342 - Psychedelic Family Business

Program Notes

“If it’s a psychedelic family business, then you’ve got to consider the ‘top line’ [as contrasted with ‘the bottom line’]. What’s the top line? The top line is: You have one unique life, and what do you love to do? What do you want to spend your life doing? What is the highest impact you can have on the world in a positive way?” -Alex Grey

“We know that in the wake of our psychedelic experiences we’re awakened to a oneness with the environment and with a sense of the need to protect it. And at least the dream of Eco-sustainability and how could we possibly manage that at this point in our trip. And yet it’s up to us to take responsibility for it. All of these things kind of naturally evolve in the wake of the psychedelic experience for many people.” -Alex Grey

“If you really want something big to happen in your life you have to make promises that you don’t know how you’re going to keep, and you have to keep them. That’s all. That’s all it takes.” -Allyson Grey

COSM
Allyson & Alex Grey’s Chapel of Sacred Mirrors
A sanctuary for seeing ourselves and the world as reflections of the Divine

Transcript

00:00:00 ►

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 a big thank you goes out to all of our donors for this month. And I’ll be getting a thank you email out to you soon, but

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I just wanted to say thanks here and to say that we have once again covered all of our expenses

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for the month. So thank you all very much. Now, continuing on with the 2012 Palenque Norte lectures that were held at Burning Man this past year,

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well, today we’re going to hear the talk that was given by Allison and Alex Gray.

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And I’d like to point out that Allison and Alex have been with us at Palenque Norte ever since our first year.

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Planque Norte ever since our first year.

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In fact, you’ll hear Allison in a few moments say that in 2004,

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they gave a Planque Norte talk about psychedelic family values.

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Well, that’s close, Allison, but actually the year was 2003,

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and the title of the talk was Art, Love, Family, and Psychedelics.

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And it also featured their daughter, Xena. And of course,

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you can listen to a recording of that talk that I played in my podcasts number seven and eight.

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And this one today, by the way, is number 342. Now, as you can tell from the title of the Gray’s talk that I’m going to play for you right now, well, at first it can maybe seem a little

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provocative. You know, what kind of a business can you operate that would be considered psychedelic,

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you may ask. Well, if you just pause for a moment and think once again about the word psychedelic,

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you will remember that it means mind or soul manifesting. And if you keep in mind that as

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you listen to the life stories

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of Allison and Alex,

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well, I think that then you’ll better understand

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what it means to live a psychedelic life,

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a life where the very best facets of your soul

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are blossoming in their fullest.

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Also, I hope that you pay close attention

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to the stories that they tell

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about their own life paths.

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Granted, we all know about their lives today as successful artists,

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but have you ever thought about the twists and turns and bumps in the road

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that they had to make it through in order to get where they are right now?

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And don’t think that even today they are without their challenges.

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You know, it’s been a couple of years now since I last saw Alex and Allison,

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but that was at the MAPS conference in San Jose,

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and they were two featured speakers there.

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But to be honest, I really didn’t expect them to show up,

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because only a few weeks before they had had a very serious automobile accident,

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and both of them had broken their backs, if I’m not mistaken.

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But here they were at a conference, both of them wearing very large back braces, but even larger smiles.

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And as you’ll hear Allison say in a few moments,

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if your determination is great enough, well then nothing can stop you.

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And these two wonderful artists are living proof of that.

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Now I should also mention that in a few moments when you hear

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Chris Pezza introduce Allison and Alex Gray, he mentions that they are the last speakers in what

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was a 21-speaker Palenque Norte lecture series. And yes, I’m aware of the fact that I haven’t

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podcast all of them yet. In fact, there are still a few more talks for which we’re trying to get

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permission from the speakers. And I think that so far there are at least two or three more who have agreed to let me podcast

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their talks. The ones that we won’t be hearing, usually they’re the ones that use some kind of

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visual aid that without which their talks are kind of hard to follow. And there were a couple

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that covered some rather personal details that the speakers only wanted to share with those who attended in person.

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So that’s why we haven’t heard all of them yet.

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However, we do get to listen to

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Allison and Alex Gray’s closing talk

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of the series right now.

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Hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I did

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the first time I heard it.

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But before I begin playing it,

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I first want to once again thank

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Chris Pezza and Tom Riddell, who along

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with a cast of dozens, organized and orchestrated these talks

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this year. It was truly a major undertaking, and they pulled it

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off exceptionally well. Also, they’re right now working on

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plans for next year’s lecture series at the Bern and some other events,

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which I’ll let you know about as their plans develop a little more fully.

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But right now, let’s listen to Allison and Alex Gray’s 2012 Palenque Norte lecture at

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the Burning Man Festival.

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Welcome to the Crystal Cavern.

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Thank you guys all for coming.

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So I see we have a full house.

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I just ask that you all be mindful as people come in to make space by moving this way.

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So we’ve been giving talks since Tuesday, and there’s been 21 speakers here.

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And this is our last talk of the week.

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And we’re really excited for this.

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Before we get started, I want to make a few thank yous.

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First off, to Lorenzo Haggerty in the Psychedelic Salon.

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Lorenzo is the reason this is happening.

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He created this, and we’re honored to continue the legacy.

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I’d also

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like to thank Bruce Dahmer

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for all the guidance and support in putting

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this together.

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Also Annie Oak and

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John Gilmore for their amazing support

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wrangling speakers and

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helping me get started with this.

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And also the Above the Limit Build crew who built this gigantic dome and put these crazy crystals up.

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And Tom Riddell has stuck with us all 21 hours and been our amazing AV tech.

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So give it up for Tom.

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And of course, all of our speakers for being here,

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donating their time and speaking to you all

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and sharing their wisdom.

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Thank you to the speakers.

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Also, we had to raise $3,000, get this stuff together in less than two weeks.

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And we were able to do it through an Indiegogo campaign.

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I’d like to thank all the people who supported that as well.

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And lastly, I’d like to thank Daniel Jabbour, who unfortunately couldn’t be here and his

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support from the psychedelic society of San Francisco, helping us raise funds.

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Awesome. And thank all of you. Welcome.

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Okay, so we have Alex and Allison Gray here with us today.

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They are visionary artists.

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I first came into knowledge of their work when I was listening to Tool when I was about 14 years old.

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And I was like, what are all these eyeballs and weird patterns?

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And then, of course,

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I found LSD and kind of started making sense. So when I traveled to New York City back then,

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I used to visit the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors when it was in Manhattan. And it was this wonderful

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gallery. And I was amazed by the scale and the size of the paintings. And I spent time in there

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when I’d visit and it was really

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amazing and we’re blessed to have their work with us here on the playa actually as well over at area

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51 which is part of fractal nation village there’s a whole dome so please go check it out

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and since then Alex and Allison have created the chapel of sacred mirrors on a grand scale on this

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very large property along the Hudson River in New York.

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So next time you make it out to New York,

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please journey up there and visit them.

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And with that, here’s Alex and Allison.

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Thank you.

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Should I start?

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Okay.

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You can hold your mic, though,

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because you never know.

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You might want to chime in.

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Yeah.

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Well, we made up this title, Psychedelic Family Business,

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because in 2004 we did a talk for Planque Norte called Psychedelic Family Values,

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which was about what do you tell the children when you have children

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and you’ve been opened up by psychedelics?

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And do you lie? Do you be a hypocrite?

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How do you teach them and all that?

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So that’s still on line, and you can find out about that.

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So when we were asked to do something about business,

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we decided to call it psychedelic family business.

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And that is not because our business is selling psychedelics.

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No, not in the least and i

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want to make that very clear uh we call it that because uh we were opened through psychedelics

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and in our spiritual life really i mean if you really want to go there and um it’s affected

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every aspect of our life.

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So how has it affected our business life? How do we make decisions and proceed as people with a business when you have had that kind of opening?

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And so how has it affected us in that way?

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So I was going to start off by just briefly, really quickly, but the structure

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of what I would just really love to do is I would just love to us to say a few of the bullet points,

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the things that we think about that have influenced us or that we found important.

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Started off with just a touch of history of like what business are we in anyway and how did we get

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there? And then I want to leave plenty of time

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for questions. So if you’re in a business or you would like to be one, or if you were in a business

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with your partner, you know, your partner is a very dear friend or a love partner, because Alex

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and I are both. And you were thinking about being in business together or are in business together,

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how do you manage that? How do you handle that?

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So if you have any questions like that, start formulating them,

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and we’ll have plenty of time at the end to do that.

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So you want to talk about it?

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Alex, we’ll ask each other questions.

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That might be a good way to do it.

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We’ll interview each other.

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How did you begin in the working world?

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Did you begin in the working world?

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I think I was working for my parents was my first jobs that I would make a few quarters for, you know.

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Or maybe before that I would make little comic books and try and sell them to the neighbors, you know, as like really a tiny child.

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So I knew that you had to do work in order to make money that was the way it looked like uh you know from my blue collar uh family uh experience

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and so um you know i then my first kind of paying job was painting funhouses.

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And then I think I was, God, I don’t know, 17 or so.

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I think you’re still painting funhouses.

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The new picture of Entheon, you ought to see it.

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We’ll probably show it later at Fractal Nation, 7 to 9.

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I’m always advertising.

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What’s the matter with me?

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It’s a business.

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It’s always in my mind.

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Anyway, keep going.

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All right.

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And then I guess I got a job at painting billboards for a while.

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I had a short stint cutting, cutting mats at the coop.

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Harvard coop.

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Harvard coop.

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Let’s see.

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Hit the heights.

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I worked at Harvard for a little while, the medical school, for five years.

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Now, you got that job.

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How did you get a job? After walking away from a full scholarship in art school after two years

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and going for being a billboard painter, how did you get a job at Harvard?

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How did you walk into Harvard and get a job?

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Harvard Medical School, anatomy department.

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How do you do that?

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Okay, I was obsessed with anatomy

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and bothered the person who was there in the anatomy department uh and uh was

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just hanging out there a lot until he uh invited me to uh work with him well you wanted to see a

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brain yeah you wanted to hold a brain in your hand and guts in the other hand it was a performance

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that alex wanted to do it’s called brains and guts you know so it’s like a photograph a document of

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brains and guts you had to go find somebody in order to do that piece.

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You had to find somebody who could access

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those things and allow you to access

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them. And here you were with your

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hair half shaved, one side

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like all the way down, one side bald.

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He was very, very

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you know, somebody you wouldn’t

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trust walking in your door. But you got this

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guy to trust you enough to hire

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you

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to do that work which you had never done before i’m just telling you if you think it’s impossible

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to do what you want to do in your life it is not at all impossible nothing is impossible

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you can do exactly what you want in your life so anyway go ahead well i actually was also at that time i got that job uh after my first

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psychedelic experience uh actually the the working there at the medical museum and uh the morgue and

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stuff and uh so that was very informative and i think that really the questions that we come up with, oh, you want more history.

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Okay.

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I’m going to do my history after you’re done.

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So I was going to get up to Harvard.

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You went to Harvard.

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Okay, I went to Harvard.

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Then you were a –

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Did medical illustration for a while.

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Well, wait a minute.

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Before that, you worked in a science lab.

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Yeah.

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Studying psychics.

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Yes, I did. You science lab studying psychics.

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Yes, I did.

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You know, do you want to learn interesting work?

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Consciousness research at the Mind-Body Institute at Harvard.

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With Joan Borsenko and Herb Benson, who wrote the relaxation response.

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You worked with them, seeing whether psychics could actually heal.

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Yeah.

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Hands-on healing.

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Yeah.

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Is it true? Does it work? I was a part-time scientist. heal. Yeah. Hands-on healing. Yeah. Is it true? Does it work?

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I was a part-time scientist.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. So, but anyway, so then from there, you got your first, well, someone called up Harvard

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and thought that you were the Harvard medical illustrator, which you were not.

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You were just painting at the time.

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They had seen the sacred mirrors.

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I was painting the sacred mirrors.

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Some doctors had seen them.

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And somebody asked them, hey, who’s your medical illustrator over there at Harvard?

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And they said, oh, there’s this guy, Alex Gray, and why don’t you call him?

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And so I was working there for, like, really cheap,

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and they called me up and they said, well, we need medical illustrations

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for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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And they offered you four times what you were making at Harvard.

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Yeah.

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Four times by the hour. And you could making at Harvard. Four times by the hour.

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And you could work at home.

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That was such a deal.

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So you did that for a year.

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Anyway, it really pissed off the medical illustrator there at Harvard, though.

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There was a staff.

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Oh, yeah, she was pissed.

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And she was, ooh, yeah.

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Because you got the good job.

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I know.

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Last year.

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Yeah.

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It got you really started, and you got a portfolio piece or two together

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and you had the Sacred Mirrors, which were also there.

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But anyway, that is just to say that you need to…

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I don’t even think Alex knew where he was going.

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He was just taking opportunities as they approached him.

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I don’t know that we always have a goal, but sometimes we do.

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My artwork was looking at the human body.

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And so if it was medical illustration, I thought, well, I’ll learn more about the human body.

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Great.

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You know?

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And so I could do that if I wasn’t selling my paintings.

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And my paintings, nobody wanted them.

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We exhibited the sacred mirrors in a gallery in 1984 or something like that, and offered them for $2,000 a piece, and nobody

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wanted any.

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Except the one that I owned.

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Yeah, except the one that I gave her.

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Alex gave me one, and that’s the only one that anybody asked.

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They put some into it, but no, they couldn’t have it this morning. So there’s your first kind of psychedelic family business.

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She inspired the Sacred Mirrors.

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The Sacred Mirrors were based on a psychedelic experience.

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And so I created an exhibit.

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So I tried to sell them.

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And that didn’t work there.

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Okay.

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So then we got a vision that we should build a chapel.

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And, well, that’s going to be expensive.

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How do you do that?

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God, I don’t know about that.

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Okay, but we got to do it. Okay, you’ve got to be expensive. How do you do that? God, I don’t know about that. You know, but OK, but we got to do it.

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OK, you’ve got to do it.

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So now that came in a psychedelic vision.

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Both the inspiration for the sacred mirrors, basically, the visions that were significant in there, like the universal mind lattice.

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And then the the vision of the chapel was in a psychedelic state as well.

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Well, I’d like to say that I think that a lot of people know our story

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because we talk a lot to people,

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but Alex tripped for the first time in my apartment,

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and we were not dating.

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He was just a person who was at my party.

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But you recognize that story, even that story

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puts me in the position of muse

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it puts me in the position of

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I had an inspiring opening

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in your apartment

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so there’s a story that you continue to tell

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and always have told

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that allows me in to your life

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and that is one of the openings

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but I wanted to say about business

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that you always took opportunities when you saw them and you recognized what you wanted one of the openings. But I wanted to say about business that, you know,

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you always took opportunities when you saw them,

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and you recognized what you want.

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You know, it’s a windy path.

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It’s a windy path to wherever it is that you’re going.

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You’re going to, you know, there may be twists and turns,

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unless you, you know, some people’s careers are not like that.

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You know that you’re going to be a resident,

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and then you’re going to be an intern,

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and then you’re going to be, you know and then you’re going to be in your specialty.

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So you have to go through and jump through those hoops.

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But in our world, there were many windy, twisty turns, and you took opportunities as they came along.

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Okay.

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Yeah, that’s one thing I wanted to say right there, is that just because the business idea may be born in a psychedelic state, I don’t think automatically confers greatness on it.

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That’s right. Very, very good. I so agree.

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A lot of crazy and stupid ideas actually fly by, too.

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So you must be discerning.

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Choose well and stop choosing.

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That’s one of our big mottos, it’s true with with with your projects too i mean you know it’s true with your relationship

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particularly and that’s when we use that choose and stop choosing but uh but with projects it’s

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like that too so here’s what i wanted to say about that was that that uh a lot of businesses talk

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about the bottom line you know and that you got to really be talk about the bottom line, you know, and that you’ve got to really be concerned about the bottom line.

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But in this case, I think that it’s the reverse of that.

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It’s like, basically, if it’s a psychedelic family business,

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then you’ve got to consider the top line.

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What’s the top line?

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The top line is you have one unique life.

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And what do you love to do?

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What do you want to spend your life doing?

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What is the highest impact that you could have on the world in a positive way?

00:20:33 ►

what is the most visionary possibility for your magnificent presence to impact and potentially evolve the world? I mean, we know that in the wake of our psychedelic experiences,

00:20:38 ►

we’re awakened to a oneness with the environment and with a sense of the need to protect it

00:20:47 ►

and at least the dream of eco-sustainability

00:20:52 ►

and how could we possibly manage that at this point

00:20:56 ►

in our trip, you know, and yet it’s up to us

00:21:00 ►

to take responsibility for it. All of these things kind of naturally evolve

00:21:04 ►

in the wake of the psychedelic experience for many people.

00:21:09 ►

You know, the higher consciousness yields a kind of higher conscience.

00:21:13 ►

So that’s the top line.

00:21:15 ►

That’s look at how, what’s the best way and the highest service that you could provide for the greatest number.

00:21:23 ►

And that, I think, is the beginning of your business.

00:21:28 ►

Because you just have to find how what it is that you love

00:21:31 ►

could serve yourself as well as everyone.

00:21:37 ►

I wanted to insert in that that you want to um what was i going to say the highest impact you have to also

00:21:49 ►

look at what makes money for you first of all most creative people end up riding more than one horse

00:21:56 ►

they ride two horses at least for a while i was a waitress you know what i mean i mean we all

00:22:01 ►

have to do work to make money to live but But if you have another business, if you know that this is your business and this is really who you are and what you are doing, then everything you make, people do that. Spend a lot of money on their serious hobbies, art or music or whatever it is,

00:22:29 ►

and they may never become, you know, I don’t know, a famous musician,

00:22:35 ►

but they will always want to play and do it.

00:22:38 ►

So anyway, creative people end up having two horses to ride.

00:22:42 ►

And I think what I was going to say say the other thing that came up about the

00:22:46 ►

highest impact is highest this is a really businessy term but they say highest impact

00:22:51 ►

highest revenue producing activity but you have to look at if you’re if your activity that you

00:22:56 ►

want to make money with is not making revenue it’s not supporting you it’s it’s not you know

00:23:02 ►

what you really love to do is make paintings and sell them, but it’s just, you know, you can’t make a living doing that right now. So you have to do

00:23:07 ►

this other thing. But do your paintings have impact? That’s something else you can find out.

00:23:12 ►

You can ask people, you can see what they say. If your paintings aren’t having any impact and

00:23:17 ►

aren’t revenue producing, then you just have to look at that and change that. That’s all.

00:23:21 ►

You just have to go to the impact area, I think, first, because you’re not going to,

00:23:25 ►

you know, I mean, you want

00:23:27 ►

to get the kind of feedback that you want

00:23:29 ►

to get. Some people

00:23:31 ►

make paintings about, you know,

00:23:34 ►

the seashore, and then they live on the seashore.

00:23:36 ►

So it may not have huge impact,

00:23:38 ►

but it’s well done, and it’s very revenue

00:23:39 ►

producing. So you have to look at these things.

00:23:41 ►

And what you were saying is, look at what you really

00:23:44 ►

love doing. And what you’re good at doing. What you feel you’re good at doing that you get at

00:23:51 ►

least some consensus around you that you’re good at doing it or take lessons and get better at it.

00:23:56 ►

I mean, I was going to go a little bit into my history because I, like many people, thought I

00:24:03 ►

was going in one direction and then decided that that was not the right direction for me.

00:24:08 ►

So I got a master’s degree so that I could become a college professor.

00:24:12 ►

I thought the academic world is great.

00:24:14 ►

I love it.

00:24:15 ►

I’m pretty good at it.

00:24:17 ►

I’d always been pretty good at it.

00:24:19 ►

Why don’t I just stay in academia and teach art while I’m being a painter?

00:24:23 ►

It was all about being a painter.

00:24:25 ►

I mean, really, it was never about being a college professor.

00:24:28 ►

But I liked the civilized, intelligent environment

00:24:31 ►

and all the services that you get and all the culture you get.

00:24:35 ►

I loved it.

00:24:37 ►

But once I got in it, and I was very young,

00:24:39 ►

after I got my master’s degree,

00:24:41 ►

so I didn’t get the biggest, best jobs teaching NYU,

00:24:45 ►

like this guy who never even got a college degree.

00:24:48 ►

But I had no reputation.

00:24:50 ►

Alex got a reputation, and he got asked.

00:24:53 ►

He taught at RISD,

00:24:54 ►

the best art schools in the country.

00:24:57 ►

But anyway, so you work on your impact.

00:25:01 ►

But I got some adult education

00:25:05 ►

classes and small museum

00:25:06 ►

art classes and things like this

00:25:08 ►

and I’m constantly working on writing

00:25:10 ►

my course descriptions

00:25:12 ►

and showing up and making

00:25:14 ►

next to nothing and I was just fed up with it

00:25:17 ►

after a while, it wasn’t that I

00:25:18 ►

wasn’t doing it, I just wasn’t liking it

00:25:21 ►

so I actually

00:25:22 ►

and this is my advice to you, I know it sounds so crazy

00:25:24 ►

but I took this book and I’m sure to you, I know it sounds so crazy, but

00:25:25 ►

I took this book, and I’m sure there are other books like it, but it’s still in its like 20th

00:25:29 ►

edition. And it’s still being reprinted today. And it is called What Color Is My Parachute?

00:25:35 ►

And I did it. I did it as a workshop in my apartment. You know, I like sat down with a

00:25:40 ►

special notebook and a special pen. And I filled in that entire workshop and did it on my own. It cost me about, what, $15.95, something like that.

00:25:47 ►

And I did the workshop,

00:25:49 ►

and it really took me through the steps that it takes.

00:25:51 ►

And whatever it is for you, I’m just saying,

00:25:54 ►

you need to go get help if that’s where you’re feeling.

00:25:56 ►

If you’re feeling like your life is not,

00:25:58 ►

you know, you’re in the job that you hate and you’re not loving,

00:26:00 ►

you need to go and do something to make that, and you make that change.

00:26:05 ►

So it really helped me to see where I could go. And I decided I wanted to go into the administrative

00:26:10 ►

side, which really was only a surprise to me, because my father was a businessman, and my

00:26:15 ►

grandfather was a businessman. But I always thought of myself as an artist, and I wasn’t

00:26:19 ►

a businesswoman. And then I found out how creative business is so I think we’ve felt that way because we created

00:26:27 ►

exactly the way we want it I mean we create you know we look at the things that we want that we

00:26:34 ►

like to do and the things that other people are willing to have us do and that we can benefit

00:26:41 ►

from you know one of the things I think we found out most of, well, we should talk a little bit about Cosm

00:26:46 ►

and how we grew Cosm,

00:26:48 ►

but I think one of the things that’s made Cosm work best

00:26:51 ►

is us not taking any money at all.

00:26:54 ►

I mean, we just don’t take any money

00:26:56 ►

and give it all to Cosm.

00:26:58 ►

So now people feel better.

00:27:02 ►

They feel better about it.

00:27:03 ►

They didn’t feel as good about it.

00:27:05 ►

Not that we have to do that.

00:27:07 ►

That’s not saying that the results of a psychedelic family business would result in your giving all your money away.

00:27:17 ►

That’s kind of what’s happening to us.

00:27:19 ►

We give it to what we love, and that’s what everyone wants to do.

00:27:22 ►

Exactly.

00:27:22 ►

You’re investing in something that you think will be of the greatest service, the top line.

00:27:27 ►

And so it’s a risk.

00:27:30 ►

And that’s one of the other things that we have to admit and face in any kind of business situation.

00:27:42 ►

All of business is a risk. You know, when you’re doing deals with people and they may go crazy or the, you know, all kinds of things can go wrong.

00:27:56 ►

But in order to have both a community and have powerful effects in the world, we have to work with each other.

00:28:12 ►

So we have to acknowledge that doing anything together is a risk,

00:28:14 ►

but be willing to go for it. There is no real stability necessarily in corporate America either.

00:28:20 ►

Many people have found my brother, for instance,

00:28:33 ►

You know, many people have found my brother, for instance, you know, who was vice president at a couple different, two different corporations, worked his way up and got, you know, his pension and everything like that.

00:28:37 ►

And then, oop, everything got rug pulled out from under you.

00:28:39 ►

Sorry, no benefits.

00:28:40 ►

See you later, Charlie.

00:28:47 ►

So things can flip, as we understand, on an instant on a dime things that you were you know like barnett newman i always loved this story he was a great painter and uh he uh i want to be a

00:28:55 ►

painter mom dad i that’s all i want to do you know and barney bar, have some sense. Go work in the family business.

00:29:07 ►

It’s only about…

00:29:07 ►

Blocking hats.

00:29:08 ►

Yeah.

00:29:09 ►

About eight years later, you know, it was the crash.

00:29:15 ►

You know, the Great Depression of 29.

00:29:18 ►

And all of his savings were wiped out that he thought was going to…

00:29:23 ►

You know, now he was going to coast and paint

00:29:25 ►

for the rest of his life well guess what you know so a lot of people have experienced that and they

00:29:31 ►

don’t necessarily trust that there’s going to be some golden parachute that somebody’s provided

00:29:36 ►

for you anymore so you have to be creative think for yourself uh plan your – and acknowledge that business is a risk, whether you’re opting into a corporate lifestyle that perhaps appears to have benefits and things like that.

00:29:54 ►

But there’s also – there’s what that costs you as well.

00:29:58 ►

So, you know, Apple is a psychedelic family business.

00:30:05 ►

You know, Steve Jobs used to interview people and say, yes, did you ever take LSD?

00:30:11 ►

You know, and instead of saying, no, no, no, no, never.

00:30:15 ►

You know, they, you know, he wanted them to say yes.

00:30:19 ►

And he wanted to know how many times, things like that.

00:30:22 ►

So if anything, like Burning man or like gatherings like this

00:30:26 ►

we are psychedelic family you know it mostly it’s the people who’ve been there seen something

00:30:34 ►

uh resonated deeply uh with a uh what appears to be a soul or spiritual kind of reality that’s of greater meaning and value than the

00:30:46 ►

material surfaces of things.

00:30:49 ►

And because we see the value in each other and we have a renewed sacred sense of the

00:30:55 ►

world, that’s the business that we want to promote.

00:30:59 ►

That’s the message in whatever business we want to do. So whatever business you do do can be a demonstration,

00:31:11 ►

a ritual, basically, demonstration of your values

00:31:16 ►

that have hopefully been evolved through your contact with higher consciousness.

00:31:24 ►

You know?

00:31:28 ►

The other thing is to, you know,

00:31:34 ►

it’s your business to evolve your spiritual life.

00:31:35 ►

You know?

00:31:41 ►

And how that can then meet up with what you do for a living is this ongoing kind of question.

00:31:47 ►

You know, one of the Eightfold Noble Path, Right Livelihood,

00:31:51 ►

the way they defined it that I read in the Ichigzavuda just recently was

00:31:56 ►

doing something you’re not ashamed of.

00:31:59 ►

That’s very simple.

00:32:01 ►

Doing something that makes you not ashamed.

00:32:03 ►

You don’t want to be doing a business

00:32:05 ►

where you feel ashamed.

00:32:07 ►

So any business that you feel is good

00:32:09 ►

for people and serves others,

00:32:11 ►

you can be working in CVS

00:32:13 ►

and its right livelihood.

00:32:14 ►

You could actually brighten up the life

00:32:16 ►

of everyone who walks into CVS

00:32:18 ►

and all of your co-workers around you.

00:32:20 ►

You could transform CVS

00:32:22 ►

or Best Buy or wherever it is.

00:32:26 ►

Whatever it is you’re working at, you can transform it

00:32:27 ►

in a positive and spiritual way.

00:32:30 ►

So that can be your business and you could become

00:32:32 ►

very good at that.

00:32:34 ►

Very good at whatever it is that you’re doing

00:32:36 ►

and wherever you are

00:32:37 ►

doing it.

00:32:39 ►

If that’s what you want to do.

00:32:41 ►

I mean, you, yeah.

00:32:43 ►

Well, the other is, you know, just business-wise,

00:32:48 ►

you would hope that people who had had an experience of higher consciousness

00:32:52 ►

and higher conscience would not want to screw people.

00:32:57 ►

They would want to maintain standards of integrity.

00:33:02 ►

And that they would want to expect that of other people as well

00:33:06 ►

that they do business with.

00:33:08 ►

And so those kind of orientations, I think,

00:33:13 ►

can direct us in any kind of job that we do.

00:33:20 ►

I wanted to say one thing about when you decide what you want to do instead of what you thought you were going to do.

00:33:28 ►

You know, you’re having this big job switch and then suddenly you realize, okay, I, well, what happened to me was I wanted to work in an office.

00:33:36 ►

I didn’t want to work in a school anymore.

00:33:39 ►

I wanted to try out working in an office.

00:33:41 ►

And so what happens when you, and I wanted to

00:33:45 ►

organize things. I wanted to organize art events.

00:33:48 ►

And I just ran into somebody

00:33:50 ►

yesterday who remembered me

00:33:52 ►

from my first actual arts

00:33:53 ►

administrative job. I

00:33:55 ►

organized a weekend

00:33:57 ►

long seminar for artists

00:33:59 ►

for the Boston Visual Artists Union.

00:34:02 ►

She worked for the Boston Visual Artists Union.

00:34:04 ►

I came in as a consultant to make this program.

00:34:09 ►

Are you ready to market your work?

00:34:12 ►

So, you know, I didn’t know how to market my work either.

00:34:15 ►

I was a painter, but I figured this would be great.

00:34:18 ►

I could learn this.

00:34:19 ►

And then I could go under the guise of organizing this

00:34:22 ►

for the Boston Visual Artists Union

00:34:23 ►

and find all of these

00:34:25 ►

the biggest gallery owners and critics

00:34:27 ►

and artists, like big name artists

00:34:29 ►

how did they do it? And we had a panel

00:34:31 ►

and we did a whole

00:34:33 ►

catalog. We actually printed something

00:34:35 ►

Are You Ready to Market Your Work? about this

00:34:37 ►

so I had to write it and edit it

00:34:39 ►

transcribe everything. I was like, I really

00:34:41 ►

learned a lot from that. And then from there

00:34:43 ►

you know, after working at a small museum and things like that, I also worked at, I ran the Art Directors Club for

00:34:51 ►

five years. And I did the same thing. I did these events about things that I wanted to know about,

00:34:57 ►

like portfolio preparation. I’ll never forget it because Alex was working at Harvard and I was

00:35:02 ►

working for the Art Directors Club. And I was organizing these workshops and evening programs to meet all these great designers and big names and everything.

00:35:10 ►

And we would have dinners, and we would have events, and I would organize them.

00:35:14 ►

And we had this one event about portfolio preparation.

00:35:18 ►

Because I wanted to help Alex and, you know, do, well, both of us.

00:35:23 ►

Really, I had a portfolio, too, but then his was a medical

00:35:26 ►

illustration portfolio by then. And I thought, how do we do this? How are we going to get out

00:35:31 ►

there? How are we going to do it? And I learned so much from doing that. And here I was getting

00:35:34 ►

paid. So, but before I was paid, and I think this is a good, good thing to mention to especially

00:35:41 ►

young people, but I had already gotten my master’s degree. I wasn’t just, you know, very young. I was, you know, 23 years old, I think, when I went to volunteer at the,

00:35:52 ►

a small art museum outside of Boston, the Brockton Art Museum. And, you know, I had actually shown

00:35:58 ►

my work in their biennial and something. And I just thought, you know. Anyway, I got this internship doing really amazing, like, they hand interns such incredible, responsible work sometimes.

00:36:10 ►

And I took a group of 80 people on two buses to New York because this was in Brockton.

00:36:17 ►

So members were allowed to buy tickets to the King Tut exhibit.

00:36:21 ►

And Alex and I got to go.

00:36:22 ►

And I had to bring speakers to you know introduce what

00:36:27 ►

we were going to see and we had to you know it’s like do a brunch we did a cocktail party we had

00:36:32 ►

to stay at the saint maritz i mean it was i like learned so much and i wasn’t getting paid a cent

00:36:38 ►

i was doing this as an intern so sometimes when you go to intern you can insist on you know i

00:36:43 ►

want something really you know dynamic i want to do something really important, an important project. And you can do it for free.

00:36:49 ►

And you can do that at Cosm, by the way. We have lots of people doing that at Cosm.

00:36:53 ►

We have people, you know, artists particularly coming in and getting a place to stay and,

00:36:58 ►

you know, and they can work for a few weeks and leave us some broken plate mosaic down our little

00:37:03 ►

walkway or something, you know. walkway or something you know so it’s

00:37:06 ►

you know it’s fun for everybody so it we’re we’re not really bartering but it may be in a way it’s

00:37:11 ►

it’s uh we’re we’re working symbiotically you know what works for for everyone and benefits all

00:37:17 ►

um and that was kind of became our motto at Cosm or for Alex and I basically for how we make

00:37:24 ►

decisions because it’s always important to know how we make decisions, because it’s

00:37:26 ►

always important to know how to make decisions. And there’s a couple ways of making decisions,

00:37:31 ►

business or non-business. One is, what looks most like your eternal self?

00:37:36 ►

That’s a good one to ask about your career, what looks most like your eternal self. If you’re

00:37:43 ►

picking out between two dresses, you can say, what looks most like your eternal self? If you’re picking out between two dresses, you can say,

00:37:45 ►

what looks most like your eternal self?

00:37:48 ►

Oh, I like this one, but this one

00:37:49 ►

looks more like my eternal self.

00:37:52 ►

And decide that way.

00:37:53 ►

Either for or against.

00:37:55 ►

But the other thing, the other question

00:37:57 ►

that you can answer

00:37:59 ►

is what benefits

00:38:01 ►

whatever the bottom or

00:38:03 ►

top line is. Both, really, hopefully.

00:38:06 ►

That’s basically it.

00:38:08 ►

What is the benefit that this will bring or not bring?

00:38:14 ►

So that’s the whole thing.

00:38:16 ►

And you go to the top line.

00:38:19 ►

Will it bring benefit to the people it touches?

00:38:22 ►

Will it bring benefit to me?

00:38:24 ►

If both are yes, it could be a good fit. benefit to the people it touches you know, would bring benefit to me, if both

00:38:25 ►

or yes, it could be a good

00:38:27 ►

a good fit, so anyway

00:38:29 ►

do you have any more notes, because I have

00:38:31 ►

probably a million things I was going to say and forgot

00:38:33 ►

but I thought we could open it up to

00:38:35 ►

questions, and people could

00:38:37 ►

because now it’s three o’clock

00:38:39 ►

and we have another maybe twenty minutes

00:38:41 ►

or so, and

00:38:43 ►

would you, would anybody, yes.

00:38:45 ►

You go.

00:38:48 ►

She said, you’ve said a little bit about that business is a risk,

00:38:53 ►

but how do you deal with the fear of failure that comes when you dare take a risk and things like that?

00:39:04 ►

And I think that’s typically what would shut normal people down,

00:39:09 ►

is that, oh, I could never do that,

00:39:11 ►

because, I mean, look at what might happen if you,

00:39:15 ►

and goodness gracious, you know.

00:39:18 ►

Of course, you know, you can walk outside

00:39:21 ►

and an art car can mow you down.

00:39:24 ►

And have, to some people.

00:39:26 ►

And, oh, golly, all those risks I was going to take in business

00:39:31 ►

now suddenly seem pale next to my mangled flesh.

00:39:36 ►

And so life is a risk.

00:39:40 ►

It’s all impermanent.

00:39:41 ►

You might wake up dead tomorrow.

00:39:43 ►

So if you’re going to do something, you best do it, you know,

00:39:48 ►

and because, good gods, it’s 2012.

00:39:51 ►

There’s always a fork in the road.

00:39:54 ►

Should I take this risk or should I go down another path?

00:39:58 ►

And when you make that decision that you’re going to go toward risk,

00:40:04 ►

just keep going.

00:40:07 ►

Put one foot in front of the other and keep finding ways to make it happen.

00:40:10 ►

We have been told at the most important times in our life not to do what we were about to do.

00:40:17 ►

When we were about to do Cosm in the City, no names mentioned here,

00:40:22 ►

but when we were about to do Cosm in the City,

00:40:27 ►

a fellow had a building,

00:40:30 ►

had Spirit New York Club on the first floor.

00:40:33 ►

He wanted to basically give us the fourth floor for two years rent-free,

00:40:35 ►

and then we would pay for the next three years,

00:40:37 ►

we would pay.

00:40:39 ►

But he would give us that time

00:40:40 ►

because he knew we were artists

00:40:41 ►

to build the space, make it beautiful, whatever.

00:40:44 ►

We invested all that we had. All that we had. Now that’s a risk. that time because he knew we were artists to build the space make it beautiful whatever we invested

00:40:45 ►

all that we had all that we had now that’s a risk you take no cushion left and you got 12 employees

00:40:52 ►

people somebody’s got to sit at the desk somebody’s gonna answer the phone somebody’s gotta

00:40:55 ►

you know so you have uh you know you you you spend it all but you keep looking for ways. You don’t go back.

00:41:06 ►

You keep looking for ways.

00:41:07 ►

You say, okay, so we’re low on funds.

00:41:09 ►

Now what can we do right now to make some money?

00:41:11 ►

What can we do right now to make some money?

00:41:13 ►

What can we do?

00:41:14 ►

And not just any money, but something good, something fun,

00:41:18 ►

something that you enjoy doing.

00:41:20 ►

So you have to really think.

00:41:22 ►

It’s very creative.

00:41:24 ►

It’s not for sissies.

00:41:26 ►

And I think that really comes out of the psychedelic thing, too.

00:41:30 ►

I mean, we as a community have an incredible opportunity to be successful for numerous reasons.

00:41:38 ►

Look around.

00:41:39 ►

This is a growing market share.

00:41:42 ►

This is a group.

00:41:43 ►

People had to.

00:41:44 ►

They were sold out six months in advance. This is a… People had… They were sold out

00:41:45 ►

six months in advance, okay? This is

00:41:48 ►

a growing group of people

00:41:49 ►

that love what we love.

00:41:52 ►

It is an incredible… And not only that,

00:41:54 ►

but the psychedelic thing,

00:41:55 ►

we have been risk takers.

00:41:58 ►

We are risk takers.

00:42:00 ►

I don’t recommend that kind

00:42:02 ►

of risk, believe me. And I wouldn’t want to be

00:42:03 ►

quoted as recommending it.

00:42:06 ►

But really, we trust our friends.

00:42:09 ►

We trust our good judgment.

00:42:11 ►

We trust our mental state.

00:42:13 ►

We trust our set and setting that we have chosen carefully, if we’re smart, you know.

00:42:19 ►

And we keep advising each other like family.

00:42:22 ►

And we are always there for each other like family if i need if i

00:42:26 ►

need advice i need so much coaching and alex needs so much coaching all the time when it comes to

00:42:32 ►

business you know when it comes to our instincts about our art we we coach each other but when it

00:42:37 ►

comes to business we need lots of input yeah but i’ll but i will say if if there is a large risk that you are considering taking, and it’s a fearsome one, of course there’s a few things about that.

00:42:56 ►

Number one, sometimes the most fearsome things that we react to like that are the things that, oh my my God, I know I have to do this, you know,

00:43:07 ►

but it’s really scaring me.

00:43:09 ►

So sometimes there’s that.

00:43:10 ►

But sometimes there’s stupidville.

00:43:12 ►

You know, like, don’t go to stupidville.

00:43:15 ►

That’s one of our favorite sayings.

00:43:16 ►

Hey, maybe I can just spend all my money and then it’ll be a wild success immediately.

00:43:22 ►

You know, no, don’t go to Stupidville.

00:43:25 ►

But you can’t always

00:43:28 ►

know, you know, the

00:43:29 ►

way things are going to turn out.

00:43:32 ►

And I am just telling you that if you really

00:43:33 ►

want something big to happen in your life,

00:43:35 ►

you have to make promises that you

00:43:37 ►

don’t know how you’re going to keep, and you

00:43:39 ►

have to keep them. That’s all.

00:43:41 ►

That’s all it takes. You make some promise,

00:43:44 ►

and you’re not sure how you’re going to keep it, and then you keep it. That’s all. That’s all it takes. You make some promise and you’re not sure how you’re

00:43:46 ►

going to keep it. And then you keep it and you go down that, that fork in the road and you keep

00:43:52 ►

choosing that direction. Okay. So that’s not going to work. What else can we do? I’ll go to another

00:43:58 ►

bank. You know, you don’t give up because that is the end of it. And then you have to start over

00:44:04 ►

and people do that too.

00:44:06 ►

And sometimes you can make that work

00:44:07 ►

because you’ve been going down the path of academia.

00:44:12 ►

And I knew I had to take a screeching hairpin turn.

00:44:17 ►

Maybe it was only a 90-degree turn, really.

00:44:20 ►

And so when we were about to make this big purchase that would put everything at risk for us, practically everybody thought it was a bad idea.

00:44:39 ►

That’s what I was going to tell you.

00:44:40 ►

We were told by two very close friends, don’t do this.

00:44:44 ►

Don’t trust this guy.

00:44:45 ►

You know, this guy wants to give you the whatever.

00:44:48 ►

And don’t do it.

00:44:49 ►

But what were you going to say?

00:44:50 ►

I’m sorry.

00:44:50 ►

No, that’s fine.

00:44:51 ►

Yes.

00:44:52 ►

Yeah, he didn’t have an alternative, though.

00:44:55 ►

That’s right.

00:44:55 ►

He said, just don’t trust him.

00:44:57 ►

Don’t do it.

00:44:58 ►

Well, what should we do?

00:44:59 ►

Well, do you have an alternative to opening up in the heart of the art world, you know, for free?

00:45:07 ►

Do you want to offer us a space, maybe?

00:45:10 ►

Would you like to give us a million dollars or something like that?

00:45:14 ►

And so, no, there was no alternative.

00:45:16 ►

So we took this, and it was wonderful.

00:45:18 ►

It was great.

00:45:19 ►

We invested everything.

00:45:20 ►

We risked everything.

00:45:22 ►

It was scary.

00:45:23 ►

But then we looked around and said, how can we make some money?

00:45:25 ►

People came back.

00:45:27 ►

It was the next big risk that we were about to take that was even more risky, which was buying the property upstate.

00:45:36 ►

And so at that point, there was a lot of soul searching.

00:45:42 ►

And virtually everybody said, no, please don’t.

00:45:46 ►

You know, this is a bad idea and whatnot.

00:45:49 ►

And so we had to be really convinced about it.

00:45:55 ►

And I actually, what happened was I pleaded with the angels, you know, that were directing us to do this.

00:46:04 ►

And we had an altar.

00:46:05 ►

And we did austerities.

00:46:08 ►

We stopped using substances and eating raw for almost two years

00:46:13 ►

and meditating and doing yoga every day.

00:46:17 ►

And that was part of our austerities towards getting this property

00:46:19 ►

because everybody was telling us it was impossible.

00:46:22 ►

Our real estate lawyer said she was such a love and such a good friend.

00:46:25 ►

And she said, look, I really think we ought to.

00:46:27 ►

I can help you find another place.

00:46:29 ►

I can help you.

00:46:30 ►

And Alex is really good at, really good at not, well, not stopping.

00:46:37 ►

And always seeing that there’s more possibility ahead.

00:46:41 ►

He’s very good at like, no, I’m not giving up yet.

00:46:43 ►

He said, Jean gene i really think

00:46:45 ►

we have done all we can do she just about tore her hair out like it took us 18 months to get it

00:46:51 ►

and we had to raise money and you know so anyway but it’s continually looking for in the direction

00:46:58 ►

that you’re going and not over there where you might might have, you know, but keep going in that direction. What more can we do? Well, you get continually asking the angels and whatever higher self or spiritual guides or whatever.

00:47:16 ►

You keep asking them, are you sure?

00:47:20 ►

Is this really what you want?

00:47:22 ►

And don’t ask them just once.

00:47:24 ►

You know, you said the other day, you know, but, I mean, what about California?

00:47:30 ►

And then throw the itching and then pull a room.

00:47:33 ►

No, this is it.

00:47:35 ►

This is it.

00:47:36 ►

Do it.

00:47:37 ►

Get it.

00:47:38 ►

Whatever you have to do, this is it.

00:47:39 ►

Get it.

00:47:40 ►

And so I was only ever that certain as to when I found Allison, that this is it.

00:47:49 ►

And when the spirits said, this is it, that was like, okay, we have to do everything we can then.

00:47:59 ►

That’s right, and it doesn’t mean that—

00:48:00 ►

You’ve got to get certainty about your commitment to it. If you’re not going to be the stand for whatever the fuck it is you’re going to do that’s going to change the world, nobody else is going to do it.

00:48:15 ►

You’ve got to be the stand.

00:48:26 ►

information at the highest levels that this is what they want of you and you have opened yourself up to service uh to that vision then you do whatever you can to do we are a growing community

00:48:35 ►

i wanted to just go there again for one second i’m going to take your question we are such a

00:48:40 ►

growing community that we have an impact already and and we know that we do. So just continue to be

00:48:46 ►

aware of that, because it’s not stopping. It’s growing bigger, and we are going to be and are

00:48:52 ►

an influence on how things go in this world, how things go in business, politics, all things,

00:48:58 ►

all the way things are run. And so this is a tremendous, being here is an incredible privilege and a model, good and bad.

00:49:08 ►

Good things happen and bad things happen here, but it’s a model that we test and that we try things

00:49:14 ►

and we do business in a different way this year than we did it before, didn’t we?

00:49:18 ►

We all know that.

00:49:20 ►

So anyway, you try things, who knows?

00:49:22 ►

It’s Burning Man’s business.

00:49:24 ►

Our business, we do it our way.

00:49:26 ►

And you figure it out as you go along.

00:49:28 ►

The more business you do.

00:49:29 ►

See, the thing that’s different about an artist that’s in business or just an artist is an artist that’s in business is successful.

00:49:39 ►

That’s the only difference.

00:49:40 ►

Once you get people who want your art, you have a business, like it or not.

00:49:45 ►

You don’t like it, you’re just going to be unhappy,

00:49:48 ►

and maybe you’ll lose your business being unhappy.

00:49:50 ►

But in any case, it’s only a difference of whether you’re successful.

00:49:55 ►

So when you are successful, you will have a business,

00:49:58 ►

and you want to operate it with honor and in your community

00:50:03 ►

and share it with the community.

00:50:04 ►

So now somebody else had a question.

00:50:08 ►

Does everybody get that?

00:50:10 ►

Do everybody hear?

00:50:12 ►

Alright.

00:50:13 ►

Do you want to restate it? Well, how is it

00:50:16 ►

different when you make decisions

00:50:18 ►

what is it again? You make decisions

00:50:20 ►

from a place of

00:50:21 ►

loving angels and tuning into

00:50:24 ►

your angel.

00:50:29 ►

And then practical, like the high revenue producing activities. Yeah, market research kind of stuff.

00:50:34 ►

You know, it may not be the best way,

00:50:36 ►

but we kind of go a lot according to,

00:50:40 ►

for business decisions, we kind of get intuitive flashes.

00:50:46 ►

You know, like,

00:50:47 ►

hey, what about this?

00:50:49 ►

What if we made a grail, you know?

00:50:51 ►

We’re just playing, you know.

00:50:53 ►

It’s like you have fun. Do you think, what if we did one of these or something?

00:50:58 ►

And so we kind of just invent stuff that we want to create.

00:51:03 ►

Or we let other people invent stuff.

00:51:05 ►

If it benefits our business

00:51:08 ►

and they can invent stuff,

00:51:10 ►

which, by the way, everybody,

00:51:11 ►

that’s all that goes on there.

00:51:14 ►

Cosm has an

00:51:16 ►

incredible apiary.

00:51:17 ►

People are doing this.

00:51:19 ►

The bees are at Cosm.

00:51:21 ►

We have eight

00:51:22 ►

very above average hives.

00:51:25 ►

Very above average.

00:51:27 ►

And we sold our first 81 bottles of honey.

00:51:31 ►

Do you think honey can build a temple?

00:51:33 ►

Maybe.

00:51:34 ►

We’re working on that.

00:51:35 ►

We’re going in that direction.

00:51:36 ►

And lip balm and all that nice.

00:51:39 ►

And candles.

00:51:40 ►

So we call it the third force, basically.

00:51:43 ►

That’s true.

00:51:43 ►

And that there’s a kind of a higher bridge consciousness that works, I think, through people.

00:51:51 ►

It is an energy field, I think, that it’s probably drawing in something else as well, but at least it’s the dialectic that leads to something new.

00:52:04 ►

And, of course, I think that that’s the way that it really is with communities as well. a dialectic that leads to something new.

00:52:07 ►

And, of course, I think that that’s the way that it really is with communities as well.

00:52:10 ►

You know, the larger the community,

00:52:12 ►

the more of that kind of force can be brought together.

00:52:17 ►

And if it can be done coherently,

00:52:19 ►

then magical things can be done.

00:52:21 ►

Like, look at this.

00:52:23 ►

I know.

00:52:23 ►

Now, Annie Oak over there has a question, but I

00:52:27 ►

want to just say thank you to Annie Oak

00:52:29 ►

for inviting us

00:52:30 ►

to do this talk, because it’s really through Annie

00:52:33 ►

that all this happened.

00:52:35 ►

She has been such a

00:52:37 ►

dear friend, and I just love what she’s

00:52:39 ►

doing so much. The Women’s Visionary

00:52:41 ►

Congress means so much to

00:52:43 ►

everyone. We’re so glad that you

00:52:44 ►

founded that.

00:52:45 ►

So what was your question?

00:52:46 ►

I’m sorry.

00:52:48 ►

Yes, we have a non-profit.

00:52:50 ►

Well, we had a non-profit business that became a church.

00:52:54 ►

So it’s not a commune.

00:52:57 ►

It’s not a collective.

00:52:59 ►

It’s not a shareholding partnership with plays.

00:53:04 ►

No, it’s a business.

00:53:06 ►

And so we, because the highest purpose is our mission,

00:53:11 ►

which is, you know, always at the peak.

00:53:14 ►

So every employee, everything that happens there,

00:53:17 ►

whether people are hired, fired, you know, whatever, laid off,

00:53:21 ►

it has to be because of this business.

00:53:25 ►

But how do we do it?

00:53:26 ►

We let them have a lot of say in what goes on.

00:53:30 ►

Alex and I are trying to get out of management and into development.

00:53:37 ►

That’s really what we are doing.

00:53:38 ►

We’re developing the, you know, the chasm.

00:53:41 ►

And so other people have to manage it and they do wonderfully.

00:53:45 ►

They’re amazing. We have different departments, we have department heads, we have managers,

00:53:50 ►

just a few, you know, and, and as you go along and you grow, you have to come up with new policies,

00:53:55 ►

you know, how many days off, how many, I never thought I wanted to do that. Like just

00:53:59 ►

be here because you want to be here. And then when you need time off, you’ve got to go to a wedding, whatever, just go.

00:54:06 ►

But in the end, you end up having to say

00:54:09 ►

how many days a year.

00:54:10 ►

Because, well, I’ve got to go for a month here

00:54:12 ►

and a month there.

00:54:13 ►

Well, you know, you can’t have it run a business like that.

00:54:16 ►

So we have to say I love you very much

00:54:19 ►

and come and volunteer sometimes

00:54:20 ►

and be part of our community,

00:54:21 ►

but you can’t be on staff.

00:54:24 ►

So there’s, you know,

00:54:29 ►

when volunteers, you know, there’s a whole, we have to have somebody to manage the volunteers because they are there to do karma yoga. And what they’re doing is spiritual. And what they,

00:54:36 ►

what they are offering is from the heart. And so they need to be treated with incredible respect

00:54:41 ►

and also expectations. You know, you’re getting free room and board here,

00:54:47 ►

and you’re here, you have to, you know, put in.

00:54:49 ►

So somebody’s got to be the manager of things.

00:54:51 ►

And we have different managers for different things,

00:54:53 ►

and they just rise to the top.

00:54:56 ►

They just emerge, don’t they?

00:54:58 ►

Yes, but I think that it’s a continual challenge

00:55:01 ►

to really create an environment that is felt to be uplifting and

00:55:11 ►

soul nurturing for the people that are doing the work there and that they feel like their

00:55:17 ►

work is honored and as purposeful as a and I think that this happens a lot of it in meetings

00:55:27 ►

we have staff meetings

00:55:31 ►

and we basically

00:55:36 ►

rededicate ourselves to the task that we’re doing

00:55:41 ►

and by sharing whatever difficulties are coming up and stuff that needs

00:55:47 ►

to be addressed in an open forum um it’s been fairly successful so far uh and we have i think

00:55:57 ►

that we have a lot to learn we’re kind of a hybrid system i think we’re adapting and evolving to the pressures

00:56:06 ►

of our new

00:56:08 ►

body,

00:56:10 ►

basically,

00:56:11 ►

that is this property.

00:56:13 ►

And so

00:56:14 ►

there are people,

00:56:18 ►

even in the staff,

00:56:20 ►

because the staff is a whole spectrum

00:56:21 ►

of people. Now the builders

00:56:24 ►

require muscle and brains and are a particular vibe

00:56:31 ►

and like to listen to tool music and really get amped up and stuff.

00:56:35 ►

And then there are some people who are a little more delicate and hospitality,

00:56:41 ►

and they’re a little more refined,

00:56:42 ►

and that makes them a little jittery, all that noise and everything.

00:56:48 ►

So, but all of them are serving the top line, which is the building of the vision of Cosm.

00:56:58 ►

And when everybody’s dedicated to the same goal, it’s like Allison said, if we all get along, we can create

00:57:06 ►

something beautiful together.

00:57:07 ►

That was it. That was what I was going to say. The voice

00:57:10 ►

says

00:57:10 ►

that we have to get along to make something beautiful

00:57:14 ►

together. So when you have drama in the workplace,

00:57:16 ►

people not getting along,

00:57:18 ►

it impairs

00:57:19 ►

your progress. You’re trying to get

00:57:22 ►

from here to there. You know where you want to be

00:57:24 ►

in many, many ways. But you can’t get there if we’re not getting along. People will keep

00:57:28 ►

information from each other or people won’t talk to each other. People who can’t, you know,

00:57:33 ►

people who are in the fundraising area, they can’t work with the media area. That just doesn’t work.

00:57:38 ►

You cannot have it. And so, you know, you try and try and try and try and try, try and try.

00:57:44 ►

And so, you know, you try and try and try and try and try, try and try.

00:57:49 ►

And if you don’t succeed at last, then you have to get rid of somebody.

00:57:51 ►

Somebody’s got to go.

00:57:55 ►

Because even though you love them and they all have skills, they’re not getting along.

00:57:57 ►

So you have to separate people.

00:58:02 ►

We have rules, too, like no fighting anywhere near where anyone can hear you.

00:58:03 ►

Anywhere.

00:58:05 ►

If you’re going to fight, if you want to yell and scream,

00:58:08 ►

whatever you want to do, we have lots of woods. Go out there and have your argument outside,

00:58:10 ►

not inside, where it impacts others

00:58:12 ►

and they’re trying to have their day.

00:58:14 ►

Yes?

00:58:16 ►

A lot of the psychedelic

00:58:18 ►

message is about

00:58:19 ►

dissolving boundaries and

00:58:22 ►

creating a union between

00:58:23 ►

many different people.

00:58:30 ►

But yet, there’s a lot of prejudice that people have against people that use psychedelics.

00:58:35 ►

So I’m wondering if you’ve ever encountered people who are prejudiced against you for the use of psychedelics,

00:58:37 ►

and how you can interact with that in a way that still moves towards greater unity.

00:58:47 ►

Do you think we have anybody that’s a prejudice against us?

00:58:50 ►

I think that probably many people who’ve had the psychedelic experience

00:58:56 ►

and then share it with people and then think,

00:58:59 ►

uh-oh, those are some of the people maybe I shouldn’t have shared that with.

00:59:03 ►

who those are some of the people maybe I shouldn’t have shared that with.

00:59:13 ►

And maybe even a lot of judgments coming down from whatever quarters can happen. And there are scientists who are deathly scared of the kind of misperception of psychedelic research and things as well.

00:59:28 ►

misperception of psychedelic research and things as well. It’s an area that’s such a powder keg of emotional kind of, it’s an emotional minefield, granted.

00:59:39 ►

All I can think of is, what do you think was going on in the christian church uh like 60 years after 70

00:59:49 ►

years after jesus died you know they were they were demonized they were thrown to the lions

00:59:56 ►

they were uh a lot of um real incredible martyrdom actually happened.

01:00:06 ►

And it’s still happening.

01:00:08 ►

Of course, this war on drugs, as Annie is saying, is crippling

01:00:10 ►

people’s lives, is

01:00:12 ►

hurting people. It’s a war on the people,

01:00:15 ►

not a war on drugs.

01:00:17 ►

Well, I just

01:00:18 ►

want to add that we do modify our

01:00:20 ►

openness. We know when

01:00:22 ►

to hold them. We do not just

01:00:24 ►

spurt out the word psychedelic in everything that we do. to modify our openness. We know when to hold them. We do not just, you know,

01:00:27 ►

spurt out the word psychedelic in everything that we do.

01:00:28 ►

Because, first of all,

01:00:29 ►

we are already,

01:00:31 ►

we’re in conflict with our town

01:00:33 ►

over whether we’re a church.

01:00:34 ►

We were, you know,

01:00:35 ►

approved as a church

01:00:36 ►

by the state attorney general

01:00:37 ►

and the IRS.

01:00:39 ►

And we have church status.

01:00:40 ►

We, you know,

01:00:41 ►

we have the papers to prove it.

01:00:43 ►

But our town still is billing us

01:00:44 ►

for real estate

01:00:45 ►

tax. So we had to be in court with them over that. And so we don’t post a lot of stuff about

01:00:50 ►

psychedelics on our site. And I think that people who know, know. We’re still an underground

01:00:57 ►

community. We have to look at that bigger picture, the mission to build a chapel. That’s what we

01:01:02 ►

really want to do. And we want to do that with our town. We want them to give us the permits

01:01:06 ►

that it takes because they could stop

01:01:07 ►

this thing. And right now we’re building Entheon.

01:01:10 ►

It’s almost like a big, big practice

01:01:11 ►

round because it’s going to be $1.5

01:01:14 ►

million, but the chapel’s going to be

01:01:16 ►

$3 t o$ 5 million. So it’s

01:01:18 ►

a big, big practice round for us.

01:01:20 ►

And our town is working with

01:01:22 ►

us beautifully. They love what we’re doing.

01:01:23 ►

They really, really want us to bring

01:01:26 ►

this incredible culture to the town.

01:01:28 ►

And we already are.

01:01:30 ►

We’re an art community.

01:01:32 ►

So they’re loving what we’re doing and it works.

01:01:34 ►

But you do have to know when to not be,

01:01:39 ►

I don’t know, like expounding that stuff.

01:01:41 ►

This is a place we can talk about it.

01:01:43 ►

And we do talk about it openly

01:01:45 ►

within all programs at Cosm within our programs in the family whether we there’s people there or not

01:01:51 ►

we are allowed to talk about it that’s not against the law nobody can you know stop us from discussing

01:01:56 ►

our opening by psychedelics and Alex and I’ve talked about it for decades. But we don’t allow it to be used on campus, at least to our knowledge.

01:02:08 ►

And so everybody keep it under wraps.

01:02:14 ►

It’s working out for right now.

01:02:16 ►

We’re doing the best we can to keep it going so we can build the temple.

01:02:22 ►

Well, of course, there’s, I think, a difference in intention.

01:02:28 ►

And intention is really important in how you’re going to approach the psychedelic experience.

01:02:35 ►

I do think, however, that, you know, really incredibly upsetting things can happen within ceremony,

01:02:49 ►

and really incredibly spiritually opening things can happen under the recreational.

01:02:57 ►

See, I really object to the term recreational.

01:03:00 ►

But what I do want to acknowledge is that I think that the highest purpose of entheogens or psychedelics is to be used in a spiritual setting to enhance the infinite love at the basis that we can get at that without so many distractions or things like that and that’s why it’s important to be wise about how you do it in a in a spiritual

01:03:30 ►

ceremony that feels really that you feel really positive about that it can be the

01:03:37 ►

most important kind of utopian opening and I certainly agree I just wanted to

01:03:43 ►

say that about recreation I don’t’t really disagree with the concept and difference

01:03:47 ►

between recreational and spiritual intentions.

01:03:51 ►

Because, like Alex said, it’s intention.

01:03:53 ►

It’s your intention.

01:03:55 ►

Is your intention spiritual?

01:03:56 ►

Is your intention higher consciousness?

01:03:58 ►

Or is your intention to, you know, get laid?

01:04:03 ►

Okay?

01:04:04 ►

So there it is. But

01:04:06 ►

then again, saying recreational,

01:04:09 ►

it maligns

01:04:10 ►

people who may be feeling that

01:04:12 ►

their use is

01:04:14 ►

celebratory and ecstatic

01:04:17 ►

dance and ecstatic

01:04:18 ►

movement and ecstatic thought

01:04:21 ►

and ecstatic community

01:04:22 ►

interaction. So just because they’re

01:04:24 ►

dancing at a party, called party,

01:04:27 ►

which is why we don’t call anything that we do at Cosmo a party.

01:04:30 ►

We don’t call it a party.

01:04:31 ►

We have DJs and fire spinning,

01:04:35 ►

and we have live music and guitar playing and all kinds of bonfire.

01:04:42 ►

And it’s a celebration.

01:04:44 ►

Because if you take it as an intention

01:04:46 ►

that it is a celebration of your ecstatic energy

01:04:49 ►

and you do it in a sacred context,

01:04:52 ►

we always try to start and end with a prayer.

01:04:55 ►

Or we howl at the moon, at the full moon.

01:04:58 ►

Tonight, our folks over there at Cosm

01:05:00 ►

are howling at the moon.

01:05:02 ►

And we’re just going to catch it, catch the wave.

01:05:04 ►

We’ll send it back over to them.

01:05:07 ►

God forbid.

01:05:09 ►

God forbid. And of course we have

01:05:12 ►

we address

01:05:14 ►

these things, believe me. We have an

01:05:16 ►

estate attorney and we have to

01:05:18 ►

write down our wishes

01:05:19 ►

and we have all the paintings are in a trust

01:05:22 ►

that Alex and I are

01:05:24 ►

the, you know, well Alex I think, but maybe it’s the both of us.

01:05:28 ►

Yeah, I have this.

01:05:29 ►

Yeah, no, the two of us have a trust.

01:05:32 ►

And what you’re saying is you feel that because your family has a restaurant, if anyone should go, there’s other wings that can hold it up, right?

01:05:42 ►

And Alex and I just have each other.

01:05:44 ►

But we don’t.

01:05:45 ►

It isn’t like that at all. And we tell

01:05:47 ►

the people that work there

01:05:49 ►

that this is a church.

01:05:51 ►

This is not just a business. This is

01:05:53 ►

a church. And churches go on without

01:05:55 ►

clergy changes

01:05:58 ►

and staff

01:05:59 ►

changes and people

01:06:01 ►

change. So the people

01:06:03 ►

that are there, that are trusted,

01:06:05 ►

we have one person who’s been with us for 11 years and another one for eight years

01:06:09 ►

and another one for, you know, several of them for five, six years. So anyway, they,

01:06:15 ►

it will be their business. And I’ve seen it happen to other businesses too, like Omega Institute in

01:06:20 ►

Rhinebeck, New York was founded by a couple. The couple divorced, but they have a

01:06:26 ►

board. They have a board of directors, and the board continued. And eventually, both founders

01:06:31 ►

are not on the board anymore. And it’s run by someone who started there as probably in

01:06:37 ►

building and maintenance. I mean, he knows how to run the place. And he’s built this incredible

01:06:42 ►

living machine where they are in a bubble.

01:06:48 ►

They have all their gray water and black water, and everything is recycled.

01:06:49 ►

Everything.

01:06:50 ►

They’re like everything.

01:06:52 ►

They sell the electricity back to the town.

01:06:53 ►

They have done it. And that’s what this one guy has done.

01:06:55 ►

And he started there in maintenance.

01:06:56 ►

So what I’m saying is what our business is will belong to our community.

01:07:01 ►

And that’s what will happen.

01:07:02 ►

We did have a terrible accident a couple of years ago.

01:07:05 ►

And of course, we were out of commission for a little while. Hardly noticed, you know, we have

01:07:09 ►

people there that that are just so trusted that we can come to Burning Man and be out of touch with

01:07:13 ►

them for a week and things just keep running and run smoothly. So that’s our intention. We haven’t

01:07:19 ►

had a business as long as your family’s had a business. So obviously, we’re not as experienced,

01:07:24 ►

but we’re working on it. I mean, we have a future, you know? Yes, somebody has had a business. So obviously we’re not as experienced, but we’re working on it.

01:07:25 ►

I mean, we have a future, you know.

01:07:27 ►

Yes, somebody else has a question.

01:07:30 ►

Well, the love is the foundation of everything we do.

01:07:34 ►

You know, if we hadn’t found each other, there wouldn’t be a family to have a business with, you know.

01:07:39 ►

So it’s foundational for us.

01:07:41 ►

And I can see that for you guys, it’s like the same way.

01:07:46 ►

The idea of a

01:07:48 ►

family business,

01:07:50 ►

what does family mean?

01:07:52 ►

And can you get along?

01:07:54 ►

Some families can’t get along.

01:07:57 ►

But the…

01:07:59 ►

And most

01:08:00 ►

families will have

01:08:01 ►

ripples and highs and

01:08:04 ►

lows and things like that.

01:08:05 ►

But the idea of wanting to put the love into something as a family is an extraordinary business decision.

01:08:16 ►

And something that requires growth on the part of all the members of the family as well.

01:08:21 ►

It can’t be run in a dictatorial fashion, really.

01:08:26 ►

It has to be… There’s got to be somebody in charge, too. It’s not unless it’s a commune

01:08:31 ►

or some kind of cooperative. Anyway, somebody else had a question. Let’s move on. Yes.

01:08:38 ►

Thank you for asking. And I think that it’s a beautiful dream that many would like to enact, and it’s not happening.

01:08:47 ►

And it’s a, you know, in the future we hope that the laws will change so that the possibility will be there.

01:08:58 ►

But we want to build the place first because we think that that’s what we can offer.

01:09:04 ►

That’s our highest offering. Other

01:09:06 ►

people are actually changing the laws. And our good friend Jeffrey Bronfman runs an ayahuasca

01:09:14 ►

church in a very sort of like below the radar kind of way, but it’s all legal, you know, and he’s got

01:09:22 ►

several different chapters all over the United States.

01:09:26 ►

And they’re growing.

01:09:27 ►

So, psychedelic churches

01:09:29 ►

are happening. And they’re

01:09:32 ►

happening legally. And this is

01:09:33 ►

a future that is a possibility.

01:09:36 ►

But it’s not something we’re doing now.

01:09:38 ►

It’s not our mission. And it’s not our mission

01:09:40 ►

right now. Our mission is to build

01:09:42 ►

a temple

01:09:43 ►

to inspire a global

01:09:46 ►

community.

01:09:48 ►

And do you want to do the

01:09:49 ►

more full rendition? But that’s

01:09:51 ►

basically it. It’s to build a temple to inspire

01:09:54 ►

a global community. Why?

01:09:56 ►

Why? Two things

01:09:58 ►

come up. One is the personal reasons

01:10:00 ►

are that as artists

01:10:02 ►

we felt that our greatest contribution

01:10:03 ►

could be in creating some architecture of beauty

01:10:08 ►

that would be an offering to our community.

01:10:12 ►

That would be like a large work of art,

01:10:14 ►

like Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel.

01:10:17 ►

That’s kind of where it came from in 1984 when we had that experience.

01:10:21 ►

It’s like we want to build sacred space that will last for

01:10:26 ►

a thousand years so that people could come and see

01:10:28 ►

art, beautiful, visionary,

01:10:30 ►

have an impactful

01:10:32 ►

visionary experience

01:10:34 ►

there, like an

01:10:35 ►

environment in which

01:10:37 ►

epiphanies and transformation

01:10:42 ►

could be

01:10:43 ►

cultivated.

01:10:45 ►

It really wasn’t, it became, we realized later that we had to have community

01:10:51 ►

because it wasn’t like in our heads, oh, yeah, we have to,

01:10:54 ►

but we were told you have to make a lot more friends.

01:10:57 ►

Somebody told us as a fundraising specialist that was coaching us,

01:11:01 ►

you know, you’re going to have a chapel, but you’ve got to make a lot more friends.

01:11:04 ►

And that’s something in business that I’ll just, you know, throw in there. It’s all about friends.

01:11:10 ►

Don’t forget that it’s all about friends and it’s supposed to be fun. You’re supposed to enjoy this.

01:11:15 ►

You know, this is supposed to be your fun. So make it your fun. Like when I was working for

01:11:19 ►

the art directors club, we would have events and people would get together and they were all about

01:11:24 ►

art directing and, you know, photography and illustration. They would have events and people would get together and they were all about art directing

01:11:25 ►

and photography and illustration. They would have other people that they could join with and be

01:11:29 ►

with. Well, anyway, it’s like that. Whatever community you’re in, if you’re in the restaurant

01:11:34 ►

business, there are trade shows and there are people that have other restaurants or there are

01:11:38 ►

people that serve restaurants and become your friends. It’s all about friends. And the more

01:11:43 ►

friends you make, the better your business is going to be.

01:11:46 ►

And then the way to grow your business, this is really seed work,

01:11:51 ►

is to inspire other people about your intention.

01:11:58 ►

Whatever it is that you’re making out here and you haven’t gotten there yet,

01:12:02 ►

you have to share it with other people in a way that inspires

01:12:05 ►

them if you share it with other people and you find that it bores them oh i don’t want to hear

01:12:11 ►

about that i’m looking around i’m not listening then you gotta that is a really great advice to

01:12:17 ►

you they are your coach they are your guru you need to hone your elevator speech or your ability

01:12:23 ►

to deliver that message powerfully. If you hand somebody a

01:12:26 ►

flyer and then you see them on the ground, you know that it’s not beautiful enough. It’s not

01:12:31 ►

something that is not impactful enough or they would have kept it. So you have to don’t just

01:12:36 ►

give people things that they’re going to throw on the ground. Do your best work. You can’t make a

01:12:40 ►

business without doing your best work. You can’t make a successful business without

01:12:45 ►

doing your best work. You know, we’re always falling short. I know that, but we’re working

01:12:49 ►

towards that. We’re working towards our best work and we never give up. It’s, it’s just, it’s really

01:12:56 ►

how to be great at anything. Do your best, be yourself. What is yourself? And you know, who is

01:13:04 ►

authentically you? What is authentic? Are you

01:13:06 ►

doing work that’s authentic to you? Is it your eternal self? Do your best. Is this your best?

01:13:13 ►

Ah, that lettering is a little falling off the edge there. I should have pushed it over. God,

01:13:17 ►

I have to do it all over again. Yes. Yes. Your best work. Never give up. Those three steps.

01:13:24 ►

That’s it. Be yourself. Do your best. Never give up. Those three steps, that’s it.

01:13:25 ►

Be yourself, do your best, never give up.

01:13:27 ►

You’ll be great at anything.

01:13:28 ►

And if you just follow that, you’ll be great sometime.

01:13:31 ►

Maybe you’ll be Judi Dench and you won’t even get famous until you’re older.

01:13:35 ►

But who cares?

01:13:36 ►

You know, Matisse didn’t even start painting until he was 40.

01:13:39 ►

Yeah?

01:13:40 ►

The body tends to heal.

01:13:42 ►

That’s my saying about that.

01:13:43 ►

The body tends to heal. So if you saying about that. The body tends to heal.

01:13:45 ►

So if you’re not healing, look at the emotional component.

01:13:48 ►

What is holding you back from healing?

01:13:50 ►

Sometimes it helps.

01:13:52 ►

Sometimes that helps you to heal, to just look at that.

01:13:55 ►

Sometimes it doesn’t, but you do your best.

01:13:57 ►

But the body did tend to heal, and stronger than before.

01:14:01 ►

See, bone breaks heal stronger than before. See, bone breaks heal stronger than before.

01:14:07 ►

There’s no reason to be continually in pain.

01:14:10 ►

Anyway, who else?

01:14:12 ►

Anyone?

01:14:13 ►

Creativity is, you have to make an object.

01:14:17 ►

Art is, and music is like that too.

01:14:19 ►

There has to be evidence if you’re really making art.

01:14:22 ►

There’s evidence.

01:14:23 ►

There’s something that you’re making.

01:14:24 ►

In the material world, in the real world it’s it’s the illusion maya is time and space you have to

01:14:31 ►

acknowledge time and space time when am i making my art when am i supposed to make my art if i go

01:14:39 ►

well i’m gonna make art now but i don’t know. You’re not likely to make it. You probably put it off or you won’t do much of it.

01:14:47 ►

Okay, time.

01:14:48 ►

So you make yourself an appointment where you’re going to do it.

01:14:51 ►

And you’re going to sit at that desk or at that place.

01:14:53 ►

Now, I didn’t talk about desk yet.

01:14:55 ►

Space.

01:14:56 ►

You need a space.

01:14:57 ►

If you don’t have a space to do your art and it’s on your kitchen table

01:14:59 ►

and you have to clean it up every time you work on it,

01:15:02 ►

you’re less likely to do it.

01:15:04 ►

It’s just like any other practice. If you want to do a yoga practice, but you’re going to do it up every time you work on it, you’re less likely to do it. It’s just like any other practice.

01:15:05 ►

If you want to do a yoga practice,

01:15:07 ►

but you’re going to do it under your coffee table,

01:15:10 ►

you’ve got to move it out of the way every morning,

01:15:12 ►

you’re less likely to do it than if you have a yoga loft

01:15:15 ►

with a little altar there waiting for you

01:15:18 ►

and all your special power objects are on it.

01:15:20 ►

Do it in a special place.

01:15:23 ►

Anyway, that’s the way art

01:15:26 ►

is as a spiritual practice. We talk

01:15:27 ►

about art as a spiritual practice.

01:15:29 ►

And so you get your

01:15:31 ►

appointment. So I’m going to

01:15:33 ►

make art on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

01:15:36 ►

That’s all the time I have right now but I’m going to

01:15:37 ►

give myself three hours on Tuesday, three

01:15:39 ►

hours on Thursday. Whatever. Or

01:15:41 ►

morning. I’m going to get up twice a week early

01:15:43 ►

and I’m going to instead of run I’m going and instead of run, I’m going to make art.

01:15:46 ►

Or I’m going to run. Whatever practice

01:15:48 ►

you want to do, you’ve got to have a time.

01:15:50 ►

And then you make a space for it. Carve out

01:15:52 ►

a table, something in the corner of your room

01:15:54 ►

or in your dining room or anywhere

01:15:55 ►

where you like to be, where it’s fun to be.

01:15:59 ►

And then keep

01:16:00 ►

that appointment. Keep that

01:16:01 ►

appointment. If you’re a writer, same

01:16:04 ►

thing. Make an appointment with your

01:16:05 ►

computer and your desk and close the door and you turn off your phone and you’re there and you have

01:16:11 ►

your time and you have your space and you’re going to be there for two or three hours. Do you think

01:16:15 ►

you’re going to get anything done? I have an appointment to do this and I’m going to do it.

01:16:20 ►

I have two or three hours and nothing to do. I’m going to sit there and look at the paper.

01:16:24 ►

Something’s going to come up. Something’s going to come up.

01:16:25 ►

Something’s going to come up.

01:16:27 ►

Meditate.

01:16:28 ►

You see, meditation is all about focusing your mind.

01:16:31 ►

And that may be the first thing you have to do when you go to your appointment,

01:16:35 ►

your time and your space.

01:16:36 ►

You’ve got to have that meditation.

01:16:39 ►

The other thing to do if you’re an artist, even or a musician,

01:16:42 ►

is to take out your work and look at past work.

01:16:44 ►

If you want to jump start, you haven’t been doing art for a while, you haven’t been

01:16:48 ►

making music for a while, listen to some music that you made before. Look at some art that

01:16:53 ►

you liked and you saved. And that’s the way to start your first session. And you won’t

01:16:59 ►

have block anymore.

01:17:01 ►

The other thing to do is do a self-portrait. Do a self-portrait

01:17:06 ►

and, you know,

01:17:08 ►

set yourself the time and the space

01:17:09 ►

and face yourself

01:17:12 ►

and your block

01:17:14 ►

and write

01:17:15 ►

I am blocked. I am

01:17:18 ►

feeling so blocked.

01:17:19 ►

And, geez,

01:17:21 ►

it’s like huge.

01:17:24 ►

And whatever it is that you’re having, have it on the paper.

01:17:31 ►

Be wherever you are with the feeling of stuckness, but get it onto the paper.

01:17:40 ►

when you can you’re basically

01:17:43 ►

trying to

01:17:46 ►

download

01:17:47 ►

your subjective state

01:17:50 ►

into an object

01:17:52 ►

and by

01:17:53 ►

making your subjective

01:17:55 ►

state of blockage

01:17:57 ►

into an object

01:17:59 ►

then you have

01:18:00 ►

gotten the monster out of the

01:18:03 ►

box of your head,

01:18:06 ►

and now you can look at it,

01:18:08 ►

and suddenly you’re different now,

01:18:11 ►

looking at this subjective state from a witness point of view.

01:18:16 ►

You have the…

01:18:18 ►

This is how we transform.

01:18:22 ►

Our new subjective state,

01:18:26 ►

you know, is

01:18:27 ►

01:18:29 ►

observation of our previous

01:18:32 ►

subjective state.

01:18:33 ►

When you can observe it

01:18:35 ►

and kind of analyze it,

01:18:38 ►

that’s

01:18:39 ►

different than being in it.

01:18:42 ►

So you’re on your way to

01:18:43 ►

healing in that way.

01:18:46 ►

Just continue to do it.

01:18:47 ►

It can be grueling in a way,

01:18:50 ►

but it could also be really fun,

01:18:52 ►

and you could find some spark that is going to say,

01:18:55 ►

oh my God, that’s exactly what I wanted to do.

01:18:58 ►

But it just requires digging,

01:19:00 ►

and it also requires a little bit of the soul forgiveness.

01:19:06 ►

It’s like, oh, I didn’t do it for so long, or I didn’t do this.

01:19:12 ►

Your creative spirit may be wrathful, and it may say, fuck you.

01:19:17 ►

The last time you were over here, you frittered it away, you asshole.

01:19:22 ►

You should have really been sticking with it, but you didn’t.

01:19:25 ►

So you have to come up with your own things that you come up to yourself.

01:19:30 ►

Like maybe you didn’t fulfill something there.

01:19:34 ►

So you forgive yourself.

01:19:36 ►

And you forgive.

01:19:38 ►

All has to be forgiven and gone through.

01:19:41 ►

And those fears dissolved

01:19:45 ►

in order for your creative block to go away

01:19:49 ►

and that creative flow to continue to establish.

01:19:51 ►

Because that is exactly it.

01:19:54 ►

It is, you can’t be anything other than creative.

01:19:58 ►

You know, you just have to take the stave out of the wheels.

01:20:02 ►

You know, whatever is kind of this block, you know, you can extract it.

01:20:07 ►

You can even make it up what it is and have a ritual of extraction.

01:20:11 ►

Before, you know, we’ve gone way over, but I wanted, and they said that they didn’t mind

01:20:16 ►

because we are the last talk, so, and they don’t mind if we stay. And I don’t mind if we stay and

01:20:20 ►

do more questions. I noticed that there are a bunch of people that have left already, but I

01:20:23 ►

didn’t want to just, I wanted to do a little announcement right now

01:20:27 ►

that we are going to be talking at Fractal Nation tonight

01:20:29 ►

between 7 and 9 about why visionary art matters.

01:20:33 ►

And if you are a visionary artist

01:20:34 ►

or you love visionary art,

01:20:36 ►

it would be fun to see you over there at Fractal Nation

01:20:38 ►

on the other side of the playa at,

01:20:40 ►

I think it’s like 2G or something like that.

01:20:44 ►

2NG.

01:20:45 ►

But anyway, and also the other thing that Alex,

01:20:47 ►

well, I’ve had a blog for some time called Ask Allison,

01:20:50 ►

but Alex always tags in and we enjoy answering the questions together

01:20:53 ►

as the third force.

01:20:56 ►

Much more interesting for us when we,

01:20:59 ►

because I always end up reading to, and Alex has such great advice.

01:21:02 ►

So we decided to change the Ask Allison blog to, i think it could be the third force uh oracle the third force oracle maybe we’ll call it third

01:21:11 ►

force oracle we’re going to call it cosm article but it’s really the third force article because

01:21:15 ►

it comes from alex and i and our own so any questions that you might have about anything

01:21:19 ►

that you think we might be interested in all the the subjects that we love. And mostly it includes business.

01:21:26 ►

It includes relationships.

01:21:28 ►

It includes spirituality, psychedelics, parenting, eating disorders,

01:21:34 ►

getting a job, career.

01:21:36 ►

We love those kind of topics.

01:21:38 ►

And any kind of psychedelic emergency.

01:21:40 ►

We’ve talked to people about things like that.

01:21:42 ►

So all those kinds of questions,

01:21:44 ►

if you think your question might benefit

01:21:46 ►

others, if you just want to ask us,

01:21:48 ►

you can ask at Allison

01:21:49 ►

at Cosm.org. If you just want a private

01:21:51 ►

ask and you want to say,

01:21:54 ►

you know, I just wonder what you, just give me your

01:21:56 ►

impression of this. Allison

01:21:58 ►

at Cosm.org will get both of us

01:22:00 ►

actually. It’s A-L-L-Y-S-O-N

01:22:02 ►

two L’s and a Y, S-O-N

01:22:04 ►

at Cosm.org

01:22:05 ►

But if you’d like

01:22:07 ►

to share it with

01:22:09 ►

the community, if you think it might be an interesting answer

01:22:12 ►

or we decided it is, we can share

01:22:14 ►

it. And if you are

01:22:15 ►

an artist and you’re sharing your artwork

01:22:17 ►

and you say, how do I

01:22:18 ►

get a poster made?

01:22:21 ►

Do you think it’s worthwhile to get a poster made?

01:22:24 ►

Or any of those kinds of more specific what materials do you use simple technical questions

01:22:29 ►

anything like that um we will you send us a picture on your facebook page and we’ll post it

01:22:35 ►

so you can get it on our blog and get a little advertising from all the people that come to our

01:22:40 ►

blog and they’ll see your art so so or if it’s an m3 and I can embed it, I would put it in if it’s your music.

01:22:46 ►

So anyway, it’d be fun to hear from you.

01:22:49 ►

And that’s what churches do.

01:22:51 ►

I mean, anything, that’s what they do.

01:22:53 ►

Anything that’s good and has to do with love and positivity,

01:22:57 ►

we can do it, you know.

01:22:59 ►

So anyway, that’s one of the things.

01:23:00 ►

Anyway, let’s applaud.

01:23:03 ►

Thank you.

01:23:04 ►

Thank you. that’s one of the things anyway you want to let’s go on and thank you thank you

01:23:17 ►

thank you thank you thank you so much thank you allison and alex for being here and now i have i’m going to hand the mic over to bruce dammer to just make a closing remark. Thank you, Alex and Allison and everybody for making this happen.

01:23:29 ►

And out there in cyberspace is Lorenzo.

01:23:33 ►

And just a little tiny bit of history, which is interesting for me.

01:23:38 ►

In 2003, Lorenzo started Palenque Norte with me kind of in the background as one of the first speakers,

01:23:45 ►

and we were all speakers.

01:23:47 ►

And did you know that that was the first speaker series at Burning Man?

01:23:52 ►

And look at what’s happened.

01:23:54 ►

We started that.

01:23:55 ►

Our community started that here.

01:24:00 ►

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,

01:24:02 ►

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

01:24:08 ►

And I would also like to thank everyone involved in this past year’s Planky Norty Talks.

01:24:14 ►

Thank you for keeping them alive and well.

01:24:17 ►

And as I said earlier, there are still a few more talks from this series that I have yet to podcast, but they’ll be reaching you before too long. Also, I’ve been in touch with Pez and Tom about their ongoing plans for Planque Norte,

01:24:31 ►

and soon I’ll be able to pass along more of what they’re planning, including a completely new

01:24:37 ►

Planque Norte website. So, as they say in Radioland, stay tuned. Now, getting back to today’s talk, when I first began listening with

01:24:47 ►

you to it, I, well, I really didn’t know what to expect. But now that I’ve heard it for a second

01:24:52 ►

time, it’s really clear to me that what Allison and Alex have provided for us here is more or less

01:24:58 ►

a blueprint for creating our own psychedelic communities, whether physically nearby or online.

01:25:06 ►

You know, at one point way back in my past, I was a motivational speaker.

01:25:11 ►

In fact, I actually remember the book that Allison mentioned in her talk today.

01:25:16 ►

But I’m here to tell you that this little talk by Alex and Allison is as good a motivational

01:25:22 ►

and inspirational talk as I’ve heard.

01:25:26 ►

You know, there really is a lot here that deserves a second and a third listen. And of course, even more important than really

01:25:32 ►

listening to their words of wisdom is to actually put those ideas into practice in your own life.

01:25:38 ►

By following the practical suggestions of Alex and Allison, I think that, well, you can actually begin a new life

01:25:45 ►

today, you know, right now. And why not think of the worldwide psychedelic community as your own,

01:25:51 ►

and then go out and find the others who are maybe in positions to support your work in some way.

01:25:57 ►

You know, simply by deciding what you’re going to do, you actually have begun, because making

01:26:02 ►

that decision is always step one.

01:26:10 ►

And also, if you’re going to change your life and become the artist that you know is deep inside you,

01:26:16 ►

well, I think it would be wise to keep in mind you have one unique life.

01:26:18 ►

And what do you love to do?

01:26:20 ►

What do you want to spend your life doing?

01:26:26 ►

And that, of course, brings to mind Joseph Campbell’s famous advice about following your own bliss. But as Allison just pointed out so clearly, bliss is great, but hey, we also have

01:26:33 ►

to eat and have places to sleep and, well, other things that require some hard cash. However, as

01:26:39 ►

she also points out, from a simply marketing point of view, well, the worldwide psychedelic community, what I’ve been calling the tribe,

01:26:48 ►

is probably as large a market as any artist, writer, musician, or other creative person could want.

01:26:55 ►

And so I think it would be wise to keep this little voice in the back of your head at all times,

01:27:01 ►

and then you’ll never feel hopeless.

01:27:03 ►

This is a growing group of people that love what

01:27:07 ►

we love it is an incredible and not only that but the psychedelic thing we have been risk takers

01:27:14 ►

we are risk takers we trust our friends we trust our good judgment we trust our mental state we

01:27:23 ►

trust our set and setting that we have chosen carefully,

01:27:26 ►

if we’re smart, you know, and we keep advising each other like family. And we are always there

01:27:33 ►

for each other like family. And for now, dear family, this is Lorenzo signing off from

01:27:39 ►

Cyberdelic Space. Be well, my friends.

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

342 - Psychedelic Family Business

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Program Notes

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