Podcast 709 – Building Psychedelic Communities

Program Notes §

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Guest speakers: Allyson and Alex Grey

Alex Grey and Frank Nuccio - Burning Man 2024

At the 2024 Burnoing Man Festival, two of the Palenque Note speakers were Allyson and Alex Gray, who discuss their work and their interspiritual art church, COSM, in the Hudson Valley.

They explain how their use of psychedelics, particularly MDMA, influenced their decision to create COSM as a community space where people could connect through shared experiences and explore their spirituality.

They also highlight the importance of community values, particularly integrity and truth, in fostering a supportive and inclusive environment. The conversation touches on various topics, including the nature of spiritual communities, the role of art and creativity, and the concept of the afterlife.

Belhe first appearance of the Grey’s on the Psychedelic Salon. These recordings were made at Entheon Village during the 2006 Burning Man Festival.

Podcast 007 – “Art, Love, Family, and Psychedelics” (Part 1)https://psychedelicsalon.com/podcast-007-art-love-family-and-psychedelics-part-1/

Podcast 008 – “Art, Love, Family, and Psychedelics” (Part 2)https://psychedelicsalon.com/podcast-008-art-love-family-and-psychedelics-part-2/

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Podcast 708 – Beyond Realism

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Transcript §

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Three-dimensional transforming musical, linguistic objects.

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Helpshout.

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Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

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

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And today I’m beginning host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

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And today I’m beginning a series of podcast from the 2024 Palenque Norte lectures that were held at the Burning Man Festival in August of this year, which is 2024, in case you’re

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listening to this podcast in the future. Now, for those who may be keeping track of this lecture

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series, this was actually the

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22nd year of Palenque Norte. My wife and I began this series at the 2003 Burning Man Festival,

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and after a few times hosting it ourselves, a big cast of volunteers has come along to keep it going.

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Lately, the weight of the lecture series has fallen on Frank Nusio, who has been organizing and recording these lectures for the past many years.

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Without Frank and his helpers, well, this series would have faded into the plies dust long ago.

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So a huge thank you to Frank Nusio and all of the wonderful people at Camp Soft Landing,

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without whom, again, these talks wouldn’t have happened.

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soft landing, without whom, again, these talks wouldn’t have happened.

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Now, today’s episode features a fascinating lecture by visionary artist Alex and Allison Gray.

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The grays are really renowned for their psychedelic-inspired artwork and for founding the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, or Cosm, an interfaith art church in New York’s Hudson Valley.

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In this conversation,

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Alex and Allison explore the intersection of psychedelics, art, and community.

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Among other things, they discuss how their transformative experiences with substances like MDMA

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shaped their artistic vision,

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a vision which led to the creation of Cosm.

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Throughout their talk, they emphasize core values like integrity,

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creativity, and spiritual exploration. Allison and Alex also share their insights on art education,

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the importance of a daily creative practice, and how visionary art can serve as a bridge

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between ancient wisdom traditions and modern spirituality. Alex and Allison also reflect on Burning Man’s influence on their work and community,

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highlighting how the festival’s ethos aligns with their personal vision of radical inclusivity

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and creative expression.

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This talk offers a unique perspective on building intentional spiritual communities in today’s

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world, grounded in psychedelic experiences and artistic practice.

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Now, on a warm August night at Burning Man, here are Alex and Alison Gray.

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All right. Hello everyone. Our final speakers today are Allison Gray and Alex Gray

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who are visionary artists that I think many of you

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are familiar with and appreciate the art of

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and

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thank you so much that’s so good of you

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you know how can you know everybody

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we are just going to get to know each other

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so

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just to introduce who we are, you know, we’re both artists.

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We’ve been sharing a studio for almost 50 years.

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And we are partners in every aspect of life.

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You know, we founded a, co-founded a you know radically welcoming

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inter-spiritual art church

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in the Hudson Valley called Cosm

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that stands for chapel of sacred mirrors

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oh what are the sacred mirrors

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the sacred mirrors are a series of paintings that Alex

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painted

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but the

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but that you

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inspired

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and named

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the Sacred Mirror

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series

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and

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we had

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an MDMA

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vision back in

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1985

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after

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I’d created

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many of the sacred mirrors

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and they’d been exhibited and stuff.

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And there was a collector who wanted to buy them,

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and we thought, God, we need the money.

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So let’s sell them.

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So we sold them, you know,

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and then he gave us some MDMA,

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and he said, hey, you know,

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I understand you guys like to alter your

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consciousness and everything. If you

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haven’t tried this, give this a try.

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You know, and so

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we took it in a couple

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of days, and we both had

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a vision of a chapel.

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And

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we came out of this

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experience, you know, kind of

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ecstatic, but also like,

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hey, we saw, I

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think we’re supposed to build a chapel.

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And we both

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saw this, and so

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we called him back and said

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basically, yeah, we can’t sell the sacred

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mirrors. I think we’re supposed to build

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a chapel.

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I just want to cut in there.

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Because the thing is, the Sacred Mears idea came out of a performance that we did together

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called Life Energy, where we were trying to experience our life energy with a community.

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You wonder how are we getting to the idea of community?

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That’s what the talk was supposed to be about.

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Well, we brought together, one of the first

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times we ever did this, you know, a few

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handfuls of our friends

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into this gallery in Boston

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where we did this performance called Life Energy

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and we tried to experience

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like, you know, like explosive

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life energy and eye bridging

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and all kinds of different interactive

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things. But the one thing

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that Alex did that people really seemed to like during the intermission, it was for the

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intermission they were supposed to face these life-size drawings of the body. One was the nervous

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system and it was the six foot tall figure and the other one was like the metaphysical systems of the body,

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like the acupuncture meridians and points and the auras and the chakras and things like that.

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That was the other chart.

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And they were supposed to stand there in front of it

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and see if they could reflect on their life energy.

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So that was, you know, it was a performance that changed our life in. So that was,

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you know, it was a performance that changed our life in a lot of ways,

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but…

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That was back in 1978.

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Yeah.

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And then since we had this vision

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in 1985 on MDMA and stuff,

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we started talking to people about,

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hey, you know, we had this vision,

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you know, that we were supposed to build this chapel, you know? And of course, we started making drawings and everything like that. And we were traveling all over the world telling people about building this temple. Yeah. We have to build the temple, but how are we going to do it? Yeah. So it was like for years we went around talking to people about it.

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And so one shaman friend basically in, I think it was 2003, or 2002.

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It was.

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It was one of anniversary, December 4th, 2000.

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He said, you know, I’ve heard you talking about this chapel idea.

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But, you know, building a sacred space is the work of a community.

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So where’s your community?

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And so I think that we should start full moon ceremonies if you really want to see

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whether there’s a community that could develop.

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And we’re supposed to be there to pray for the chapel of Sycamirons to happen.

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Like that was our group prayer and then everybody had their own individual prayers.

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But that was the beginning of we started full moon ceremonies in January 2003 and and we are about to celebrate our 272nd

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consecutive in an unbroken chain of full moon ceremonies.

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We’ve moved a few times.

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We’ve moved the ceremonies.

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They got bigger, and they got more, you know, more stuff going on, you know.

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But you should come and experience a full moon ceremony of Cosm.

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It’s something that, you know, it’s been going on for over 20 years.

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And it’s a psychedelic community that includes people who are not psychedelic.

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As long as we can all be, you know, sort of inclusive,

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and we talk about it openly and everything.

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We don’t do it there openly, although people do.

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Oh, yeah, I know it.

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It’s been known to happen.

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It’s been known to happen, but we don’t know about it unless it’s legal because we’re a legal church.

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Yeah, cannabis is legal now in New York, at least, you know.

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So that’s something that a sacrament that a number of the people who come

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to Qasem enjoy. And to, you know, further that notion about community and it, we were kind of surprised, you know, that, and began to just kind of understand after we started these full moon ceremonies that there were a number of people that did want to help to make this thing happen.

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So let’s say the communities are built

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out of a shared purpose,

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you know, and when people feel aligned

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with either an experience that people had

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or a purpose that they share,

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you know, that that is something

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that can bond a community.

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And artworks, creative works, can bond a community. But we like to say that the inevitable consequence of love

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and that would be the greatest love would be

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the love of more people and greater community

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and the inevitable consequence of love is the building of a temple.

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That’s what we found when we were traveling to

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see sacred sites all over the world.

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We discovered

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how did they, who

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built these and why

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did they build them?

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And in many cases, I mean

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I do believe it comes out of the love

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that people have for

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community and for each other.

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And the other thing that we found was that people were looking for a place to

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just be together and tell their stories, you know,

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and have deep conversations and, you know, basically try to, I don’t know,

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be as authentic as they possibly could be with other people and find love.

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Because that’s really what’s incredible about a spiritual community is that it crosses all the boundaries of race, color, creed.

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If it’s really true, you know, inclusive religion, it does, I mean, religions are not inclusive, many of them. You know, you can’t do this

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if you’re not that. But they all have a center of love. Yeah. Well, I tend to think of the temples

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as kind of crescendos of love energy, of a community. And truly,

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the mythologies that have woven through many

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spiritual communities are just their

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ways of articulating these

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senses of unity.

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And one of the most profound

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lasting effects of the psychedelic

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experience is a sense of unity,

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a sense of oneness.

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And both within

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and with the greater

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world, certainly maybe

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with some healing

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comes a unity within

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one’s family, and

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then with a greater community

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around that, and

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ever greater rings of communities

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until we embrace the entire living web and all the plant kingdom and the the cosmic

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visitors and residents and strangers that transit through this portal of reality that we’re

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co-inhabiting. So I would like to say that a community

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shares an experience. So that’s one of the things that I think

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that our community, which is global, worldwide, we know

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that there is a psychedelic community in Egypt.

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You know, it’s incredible psychedelic community in Greece, in everywhere, in Moscow.

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Yeah.

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I mean, there was a place in Moscow where, you know, you have to go down through tunnels

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and go through a lot of locked doors before you get to the place where people were smoking weed.

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But we found them.

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Yeah. We did. They found us. Yeah. Yeah. found them. We did.

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They found us.

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Yeah.

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And they brought us there.

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Now we’re like magnets for psychedelic somehow.

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I don’t know.

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What happens?

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Why that is?

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The deepest intersankdom.

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Yeah.

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We did a lot of incredible things there, but that was really.

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Well, that’s psychedelic angels are all over the place too.

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And I think that they’re, I like to think, of course, once you’ve gone over the line into imagining that there’s a spiritual reality or a world beyond the material realm that we is the kind of like the fulminating ultimate mystery

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that happens during

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these psychedelic visionary

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experiences. Now

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they’re

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complete kind of

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immersive

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lessons if we could just

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slow it down or put it

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on slow-mo and write

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down like what what’s happening right now that

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now even if we all make a sense of it in a different way most of us if you’re talking

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about a psychedelic community have been through something like that.

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And because that, you know, that’s kind of a sieve of people, okay, now you’re in that group

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of people that have had that experience and you understand something, what happens?

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Like that sense of unity, I was saying, then leads to a sense, I think, of justice, hopefully, you know, a sense of

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oneness would mean that there is a sense that you’re united. In our, one of our amazing

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psychedelic, mystical experiences, it was basically we had become balls of light, torridal,

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flowing balls of light.

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And there was no gender,

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there was no age,

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there was no race,

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it was just an energy ball,

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and the energy was love.

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So a love energy ball that was a transcendent

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of its physical vessel that was briefly inhabiting

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or somehow providing some little tunnel down to from this eternal cell in the body of God

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that I felt all souls are in some sense.

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And this sense of unity means that we’re all, you know,

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in this field of love energy and each learning a different lesson,

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but each as important, basically, as each other.

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So that sense of equality and what should lead from that right view of interconnectedness to a sense of justice, I think is, you know, ultimately what one begins to see.

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And you connect with those core values of all the different spiritual traditions.

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I would like to just break in for a second and say circling back to the original theme of the night was, you know, psychedelic community values.

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Like what has psychedelics taught us about community is the conversation.

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And, of course, we have grown as a community.

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We started the Cosm Journal in 2003,

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and we’ve had, you know, covered various aspects of visionary culture in the journal,

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in 10 different volumes with different themes like community and love and the body and things like that.

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There have been, but this is the newest version.

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It is a fat boy.

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And it has amazing things in it.

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It’s our first hardcover Cosm Journal, number 11,

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with the theme being, guess what, Anthion,

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which is, for those of you who don’t know, you know, what goes on with us,

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we have built a sanctuary, visionary art.

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Right now is at the phase where we need to put the sculptures,

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this beautiful conceptualization of the sculptures of Anthion, so that we can have a beautiful ornamentally

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sculptural building. But anyway, within that volume, there are

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things that talk about the history of Cosm. How did a

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community form? Like how did, you know, and maybe some of you

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have questions about that, that you have been thinking

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about living in community

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or that you would like to

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know more about how to start

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an intentional community

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any of those things I think

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you know we kind of are not

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the experts really

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we just stumbled on into it but it

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grew in the way that

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you know we just adore

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we just love the way that you know we just adore we just love

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the way it is and

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you can come and visit us

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and we can have ways to entertain people

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and to meet with your friends

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you know when they’re in town

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it’s just it’s a great network of

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the great net of beings

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as Alex’s painting says

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there’s also a psychedelic reliquary there.

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So we have some interesting items.

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One of the drawings by Kat Harrison

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that was reproduced in Plants of the Gods

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of the kind of

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mushroom shaman

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whose

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beehive-like body

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is there and bee-like

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faces there.

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And we also have the

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photograph upon which it was based.

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So that

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kind of

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established an early visionary psychedelic art

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and one of the earliest examples really

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and of what Terrence thought must be a mushroom cult of some kind

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that lived together there.

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And so they had their own unique creative

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expression that is still

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running around on

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people’s T-shirts today.

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There you go. I was going to say. Here we go.

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That is the drawing.

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That’s the very drawing.

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But it was a cave.

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It was a cave drawing.

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So Kat Harrison

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had to

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make the drawing more clear. And had to make the drawing

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more clear and

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her drawing became the cover of a lot

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of books about mushrooms and

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psychedelics and stuff.

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And the prehistoric connections

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with communities

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that seem at the

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basis of

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much of world civilization.

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If we dig deep enough, we find these roots.

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And so I think that Burning Man exemplifies many of the values

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that one hopefully would come to.

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If you’re holding

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high value to creativity

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and to

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invention,

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reinventing one cell.

00:21:38 ► §

And I think that that comes

00:21:39 ► §

naturally out of

00:21:41 ► §

the psychedelic experience

00:21:43 ► §

as well as the idea of leave no trace.

00:21:48 ► §

You know, that this is something important

00:21:50 ► §

to care for the planet, care for the community,

00:21:54 ► §

by showing your solidarity with those values.

00:21:59 ► §

And by, you know, picking up stuff that isn’t yours

00:22:03 ► §

but finding a proper place to put it, you know, this is stuff that isn’t yours, but finding a proper place to put it.

00:22:06 ► §

You know, this is a way that we can imagine a future where this comes natural to all our communities on the globe.

00:22:17 ► §

Now, you know, it seems like, oh, who could even imagine that, you know, at this point.

00:22:23 ► §

This is the place where you can, you know.

00:22:28 ► §

Turn the normal, quote, normal world on its head for a little while

00:22:34 ► §

and see through a new lens and see if it can help align you better with the creative

00:22:43 ► §

source.

00:22:44 ► §

That’s really moving through all the great traditions.

00:22:47 ► §

And I think is uniting psychedelic communities around the world.

00:22:53 ► §

Certainly in these festival scenes and things like this,

00:22:56 ► §

this is where, like I said, love crescendos,

00:22:59 ► §

not only in the temples, but in these temporary mushroom-like frutings

00:23:04 ► §

of festival culture or psychedelic culture all over the world.

00:23:10 ► §

I want to encourage everybody, and I’m sure that you’re here about community because you are part of communities,

00:23:18 ► §

probably many communities.

00:23:20 ► §

Some of us are members of the community of where we live or various groups that get together regularly.

00:23:28 ► §

If you were the kind of leader that wanted to start a community,

00:23:33 ► §

I think that it’s just a gathering of people,

00:23:38 ► §

and we all know how to do that.

00:23:40 ► §

But it’s also good to join the gatherings of others, you know,

00:23:44 ► §

and make a little

00:23:46 ► §

mini-government that works so that you work together. Our history that ended us up in this,

00:23:55 ► §

as an inter-spiritual art church. Well, it’s just that we were doing everything that churches

00:24:04 ► §

do. You know, we were doing everything that churches do.

00:24:06 ► §

You know, we were doing baby blessings and weddings and memorials

00:24:10 ► §

and having regular gatherings and liturgy from Alex’s book of Psalms.

00:24:17 ► §

So, you know, it just turned out that way,

00:24:19 ► §

but a lot of communities are developed differently.

00:24:21 ► §

They’re communes, you know, and all sorts of ways

00:24:26 ► §

of doing intentional community.

00:24:28 ► §

So I think it’s been a

00:24:30 ► §

blissful

00:24:31 ► §

to live with

00:24:34 ► §

people in

00:24:36 ► §

harmony.

00:24:38 ► §

Yeah, well, the sense of teamwork,

00:24:40 ► §

you know, the sense of, it’s not

00:24:42 ► §

just one of us, but

00:24:44 ► §

there’s

00:24:44 ► §

but there is the sense of it’s not just one of us, but there’s, but there is, you know, a sense of

00:24:49 ► §

oneness, you know, that there is only one of us, you know, that transcends what we can see,

00:24:57 ► §

you know.

00:24:58 ► §

I wanted to recall, I mean, I’ve been recalling the time in our journey where we had just

00:25:04 ► §

purchased the land that we’re on now

00:25:08 ► §

and it was a very compromised old piece of property

00:25:14 ► §

with six buildings and a barn that were all very run down

00:25:19 ► §

and really full of junk and just like needed an incredible

00:25:24 ► §

every one of them needed

00:25:26 ► §

an incredible work. A couple of people

00:25:27 ► §

fainted when they saw it, thinking

00:25:29 ► §

of how much work we had to do.

00:25:32 ► §

Those were the so-called

00:25:34 ► §

investors that

00:25:35 ► §

dropped out. That’s right.

00:25:37 ► §

That’s right. But it was

00:25:40 ► §

at a lot of potential we thought

00:25:42 ► §

and it really has.

00:25:43 ► §

But the thing was we were scared

00:25:45 ► §

shitless of course as soon as

00:25:47 ► §

we signed the papers and we

00:25:49 ► §

but these people

00:25:51 ► §

a friend

00:25:52 ► §

commissioned these people

00:25:55 ► §

Yogi Raj and Veevi

00:25:56 ► §

from like

00:25:57 ► §

Minnesota or something

00:26:00 ► §

to come and

00:26:02 ► §

do a workshop

00:26:04 ► §

for just us just related to, you know, our purposes,

00:26:11 ► §

our purpose, our values, and our beliefs.

00:26:15 ► §

And we had already been operating for, you know, since 2003 to 2009.

00:26:22 ► §

It was, you know, it was like six years we’d been operating as a sort of an alcohol-free club in a way. But we also had the full moon ceremony, so we ended

00:26:31 ► §

up doing weddings, baby blessings, and memorials there. So, but this was before we became

00:26:36 ► §

a church. But anyway, so we, what was I going to say?

00:26:43 ► §

You were talking about how

00:26:45 ► §

Yogi Rosh and Veevi

00:26:48 ► §

helped us to come up with some

00:26:51 ► §

core values basically

00:26:53 ► §

which is a cool thing that

00:26:55 ► §

you can read about burning man’s

00:26:58 ► §

values and beliefs and stuff like that

00:27:01 ► §

and I think that it’s

00:27:03 ► §

it’s a cool thing for anybody, you know,

00:27:06 ► §

to make an attempt at some basic ideas.

00:27:12 ► §

Or even that if after a psychedelic experience that you’re more open

00:27:20 ► §

to the possibility that maybe you don’t know what’s going

00:27:26 ► §

on, you know.

00:27:27 ► §

And so that’s a

00:27:29 ► §

good opening and it’s

00:27:31 ► §

actually one of

00:27:34 ► §

the usual results

00:27:35 ► §

of a psychedelic

00:27:38 ► §

experience. You know how to find the core values?

00:27:40 ► §

Is a sense of openness.

00:27:41 ► §

See, we have a lot of this sort of material in this new

00:27:43 ► §

cause of truth. Well, let’s see here.

00:27:45 ► §

Let me look in this

00:27:46 ► §

wonderful book that I just got

00:27:49 ► §

from Cosm. Oh my God.

00:27:52 ► §

It is just hitting

00:27:53 ► §

the curb,

00:27:56 ► §

whatever it is, coming in from

00:27:57 ► §

the publisher,

00:28:00 ► §

and you can hang out of these.

00:28:01 ► §

Oh, look in the table of contents.

00:28:03 ► §

Well, you do that.

00:28:06 ► §

Well, I tell everybody something else.

00:28:10 ► §

And I just want to really acknowledge Palenque Norte.

00:28:16 ► §

We did a Polenke Norte talk the first time in 2003, and our daughter was 14.

00:28:21 ► §

And the title of that talk was Psychedelic Family Values.

00:28:25 ► §

So this was kind of a play on that, say psychedelic community values because I think we learn

00:28:28 ► §

from psychedelics like

00:28:30 ► §

every aspect of life, how to be a

00:28:32 ► §

better parent.

00:28:33 ► §

But it was really

00:28:35 ► §

how do you, in those days it was

00:28:38 ► §

what do you tell the children? It was like how do you

00:28:40 ► §

tell them and not

00:28:41 ► §

get them into trouble with their

00:28:43 ► §

friends and their parents of their friends,

00:28:47 ► §

when they’re, you know, living in a regular material world.

00:28:51 ► §

So, but anyway, it was really fun to do that, and I know that it’s still available,

00:28:58 ► §

although probably, you know, some dated in certain ways, it’s information.

00:29:04 ► §

Because today, talking about psychedelics is so much easier with children.

00:29:09 ► §

It is so much easier.

00:29:10 ► §

Thank God for that.

00:29:12 ► §

And thank Burning Man also for being more open to discussing it.

00:29:19 ► §

Of course, it’s still a tricky subject, you know,

00:29:24 ► §

for a lot of people to be outspoken about.

00:29:30 ► §

But I also salute Palenque Norte for continuing the conversation that started way down in Palenke, you know.

00:29:47 ► §

And this was a gathering of psychedelic friends, you know,

00:29:52 ► §

who knew that these conversations were a way in for some people

00:29:59 ► §

who had journeyed and were wanting to seek out others

00:30:05 ► §

who they could share

00:30:08 ► §

their insights with

00:30:10 ► §

or who they could

00:30:12 ► §

check things out

00:30:14 ► §

with and so we

00:30:16 ► §

have seen that

00:30:18 ► §

visionary art can be a kind of

00:30:21 ► §

orienting generality

00:30:24 ► §

to the

00:30:24 ► §

as a reference point to the psychedelic,

00:30:29 ► §

mystical experience, because there aren’t a whole lot of outward representatives of those

00:30:36 ► §

states of awareness.

00:30:37 ► §

So having some kind of thing that we can point to, like the ancient to silly mushroom shaman there,

00:30:47 ► §

it’s a way we can look back

00:30:49 ► §

and gather up

00:30:52 ► §

our global

00:30:54 ► §

community. Because

00:30:55 ► §

if we’re connected with

00:30:58 ► §

psychedelics and we’re connected with

00:31:01 ► §

creativity, why those are

00:31:03 ► §

two of the oldest paths.

00:31:07 ► §

Oldest, I would dare call them a religion.

00:31:10 ► §

We call ourselves an art church.

00:31:12 ► §

I mean, maybe that’s audacious.

00:31:14 ► §

But creative spirit is something that all creative people are familiar with.

00:31:20 ► §

It doesn’t even need a mythology.

00:31:22 ► §

But what else could it be but a kind of a living ingot of the same kind of cosmic energy that birthed all the galaxies, you know,

00:31:36 ► §

where a forward evolution of that kind of cosmic energy.

00:31:43 ► §

And so as creators here at Burning Man, you know, this is a forward evolution of that kind of cosmic energy. And so as creators here at Burning Man,

00:31:49 ► §

you know, this is like one of the greatest places

00:31:54 ► §

to meet community and to, you know, experience things together.

00:32:01 ► §

They say what makes a kind of spiritual community is that somehow during

00:32:12 ► §

a ritual of some kind, they’re brought in touch with certain symbols.

00:32:18 ► §

Now, obviously, the Burning Man and the burning temple are very important, symbolic, and by symbolic, we mean that they’re infinitely kind of interpretable.

00:32:35 ► §

They don’t have a clear, it only means this.

00:32:39 ► §

It means so many things.

00:32:42 ► §

You know, it could be the creative spirit itself, a light, you know, with energy, you know,

00:32:49 ► §

and radiant.

00:32:50 ► §

So I think that we come in contact with our own light, seeing the light body and all the fireworks

00:32:59 ► §

and everything like that.

00:33:00 ► §

We light up ourselves, the common self, the universal one, and then the

00:33:11 ► §

temple, which is the community and our sacred bond with each other. And those that have

00:33:20 ► §

passed, the spirits are there in the dust, in the pliast.

00:33:26 ► §

And we see them swerve about and make contact.

00:33:30 ► §

So we get to have that holy experience of unity with the nature spirits,

00:33:38 ► §

and they’re strong here.

00:33:40 ► §

Boy, oh, boy, we know that.

00:33:42 ► §

And celebrate even these special times when we whisper about,

00:33:49 ► §

boy, the weather’s button pretty nice, hasn’t that?

00:33:52 ► §

Don’t say it too loud.

00:33:54 ► §

Yeah.

00:33:55 ► §

We all feel so lucky.

00:33:58 ► §

But anyway, so, well, we could mention a few.

00:34:01 ► §

I think it’d be almost more interesting, though, to hear from you all.

00:34:08 ► §

Like, what do you think?

00:34:09 ► §

And do you have core values with your community?

00:34:12 ► §

It’s a really great exercise to start to think about your purpose,

00:34:21 ► §

your mission really

00:34:25 ► §

and then your values

00:34:29 ► §

like what’s okay with you

00:34:31 ► §

I think that one of the things that we share a lot

00:34:34 ► §

in this community is the value of acceptance

00:34:38 ► §

of differences

00:34:40 ► §

you know that’s one of the

00:34:42 ► §

that’s definitely a core value.

00:34:46 ► §

And we have things in our, I’m not going to

00:34:47 ► §

bore you with it, but we have things in here about

00:34:50 ► §

our work ethic

00:34:51 ► §

at Cosm. Like, what is our work ethic?

00:34:54 ► §

How much, you know,

00:34:56 ► §

are we putting

00:34:58 ► §

in to

00:35:00 ► §

whatever we are, you know,

00:35:02 ► §

committed to in our life?

00:35:03 ► §

It’s like creativity can be

00:35:05 ► §

like devotional labor.

00:35:08 ► §

And

00:35:09 ► §

our lives

00:35:11 ► §

are our ultimate works of art.

00:35:14 ► §

Consciousness is

00:35:15 ► §

the ultimate medium.

00:35:17 ► §

So how do we author

00:35:19 ► §

our life story? How do we

00:35:22 ► §

craft

00:35:23 ► §

our thoughts?

00:35:26 ► §

So I think that the metaphors that are

00:35:29 ► §

loose in a

00:35:31 ► §

I don’t know

00:35:33 ► §

creative spiritual community

00:35:36 ► §

even

00:35:37 ► §

some people wouldn’t say

00:35:40 ► §

I wouldn’t call Burning Man a spiritual thing.

00:35:43 ► §

But a lot of people do

00:35:44 ► §

and a lot of people connect with you know, a lot of people do. And a lot of

00:35:45 ► §

people connect with it, like, with a kind of intensity and passion, because there’s no place like

00:35:53 ► §

it on earth, you know, where they can bond with other people. And even if it’s just, like,

00:36:00 ► §

just that year, you know, you’ll always remember certain things, you know, and it unites you.

00:36:07 ► §

So I’m…

00:36:10 ► §

So does anybody have any topics that they’d like to hear us talk about or that you would like to bring up?

00:36:16 ► §

Yes.

00:36:18 ► §

Oh, okay. We’ll do this person.

00:36:23 ► §

I saw it back. I was wondering if your experiences through psychedelics.

00:36:30 ► §

Have any informed messages about end of life, after life,

00:36:37 ► §

how we’re honoring this experience now,

00:36:39 ► §

and how to carry that through into a greater journey?

00:36:44 ► §

How do we hear?

00:36:47 ► §

Well, curious, you asked that question.

00:36:52 ► §

Well, it’s very interesting.

00:36:55 ► §

When else, when, well, okay, it’s about through the psychedelic experiences, do you have any insights about the end of life

00:37:06 ► §

kind of transitions?

00:37:08 ► §

And could you say anything even eschatologically

00:37:12 ► §

or ontologically about the possibility of,

00:37:17 ► §

you know,

00:37:19 ► §

kind of survival of physical death?

00:37:23 ► §

And so I would, you know,

00:37:27 ► §

one of our earliest and most powerful psychedelic experiences

00:37:32 ► §

that we talk about, we call it the universal mind lattice,

00:37:36 ► §

that kind of toroidal ball of light that I was talking about,

00:37:40 ► §

that I experienced everybody, is that, you know,

00:37:46 ► §

where simultaneously here and there, you know, I experienced everybody is that, you know, where simultaneously here and there, you know. And so from that vantage point, I could also see that, oh, I was

00:37:54 ► §

just simply like one little time sausage capsule, you know, of the, you know, it’s kind of, you ever seen the yo-yo’s,

00:38:08 ► §

you know, where they do the walk the dog thing? You know, so I think of it’s like somehow,

00:38:14 ► §

you know, God or at you conspire, and you come down and you spin in life and then you snap back up,

00:38:21 ► §

you know, into the, into this, you know, spiritual sky. So, so for, to, you know, into the, you know, spiritual sky.

00:38:27 ► §

So to my mind, we got a glimpse of what it could possibly be like in some of the after-death

00:38:37 ► §

states.

00:38:39 ► §

Now, I got a confirmation on that when I found a report by a guy named

00:38:45 ► §

Victor Solo

00:38:46 ► §

who wrote one of the first

00:38:50 ► §

before there was the term

00:38:52 ► §

near death experience

00:38:53 ► §

he wrote a thing for Reader’s Digest

00:38:56 ► §

and

00:38:57 ► §

it was

00:38:59 ► §

I died at 1045

00:39:02 ► §

or something like that

00:39:03 ► §

kind of sensational thing.

00:39:05 ► §

He had a heart attack and wound up describing something that was so uncannily similar to this, you know.

00:39:15 ► §

And eventually the electrical paddles brought him back.

00:39:20 ► §

But he had told everybody about this experience and wrote up this thing.

00:39:27 ► §

And it was very, very interesting.

00:39:31 ► §

Some guy got struck by lightning in Japan and died and then was revived.

00:39:41 ► §

And he found me when I had a show in Japan and said I was in the universal mind

00:39:48 ► §

lattice and that seeing this painting made me have to come because he had come a long

00:39:54 ► §

way to talk to him. He showed me his big scar and stuff. So I’m not saying that this

00:40:02 ► §

is what it’s like on the other side but to some people it is and I’m not saying that this is what it’s like on the other side, but to some people it is.

00:40:07 ► §

And so that gives me a sense of openness about the possibility of the survival of bodily death.

00:40:19 ► §

And I think if you consider these things scientifically like Ian Stevenson, you know, all his research

00:40:27 ► §

about reincarnation, yeah, would point to the idea that, yes, there are multiple lifetimes, you know,

00:40:39 ► §

and this is, I think that psychedelics definitely open up that

00:40:45 ► §

or even confirm that

00:40:47 ► §

kind of sense.

00:40:54 ► §

That’s an exciting subject.

00:40:56 ► §

I know one of Alex’s favorites, really.

00:40:58 ► §

Don’t we all want to know

00:41:00 ► §

what’s on the other side?

00:41:02 ► §

I think that

00:41:03 ► §

you know, the best, well,

00:41:06 ► §

one of the best things about

00:41:07 ► §

psychedelics is there, you know,

00:41:09 ► §

that it helps us

00:41:11 ► §

to resolve the conflict between

00:41:14 ► §

life and death. And

00:41:15 ► §

we signed a pact early

00:41:18 ► §

on in our psychedelic

00:41:20 ► §

journal, you know, where we

00:41:21 ► §

said, you know, okay,

00:41:23 ► §

you know, we’re

00:41:24 ► §

truths, there’s a truth, said, you know, okay, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re, truths is a

00:41:27 ► §

truce, yeah, between life and death. And so I think it’s the great big, you know, it’s, I just

00:41:33 ► §

was reading Jane Goodall, she worked with all those gorillas and everything, and she is in her

00:41:38 ► §

90s and they asked her, you know, about, and she just thinks that, you know, it has the best

00:41:43 ► §

attitude about it, it’s the great beyond.

00:41:46 ► §

And it’s an exciting adventure.

00:41:48 ► §

And every night before we go to bed,

00:41:50 ► §

we wish each other a great adventure in the sleep world.

00:41:55 ► §

And so I feel that that’s kind of, you know,

00:41:58 ► §

what you can hope for is that your consciousness will,

00:42:03 ► §

I don’t know, enter the great void, the voidness of the all.

00:42:09 ► §

And maybe, I don’t need, do we believe in reincarnation?

00:42:13 ► §

I don’t know.

00:42:14 ► §

I kind of do.

00:42:15 ► §

I kind of do.

00:42:16 ► §

Because I can’t let’s somehow, right?

00:42:18 ► §

Yeah.

00:42:19 ► §

Yeah.

00:42:19 ► §

Yeah.

00:42:19 ► §

Yeah.

00:42:23 ► §

Well, anybody else have something to say?

00:42:25 ► §

Yes.

00:42:26 ► §

Or do we have somebody already over here?

00:42:29 ► §

Let us decide.

00:42:31 ► §

Let’s do the choosing.

00:42:32 ► §

How about that?

00:42:33 ► §

But anyway, yes, you have the mic already.

00:42:35 ► §

Good.

00:42:36 ► §

Earlier on, you were speaking about the uniqueness

00:42:38 ► §

and the impact of Burning Man.

00:42:40 ► §

How has Burning Man shaped, informed, or contributed to your chapel?

00:42:46 ► §

I’d be curious to know.

00:42:48 ► §

Is there anything tangible?

00:42:49 ► §

It can’t tangible linkage between

00:42:52 ► §

here and there.

00:42:53 ► §

I’d like to say that there are

00:42:55 ► §

friends that we see here

00:42:58 ► §

and the reconnecting

00:43:00 ► §

with people from all over the world

00:43:02 ► §

who have

00:43:03 ► §

some similar interests and core values and like principles, you know, that are in common with us.

00:43:12 ► §

These are our dear friends that we see. And we make so many new friends. And frankly, you know, it is kind of a New Year’s resolution of ours every year to make more friends. I recommend that. It’s a really great idea.

00:43:25 ► §

If you want to have a community, you have to just, like, you know,

00:43:29 ► §

know people from everywhere. It’s just the most wonderful thing.

00:43:32 ► §

And there’s many, many, you know, ways to be creative.

00:43:37 ► §

And so many of them are demonstrated here.

00:43:39 ► §

It’s the greatest monumental sculpture exhibit on the planet.

00:43:44 ► §

You know, people come here and build a huge thing, you know. It’s the greatest monumental sculpture exhibit on the planet.

00:43:47 ► §

People come here and build a huge thing. You know, it’s incredible.

00:43:52 ► §

Yes.

00:43:54 ► §

You know, we met Kate Rodenbush in 2008.

00:44:03 ► §

And yes, well, we knew her,

00:44:06 ► §

but I was saying that Kate Roddenbush

00:44:13 ► §

is a sculptor here at Burning Man

00:44:18 ► §

and many of her pieces of many years.

00:44:21 ► §

She’s built great temples and things.

00:44:27 ► §

And so we invited her to

00:44:29 ► §

if she wanted to,

00:44:33 ► §

you know, to

00:44:34 ► §

use our grounds to

00:44:37 ► §

display the peace altered states

00:44:40 ► §

that was so beautiful.

00:44:42 ► §

And so she very

00:44:44 ► §

generously allowed that.

00:44:47 ► §

And it brought kind of something

00:44:49 ► §

that was directly associated with Burning Man

00:44:52 ► §

and first seen at Burning Man

00:44:55 ► §

and provided a wedding chapel, actually,

00:44:58 ► §

for many people at Burning Man.

00:45:02 ► §

And then came to Cosm

00:45:04 ► §

and is in our meadow

00:45:06 ► §

and has been a place

00:45:08 ► §

of many weddings as well

00:45:10 ► §

so it was absolutely direct

00:45:12 ► §

and Larry Harvey came to

00:45:15 ► §

visit Cosm when we were

00:45:18 ► §

in the city and

00:45:19 ► §

so we had

00:45:22 ► §

made connections

00:45:24 ► §

over the years and we’re inspired by a number of artists run kind of initiatives that kind of bridge a lot of realms like the Domainter community.

00:45:35 ► §

You know, it’s a crazy, amazing community.

00:45:38 ► §

The Burning Man community, there’s nothing like it.

00:45:40 ► §

But there’s outposts, you know, like burns that are all over the world.

00:45:45 ► §

So, you know, like, we

00:45:47 ► §

feel like in some ways a satellite

00:45:50 ► §

that resonates with

00:45:51 ► §

a lot of the values,

00:45:54 ► §

you know.

00:45:55 ► §

I wanted to also acknowledge Kate

00:45:57 ► §

Sarnson, who

00:45:59 ► §

you know, helped us

00:46:01 ► §

built the first

00:46:03 ► §

iteration was called Antheon Village,

00:46:07 ► §

and it was here at Burning Man that we first used Alex’s term.

00:46:11 ► §

He made it up as far as I ever knew.

00:46:14 ► §

The name Entheon.

00:46:15 ► §

So Entheon Village became MAPS and Cosm

00:46:20 ► §

and Matt Atwood,

00:46:22 ► §

and Martina Hoffman and Robert Panosa and

00:46:26 ► §

the Zendo. It was

00:46:28 ► §

like I think it was among the first Zendo.

00:46:31 ► §

And that was

00:46:32 ► §

in 2006 and

00:46:33 ► §

it was really from Kate’s

00:46:35 ► §

incredible generosity and her knowledge

00:46:38 ► §

of organizing people

00:46:39 ► §

and knowing the right people to talk

00:46:41 ► §

because we didn’t know anybody.

00:46:43 ► §

We had been here as guests in 2003

00:46:46 ► §

when we did the Palenque Norte.

00:46:50 ► §

But, yeah, we made friends with Kate,

00:46:52 ► §

and she got us the first Entheon village put together,

00:46:56 ► §

and it was really, you know,

00:46:57 ► §

the friends that you make here are just,

00:47:01 ► §

so many things that we have done at Calum.

00:47:03 ► §

We had to mount

00:47:05 ► §

two 800-pound doors

00:47:07 ► §

on the bronze doors that we had

00:47:10 ► §

cast. And, you know,

00:47:12 ► §

from Alex’s drawing, creating

00:47:13 ► §

a better world, they’re beautifully inspiring

00:47:16 ► §

a message of

00:47:18 ► §

creating a better world. And they’re

00:47:19 ► §

800 pounds apiece. How did

00:47:22 ► §

we make them, you know,

00:47:24 ► §

both ADA compliant

00:47:26 ► §

and compliant with New York State

00:47:27 ► §

building codes?

00:47:30 ► §

Okay, friends from Burning

00:47:31 ► §

Man made that happen.

00:47:33 ► §

You see, we went to our friends

00:47:35 ► §

in New Jersey who do

00:47:37 ► §

like metal work and they made

00:47:39 ► §

the most gorgeous doors happen.

00:47:42 ► §

You know, because you had to have it open

00:47:43 ► §

with less than five pounds of

00:47:46 ► §

pressure for ADA compliance.

00:47:48 ► §

You just press a button.

00:47:50 ► §

And then the thing is all mechanical.

00:47:52 ► §

It opens up hydraulically.

00:47:54 ► §

So it’s like, how do we

00:47:55 ► §

find people that are willing to take

00:47:58 ► §

on crazy projects, you know?

00:48:01 ► §

Yeah. Yeah.

00:48:02 ► §

It’s like

00:48:03 ► §

the uncategorizable kind of problems that artists have, you know, can only sometimes be solved by the real, you know, I don’t know, what, it’s like the Swiss Army knife kind of intelligences that are developed here on the playa,

00:48:25 ► §

you know?

00:48:28 ► §

Yeah, I, you had a question

00:48:29 ► §

as well.

00:48:30 ► §

Oh, yes, you’re checking up.

00:48:33 ► §

I hope I don’t change the

00:48:35 ► §

direction of our topic too much, but I wanted

00:48:38 ► §

to speak up to

00:48:39 ► §

your idea of core values.

00:48:42 ► §

So I’m

00:48:43 ► §

a mycologist by trade. I grow psilocybin,

00:48:46 ► §

mushrooms professionally.

00:48:48 ► §

And one, I just want to state that

00:48:51 ► §

my guiding lights within my community

00:48:54 ► §

is all about integrity.

00:48:56 ► §

Like where, how am I

00:48:58 ► §

holding my medicine, where it’s coming from,

00:49:01 ► §

the organic ingredients I’m putting into it,

00:49:04 ► §

you know, what am I speaking around them, what kind of music am I playing? Like all these things, if we’re going to be,

00:49:09 ► §

you know, carriers of this that pass along for other people for their healing, like, it has to

00:49:14 ► §

become from the most genuine and most loving, giving place. And so I just like, you know,

00:49:20 ► §

like who am I passing my medicine to, you know, like making sure that people are safe to receive that.

00:49:27 ► §

Like my guiding light all around is all about integrity.

00:49:31 ► §

Am I in alignment with my path consistently?

00:49:34 ► §

And I can notice when I’m not because then, you know,

00:49:37 ► §

things starts getting crazy and I realize I have to come back to, you know,

00:49:41 ► §

back to myself and like figure out, you know,

00:49:43 ► §

what it is that I need to make the shift inside of myself to keep things going.

00:49:47 ► §

But I just wanted to share that with you.

00:49:51 ► §

Integrity, absolutely.

00:49:52 ► §

I mean, you say being aligned with your core values is integrity.

00:50:00 ► §

And like so that when you’re in integrity.

00:50:02 ► §

Another definition I really like a lot about integrity is doing what you said you do when you said you do it.

00:50:10 ► §

And that means if you have to change that agreement, like I can’t be there at 5 o’clock,

00:50:16 ► §

but I would like to change my agreement to 7 o’clock, that’s still in integrity because you’ve changed your agreement.

00:50:22 ► §

But when you don’t show up until 7 o’clock and you said you’re going to be there at 5 o’clock,

00:50:26 ► §

then you’re out of integrity.

00:50:28 ► §

And so what do you do when you’re out of integrity?

00:50:30 ► §

Just as a core value, basically.

00:50:33 ► §

But what do you do when you’re out of integrity?

00:50:36 ► §

You take responsibility for it.

00:50:38 ► §

That’s the only thing that you can do.

00:50:40 ► §

I’m late.

00:50:41 ► §

You don’t have to say anything more than that.

00:50:43 ► §

It’s like you are late. it’s like you are late.

00:50:45 ► §

It’s like you are late.

00:50:46 ► §

I said I’d be here seven, and I didn’t make it.

00:50:50 ► §

I missed the mark, you know.

00:50:52 ► §

So anyway, then just leave it alone.

00:50:54 ► §

It’s like no excuses, nobody wants to know, you know what I mean?

00:50:56 ► §

But integrity is really a very interesting and important core value in every community.

00:51:03 ► §

When you can’t count it’s being

00:51:05 ► §

accountable isn’t it it’s just like you know what can you be counted on if you say

00:51:10 ► §

you’re going to do something can you be counted on to do it or or change the

00:51:14 ► §

agreement with somebody about it so anyway beautiful yeah oriented to truth like

00:51:24 ► §

truth goodness and beauty.

00:51:28 ► §

You know, I think that that’s what unites a lot of spiritual communities.

00:51:33 ► §

And I think that unites people here at Burning Man, too.

00:51:36 ► §

There’s an interest and concern with all of those subjects, I think.

00:51:41 ► §

And in medicine communities, especially, you know.

00:51:44 ► §

I think you’re really right

00:51:48 ► §

so connecting to so connecting to values and purpose.

00:52:12 ► §

So recently I’ve been doing some reevaluation in my life,

00:52:17 ► §

and by re-evaluation, I mean, like, literally going through a process of like,

00:52:21 ► §

what are my higher values?

00:52:23 ► §

And so one of them is

00:52:25 ► §

community togetherness and another is like our creativity and I’ve realized in terms

00:52:31 ► §

of like it looks like I’m going to be like working at like what the Buddha

00:52:35 ► §

it’s called right livelihood and so I’ve realized I’m not just an artist I’m also

00:52:38 ► §

an art educator and so like I follow the YouTube channel that Cosm has and I see

00:52:43 ► §

the broadcasts that you do and and I see like you’re offering courses and get together for the community and so

00:52:50 ► §

I’ve been thinking about community a lot as well lately and

00:52:54 ► §

I’m wondering if I could just maybe open it up for both of you to maybe reflect upon like what does

00:53:04 ► §

education or art education look like

00:53:06 ► §

when it’s working

00:53:07 ► §

does that make sense?

00:53:10 ► §

Because I see it happening in the

00:53:12 ► §

community that you’ve fostered around

00:53:14 ► §

the work

00:53:14 ► §

that you’ve done with Kausen.

00:53:19 ► §

Yeah.

00:53:20 ► §

I think that one of the things

00:53:22 ► §

that is wonderful about

00:53:24 ► §

kind of the visionary art orientation is that there’s still this sense of, but it’s the same like I think in the realist, but maybe some others as well, a respect for mastery of something.

00:53:45 ► §

And so the craft becomes like a spiritual practice

00:53:51 ► §

because you want to get better at it.

00:53:54 ► §

And the only way that you can, I think, really get better at

00:53:58 ► §

at this thing of kind of portraying the mystical experiences by, you know, developing your own self-knowledge

00:54:10 ► §

and developing your own spiritual nature in a way, meditating perhaps, finding a way to ground

00:54:20 ► §

in a daily practice what you learn on the path

00:54:26 ► §

of psychedelics

00:54:29 ► §

so that it can become

00:54:32 ► §

more integrated

00:54:33 ► §

with your

00:54:35 ► §

everyday approach.

00:54:38 ► §

Yeah.

00:54:38 ► §

Well, I mean,

00:54:39 ► §

art education

00:54:41 ► §

is something

00:54:43 ► §

that you can only do that yourself.

00:54:46 ► §

Really.

00:54:46 ► §

If you really want to be a great artist, you know, first of all, draw every day.

00:54:52 ► §

And be, you know, sort of, you know, like you set high standards for yourself and then reach for them.

00:55:03 ► §

I mean, if you want to learn to be, you have to be guided by your own instincts.

00:55:09 ► §

You know, you have to just start somewhere.

00:55:13 ► §

And what you start with is what really calls you.

00:55:16 ► §

Now, Alex and I both had traditional art educations for the first two years.

00:55:21 ► §

Very rigid, very academic, but it forced us. This is a good thing about a art

00:55:26 ► §

education. That’s a formal art education. If you could afford it, excuse me. But, you know,

00:55:33 ► §

it’s just so expensive anymore to do that. But if you can, you’re, you know, you’re way ahead,

00:55:39 ► §

because somebody will hold your feet to the fire about learning to draw the figure, learning to

00:55:44 ► §

draw period, learning design,

00:55:47 ► §

composition, and you have to be always, you know, ready to show your work to other people

00:55:52 ► §

and get critiqued. So that is another value of an art education. If you are working on,

00:55:58 ► §

you know, educating yourself as an artist, you can have gatherings.

00:56:06 ► §

First of all, you can ask your family and your friends for advice.

00:56:09 ► §

Which are these paintings?

00:56:10 ► §

What do you like about this painting?

00:56:12 ► §

What do you think is not working about this painting?

00:56:15 ► §

And if I did the painting over again, how would you think I should do it differently?

00:56:20 ► §

But ask those questions to yourself first.

00:56:23 ► §

Because you end up you have to teach yourself.

00:56:27 ► §

If you don’t need the figure and you just love pouring paint, you know, don’t bother.

00:56:33 ► §

But if you’ve got to put figures in your art, you’ve got to study figure drawing or it just doesn’t look authentic.

00:56:39 ► §

It doesn’t look, you know, like good.

00:56:42 ► §

So the decision is up to each individual.

00:56:44 ► §

You can get certain

00:56:45 ► §

a lot of resources

00:56:48 ► §

from going to a formal art education

00:56:50 ► §

but you can also take

00:56:51 ► §

classes of cosm. I mean we

00:56:53 ► §

look

00:56:55 ► §

we recommend that

00:56:57 ► §

everybody come to art church. You can be

00:57:00 ► §

on Zoom or you can be in person

00:57:02 ► §

and you can still come to our church

00:57:03 ► §

once a month you have an art practice and if it calls you you’ll put it into your life for the rest of the month

00:57:10 ► §

you might like go back to that drawing that you started in our church and you might make

00:57:14 ► §

it into a painting or you might you know like make it better as a drawing so you know if

00:57:19 ► §

you have a if you have a inclination to want to make art that you thought of yourself ever in your life as identifying as an artist,

00:57:28 ► §

then it’s worth it, I think, to make art part of it.

00:57:33 ► §

Listen, it’s a health factor, creativity.

00:57:36 ► §

It could be music, it could be dance,

00:57:38 ► §

it could be a lot of cooking and gardening,

00:57:41 ► §

satisfy a lot of people’s creative ideas or need.

00:57:47 ► §

It’s not different than exercise.

00:57:49 ► §

You dare not say, I don’t need exercise.

00:57:54 ► §

I just don’t.

00:57:55 ► §

I don’t like to.

00:57:57 ► §

You know that that’s wrong.

00:57:59 ► §

You may say it, but you know that that’s wrong.

00:58:00 ► §

You’ve got to keep yourself sharp as far as being a creator as

00:58:05 ► §

well and somehow

00:58:07 ► §

being creative and go to square

00:58:09 ► §

dancing or just do something

00:58:12 ► §

that’s creative.

00:58:14 ► §

Now I

00:58:14 ► §

and to speak further

00:58:17 ► §

to it I think that there would be a

00:58:19 ► §

possibility of having both the craft

00:58:22 ► §

and the mastery

00:58:24 ► §

there and a kind of ministry that would

00:58:27 ► §

look at the great traditions and how those traditions had certain aspects that a psychedelic artist,

00:58:42 ► §

visionary artist, could relate to some aspects, maybe not so much.

00:58:47 ► §

So you examine the great traditions and you also look at the mystical experience.

00:58:59 ► §

You know, I was so taken by this whole matter of the psychedelic mystical experience

00:59:12 ► §

helping heal people so dramatically, you know,

00:59:20 ► §

and changing, reformatting their psychic hard drive, basically it did for us.

00:59:24 ► §

know, changing, reformatting their psychic hard drive, basically, it did for us. You know, so whatever the education is, it has to include understanding of sacred medicine work

00:59:38 ► §

and the underlying mystical visionary kind of cartographies of the great traditions.

00:59:50 ► §

Because we have an unbelievable inheritance of world spirit that we can draw upon to imagine

01:00:02 ► §

the new kind of

01:00:05 ► §

spirit of the moment

01:00:08 ► §

you know

01:00:09 ► §

that can help further us

01:00:11 ► §

through these dramatic times

01:00:13 ► §

some maybe

01:00:15 ► §

at times catastrophic times

01:00:17 ► §

you know that we may have

01:00:18 ► §

ahead of us

01:00:20 ► §

you know but maybe there’s a way

01:00:22 ► §

that

01:00:22 ► §

that the arts

01:00:24 ► §

can serve consciousness change and

01:00:29 ► §

the consciousness evolution, and I think that that ultimately will help us get where we need to

01:00:36 ► §

go.

01:00:38 ► §

I just wanted to, yes, I love that too.

01:00:40 ► §

I just wanted to say as far as our education after two years of really hardcore

01:00:46 ► §

boot camp of art

01:00:47 ► §

school kind of stuff, we

01:00:50 ► §

both moved on to

01:00:51 ► §

more, well Alex went and

01:00:53 ► §

became a billboard painter

01:00:55 ► §

for Columbus Outdoor advertising for a year.

01:00:58 ► §

That was an education.

01:01:00 ► §

And

01:01:00 ► §

you know, and I went, we both went on to

01:01:03 ► §

art educations that had a lot more freedom and flexibility,

01:01:08 ► §

which was the museum school in Boston, which would basically let you do what you wanted to do,

01:01:14 ► §

you know, and have great people around to comment and help you, like mixed media and performance,

01:01:21 ► §

and those things were not far into them.

01:01:24 ► §

So, yeah.

01:01:25 ► §

But anyway, so anybody else have completely different questions.

01:01:29 ► §

There’s one right there.

01:01:30 ► §

That’ll be the last question.

01:01:32 ► §

Next question.

01:01:32 ► §

Okay.

01:01:34 ► §

Thank you very much.

01:01:37 ► §

You know, it’s really interesting.

01:01:39 ► §

I was at the eclipse in 2017 in Oregon,

01:01:42 ► §

and I didn’t know you were going to be there,

01:01:44 ► §

and I got to see you.

01:01:45 ► §

And today I made a wrong turn,

01:01:47 ► §

and you guys are here,

01:01:48 ► §

so I kind of feel like I’m meant to ask you this question.

01:01:51 ► §

It’s your fate.

01:01:52 ► §

Yes, absolutely.

01:01:53 ► §

Connected.

01:01:54 ► §

And that’s, yeah, and that’s kind of what the question is about,

01:01:56 ► §

and the question is about purpose.

01:01:58 ► §

I’ll give you very brief context for time.

01:02:02 ► §

I was born in San Francisco, but my parents are, I’m one generation away from deep indigenous tribes in Dominican Republic and in Panama.

01:02:18 ► §

And I grew up always, I’m a filmmaker, I’m a storyteller, ever since I was a kid.

01:02:24 ► §

And life was really,

01:02:26 ► §

a lot of things opened for me really

01:02:27 ► §

quickly, and I rose up really

01:02:29 ► §

quickly. I’m 36, and I

01:02:31 ► §

just quit corporate America because

01:02:33 ► §

I got the call. And the call

01:02:36 ► §

has led me back to the Dominican Republic,

01:02:38 ► §

and in the past three years

01:02:40 ► §

through plant medicine, which I never

01:02:42 ► §

experimented with psychedelics

01:02:44 ► §

for fun. Never.

01:02:45 ► §

It was a calling.

01:02:47 ► §

And the mother, Ayahuasca, she presented me with, she said, you’re finally here.

01:02:52 ► §

I gave you this life so that you can be here.

01:02:55 ► §

And that has led me to connect with my indigenous Arawaakotaino tribe.

01:02:59 ► §

They are the first tribe that Columbus encountered when he found America.

01:03:03 ► §

And they massacre us all.

01:03:04 ► §

But we’re still here.

01:03:07 ► §

And the medicine has told me that all that happened was to get me to this moment where I am now

01:03:14 ► §

a bridge between the ancestral and today. And, you know, I just got done doing a three-week pilgrimage through my island

01:03:26 ► §

to the sacred caves or the sacred stones

01:03:28 ► §

it was very powerful

01:03:30 ► §

when we prayed and sang and gave offerings to

01:03:33 ► §

all of our deities

01:03:36 ► §

and of our Cosmo vision

01:03:37 ► §

and the

01:03:40 ► §

call is so strong

01:03:42 ► §

and I was in ceremony with

01:03:44 ► §

Artaitas,

01:03:46 ► §

one of which is Arawako, who is from the Brazilian Amazon.

01:03:49 ► §

He’s a 77th generation shaman.

01:03:53 ► §

And he has planted a seat in me

01:03:55 ► §

to create a message, to create a signal

01:04:00 ► §

and send it out to this universe,

01:04:03 ► §

to call all of our descendants of Tha’i No, Waco,

01:04:05 ► §

to come back to the island, to sit by the fire, and to learn about our cosmovision and

01:04:10 ► §

our ancestry. My question is, I feel such an immense sense of purpose to do this.

01:04:19 ► §

On the last day of that pilgrimage, I got a call and they said, hey, do you want to come

01:04:23 ► §

to Burning Man? Just show up to San Francisco.

01:04:27 ► §

And I packed it for Burning Man one day.

01:04:30 ► §

And I’m here, and I’m here in front of you to ask you this question.

01:04:33 ► §

I feel an immense sense of purpose.

01:04:41 ► §

Do you, did you in your work ever feel, or when you’ve experimented with ayahuasca plant medicine, and specifically when you were connecting with a mother and he-a-wello, all of those.

01:04:47 ► §

Did you ever get a message that this was your purpose?

01:04:51 ► §

Because obviously you both have become so influential

01:04:53 ► §

and inspirational for artists and people all around the world.

01:04:57 ► §

Did you ever feel that purpose?

01:05:01 ► §

Because I do, and I have to get started now.

01:05:03 ► §

And I feel like me being here at Burning Man is like

01:05:05 ► §

that’s what’s going to spark this

01:05:07 ► §

creative flame for me to create the most important

01:05:10 ► §

thing I’ve ever done in my life

01:05:11 ► §

so purpose have you ever felt purpose

01:05:13 ► §

thank you very much

01:05:15 ► §

yes

01:05:19 ► §

of course and congratulations

01:05:23 ► §

for feeling a sense of purpose

01:05:25 ► §

That’s wonderful

01:05:26 ► §

Yes, I think that

01:05:30 ► §

That leads to a sense of mission

01:05:36 ► §

You know

01:05:38 ► §

And that when you have a vision

01:05:41 ► §

Like that

01:05:42 ► §

It leads you to

01:05:44 ► §

Orient yourself toward fulfilling that.

01:05:48 ► §

And part of it beautifully demonstrates what I think is also one of the possibilities that some in the psychedelic community are showing,

01:06:03 ► §

that some in the psychedelic community are showing, which is a recognition of the legacy

01:06:09 ► §

of the indigenous ancestors

01:06:13 ► §

that have carried the medicines for millennia

01:06:18 ► §

despite tremendous forces

01:06:21 ► §

that worked against it

01:06:24 ► §

and demonized it and did all kinds of things to repress it.

01:06:33 ► §

But it’s a very special time right now.

01:06:37 ► §

And now, I feel like there’s a maverick band of angels that says, man we’re the swat team you know that come in and like

01:06:49 ► §

anything any kind of spiritual uh way that you have and it doesn’t have to be aligned with any tradition

01:06:59 ► §

you know if you just have this intention you open up that space and you connect with the infinite,

01:07:07 ► §

and then you start to see you are connected with medicine families, with sacred traditions

01:07:15 ► §

that go way back before anybody can even say.

01:07:20 ► §

So that sense of unity, that sense of purpose, that sense of connection with your roots, you know, but bringing and bridging, like, you know, you can speak to people in ways that have never been spoken before.

01:07:41 ► §

people in ways that have never been spoken before.

01:07:45 ► §

And so that’s a unique

01:07:46 ► §

voice that you’ll bring.

01:07:52 ► §

I’m so excited for you.

01:07:53 ► §

I am too. Thank you.

01:07:54 ► §

I think that they want us to close

01:07:58 ► §

this ceremony or this talk.

01:08:01 ► §

But I wanted to just say that

01:08:03 ► §

we represent a community

01:08:06 ► §

in Cosm. I mean,

01:08:08 ► §

there’s a greater community, the psychedelic community,

01:08:10 ► §

and the greater community of Burning Man,

01:08:11 ► §

and the global community of

01:08:13 ► §

the psychedelic community.

01:08:14 ► §

But Cosm’s mission

01:08:17 ► §

is to build an

01:08:19 ► §

enduring sanctuary of

01:08:21 ► §

visionary art to uplift a

01:08:23 ► §

global community.

01:08:28 ► §

And we just like to say that as a model,

01:08:32 ► §

that if you are thinking about putting together community,

01:08:38 ► §

start to think about your mission and the values that you want, you know,

01:08:42 ► §

to be set down, you know, very, very basic core values.

01:08:45 ► §

And you’re welcome to look up our core values either in this I think they’re online as well

01:08:48 ► §

but they’re all online as well.

01:08:49 ► §

Cosm.org.

01:08:50 ► §

Cosm.org.

01:08:51 ► §

And you can also find our

01:08:53 ► §

videos on

01:08:55 ► §

cosm.tv channel on YouTube.

01:08:58 ► §

So you go to YouTube,

01:08:59 ► §

cosm.com.com.tv

01:09:00 ► §

we have about 150

01:09:02 ► §

or so

01:09:03 ► §

you know, offerings there, including puppet shows and things like that. TV. We have about 150 or so offerings

01:09:05 ► §

there, including puppet

01:09:08 ► §

shows and things like that.

01:09:09 ► §

And a lot of full moon ceremonies

01:09:11 ► §

and interviews and stuff. Sacred puppet shows.

01:09:14 ► §

Sacred. Yeah.

01:09:16 ► §

All psychedelic too.

01:09:18 ► §

So anyway, we bless you and we love you

01:09:20 ► §

and thanks so much for being here tonight.

01:09:22 ► §

Thank you.

01:09:35 ► §

As you already know, if you’ve been attending my weekly live salons,

01:09:37 ► §

well, for the past year or more,

01:09:41 ► §

I’ve been spending a great deal of my time involved with artificial intelligence.

01:09:45 ► §

To give you just a little taste of how far this field has progressed recently, I’m doing a little experiment right now, and I’d like to hear your comments about it.

01:09:51 ► §

What I’ve done is to use a free artificial intelligence program to create a transcript of this

01:09:57 ► §

Palenque Norte lecture. Then I use that transcript as input to another free AI program that

01:10:04 ► §

analyze the conversation. And after the analysis was complete, that same AI program that analyzed the conversation.

01:10:06 ► §

And after the analysis was complete, that same AI, without any further input by me,

01:10:12 ► §

created the conversation that we are about to listen to.

01:10:15 ► §

Now, the total amount of my own time used to create this was less than three minutes.

01:10:21 ► §

Now let’s listen to a conversation between two non-human artificial characters and see what

01:10:27 ► §

this AI came up with. Now, please keep in mind what you’re about to listen to with me was written and

01:10:34 ► §

recorded entirely by a machine with no human intervention other than to input a transcript of the

01:10:41 ► §

talk. All right, ready to dive in. We’re tackling psychedelic communities today.

01:10:47 ► §

Town’s intriguing.

01:10:48 ► §

It’s a fascinating world, really.

01:10:50 ► §

And to guide us, we’ve got Alex and Alison Gray, recorded live at Palanky Norte.

01:10:55 ► §

The visionary artists.

01:10:57 ► §

I’m familiar with their work.

01:10:58 ► §

Exactly.

01:10:59 ► §

They’re the minds behind Kossam, this inter-spiritual art church.

01:11:02 ► §

Okay, already, inter-spiritual art Church, I’m hooked. What’s the story

01:11:05 ► §

there? Well, get this. Back

01:11:08 ► §

in 1985, they

01:11:10 ► §

had this shared vision on

01:11:11 ► §

MDMA. They saw a chapel,

01:11:14 ► §

a place for art, for consciousness.

01:11:16 ► §

Wow. Yeah, a place for connection.

01:11:18 ► §

And they were adamant that it

01:11:20 ► §

wasn’t just some fleeting thing. You know,

01:11:21 ► §

they felt called to build it, to make it real.

01:11:24 ► §

So Kossam was born from that vision.

01:11:26 ► §

It’s like the seed was planted right.

01:11:27 ► §

Yeah.

01:11:28 ► §

They started hosting full moon ceremonies in 2003, and guess what?

01:11:32 ► §

They haven’t stopped.

01:11:33 ► §

No way.

01:11:34 ► §

272 gatherings in a row.

01:11:35 ► §

They really tapped into something, creating this space where people feel comfortable exploring

01:11:39 ► §

these big, often taboo topics.

01:11:42 ► §

That’s incredible.

01:11:43 ► §

It really speaks to the power of shared experience.

01:11:45 ► §

Totally.

01:11:46 ► §

Yeah.

01:11:47 ► §

And, you know, it wasn’t just about psychedelics for them.

01:11:49 ► §

It was about authentic connection, deep conversations, showing up as you are.

01:11:55 ► §

Right.

01:11:55 ► §

Those are the building blocks of any strong community, aren’t they?

01:11:58 ► §

Finding your tribe.

01:11:59 ► §

Absolutely.

01:12:00 ► §

And they had this one line, the inevitable consequence of love is the building of a temple.

01:12:05 ► §

Wow, that’s profound.

01:12:07 ► §

It struck me too at first.

01:12:09 ► §

I’m like, whoa, hold on.

01:12:10 ► §

But they’re talking about that same love that built the ancient temples, right?

01:12:13 ► §

That deep sense of connection that drives us to create community.

01:12:18 ► §

It’s like tapping into something universal, something that transcends all those boundaries we put up between us.

01:12:23 ► §

Yeah.

01:12:24 ► §

And speaking of Qasem, it did become more than just a gathering place, didn’t it?

01:12:28 ► §

It became a recognized church.

01:12:29 ► §

Wait, really?

01:12:30 ► §

I think I missed that part.

01:12:31 ► §

So it’s an official church now.

01:12:33 ► §

It is.

01:12:34 ► §

Someone even asked them at Polanki Norte.

01:12:36 ► §

Why make it a church?

01:12:37 ► §

That’s a great question.

01:12:38 ► §

What did they say?

01:12:39 ► §

They said it wasn’t strategic or anything.

01:12:41 ► §

It just sort of happened.

01:12:42 ► §

They were already doing things churches traditionally do, baby blessings, weddings, memorials.

01:12:47 ► §

Makes sense.

01:12:48 ► §

And with the artwork at the center of their gatherings, it’s like their own form of liturgy in a way.

01:12:54 ► §

Exactly.

01:12:55 ► §

It evolved organically.

01:12:56 ► §

Yeah.

01:12:56 ► §

But they made it clear.

01:12:57 ► §

This is just one model, right?

01:12:59 ► §

Community takes many forms.

01:13:01 ► §

So true.

01:13:02 ► §

From communes to online groups, what matters is that feeling of belonging, of not being

01:13:08 ► §

alone in your experiences.

01:13:10 ► §

And especially when we’re talking about something as profound as psychedelic exploration.

01:13:14 ► §

But one thing that really stood out for Alex and Allison was the importance of core values.

01:13:19 ► §

Yeah, they talked about that a lot, especially acceptance, embracing diversity.

01:13:24 ► §

Finding unity in our differences, exactly.

01:13:27 ► §

And they walk the walk.

01:13:28 ► §

Their journal of the Cosmian Surveillance has a whole section on their community’s work ethic.

01:13:32 ► §

Right.

01:13:32 ► §

So it’s not just about feeling good.

01:13:34 ► §

It’s about doing good, right?

01:13:35 ► §

Aligning your life with those values.

01:13:37 ► §

They call it right livelihood.

01:13:38 ► §

It’s powerful stuff.

01:13:39 ► §

It’s like they’re saying, don’t just dip your toes in the water.

01:13:42 ► §

Dive in.

01:13:43 ► §

Figure out what really matters to you.

01:13:44 ► §

Dive in. And speaking of diving in, this conversation took place at Palenque Norte, right?

01:13:50 ► §

Right. It’s like the Burning Man of Mexico.

01:13:52 ► §

Exactly. So naturally, someone asked about Burning Man’s influence on Cauds.

01:13:56 ► §

Yeah, and you can definitely see the connections there.

01:13:58 ► §

Absolutely. The Grays were pointing out the parallels to Burning Man’s 10 principles, you know,

01:14:02 ► §

radical self-expression, communal effort, leaving no trace.

01:14:06 ► §

It’s all connected. And it’s not just theoretical either. They actually had a concrete example, this sculpture called Altered States by Kate Roddenbush.

01:14:15 ► §

Okay. I’ve heard of her. What about the sculpture? It was a wedding chapel at Burning Man. And now it’s got a permanent home that caused them.

01:14:22 ► §

Wow. It’s like this tangible link between these two communities.

01:14:25 ► §

That’s really cool.

01:14:26 ► §

Isn’t it?

01:14:27 ► §

And they also mentioned another artist, Kate Sarsen, who helped them create Enthion Village at Burning Man back in 2006.

01:14:34 ► §

Wait, Entheon Village.

01:14:35 ► §

Enthion, what is that?

01:14:36 ► §

Oh, it’s a term Alex coined.

01:14:38 ► §

Basically, it’s a space for sacred experiences, often involving art and, well, psychedelics.

01:14:44 ► §

So Burning Man is like this temporary enthe on them.

01:14:48 ► §

Kind of, yeah, where people can cap into those experiences and then bring that energy back to their

01:14:53 ► §

everyday life.

01:14:53 ► §

It’s that ripple effect, right?

01:14:55 ► §

Totally.

01:14:56 ► §

And, you know, speaking of profound experiences, someone asked about how psychedelics inform

01:15:00 ► §

our understanding of life and death, even the afterlife.

01:15:04 ► §

Oh, wow. Yeah. Getting into some deep stuff there.

01:15:08 ► §

They did. Alex actually described an experience he calls the universal mind lattice.

01:15:14 ► §

Have you heard of that?

01:15:15 ► §

It rings a bell, but refresh my memory.

01:15:17 ► §

Basically, he talked about this vision of interconnectedness.

01:15:20 ► §

Like, our individual consciousnesses are these points of light in a vast web.

01:15:25 ► §

Okay, I kind of remember that. It’s pretty out there.

01:15:27 ► §

It is. But here’s the thing, Alex said. Others have described similar vision.

01:15:31 ► §

Really? Like who?

01:15:32 ► §

People who had near-death experiences, even someone who was struck by lightning, they all describe something similar.

01:15:37 ► §

You’re kidding. So are these experiences just hardwired into us?

01:15:42 ► §

It makes you wonder, right? Like, what if they’re more common than we think?

01:15:46 ► §

And that makes these shared narratives even more powerful.

01:15:49 ► §

Especially when we’re talking about the unknown, like death.

01:15:52 ► §

But, you know, it’s not just about having these experiences, right?

01:15:54 ► §

It’s what we do with them.

01:15:56 ► §

That’s what they kept saying, yeah.

01:15:57 ► §

It’s about taking those experiences and using them to create positive change in ourselves and in the world.

01:16:05 ► §

And that often starts with building those strong communities,

01:16:08 ► §

doesn’t it?

01:16:08 ► §

It does.

01:16:09 ► §

Places where people feel safe to be vulnerable,

01:16:12 ► §

to ask those big questions.

01:16:13 ► §

And to support each other through it all, right?

01:16:15 ► §

Exactly.

01:16:16 ► §

They talked about really taking stock of your own life.

01:16:19 ► §

What are your core values?

01:16:21 ► §

What experiences have shaped you?

01:16:23 ► §

It’s about figuring out what truly matters to you.

01:16:25 ► §

And then finding those who share your passions.

01:16:28 ► §

Right.

01:16:28 ► §

And they didn’t just leave it at that.

01:16:30 ► §

They talked about taking action.

01:16:32 ► §

You know, get out there and build something.

01:16:33 ► §

Don’t just think about it.

01:16:34 ► §

Do it.

01:16:34 ► §

Yeah.

01:16:35 ► §

Exactly.

01:16:35 ► §

Join a group.

01:16:37 ► §

Learn how it works.

01:16:38 ► §

Yeah.

01:16:38 ► §

Contribute your own skills.

01:16:40 ► §

And if you can’t find what you’re looking for.

01:16:42 ► §

Create it yourself.

01:16:43 ► §

Exactly.

01:16:43 ► §

It doesn’t have to be this big, grand thing either.

01:16:46 ► §

Start small, gathering people.

01:16:48 ► §

That’s what they did, right?

01:16:50 ► §

Yeah.

01:16:50 ► §

They started with those full moon ceremonies.

01:16:52 ► §

Look what it grew into.

01:16:54 ► §

But they were adamant about one thing.

01:16:56 ► §

Be upfront about your values.

01:16:58 ► §

Don’t shy away from them.

01:17:00 ► §

Right.

01:17:00 ► §

They were really big on integrity, like really walking the walk.

01:17:03 ► §

They even used this example of, I think it was a mycologist in the audience.

01:17:06 ► §

Someone who works with the mushrooms, right? Yeah, exactly. Then we were talking about how important integrity is in that work, you know, making sure the medicine is good, creating a safe space for people.

01:17:15 ► §

It really makes you think it’s not enough to just talk about it, is it? The way we approach these things, even when no one’s watching, it matters.

01:17:23 ► §

Absolutely. It ripples outward, and it gets at something else they kept saying.

01:17:28 ► §

Psychedelics, they’re not a magic bullet, are they?

01:17:30 ► §

Right, not a quick fix.

01:17:32 ► §

It’s more like they’re catalysts for introspection, for connection, and then hopefully

01:17:38 ► §

for action.

01:17:39 ► §

Exactly.

01:17:40 ► §

It all comes much to action.

01:17:41 ► §

And those communities we were talking about, they’re where that action can really take root, aren’t they?

01:17:46 ► §

Totally.

01:17:47 ► §

Safe spaces to be vulnerable, to explore, to support each other on the journey.

01:17:51 ► §

I don’t know about you, but this whole conversation has been so inspiring.

01:17:54 ► §

Me too.

01:17:55 ► §

It’s like they’ve given us this roadmap, you know.

01:17:57 ► §

Yeah.

01:17:57 ► §

For anyone looking for deeper meaning, a sense of purpose.

01:18:01 ► §

What really struck me is how they bring everything together.

01:18:03 ► §

Art, spirituality, community,

01:18:05 ► §

it’s all connected for them. It’s like they’re saying, look, these experiences we’re talking about,

01:18:10 ► §

they’re not just these isolated things that happen in a vacuum. They have implications for every

01:18:16 ► §

part of our lives. It’s a very holistic way of seeing things. And they don’t just talk about it in

01:18:20 ► §

these vague terms either. They get into the practical stuff, how to actually build those communities, how to make them last. Which is exactly what we wanted to explore with

01:18:29 ► §

this deep dive. Right. To understand what’s happening in these communities, what they value,

01:18:33 ► §

how they function. It’s fascinating stuff. And, you know, what I’m seeing is that these communities,

01:18:38 ► §

they might look different on the surface. Yeah. But they’re all united by this desire for something

01:18:43 ► §

more, more compassion, more

01:18:45 ► §

connection, a better world. From full moon ceremonies to burning man. Artists, musicians,

01:18:51 ► §

mycologists, they’re all pushing those boundaries, asking those questions. Consciousness is the

01:18:56 ► §

ultimate medium. Right. That’s what the gray said. It’s about how we choose to show up in the

01:19:00 ► §

world and who we choose to build it with. So if you’re listening to this

01:19:06 ► §

and something’s resonating. Don’t ignore it. Reach out, find your people, build something new.

01:19:11 ► §

Who knows? You might just surprise yourself. The world needs more of those spaces where creativity

01:19:16 ► §

and compassion can flourish. You might just build the next temple, whatever form that takes in your life.

01:19:22 ► §

This has been an incredible deep dive. Thank you for joining us.

01:19:26 ► §

Well, there isn’t anything I can add to that.

01:19:30 ► §

So for now, this is Lorenzo,

01:19:32 ► §

signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

01:19:34 ► §

Namaste, my friends.