you, I have my good days and my more challenging days.

01:17:38 ►

Today is one of the really good ones.

01:17:41 ►

One of the best, even with the aches and pains that come with a body

01:17:44 ►

that wasn’t taken

01:17:45 ►

care of as well as it should have been when it was younger. But even so, today is a really good day,

01:17:51 ►

and I expect that tomorrow will be even better. And so my wish for you is that you take Eileen’s

01:17:57 ►

advice and explode that frame you were forced into as a child, and then put the pieces of your life

01:18:03 ►

together in a way that pleases you the most.

01:18:06 ►

If you do, I’m sure that we will all enjoy seeing the new pattern of life that you create for

01:18:11 ►

yourself. As the good Dr. Leary often said, think for yourself and question authority.

01:18:17 ►

And to that, I can only add the Bard McKenna’s favorite saying, keep the old faith and stay high.

01:18:27 ►

favorite saying, keep the old faith and stay high. Well, that’s going to do it for today. And so I’ll close the podcast once again by reminding you that this and most of the podcasts from the

01:18:32 ►

Psychedelic Salon are freely available for you to use in your own audio projects under the Creative

01:18:37 ►

Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 3.0 license. And if you have any questions about that,

01:18:43 ►

just click the Creative Commons link at the

01:18:45 ►

bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage, which you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us. And if

01:18:52 ►

you’re interested in some of the stories that may or may not have led you and me to where we’re

01:18:57 ►

sharing this moment together right now, well, you can read a few of them in my novel, The Genesis

01:19:02 ►

Generation, which is available in Kindle and other ebook formats, as well as a pay-what-you-can audiobook read by me.

01:19:10 ►

And you can find out more about that at genesisgeneration.us.

01:19:15 ►

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

01:19:20 ►

Be well, my friends.

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

281 - Sacred Economics

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