Program Notes
Guest speaker: Ben Stewart
Ben Stewart
Year this lecture was recorded: 2017
The filmmaker Ben Stewart sits down in Lex Pelger’s living room to share his story about the journey that led him to making films and how the psychedelics helped shape his path.
You can learn more about his work on his website:
http://talismanicidols.net/
Watch Ben Stewart’s videos at:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVtkjwwba5AyYyIkq-DSZkw
Follow Ben on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/KymaticaNamaste/
And see everything Gaia.com is up to at:
https://www.gaia.com
As always, this is a No Nonsense production. Any assistance is always appreciated. Join us on Patreon.
https://www.patreon.com/NoNonsense
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.
00:00:20 ►
This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in Psychedelic Salon 2.0.
00:00:25 ►
And today Lex Pelger is bringing us an interview with a truly fascinating man, Ben Stewart.
00:00:31 ►
Now since I was over 40 years old before my first psychedelic experience,
00:00:36 ►
I’m not really a very good reference for giving any advice about the age at which it is safe for young people to begin using these powerful substances.
00:00:51 ►
In the case of cannabis, I think that probably Dr. McNutt in the UK gives the best advice,
00:00:56 ►
saying that since the human brain isn’t completely formed until a person is around 21 years old,
00:01:00 ►
people younger than 21 should avoid using cannabis.
00:01:05 ►
However, I don’t recall him making a similar statement about psychedelics,
00:01:10 ►
although my guess is that he would probably offer about the same advice as he does for cannabis.
00:01:17 ►
Nonetheless, in some societies, young people are still taken through psychedelic experiences at several points in their lives, one being when they reach the age of puberty.
00:01:22 ►
But I’ve always wondered if in the Western society,
00:01:26 ►
where we don’t have the centuries of tradition regarding these medicines, I wonder if young
00:01:31 ►
people would come through a powerful psychedelic experience without being damaged in some way.
00:01:36 ►
So it was very refreshing and quite informative to learn that Lex’s guest today, Ben Stewart,
00:01:43 ►
who has already achieved more success in life than most people his age,
00:01:47 ►
well, he had his first psychedelic experience when he was 14 years old.
00:01:52 ►
I, for one, would like to hear more about that first experience.
00:01:57 ►
Hopefully, Lex will have him back in the salon one day to tell us more.
00:02:01 ►
But for now, let’s listen to Ben telling Lex about his interesting journey from
00:02:05 ►
this first psychedelic experience to where he is today.
00:02:15 ►
This is a non-nonsense production. If you like what you hear and want to help us make the Salon 2.0 bigger and better, sign up to support this work
00:02:26 ►
monthly on patreon.com. As a two-person production, any help goes a long way.
00:02:33 ►
Join us at patreon.com slash nononsense.
00:02:41 ►
I’m Lex Pelger, and this is The Psychedelic Salon 2.0.
00:02:46 ►
This week, I’m very happy to introduce a show recorded in my living room
00:02:50 ►
with the filmmaker and thinker Ben Stewart.
00:02:54 ►
In this episode, once in a while, you might be able to hear his little girl
00:02:58 ►
wander in and out of the room or head upstairs to bang on the drums.
00:03:03 ►
To me, that’s always a key ingredient for a perfect interview.
00:03:08 ►
Ben produces films, including the feature-length pieces
00:03:11 ►
The Esoteric Agenda and Chimatica.
00:03:14 ►
On the Gaia Network online, he hosts the Waking Infinity series,
00:03:19 ►
which covers topics from plant medicines to alchemy to Burning Man and more.
00:03:24 ►
He also knows his way around conspiracy theories.
00:03:28 ►
I enjoy watching his interviews, and so for today,
00:03:30 ►
it’s nice to turn the tables and let him field the questions.
00:03:36 ►
Also, I’ve been listening to your feedback.
00:03:39 ►
I hear that some people aren’t tickled by Lorenzo’s Gore Vidal speech
00:03:42 ►
or my recent bloody podcast on war.
00:03:46 ►
But I believe that psychedelics are much bigger than the class of molecules we call tryptamines.
00:03:51 ►
It all ties into a matrix that goes from heroin to hermeticism.
00:03:56 ►
And somehow, when you look close enough, it feels like everything is psychedelic.
00:04:01 ►
For the next few weeks, I’ve got some good episodes lined up, and they are primarily
00:04:04 ►
focused on psychedelics.
00:04:06 ►
So keep that feedback coming, any flavor, we’re listening.
00:04:11 ►
And if you have anyone you think I should talk to, let me know at pelger at gmail dot com.
00:04:16 ►
Now, here’s Ben Stewart.
00:04:33 ►
This is the Psychedelic Salon 2.0, and I am here with Ben Stewart of Gaia, who is doing original content for them.
00:04:34 ►
Welcome to the show.
00:04:35 ►
Thank you so much for having me, Lex.
00:04:38 ►
Yeah, thanks for coming in and sitting on my floor. For everybody listening out here, if you hear a really adorable-sounding little girl playing instruments in the background, you are lucky.
00:04:44 ►
She’s wonderful. So, yeah, thanks for coming by today. I was wondering if you could just tell us
00:04:49 ►
initially about Gaia and what they do. Yeah, Gaia, I mean, Gaia has been around for a while,
00:04:56 ►
but you would know them more as Gaiam. So Gaiam makes yoga mats, all yoga product lines.
00:05:03 ►
So since the late 80s, with Rodney Yee, the long-haired
00:05:07 ►
ponytail guy on the beach doing yoga, that’s all Guy-Am. So just a few years ago, Guy-Am
00:05:14 ►
split off from their media, conscious media content. So the media side became Gaia. And
00:05:23 ►
basically, they were mainly just licensing conscious media
00:05:26 ►
in three categories, yoga, seeking truth and transformation. Seeking truth is where you find
00:05:32 ►
like conspiracy and whistleblowers cover up yoga is obvious and transformation is like for the
00:05:38 ►
expansion of consciousness or stepping into your role and your purpose. So anything that falls into those categories.
00:05:45 ►
And now that they’ve split off from Guy M., they’re really expanding.
00:05:50 ►
And so they were bringing in more people to create original content
00:05:54 ►
because they do have their own original content,
00:05:56 ►
but it’s also there’s only three or four producers there
00:06:00 ►
that were producing some of that stuff.
00:06:03 ►
So for me, how I kind of got into that
00:06:06 ►
was I was licensing a lot of my material to them. I’d made three films in the past. One is Esoteric
00:06:12 ►
Agenda, another is Chimatica, and the third one was on Grip. And then a few years later, I started
00:06:18 ►
working on a show called Waking Infinity, and Gaia kept coming to me asking to license that,
00:06:23 ►
and I gave them permission to distribute digitally all of my material.
00:06:28 ►
So then they asked me to come out.
00:06:30 ►
If you know George Noory, if you’ve ever heard of Coast to Coast AM, it’s this late night AM show.
00:06:38 ►
Conspiracy all the way to alien abductions and whatever you want to talk about, the fringe stuff.
00:06:44 ►
And he has a show on
00:06:45 ►
Gaia and they brought me on to be hosted or they brought me on and the host George Nuri was asking
00:06:52 ►
me questions about what I do and everything and then eventually I had an interview or a meeting
00:06:58 ►
right afterwards with the CEO of Gaia and he asked me what my plans were what I’m what my intentions
00:07:04 ►
are and he was gauging whether
00:07:06 ►
I was in the space and what they call the space is the right heart space, the right head space,
00:07:10 ►
and wanting to do the right thing for the world and for humanity. And then he offered me a
00:07:15 ►
production job. So that’s what landed me here in Boulder, Colorado. I was just living basically a
00:07:21 ►
vagabond for the past 10 years. I was in a professional music group before
00:07:26 ►
that called Hyrosonic. And then I started doing independent films on the side. And then that grew
00:07:31 ►
bigger than the band. And then I just started bouncing around the world. I met my now wife,
00:07:37 ►
who’s Dutch in Holland. I was doing a talk out there. We had a kid. So we were just kind of
00:07:42 ►
floating around for a while. And then all of a sudden this Gaia thing came up, and now we’re all together here in Boulder, meeting really cool
00:07:49 ►
people in the community. And so, yeah, that’s the story, how I landed at Gaia, what Gaia is about,
00:07:56 ►
and the trajectory ever forward. Ever forward. And can you tell me a little bit more about those first three films and how they came about sure so um so esoteric agenda was the first one um that was 2008 and basically i was just out
00:08:15 ►
of the military i was in the air force for six years and while i was in the military my band
00:08:21 ►
was really taken off we were on lollapalooza. We were playing with Jane’s Addiction, Three Doors Down, The U’s, Fuel, Filter, some amazing bands. And people
00:08:30 ►
were constantly asking me what the lyrics were about because I was writing the lyrics
00:08:34 ►
and one of the primary songwriters as well. So they’re always asking me, what are the
00:08:39 ►
lyrics about? We can tell it’s something profound, but you keep it kind of cryptic what’s it about
00:08:45 ►
so in true artist fashion i didn’t just tell them i made a piece of art i made a film about it and
00:08:52 ►
i’d never done film before but i was inspired by this film zeitgeist uh and the main reason i was
00:08:58 ►
inspired by zeitgeist was because it was free online and it was anonymous at first. And to me, that was like the best way to show authenticity.
00:09:08 ►
So like it was just free to the world.
00:09:11 ►
I don’t want anything from you.
00:09:12 ►
I don’t want your money.
00:09:13 ►
I don’t want your adoration.
00:09:14 ►
I just want you to wake up.
00:09:15 ►
I just really want this message to get through.
00:09:18 ►
And I thought that was brilliant.
00:09:19 ►
So I decided, you know what?
00:09:21 ►
That’s exactly the next step for me.
00:09:23 ►
I need to make a film that’s free.
00:09:25 ►
I didn’t make it anonymous.
00:09:26 ►
Well, I did at first make it anonymous,
00:09:28 ►
but then people were able to email me and ask if I could be on interviews,
00:09:32 ►
and it shortly after came out.
00:09:35 ►
And so that film was mainly about conspiracy at first.
00:09:38 ►
I was all into conspiracy,
00:09:40 ►
but I was into the distortion of time from the lunar calendar to the Gregorian
00:09:46 ►
to specific dates that wars were launched on and the parallels, how they’re congruent with pagan
00:09:55 ►
holidays, I guess you would call it, pagan ceremonial days. And so by the end of it,
00:10:01 ►
it was just stream of consciousness. I’d never worked on film before, never made a demo reel.
00:10:05 ►
I just had a $2,000 laptop and cracked Final Cut Express and Adobe After Effects.
00:10:11 ►
And I just started making my own stuff.
00:10:13 ►
And this was before YouTube, so I was putting it up on Google Videos.
00:10:17 ►
And people started connecting with me.
00:10:19 ►
When are you going to finish your film?
00:10:21 ►
And I was thinking, is this a film?
00:10:22 ►
It’s just kind of a stream of consciousness in 15-minute chunks. But I decided to put a definitive end on it. But once I realized I was about to make
00:10:29 ►
a film, I realized I don’t want to make it. I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist,
00:10:33 ►
filmmaker. So I had to put some kind of an end on there that was like a twist ending. So then
00:10:38 ►
I really got into consciousness and the power of one human being and you know uh what your intentions are what your focus is and what
00:10:47 ►
you can leverage as far as doing something good for the world so that was the end of that film
00:10:52 ►
and as soon as that came out i got all these emails of people saying like you know i love the
00:10:57 ►
ending of the film but the whole beginning of it i i feel scared i don’t know what to do and so i
00:11:03 ►
was trying to coach them through it. Like,
00:11:05 ►
listen, you know, I know the end was only 15 minutes and all the scary stuff was an hour and
00:11:09 ►
45, but it’s really powerful. And they’re like, are you going to do another film? And that was
00:11:15 ►
about the time where I was realizing, cause there was people saying like, I quit my job and I, I
00:11:20 ►
left my family and I ran off to this cabin in the woods and I was like, please think again about what you just did
00:11:28 ►
and please don’t say you did it because of me
00:11:30 ►
because obviously the next step is
00:11:32 ►
I need to make a film all about personal responsibility
00:11:35 ►
and understanding first, before the scary stuff,
00:11:39 ►
how powerful we are, how powerful the subconscious is,
00:11:42 ►
how powerful collective consciousness is
00:11:44 ►
and how groups think together, how powerful the subconscious is, how powerful collective consciousness is, and how groups think together when, you know, how scary things can get when you’re just watching everybody
00:11:49 ►
else kind of freak out around you. So the second film was Chimatica, and I made that in 2009.
00:11:56 ►
And I just banged that out real quick. It was like a download. It was just flowing through me.
00:12:01 ►
I almost can’t take credit for it because I don’t know where it came from.
00:12:09 ►
All the research just clicked together, and then, bam, it came out as a film.
00:12:10 ►
I decided.
00:12:11 ►
I was like, you know what? I’m going to put it up for a film festival, New York Independent Film Festival,
00:12:15 ►
and it won Best Scientific Film.
00:12:17 ►
And then I started getting a ton of offers to go around the world and do talks.
00:12:23 ►
So I was going to Australia at least once a year, up to Canada.
00:12:28 ►
Strangely, not so much around the States.
00:12:30 ►
A lot in Europe, and that was eventually when I did a three-month tour in Europe.
00:12:33 ►
That was when I went to Holland and met my future wife, which is now my wife.
00:12:40 ►
And then from that point, I met this guy who lives up in Canada who is sovereign.
00:12:44 ►
And then from that point, I met this guy who lives up in Canada who is sovereign.
00:13:07 ►
He was basically – he gave back his driver’s license, all of his documentation that had his name in all capital letters, showing that he was basically like a corporation underneath a larger corporation of Canada, which is actually underneath a larger corporation that is the United States, strangely, at least when you look on the books.
00:13:10 ►
So I interviewed this guy.
00:13:13 ►
I went up to his place in northern Canada, in Alberta, actually,
00:13:16 ►
and he has an earthship.
00:13:17 ►
He quit his job.
00:13:20 ►
He moved off onto this piece of property, sold off his house, and he and his family built their home together.
00:13:23 ►
And now they’re raising all their own food, treating all their own water, basically completely self-sufficient. All their
00:13:30 ►
own energy comes from the solar panels on the roof. And he was walking the walk. So that was
00:13:36 ►
when I decided I want to stop giving so much of my opinion and my voice. And I want to highlight
00:13:41 ►
somebody who’s actually doing it and living it. So I did that,
00:13:45 ►
that really reached a niche market. And then shortly thereafter, David Icke was putting on this,
00:13:50 ►
the People’s Voice TV as a TV network. And he asked if I would want to add a show to it. So I
00:13:57 ►
started making 30 minute episodes on this show called Waking Infinity, which we just found out
00:14:02 ►
you’ve seen episode four of yes soon everyone uh here you’ll
00:14:06 ►
be able to hear sergey baronov who is a really fascinating character and some of my research
00:14:11 ►
was being able to watch this excellent episode that you put together about him that uh all of
00:14:17 ►
us will be able to hear now yeah yeah it was it was very um it was very nice to meet sergey it
00:14:23 ►
just came up out of the blue when I was down in Peru,
00:14:26 ►
down in the Sacred Valley around Pisac. And yeah, we did, he did a ceremony for us with
00:14:35 ►
Wachuma, completely kicked my ass. But it was great. And Sergei is a great guy.
00:14:42 ►
But yeah, so that was the final episode of Waking Infinity which is all on Gaia everything I’ve done is is on Gaia and everything except Waking Infinity my
00:14:50 ►
three full-length films are all free on YouTube as well so um so that’s that’s the whole story of
00:14:56 ►
the the stuff that I’ve made up till now and then that leads me to basically that’s what got me my production gig at Gaia.
00:15:11 ►
And so the first thing that they offered me was a project on psychedelics.
00:15:17 ►
So therein lies this conversation we’re having right now is this show that we’re putting on called Psychedelica. 30-minute episodes will be an ongoing series all about psychedelics, all the relevant topics around it,
00:15:28 ►
the history of it, the future of it.
00:15:32 ►
And right now we just handed in episode one,
00:15:34 ►
and the first season has already been filmed.
00:15:36 ►
A really good guest that we had on there,
00:15:41 ►
and we’re looking at driving it forward into the future.
00:15:43 ►
It’s a big booming topic for sure.
00:15:45 ►
And do you have any favorite episodes you’re really looking forward to produce for this first season? Yeah, it’s hard to pick a
00:15:50 ►
favorite. The final episode, there’s 13 episodes in a season. So the final episode is called
00:15:57 ►
Psychedelic Society. And that’s really a futuristic look at, let’s say, if some of the stereotypes or the stigmas of psychedelics
00:16:06 ►
were to quell a little bit and people were not to look at them as such a ridiculously hot topic,
00:16:13 ►
but kind of just put it into perspective. There’s more dangerous stuff, you know,
00:16:17 ►
that you’ll find on the counter at Walgreens, you know. And so psychedelics, the future of them, what we’re looking at is, let’s say if we were to responsibly integrate them into society, what would society look like?
00:16:33 ►
How would health care change if they adopted some of the same tenets like set and setting?
00:16:39 ►
And our mutual friend Dan McQueen likes to add skill at the end of there.
00:16:44 ►
So what would health care look like in that respect?
00:16:47 ►
What would architecture look like?
00:16:49 ►
What would business and economy start looking like?
00:16:52 ►
How would ecological movement start really stepping up?
00:16:56 ►
Because a lot of the guests that I’ve gotten for this show say that that’s one of the things that they, if they had to put their opinion on why are psychedelics here, like if they are communicating, what is the common denominator that it seems to be communicating?
00:17:11 ►
And a lot of them were answering, well, it seems like there’s some social connective property that seems to happen.
00:17:18 ►
There’s this social quality of it and also ecological.
00:17:21 ►
There’s this greater understanding that we are a part of this great web of life.
00:17:26 ►
We’re not just some isolated entity among other isolated entities,
00:17:30 ►
and the connection is all in our head.
00:17:33 ►
Is that what it felt like for you as you first started exploring psychedelics?
00:17:37 ►
Yeah, psychedelics, I got into it when I was like 14.
00:17:42 ►
So that was actually, it was great.
00:17:44 ►
It was very eye-opening, and it was what kept me off the narcotics, really.
00:17:49 ►
It’s what kept me out of coke and heroin, because that was really, really prevalent in my high school.
00:17:55 ►
So yeah, psychedelics for me, what I started noticing was,
00:18:00 ►
as soon as I took mushrooms for the first time at the age of 14,
00:18:04 ►
I realized there was this
00:18:05 ►
expansive quality to it. It opened me up to the fact that there’s more out there. And I wasn’t
00:18:11 ►
eloquent enough to be able to verbalize what it was that I was experiencing. But I knew,
00:18:16 ►
because I tried cocaine, I tried some other things, I tried pills, none of them really did
00:18:21 ►
anything for me that ever made me feel like oh this is my jam
00:18:25 ►
you know but psychedelics it totally did and I also respected it because for me there’s just
00:18:31 ►
no way to do it recreationally consistently it was recreational at that time but I couldn’t do
00:18:37 ►
it consistently a I couldn’t get my hands on it and b it was just there’s too much for me to
00:18:42 ►
process for me to want to go back and do it the very next day and then the very next day.
00:18:46 ►
So for me, it was this kind of quality that allowed me to appreciate music in a different way, listen to lyrics in a different way, look at my hands in a different way.
00:18:58 ►
You know, all these things that seem to consistently happen.
00:19:02 ►
And for me, the only thing that’s evolved is how I apply it. So now I’m
00:19:07 ►
really into movement, whether that be acroyoga or gymnastics or climbing trees or rock jumping or
00:19:15 ►
just crawling around playing with my daughter. I’m into very diverse types of movement and using my
00:19:20 ►
body as an instrument and a clear channel. And so you’ll hear a lot of things like biohacking or human potential
00:19:28 ►
and human optimization around that kind of.
00:19:30 ►
And I don’t put those words to it necessarily.
00:19:33 ►
I’m just exploring the grace of the body and the beauty of being alive
00:19:38 ►
and engaging with the world and engaging with my body.
00:19:42 ►
And psychedelics seem to be this really beautiful agent that that
00:19:48 ►
opens it up and causes for deep moments of reflection. I do love moving on moving on
00:19:55 ►
psychedelics, but I also love being in my center and you know, kind of just reflecting and
00:20:01 ►
processing the past five, six months or whatever it might be.
00:20:09 ►
So what it seems to do is it’s an integrative thing.
00:20:11 ►
And we interviewed this guy, Michael Winkleman.
00:20:15 ►
He’s in Brazil, but he was on Neurons to Nirvana, a very well-spoken dude.
00:20:18 ►
And he calls them psychointegrators. And he actually talks about how there’s the triune brain.
00:20:22 ►
You’ll have the primal reptilian and the mammalian,
00:20:25 ►
and then you have the neocortex.
00:20:28 ►
And what he says that happens is under the influence of psychedelics,
00:20:33 ►
you get this loop that goes from the brainstem all the way to the neocortex
00:20:36 ►
and back down.
00:20:38 ►
And the communication that starts happening causes for integration
00:20:42 ►
in a way that doesn’t normally happen in our default
00:20:45 ►
mode. So he calls them psycho integrators. And I realized that that was already that was just a
00:20:51 ►
better name than what I was already experiencing. Because whatever I’m into, whatever catches my
00:20:56 ►
creativity and my inspiration, this integrates it and shows me that all of that is a sign or
00:21:02 ►
signal towards my greater purpose.
00:21:07 ►
And I can’t put words around whatever my greater purpose is.
00:21:11 ►
I just know when I’m riding that wave and I know when I fall off the board.
00:21:16 ►
And so that’s the coolest thing that psychedelics has done for me is it’s allowed for me to understand how to truly integrate these things that I’ll read in books or watch in a documentary
00:21:21 ►
or hear or do and feel and, you know, whether it be all the way from lovemaking to cooking
00:21:27 ►
to just taking a brisk walk to very intense mental work
00:21:33 ►
that I do at work now to the intense movement that I do,
00:21:37 ►
integrating it and showing that there’s many different facets
00:21:40 ►
to me and who I am that are all working together.
00:21:44 ►
There’s just an ebb and flow between the intense and the less intense and the this and the that.
00:21:49 ►
And these psychedelics really helped me integrate that into processing it all into an actual purpose and a trajectory for me.
00:21:58 ►
Wow.
00:21:59 ►
And hearing about that triune brain, it sounds so much like what the Christian mystics think about the priestess card in the tarot.
00:22:07 ►
That’s part of what that card is there for us to learn from is that integration process of these three selves,
00:22:14 ►
at least three that we have floating around inside ourselves.
00:22:18 ►
That’s interesting.
00:22:18 ►
I actually never heard that, but I’m super into the tarot.
00:22:22 ►
The hanged man card has always caught me. And actually,
00:22:25 ►
the last album of my band, Hyrosonic, we did an album called Consciousness, Fame, God, Money,
00:22:31 ►
Power. And there’s a modern version of the hanged man right on the front of it. Because I always
00:22:36 ►
liked it. And it kind of also ties back into the psychedelics thing. The hanged man, for me,
00:22:41 ►
is always represented. So he’s hanging upside down. He’s seeing the world exactly opposite.
00:22:46 ►
All the change in his pocket falls away to the earth.
00:22:49 ►
So the value that he used to place on things in the world is no longer there.
00:22:54 ►
He’s getting a fresh new look.
00:22:56 ►
And that’s all he can do.
00:22:57 ►
He’s suspended there.
00:22:58 ►
He’s, in a sense, kind of paralyzed in a moment where he can only just view the world.
00:23:03 ►
He or she can only just view the world in new ways, with new eyes.
00:23:08 ►
And psychedelics seem to do just that.
00:23:09 ►
They allow you to see things in a new way.
00:23:12 ►
And under that influence, you’re kind of suspended there,
00:23:15 ►
unless you take something to kind of lessen the intensity of it.
00:23:21 ►
I think salt can do that for ayahuasca, maybe, can lower the intensity of it. I know salt can do that for ayahuasca, maybe can lower the intensity of it. I
00:23:27 ►
know CBD can do that as well. It can kind of have that effect. But the whole, back to the whole
00:23:34 ►
tarot card, the hanged man, that’s something, I guess that was a part, the reason why I really
00:23:39 ►
felt that that was important for me is because, whether it’s because I’m a Capricorn or just because my
00:23:45 ►
dad was in the military or whatever it might be, I’m really into my patterns, you know, where
00:23:50 ►
I can get into a groove and into a pattern. That’s where I get stuff done. I materialize all of my
00:23:57 ►
dreams very easily. But I’m also I can get very rigid and kind of stuck in my own patterns and
00:24:02 ►
psychedelics and also that card,
00:24:09 ►
they help remind me that all these are decisions and these patterns are,
00:24:12 ►
they’re still there and they’re deeply ingrained,
00:24:15 ►
but they’re deeply ingrained because I keep reinforcing them.
00:24:18 ►
So psychedelics, they definitely broaden it and they’ve given me that kind of vision to see that I can be whatever.
00:24:32 ►
I am, you know, as a clear vessel, I can respond to life and respond to my loved ones and, you know, and others in any way that I choose.
00:24:36 ►
And the way that I typically choose, I’m not imprisoned by how I’ve reacted in the past.
00:24:42 ►
So that to me, that’s been the most interesting thing
00:24:46 ►
about the psychedelics
00:24:46 ►
and that card specifically
00:24:48 ►
is how it opens up new ways
00:24:50 ►
of looking at the world.
00:24:51 ►
Never a bad thing to be upside down
00:24:53 ►
for a little while.
00:24:54 ►
Touche.
00:24:55 ►
It’s good for the back.
00:24:57 ►
And a question,
00:24:59 ►
a personal curiosity,
00:25:02 ►
as a new father
00:25:03 ►
and a psychedelic parent and as someone who started
00:25:08 ►
psychedelics at 14 without you know without too much damage do you have any thoughts yet about
00:25:14 ►
what it’s going to be like as your little girl grows older and gets curious about these these
00:25:18 ►
things yeah so uh barbara my wife and i have talked about this quite a bit. In the womb, Onolora had ayahuasca three times.
00:25:28 ►
Now, you know, for one, that’s, if you go down into South America, that’s not a weird thing.
00:25:35 ►
That’s actually a very common thing.
00:25:37 ►
But she also, just to be safe, would only take a very little bit.
00:25:43 ►
And also, after she was born,
00:25:47 ►
dipping the pinky finger in some ayahuasca and rubbing it on her gums.
00:25:49 ►
So Ana Laura’s had probably more ayahuasca
00:25:53 ►
than most people,
00:25:55 ►
four or five times in very small doses.
00:25:59 ►
But with that being said,
00:26:00 ►
we’ve talked about this.
00:26:01 ►
As she grows older,
00:26:04 ►
how are we going to introduce her to that?
00:26:06 ►
And, well, definitely there’s no shame in it.
00:26:10 ►
So that’s the first thing is she’s going to know that it’s an integral part of our lives because there’s no shame.
00:26:16 ►
It’s a very spiritual, sacred thing that we hold in our lives.
00:26:19 ►
Because ayahuasca may have saved my life as well as Barbara’s life in many ways, opened us up in very many ways.
00:26:28 ►
So that’s something that Anilora will know about us.
00:26:31 ►
She will know that it’s not just taking the substance either.
00:26:35 ►
It’s the way that we do it together.
00:26:37 ►
It’s the sacred way.
00:26:39 ►
It’s the bringing together of people, the intention behind it.
00:26:47 ►
together of people, the intention behind it. So whether it be cannabis, ayahuasca, psilocybin,
00:26:57 ►
DMT down the road, you know, in a very small and very responsible way at a point in time where we feel it’s responsible enough, not just with just the substances themselves, but also we’re very aware of the fact that we have a community
00:27:07 ►
around us and the community, we try and respect the fact that they have different ways of looking
00:27:13 ►
at it and also respect the fact that, you know, if we’re irresponsible with how open we are about it
00:27:18 ►
and some people don’t like that, there is this thing called child protective services and
00:27:25 ►
social services or whatever it might be so we’re very aware of that but mainly
00:27:30 ►
for for honor Laura’s opening and awakening and coming to age she’s gonna
00:27:37 ►
know about it and we’re gonna demystify all of the the propaganda and all the
00:27:41 ►
stigmas that are out there about psychedelics. But we’re also, as we were talking about beforehand, of course, as with anything,
00:27:48 ►
as with drinking water, there are harms if you overdo it.
00:27:52 ►
So with that, we’re going to wait until we know that she is able to handle it.
00:27:58 ►
And then just a very little bit will allow for a safe space.
00:28:03 ►
That may not be until she’s 16, 18, 20, whatever. We’re
00:28:07 ►
going to do more research about that. So it’s down the line. She’s only two now. But as being
00:28:15 ►
a psychedelic parent, yes, we’ve talked about that and we want that to be a very special part
00:28:21 ►
of her life and something that she doesn’t have skewed understanding of.
00:28:27 ►
Something that Jonathan Thompson of Psychedelic Parenting recently said to me
00:28:32 ►
helped me a lot. He said with his children, he’s taking advice from Alison Gray. And her idea was
00:28:40 ►
that you give kids the information they ask for, but you don’t give any more.
00:28:45 ►
And he interpreted that as saying,
00:28:47 ►
if they ask the question, they’re ready to know the answer,
00:28:50 ►
but you don’t need to keep going
00:28:51 ►
and explain more than they ask for.
00:28:54 ►
And that’s true for many adult things,
00:28:55 ►
from sexuality to violence and the darkness of the world
00:29:00 ►
and to drugs as well.
00:29:02 ►
And I thought that was a really nice way
00:29:03 ►
of really trusting your child and giving them just enough. Not too much, but enough. That’s a really good point.
00:29:09 ►
I’m glad you bring that up. Um, that’s, that’s really good food for thought. Um, that’s true.
00:29:14 ►
When a question comes about, it’s, it’s, it means that they’re ready to hear an answer. And, you
00:29:20 ►
know, a lot of the times I realized that she’s so much, even at two years old, she’s so much more intelligent than I give her credit for.
00:29:27 ►
Like she gets when I’m in a mood or when something’s off, she gets it.
00:29:32 ►
And she’ll come up and even tug on your clothes and look you in the eyes and kind of, in a sense, call you on it.
00:29:38 ►
And, you know, in a very sweet, loving two-year-old way, she’ll call you on it.
00:29:42 ►
So that’s a really good way to think about it. But also the
00:29:46 ►
no more than is necessary, like answer the question, don’t answer every question.
00:29:52 ►
Because there’s got to be some kind of, you know, their intuitive spark that causes them to ask a
00:29:59 ►
question. They’re looking for something. And I also noticed that words are very powerful,
00:30:04 ►
especially when it
00:30:05 ►
comes to kids you know even a small sentence they can mull it over for a long time I remember
00:30:10 ►
little little bits of wisdom that my parents gave me when I was younger real young that I didn’t
00:30:16 ►
actually unfold or unpack until 20 30 years later something like that and so it still stuck around
00:30:23 ►
but it was like a seed that is just,
00:30:25 ►
you know, hadn’t been fed or watered. But eventually when I was ready, it just popped
00:30:31 ►
back into my mind, sometimes even in a dream, and then would come up and I would start mulling it
00:30:37 ►
over, almost like a little parable in the Tao Te Ching or something that you just go over and over.
00:30:42 ►
And then eventually you’re like, ah, the point of it is not to be in this realm of thinking
00:30:48 ►
and trying to fit it together in that way, but to open it up.
00:30:51 ►
That’s what I’ve always liked about questions.
00:30:53 ►
Quest. You’re questing for knowledge.
00:30:56 ►
So it sends you on this quest.
00:30:58 ►
And in that, whenever we’re on a quest for something,
00:31:02 ►
our attention is seeking and calling in information so we can use that primal intelligence to piece it together in our knowing.
00:31:10 ►
Because there’s some kind of intelligence that we have that just knows when it hears the thing it needs to hear to then put the pieces together and move forward from that point.
00:31:20 ►
And as a movement trainer, I also noticed that you’ll be in one tree about to jump into another tree, grab another branch, and you can overanalyze it all you want.
00:31:31 ►
But if there’s a lion chasing you or like a big angry gorilla chasing you, you’d make that jump.
00:31:36 ►
Your body would know exactly how to do it.
00:31:38 ►
You wouldn’t have to think about it at all.
00:31:51 ►
That’s the intelligence that I think that once you quest after knowledge and you hear a bit of information or you feel it or you piece it together somehow in the right way, you know it.
00:31:53 ►
There’s no question about it. That’s another thing about psychedelics and parenting, which is a psychedelic trip on its own that I love.
00:32:00 ►
All the old heads have been telling me, son, now the real trip begins.
00:32:05 ►
Yeah.
00:32:06 ►
Which is nice.
00:32:08 ►
So for your quest with Psychedelica, what are the aspects of this that you’re most excited to delve into?
00:32:15 ►
And maybe if there’s any more esoteric sources you might be looking for.
00:32:18 ►
I know we have a lot of listeners with a lot of intriguing, very individualistic angles on this stuff.
00:32:24 ►
And maybe there might be someone
00:32:25 ►
out there might want to reach out to you. Yeah, well, so with the show Psychedelica,
00:32:30 ►
you know, the first season has a ton of a ton of really good episodes. Like we start off with just
00:32:35 ►
the story, psychedelic story, and then set setting and skill, and then shamanic roots,
00:32:41 ►
and then ayahuasca, cannabis, DMilocybin cacti medicine then the shadow side
00:32:48 ►
then the current climate which is uh basically the past hundred years in psychedelics then
00:32:53 ►
therapeutic application then reintegration after peak experience how do you come home fully how do
00:32:59 ►
you go back to a land where all of your patterns and those things are integrated there, you know, calling
00:33:05 ►
upon your old self when you want this new self to emerge, and then psychedelic society.
00:33:11 ►
So all these types of topics, I sat down with a guy, Dan McQueen, which we both know from
00:33:17 ►
medicinal mindfulness, as well as Kimba Arum. She does really, really good didgeridoo and other great music.
00:33:26 ►
She’s done all the Psychedelic Shine events.
00:33:28 ►
She’ll do music before Psychedelic Shine events.
00:33:31 ►
And we sat down and we were really just talking about, you know,
00:33:35 ►
what’s going to make this a relevant show is talking to the communities as much as possible
00:33:40 ►
and seeing what are the relevant topics that are coming to us.
00:33:43 ►
Because we can direct it if we want. We can say, oh, this is what we think people will want to hear. But
00:33:49 ►
really, we want to hear from the people to school us, to tell us like, what is nobody talking about
00:33:56 ►
that needs to be talked about? What’s very important about harm reduction that most people
00:34:00 ►
aren’t talking about? We briefly touched upon this. But what are the topics that need to be touched upon
00:34:06 ►
that nobody else is touching,
00:34:07 ►
especially in the media realm?
00:34:09 ►
Because I think Vice has,
00:34:13 ►
they kind of touch upon some psychedelics in their show.
00:34:18 ►
There must be, it’s blowing up here and there.
00:34:20 ►
My friends at Collective Evolution,
00:34:22 ►
they’re touching base on that.
00:34:24 ►
And it’s a growing field that. And it’s a growing
00:34:25 ►
field. But as it’s a growing field, the best thing to do is show a nice, well-rounded
00:34:31 ►
kind of exposure to the topic. What are the relevant topics? What are the dangers? What are
00:34:39 ►
the things that we could do to make sure that we’re using them responsibly? What’s the most
00:34:44 ►
optimal way to use it to really reach into all the other parts of our lives?
00:34:49 ►
So I guess what we’re looking for, you know, if I were to distill it down,
00:34:53 ►
is we’re looking for a dialogue with the community.
00:34:55 ►
So my intention is once we get this website up, because we will have,
00:34:59 ►
I think it’s psychedelica.com, maybe psychedelica.net, I’m not sure.
00:35:04 ►
But once we get the website up and running,
00:35:06 ►
we want there to be a platform for the entire community, you know, all inclusive to give their
00:35:13 ►
comments and their feedback on the show. You can do that on Gaia on the comments there as well,
00:35:18 ►
right on each episode, whatever your comments might be, but also show us what we’re missing,
00:35:24 ►
you know, what we’re lacking, what are the topics that we’re not hitting. And if we tried to hit it, but we missed,
00:35:30 ►
show us how to hit that, that nail, you know, right on the head. So it’s mainly about the
00:35:37 ►
connection and networking, which to me is that’s the future of everything online and the future of,
00:35:42 ►
you know, connecting with your community. It’s really bringing that integration back.
00:35:46 ►
So we want to hear from as many people as possible.
00:35:49 ►
What do you think is the most relevant thing we could be talking about?
00:35:52 ►
That sounds excellent.
00:35:54 ►
I encourage everybody to check out this moving project.
00:35:59 ►
It sounds really exciting, a place that the community will get to share more.
00:36:03 ►
So I think I might leave you with the last question, the castle in the sky.
00:36:08 ►
If we had a major film studio with huge budgets and a big distribution network,
00:36:15 ►
and they came to you and said, we want to fund your next big project,
00:36:19 ►
what would you want to do the most with that kind of scope?
00:36:23 ►
So this is any any topic all right we got it the
00:36:27 ►
psychedelic salon 2.0 has a couple million invisible dollars for you to do whatever project
00:36:32 ►
you want to do well for me um i already know what this is and it was part of the interview that
00:36:40 ►
brought me to gaia so it started off with my movement training and then also Wim
00:36:45 ►
Hoff breathing, breath training, which I’ve met and interviewed him. Also organizing and focusing
00:36:53 ►
the mind. There’s a guy named David Allen who has this book called Getting Things Done, a stress-free
00:36:57 ►
guide to productivity. Super, super good stuff. But it’s basically just the optimization of the human potential.
00:37:11 ►
So I’ll start with David Allen, whereas he talks about the mind as a dojo. And so he has this whole outer system of lists of someday maybe I want to do these things. So I’ll list it.
00:37:20 ►
Having a calendar for things that are time specific having a next action like a project
00:37:25 ►
list of all the projects that we currently have and then next actions because there’s only one
00:37:29 ►
next action on all our projects so it’s this whole outer system that we can see with our eyes it’s
00:37:35 ►
outside of our head so we can refer to that but when we’re done referring to that and once we get
00:37:40 ►
to the point where we trust this outer system the mind can actually relax because you know that it will keep you in line.
00:37:47 ►
But only one thing should your mind be focusing on at any given time, like a dojo.
00:37:52 ►
So for me, that’s a part of human optimization, but also breathing and posture.
00:37:58 ►
So you hear a lot about, you know, breathe uninhibitedly, all the spiritual practices. But there’s something about posture, like the standard kyphosis,
00:38:05 ►
which is the slouching, you know, in your chest,
00:38:08 ►
kind of just caving in and sitting on top of your organs.
00:38:12 ►
That cuts off 30% of your oxygen consumption.
00:38:15 ►
So the more you actually sit or stand with proper posture,
00:38:18 ►
the more you can breathe uninhibitedly,
00:38:20 ►
which connects with your nervous system
00:38:22 ►
and actually allows for an open channel in the entire body.
00:38:26 ►
And then with movement training through the woods and very dynamic, lush types of movement,
00:38:30 ►
you’re sending information from nature through your ankle and your wrists and all-inclusive and integrative of optimizing our human potential towards anything.
00:38:50 ►
No matter what we want to use that for, you’re creating your body and your mind as a clear channel to be able to use in those higher realms like art and the creative realms, the higher languages like music, which is one of my favorite things in the world.
00:39:06 ►
So what’s the best way to move forward with this in the world? And that’s the younger generations.
00:39:12 ►
After I’ve made conspiracy documentaries, people were like, how long is it going to take for people
00:39:17 ►
to wake up? And my answer is always the same. One generation. That’s it. If we can reach the
00:39:22 ►
younger generations in the right way, but what is the right way?
00:39:26 ►
So that’s the dialogue.
00:39:27 ►
Again, I don’t assume that I have the answer, but opening that dialogue and getting people putting their attention in that realm consistently, new topics, constantly bringing that up.
00:39:37 ►
What is a better educational system? better way to rear our children into the future who will eventually become the leaders that are
00:39:46 ►
taking the reins of this boat, you know, like steering the yoke of this boat into the future.
00:39:51 ►
Are we going to fall off the edge of the earth or, you know, what are we?
00:39:55 ►
Yeah, hopefully into that great abyss. But that’s what it is. For me, it’s an educational system,
00:40:01 ►
but that’s too small of a way to say it. It’s reaching
00:40:05 ►
the younger people, educating them in, you know, we have hundreds of thousands of years of standing
00:40:12 ►
upright and moving through nature. And now 10, 12 hours a day, we’re sitting constantly. Evolution
00:40:18 ►
didn’t prepare us for that, nor did it prepare us for the diets that we have today. But we can make
00:40:23 ►
it through it, but the conversation needs to be had. So that’s my answer. The long story short, what would that project be?
00:40:31 ►
It would be human optimization in all of its glory, which has to do physical, has to do mental,
00:40:36 ►
emotional, and spiritual. So yoking the wisdom of the elders to the energy of the youth. Yes,
00:40:42 ►
moving forward. Well, Ben, this has been a wonderful conversation,
00:40:46 ►
and I encourage everyone to stay in touch
00:40:49 ►
and to follow this wonderful project.
00:40:51 ►
I’m looking forward to see where it’s going.
00:40:53 ►
Yeah, I’ll just quick throw a plug out there.
00:40:55 ►
My website is talismanicidols.net,
00:40:58 ►
and I’ll spell that out real quick
00:41:00 ►
because most people are like, what?
00:41:02 ►
It’s T-A-L-I-S-M-A-N-I-C-I-D-O-L-S.net. And I’m
00:41:09 ►
pretty sure you’ll have show notes or something. We’ll put everything in the episode notes and
00:41:12 ►
any other stuff that you feel like might be good for people to share. Sweet. Thank you so much for
00:41:16 ►
this opportunity, Lex. Thank you, Ben. Until next time. Yes. Thanks for listening to the sacralic salon 2.0 to help us out you can leave a review or rating
00:41:33 ►
on your favorite podcast service or share an episode with a friend it really does make a
00:41:38 ►
difference and to follow along with everything else we’re working on check out patreon.com
00:41:45 ►
slash non-nonsense