Latest / The Observatory | Discovery of Consciousness & Awareness / Decriminalize Nature | Dr. Larry Norris on Plant Medicine, Entheogens, Ayahuasca & the Right to Relationship with Nature

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Decriminalize Nature | Dr. Larry Norris on Plant Medicine, Entheogens, Ayahuasca & the Right to Relationship with Nature · The Observatory | Discovery of Consciousness & Awareness

0:03
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Observatory Podcast.
0:05
Speaker 2: With your hosts Scott and larray Wright.
0:08
Speaker 3: Join us each week as we explore living life from
0:11
Speaker 3: the inside out. Welcome to the Observatory Podcast. Today we
0:20
Speaker 3: have with us as our guest doctor Larry Norris. He's
0:23
Speaker 3: the co founder of Decriminalized Nature. Join us as we
0:26
Speaker 3: have a wide open discussion about bringing a bridge between
0:31
Speaker 3: the science and the spiritual. It's a great conversation. Hope
0:36
Speaker 3: you enjoy it. We welcome you here and we can't
0:40
Speaker 3: wait to talk to you. Ray and I have been
0:42
Speaker 3: excited about this. We don't know too much about it,
0:44
Speaker 3: but we are looking forward to getting to know much
0:46
Speaker 3: more about it.
0:47
Speaker 2: Yes, this is a topic that we have a lot
0:49
Speaker 2: of interest in. So welcome doctor Norris.
0:51
Speaker 4: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. It's
0:52
Speaker 4: so pleasure to be here.
0:54
Speaker 3: So Decriminalized Nature, I mean, people are going to be
0:57
Speaker 3: coming on here and saying, well, why is nature criminalized?
1:00
Speaker 1: You know, what is this all about?
1:02
Speaker 3: And as we were introduced to you from some friends
1:05
Speaker 3: of ours that referred us to talk to you, we
1:10
Speaker 3: could feel the the alignment that we had with some
1:13
Speaker 3: of the experiences that we've had in our lives. And
1:15
Speaker 3: other friends and things like that. So tell us what
1:18
Speaker 3: is the criminalize nature?
1:20
Speaker 4: Yeah? Sure so, And I think you know you you
1:23
Speaker 4: hit it on the nose with your question, which is
1:26
Speaker 4: exactly the question we wanted to ask. Why is nature
1:29
Speaker 4: against them? Why is it against the law to grow
1:31
Speaker 4: a question? Why is it against a lot of growing mushroom?
1:34
Speaker 4: Why is it against a lot to put that mushroom?
1:36
Speaker 4: You can, you can need as many poisonous mushrooms as
1:37
Speaker 4: you want, no one to interest you. Yeah, but for
1:40
Speaker 4: some reason, these particular mushrooms, there's something different about them.
1:42
Speaker 4: And so that's the question we wanted to ask as
1:45
Speaker 4: well as we start out our organization, why is nature
1:47
Speaker 4: against them? And and that's how we sort of came
1:50
Speaker 4: to our name. Instead of just saying, you know, yeah,
1:53
Speaker 4: we're going to be whatever organization, we really wanted people
1:55
Speaker 4: to be thinking that as they came forward, because nature
1:58
Speaker 4: is less threatened, you know than other these other terms,
2:02
Speaker 4: you know, talking about something that you know, always been
2:04
Speaker 4: used with our ancestors across the planet. You know, all
2:07
Speaker 4: of our ancestors have worked with plants at some point
2:10
Speaker 4: back centric millennia, you know, I mean my ancestor is
2:14
Speaker 4: from Finland, and so there's a lot of you know,
2:17
Speaker 4: not just with with sort of amineum mushrooms, but also
2:19
Speaker 4: with working with sauna and steam bats and putting like
2:22
Speaker 4: herbs like lavender on the stones and using the water
2:25
Speaker 4: in the bath to like you know, sort of get
2:27
Speaker 4: that roomotherrapy going. So people have been working with nature
2:29
Speaker 4: and finding out these lining properties of nature for a
2:31
Speaker 4: really long time, but we're now in a sort of
2:34
Speaker 4: this contemporary culture. We're so removed from nature that would
2:36
Speaker 4: think we have to sort of rely upon somebody else
2:38
Speaker 4: to provide us what grows naturally out of the ground.
2:41
Speaker 4: And so there's another conversation that we had there about
2:43
Speaker 4: sort of certain powers and dynamics that are happening that
2:47
Speaker 4: sort of are removing us from our direct access from
2:49
Speaker 4: our self agency to feel, you know, to be relied
2:52
Speaker 4: upon a pharmaceutical company or whatever else. But we really
2:54
Speaker 4: want saying, hey, you know, these things brow to the ground.
2:56
Speaker 4: Let's learn more about nature. You know the fact that
2:58
Speaker 4: you know, if you're even in the Bay Area, there's
3:00
Speaker 4: that we just don't even know to have these you know,
3:02
Speaker 4: substances in them. The epigenic or psychedoelic sort of compounds
3:05
Speaker 4: inside of them, because you know, there's a term sort
3:08
Speaker 4: of plant witness. We walk around we just see green
3:10
Speaker 4: things with lead without going like, oh wow, this could
3:13
Speaker 4: be really helpful. This is a sacred plan. So this
3:15
Speaker 4: was used a really long time for all these different traditions.
3:17
Speaker 4: So I get back to your point. You know, that's
3:20
Speaker 4: the question we asked, why is nature criminalized? And so
3:23
Speaker 4: so so we came together in twenty nineteen basically to
3:28
Speaker 4: solve that problem.
3:29
Speaker 2: And Larry, you're that problem. You're talking about your partner
3:32
Speaker 2: Carlos when you said we came together, right, Yes, that's.
3:36
Speaker 4: A group of Actually there's about five of us or
3:40
Speaker 4: maybe five to ten that came together and the meeting.
3:43
Speaker 4: Carlos Plazola is the chair of Decriminalized Nature. He's been
3:47
Speaker 4: very you know, working on this a lot with myself
3:50
Speaker 4: and many others. But we had a group come together,
3:53
Speaker 4: and I'll speak to this a little bit and then
3:54
Speaker 4: I'll kind of give you little less sort of the
3:56
Speaker 4: train of how I got to there. We all came
3:58
Speaker 4: together and basically late twenty eighteen to discuss building like
4:04
Speaker 4: a Touches community, a healing center, a place for people
4:06
Speaker 4: to come together. But obviously, you know, most of us
4:09
Speaker 4: that were there were interested in these plant and mushroom medicines,
4:13
Speaker 4: but because of the criminality, we were talking about other things,
4:15
Speaker 4: you know, yoga, breath work, you know, growing things we
4:18
Speaker 4: sort of spoke to a little bit earlier, and how
4:20
Speaker 4: do we come together and bring a community together to
4:22
Speaker 4: really think about these things and these ideas and utilize
4:25
Speaker 4: these other ways of knowing, these alternative sort of cultured
4:29
Speaker 4: states of consciousness to help us with feelings. In that conversation,
4:33
Speaker 4: you know, there was nurse practitioners there, overbottenists, there were
4:36
Speaker 4: you know, business people, there were doctors, there are all
4:38
Speaker 4: these other people that all just kind of came to
4:39
Speaker 4: the room to talk about the Feeling Center, and we
4:41
Speaker 4: started talking about, well, you know, this thing's happening in Denver,
4:44
Speaker 4: the thing's happening in Oregon. Denver was going to be
4:48
Speaker 4: voting for decriminalizing psilocybin mushrooms or mushroom containing pslocybin and
4:53
Speaker 4: organ was going to go towards more of a legalization fidel.
4:55
Speaker 4: So that had that sort of started a conversation, what's
4:57
Speaker 4: the difference between the decriminalization and legalization and what would
5:00
Speaker 4: we want to do. Could we do something here locally?
5:02
Speaker 4: I mean, this is a San Francisco area, whi is
5:05
Speaker 4: Oregon and Denver, Colorado ahead of a center. So there's
5:08
Speaker 4: all these at conversations and we're like, hey, you know what,
5:11
Speaker 4: not only are we thinking that we can do this here?
5:14
Speaker 4: And Carlos obviously helped because we did a lot of
5:16
Speaker 4: work with the Hope and City compt a long time ago,
5:18
Speaker 4: so we knew kind of the process of how that works.
5:22
Speaker 4: But we're like, we can also bring everyone together under
5:24
Speaker 4: this bigger umbrella of nature. We would have to just
5:27
Speaker 4: focus on mushrooms. We have an hiahuasca community here, we
5:30
Speaker 4: have a cactus community here, we have a DMP community here,
5:32
Speaker 4: we have any biginning community here, the local community here,
5:36
Speaker 4: all these the mushroom community here. So let's bring everyone
5:38
Speaker 4: together and have this much bigger conversation. What is our
5:41
Speaker 4: relationship with nature? What is our relationship with our ancestors,
5:44
Speaker 4: What is our relationship with personal feeling, personal scriptural growth,
5:47
Speaker 4: these different types of things. So that sort of started
5:50
Speaker 4: the conversation, and once that conversation got going, you know,
5:53
Speaker 4: in January really put in a lot of effort brought
5:56
Speaker 4: up the sort of this resolution city level resolution, proposed
6:00
Speaker 4: it to open a city council, and in about six
6:02
Speaker 4: months we ended up passing unanimously open to pass the
6:06
Speaker 4: resolution to decriminalize, which on a city level, which is
6:10
Speaker 4: basically a deprioritization and a defunding because the city can't
6:14
Speaker 4: technically decriminalize because that would be in conflict with state law.
6:17
Speaker 4: So what they do is sort of this loophole is
6:19
Speaker 4: the city does have the power to have the purse
6:22
Speaker 4: screens basically, so it's saying, hey, you know what, we
6:24
Speaker 4: have these other things to do. We don't want to
6:26
Speaker 4: spend any time and resources on restling people for growing
6:29
Speaker 4: mushrooms or healing themselves that type of thing. So that's
6:31
Speaker 4: kind of the approach that we work with. A deprioritization
6:34
Speaker 4: of meaning you know, somebody JAYWALKINGTT would probably get a
6:37
Speaker 4: ticket for somebody with mushrooms, and then also that there's
6:40
Speaker 4: no funding for I can kind of tickets or resting
6:43
Speaker 4: people the things. So that's kind of the process. Now,
6:46
Speaker 4: Now my own story is, you know, I've been kind
6:47
Speaker 4: of working on this a long time. That's how I
6:49
Speaker 4: made it to the room with the variet of other people.
6:51
Speaker 4: I went there as a member or an executive director
6:54
Speaker 4: of nonprofit learning out here called Enphogenic Research Integration Education.
6:59
Speaker 4: This is a educational and integration group that we started
7:04
Speaker 4: at a California instead of intical studies as a student group.
7:07
Speaker 4: And we're realizing, like, you know, hey, there are a
7:10
Speaker 4: lot of people that are interested in these experiences, having
7:13
Speaker 4: these experiences, that want to share these profund experiences, but
7:16
Speaker 4: for whatever reason, don't feel real comfortable going to a therapist,
7:19
Speaker 4: for example, to talk about it because they're worriedble the
7:21
Speaker 4: therapists my diagnosed me. I'm going to have the song
7:23
Speaker 4: for diagnosis for just dotting this experience. Where can I
7:25
Speaker 4: go talk to people about these profund experiences that are
7:28
Speaker 4: so far out there sometimes that I just need to
7:30
Speaker 4: sort of chat with someone about that. So that's why
7:32
Speaker 4: I was there. Now kind of go back even further,
7:35
Speaker 4: you know, I started this work probably like the mid nineties.
7:40
Speaker 4: I was at the University of Michigan and an Arbor
7:42
Speaker 4: where I went to do my undergrad I was doing
7:45
Speaker 4: studying biopsychology and cognitive science at the time, which is
7:48
Speaker 4: much more on neuroscience. Right, that was before they called
7:51
Speaker 4: differ of science. Right. I was psychology that's whole. But anyway,
7:57
Speaker 4: so we're looking at these the mechanisms of the brain,
8:01
Speaker 4: you know, conscience through the internal workings of the brain
8:05
Speaker 4: in the classes, and then I'm having mushroom experiences and
8:07
Speaker 4: I'm like, wow, we're like sitting swimming in a See
8:11
Speaker 4: it's not coming just from my brain. It's like it'sed.
8:13
Speaker 4: We're embedded in this area of touchedness. So it was
8:16
Speaker 4: kind of this sort of cognitive dissonance that was happening
8:18
Speaker 4: where in my classes I was learning something very mechanistic,
8:22
Speaker 4: and my experiences was something much more beyond that, mush
8:24
Speaker 4: more profound. At the end of that sort of timeline,
8:27
Speaker 4: I was also having to do some animal research, and
8:30
Speaker 4: as you can imagine, having mushroom experiences one night and
8:32
Speaker 4: then having to wake up in the morning and basically
8:34
Speaker 4: torture rats. For lack of better terming, of course that
8:36
Speaker 4: was the case, but you know, like going in there
8:38
Speaker 4: doing studies on them, that type of thing, and just
8:39
Speaker 4: being like what am I doing? So I had the
8:41
Speaker 4: sort of crisis of my identity what do I do now?
8:44
Speaker 4: Because I don't think I can do animal research. I
8:46
Speaker 4: did a big one road trip around the US. I
8:48
Speaker 4: went to Multi Discary Association with Psychedelic Studies when it
8:51
Speaker 4: was a small office in Charlotte and aair or Charlotte,
8:53
Speaker 4: North Carolina in nineteen eighty eight. They give me some
8:56
Speaker 4: addresses of people who were maybe doing this research and
8:59
Speaker 4: other places to go check out across the US. So
9:01
Speaker 4: I did this big, long road trip, but everyone that
9:03
Speaker 4: was doing the research was like hiding it behind something else. Hey,
9:06
Speaker 4: I'm doing this biofeedback research. I know, by the way,
9:08
Speaker 4: I'm also doing psychedelic research. You know. So at this
9:10
Speaker 4: point time, I think only Rick Strassman had I've done
9:13
Speaker 4: anything legitimate in the nineties in terms of scientific research.
9:16
Speaker 4: Everything else is kind of sort of under wraps, you know.
9:18
Speaker 1: Everyone's doing a lot of fear around it.
9:21
Speaker 4: Right absolutely, absolutely, yeah, just until I mean until even
9:26
Speaker 4: that John Popkins's stuff came out, and it was the
9:28
Speaker 4: late two thousand and eight range when they started doing
9:30
Speaker 4: the Healthy Normal studies that sort of started this new
9:34
Speaker 4: scientific research in sort of in a much broader way
9:37
Speaker 4: than it was before that. Like I said, so it
9:39
Speaker 4: was just basically Rick Stratsman at been time, and maybe
9:41
Speaker 4: a few other inscure in there. I took a little sabbatical.
9:44
Speaker 4: After doing that, that moved of why I spent about
9:46
Speaker 4: eleven years by from across my usk. At the time
9:49
Speaker 4: was like, wow, this is even more profound than my
9:52
Speaker 4: mushroom experiences. You know, with mushroom experiences, for me, I
9:54
Speaker 4: always had the sense of like, oh, this is this
9:56
Speaker 4: is previously, this is my higher consciousness. I'm speaking to
9:59
Speaker 4: a higher level of myself, this is another part of me.
10:03
Speaker 4: For whatever reason, when I had the ziouasca experiences, you know,
10:06
Speaker 4: I started drinking iahuasca in about two thousand, it was like, wow,
10:10
Speaker 4: I really understand what they mean when they say plant
10:13
Speaker 4: teacher or plant guide, or that I'm having a conversation
10:16
Speaker 4: or a relationship with another being if you will. These
10:19
Speaker 4: plants have consciousness. Like that was minding for me, you know,
10:24
Speaker 4: like wow, like this isn't just me speaking, this is
10:27
Speaker 4: something much broader and much bigger. So so after that
10:30
Speaker 4: I decided, Okay, well I really want to do this
10:32
Speaker 4: research a little bit more. That's when I went to
10:34
Speaker 4: go to move back to San Francisco, or moved to
10:37
Speaker 4: San Francisco to go to CIS Company instead of entrical
10:39
Speaker 4: Studies to get my dissertation looking at archetypes of transformation
10:45
Speaker 4: or sudden transformative shifts that happened in an ayahuasca experience.
10:49
Speaker 4: And then how do you help people with MENI making
10:51
Speaker 4: or integration or that sort of thing. So did my dissertation,
10:55
Speaker 4: created the nonprofit Eerie, then met everybody in late twenty eighteen,
11:00
Speaker 4: dicussed this sort of consciousness healing center. We started to
11:02
Speaker 4: discuss depromised nature and the potential of the criminalizings that
11:06
Speaker 4: people could have access. We saw that there were a
11:09
Speaker 4: lot of research that was happening in the pharmaceutical field.
11:11
Speaker 4: We saw a lot of research in the scientific field,
11:14
Speaker 4: but there's nothing, no real conversations about the individual's right
11:17
Speaker 4: to have their own relationship for nature without it being
11:20
Speaker 4: influenced by government or controlled by corporations or regular victory
11:24
Speaker 4: frameworks or you know, pharmaceutical companies. But in ceremony like
11:27
Speaker 4: people have been doing in four centuries or millennium, in community,
11:30
Speaker 4: in the community based healing. You know, there's some people
11:33
Speaker 4: that you know a lot of communities that have been
11:35
Speaker 4: around that may never go to a therapist to have
11:37
Speaker 4: these experience, may never go to a therapist at all.
11:40
Speaker 4: They doesn't mean they shouldn't have access to the experience,
11:42
Speaker 4: so and oftentimes that they're going to find healing in
11:45
Speaker 4: community where there's a culturally relevant setting, where around people
11:48
Speaker 4: that know their story, that know their history, that know
11:50
Speaker 4: the background, I know the culture of these different types
11:52
Speaker 4: of things, and so we really want to sort of
11:53
Speaker 4: give some voice to those folks as we started this movement.
11:57
Speaker 4: So since then twenty nineteen past Feenanimal and then we
12:01
Speaker 4: passed in fifteen cities across the US, we have quite
12:04
Speaker 4: a few more cities that are active and engaging in
12:06
Speaker 4: this process. And we've also influenced now state policy. If
12:10
Speaker 4: you look at sort of the Colorado policy that passed.
12:12
Speaker 4: When we started, Denver, Colorado told us, hey, you know what,
12:16
Speaker 4: you can only do mushroom. That's the only thing you're
12:18
Speaker 4: going to be able to pass because it's too hard
12:20
Speaker 4: to do, right. But this shows you the power of education.
12:23
Speaker 4: So since Denver passed in twenty nineteen, which is about
12:26
Speaker 4: a month before we did, and then this recent Colorado
12:28
Speaker 4: statewide build that happened, they now added people gain caec
12:32
Speaker 4: gui ayahuasta and mushrooms. So the education works. People say, hey,
12:37
Speaker 4: wait a second, these their ancient plant medicine. Why are
12:40
Speaker 4: we criminalizing them? Just figure saying earlier, and so we
12:42
Speaker 4: have done some good job not just sort of passing policies,
12:45
Speaker 4: are also influencing the conversation and giving a voice to
12:48
Speaker 4: people who didn't have the voice. But it was just
12:49
Speaker 4: the medical bodel that was speaking.
12:52
Speaker 2: Well, that's awesome.
12:53
Speaker 1: Let me back up you because you said there's a
12:54
Speaker 1: lot there though, No that was that.
12:56
Speaker 2: You know, first of all, it was very informational just
12:59
Speaker 2: about the difference between legalize and decriminalize, and I think
13:04
Speaker 2: that's a fabulous, you know, differentiation to kind of ask
13:08
Speaker 2: ourselves that question. And then you also just kind of
13:11
Speaker 2: talked about the path of of how it's been unfolding
13:15
Speaker 2: and everyone's been coming to a question to say, you know,
13:20
Speaker 2: how have all these medicines been around for a very
13:22
Speaker 2: long time, how have they been instrumental with our ancestors,
13:27
Speaker 2: and how could they help us in some of the
13:29
Speaker 2: crisises that we are facing today on an a mental level,
13:33
Speaker 2: an emotional level, on a wholeness level. And when you
13:37
Speaker 2: talk about healing and not everybody goes to a therapist,
13:39
Speaker 2: you know, I hear all the time about how these
13:44
Speaker 2: plants help us have a greater understanding and awareness around
13:48
Speaker 2: our biases. Right now, I may not necessarily go to
13:52
Speaker 2: a therapist or anyone to talk about my biases. I
13:55
Speaker 2: may not even be aware of it. But when I
13:58
Speaker 2: start to want to seek a greater wholeness to myself
14:01
Speaker 2: and the relationship that I have in my community and
14:05
Speaker 2: start to understand bias or patterns or relationships, this is
14:11
Speaker 2: where something very natural could be very supportive to everyone,
14:17
Speaker 2: and it not being in the community of psychotherapy.
14:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I mean, go ahead.
14:27
Speaker 4: I'd love to talk to you. I'd love to unpacked
14:29
Speaker 4: decriminalization legalization thing at some point time in the future
14:32
Speaker 4: as well, and also some of the other points to
14:33
Speaker 4: make there. So I take some notes, but go ahead.
14:37
Speaker 3: As you're stating that, I'm just listening and without some
14:41
Speaker 3: kind of it's obvious that there has to be something's
14:44
Speaker 3: got to change. We can't keep going down the same
14:47
Speaker 3: roads that we've been going down and noticing where we
14:50
Speaker 3: have biases, like like Gray said, or we're out of
14:55
Speaker 3: alignment with what feels right. And it isn't about right,
15:00
Speaker 3: right and wrong, It's about what what does it feel
15:03
Speaker 3: like when I have to go to the lab and
15:08
Speaker 3: perform animal, whatever you're doing with the rats, experimentation on rats.
15:13
Speaker 3: And you know, I grew up as a hunter. So
15:16
Speaker 3: when I was when and I don't and I'm not
15:19
Speaker 3: trying to say hunting is wrong at all, but I
15:21
Speaker 3: grew up as a hunter, very very out of violence
15:25
Speaker 3: type of hunting.
15:25
Speaker 1: It was like entertainment. When I was young.
15:27
Speaker 2: It was a sport.
15:28
Speaker 3: It was a sport, and we were killing for sport.
15:32
Speaker 3: And in later years, when I started to have these experiences,
15:35
Speaker 3: I started to see this unity in this oneness, this
15:38
Speaker 3: feeling of being part of everything. It's like, how can
15:41
Speaker 3: I do that?
15:43
Speaker 1: Now?
15:43
Speaker 3: I take spiders outside and turnus, you know, and now
15:47
Speaker 3: that was there. I mean, it was never how I was.
15:49
Speaker 3: And it's not that there aren't times that I don't
15:53
Speaker 3: kill an aunt or something like that.
15:55
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to say that.
15:56
Speaker 3: But I'm I'm I try to be much more cognizant
15:59
Speaker 3: of the preciousness and sacredness of a living being, right,
16:05
Speaker 3: And you experience that from these experiences with plants and
16:09
Speaker 3: other things where you come into that space of presence
16:13
Speaker 3: we were talking before we started here, and something that
16:15
Speaker 3: can quiet your mind down to this place of stillness
16:19
Speaker 3: or then you begin to understand that there's more going
16:22
Speaker 3: on here than I realized, and I can experience it
16:26
Speaker 3: while I'm alive. I don't have to die to know
16:29
Speaker 3: that this source of existence is there. I can know
16:33
Speaker 3: it while I'm alive, while I'm walking and breathing.
16:35
Speaker 2: My heart's beating, Doctor Norris, when you started, was predominantly
16:40
Speaker 2: your circle or your community one that was seeking spiritual transformation.
16:46
Speaker 2: Did all of this come from a place of people
16:50
Speaker 2: wanting to know themselves better? Or did it come from
16:54
Speaker 2: people who wanted to have more of just access to
16:57
Speaker 2: the plants for a variety of reasons. Was there any
17:00
Speaker 2: one single thing that was sort of that foundational, meaningful reason?
17:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, you know, I think when it comes to
17:11
Speaker 4: these experiences, you know, the idea of sort of informed
17:14
Speaker 4: consent is kind of like thrown out the window, right.
17:16
Speaker 4: You know, that's a lot of even these scientific studies,
17:18
Speaker 4: the idea of a double lene cathembal turnout like all
17:20
Speaker 4: these things are not possible. So, you know, psychedelics and
17:23
Speaker 4: empty gens are really forcing a new conversation around how
17:26
Speaker 4: we measure some of these things. Right, So question is
17:29
Speaker 4: like what is mental health? You know, that's that's that's
17:32
Speaker 4: deeper questioning, you know, the question of like when I
17:35
Speaker 4: first started, I didn't know what this experience is going
17:38
Speaker 4: to be. Like other people when they first have their experiences,
17:40
Speaker 4: you don't know the potential. You're just okay, this thing
17:43
Speaker 4: I've heard of. Maybe people are doing it recreationally. They
17:45
Speaker 4: don't understand the importance of it. That obviously changed quite
17:47
Speaker 4: a bit since then. But people are kind of like,
17:51
Speaker 4: you know, sort of sometimes surprised and shocked, and they
17:53
Speaker 4: might be going for some other reason, and then they
17:56
Speaker 4: have this deep perk cound insights that they just didn't
17:57
Speaker 4: even know. And sometimes I think there's something to be
18:00
Speaker 4: said for mental health as we're looking at it today,
18:05
Speaker 4: is maybe less about this person is depressed because they
18:09
Speaker 4: have some sort of neurochemical imbalance, but maybe they're depressed
18:14
Speaker 4: because they're in a situation that is depressed. We've lost
18:18
Speaker 4: connection to spirit, we've lost connection to nature, we've lost
18:20
Speaker 4: connection to each other, we lost connection to these profound
18:23
Speaker 4: insights that were part of our ancestors le need or
18:27
Speaker 4: the area.
18:27
Speaker 3: That they're telling themselves an old story, right, because that's
18:31
Speaker 3: that's the other thing. It might not be anything that's
18:34
Speaker 3: happening right now. It's something from your past, some kind
18:36
Speaker 3: of trauma that you just.
18:37
Speaker 4: Can't like go up right. And I think that's where,
18:39
Speaker 4: at least for myself, I've noticed that, you know, you
18:43
Speaker 4: have some of these what some might term its conscientist
18:46
Speaker 4: expanding experiences and then embedded in that you are going
18:49
Speaker 4: through this process of feeling visiting your travelers. Well, you know,
18:52
Speaker 4: I have a friend of mine who you know, had
18:55
Speaker 4: been suffering from heroin substance issues for about twenty some years.
19:00
Speaker 4: One of the first participants in Doctor Kits are and
19:03
Speaker 4: st Kits that Doctor Mashes studies with evil Games, and
19:06
Speaker 4: he says that while he had this big, be profound experience,
19:09
Speaker 4: it was like he was able to go back to
19:11
Speaker 4: his traumas with what he said was the emotion volume
19:13
Speaker 4: turned down, so he's able to revisit those old stories,
19:17
Speaker 4: not so embedded in it that he couldn't see anymore,
19:20
Speaker 4: but he was able to step back a little bit
19:22
Speaker 4: and say, Okay, wow, here are the different dynamics there,
19:24
Speaker 4: and this is how this is relating to my current
19:26
Speaker 4: trauma and my current situation now. So sometimes you know,
19:29
Speaker 4: you can be surprised you have this profound experiences and
19:32
Speaker 4: then embedded in that sort of layers of the holds
19:34
Speaker 4: of that are our traumas, our issues, our challenges, our difficulties,
19:38
Speaker 4: and somethings like that.
19:39
Speaker 2: So I think, yeah, that's the emotion volume turned down.
19:44
Speaker 1: I think that that describes it so well.
19:47
Speaker 4: It really does, right, absolutely, So I think this is
19:50
Speaker 4: really important that we have these conversations now around mental
19:53
Speaker 4: health and shifting the conversation around mental health now. It's
19:57
Speaker 4: hard for sort of contemporary modern culture to address some
20:01
Speaker 4: of these issues because a lot of that seems having
20:04
Speaker 4: to say, well, maybe we need to shift things around culture.
20:07
Speaker 4: Maybe late stage capitalism and very difficult for folks. Maybe
20:11
Speaker 4: there's issues that where there's this extractive process or that
20:14
Speaker 4: people are trying to monetize everything while people are trying
20:16
Speaker 4: to you know, you know, work you to the bone
20:19
Speaker 4: just so that you can participate in society. And so
20:22
Speaker 4: a lot of these things, you know, are are sort
20:25
Speaker 4: of disorders or pathologies of culture and society, not the
20:28
Speaker 4: individual itself. And so sometimes you know, and I'm sure
20:31
Speaker 4: you probably felt this way as well. You know, there's
20:33
Speaker 4: been moments where maybe I get a little bit more
20:35
Speaker 4: depressed after an experience because I'm like, Wow, here's all
20:38
Speaker 4: the potentials of what could be. And then you're sort
20:40
Speaker 4: of landed back in the world and you're like, wow,
20:43
Speaker 4: this is what we're juststing and so and so how
20:47
Speaker 4: much work we have to do. And I think that's
20:49
Speaker 4: what's really important, is really and that's something we will
20:51
Speaker 4: go out with with with Erie and stuff like that.
20:53
Speaker 4: Is the nonprofit and mentioned earlier integration kind of into
20:57
Speaker 4: meeting making process. You make meeting of that experience, but
20:59
Speaker 4: that implementation process, that's where that's where sort of the
21:03
Speaker 4: rubber hits throat sort of speak or a metaphors, is
21:06
Speaker 4: that the sprouts begin to sprouts, right, So where you
21:09
Speaker 4: actually take and you start saying, Okay, these are the
21:12
Speaker 4: insights I had. I see the world how it is here?
21:15
Speaker 4: What can I do to move things forward? What can
21:17
Speaker 4: I do to help heal myself, help heal my community,
21:21
Speaker 4: help heal each other? And so I think that's where
21:23
Speaker 4: we're seeing a lot of this progress with declomied Maator
21:25
Speaker 4: is a lot of people all across the US who
21:27
Speaker 4: have said, Hey, you know what, I can make change
21:29
Speaker 4: happen for my community. I can make change happening for myself.
21:31
Speaker 4: Let's let's engage in direct democracy. Let's remember that the
21:34
Speaker 4: government officials are work for us or our employees. Forget
21:38
Speaker 4: that sometimes they let them tell us what to do,
21:40
Speaker 4: but they're there because we voted them into office, so
21:42
Speaker 4: they're actually our employees. And so to just change the dynamic.
21:45
Speaker 4: And that was such a powerful thing for me as well,
21:47
Speaker 4: is just getting engaged in direct democracy, getting engaged in
21:50
Speaker 4: the political process, which I had never really been engaged
21:52
Speaker 4: in in this kind of way before. I had, you know,
21:55
Speaker 4: protested and advocacy and activism and those different types of
21:58
Speaker 4: things in the past, but never like directly working with
22:00
Speaker 4: the city councils or elected officials to cry and make change.
22:03
Speaker 4: And so that was really powerful because that's our duty
22:05
Speaker 4: as a citizens of the United States and the world.
22:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, that brings up a question. So when you go
22:12
Speaker 2: into these cities and you're working with either the city
22:14
Speaker 2: councils or you know, the governing bodies, the emphasis is
22:20
Speaker 2: not on what they fear around the plants. It sounds
22:24
Speaker 2: like you're really approaching it more based on what the
22:27
Speaker 2: power of the plants can bring to the community. So
22:31
Speaker 2: it's you know, that's something that's so, I mean, it
22:35
Speaker 2: makes such perfect sense, But it's usually the other way around, right.
22:38
Speaker 2: We always start when we're trying to solve anything, whether
22:41
Speaker 2: it be social media, Like we listen to the news
22:45
Speaker 2: and you know, there's a lot of things on at
22:48
Speaker 2: the legislative level right now that's talking about the good
22:51
Speaker 2: and bad equalities of social media and what age groups.
22:55
Speaker 2: But we always come from a place of what is
22:58
Speaker 2: wrong with everything versus I mean from a place that is,
23:01
Speaker 2: what how can this help a community? And are we
23:04
Speaker 2: setting it up to be helpful in the community versus
23:08
Speaker 2: coming in where we're afraid of it? So is that
23:10
Speaker 2: how you approach most of your city councils about the plants,
23:14
Speaker 2: is you know, what can it do for your community?
23:17
Speaker 2: What how does allowing people to have a relationship with
23:21
Speaker 2: nature helpful for your community?
23:25
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's a big thing obviously, you know, I mean,
23:27
Speaker 4: because we have to work through fifty plus years of misinformation,
23:30
Speaker 4: all the stigma that's happened, all the challenges. You know,
23:33
Speaker 4: it's kind of strange to see some of the players
23:37
Speaker 4: who maybe twenty years ago were bad mounting psychedelics are
23:40
Speaker 4: now trying to swallow up the quote unquote industry, right,
23:43
Speaker 4: medicalization of those different types of things. If you talk
23:45
Speaker 4: to somebody twenty years ago, those same people are like, oh,
23:47
Speaker 4: these are going to you know, do all these bad
23:49
Speaker 4: things to your brain and cause all these problems and challenges.
23:51
Speaker 4: That are enough. But we're not really saying that people
23:53
Speaker 4: have to you know, and that's again the difference between
23:55
Speaker 4: declamization and legalization. We're basically just saying, let's remove the
23:58
Speaker 4: criminal penalties. You know. Legalization is a process for now
24:01
Speaker 4: there's you know, state involvement. So in a way, legal
24:05
Speaker 4: legalization is kind of like for people stay prohibition lights
24:08
Speaker 4: or or partial declomization, because it's only really decriminalized within
24:11
Speaker 4: that very narrow range of that regulatory framework. But if
24:15
Speaker 4: you were to like grow maybe two more mushrooms than
24:18
Speaker 4: the limit, then you would be a criminal again, right
24:21
Speaker 4: for just having an abundant growth grow you know. So
24:24
Speaker 4: so so decriminization is really about removing those criminal penalties.
24:28
Speaker 4: Legalization is more of a framework for you know, people
24:30
Speaker 4: to sort of there's licenses and taxes and state runs
24:34
Speaker 4: grow ops and state run training and all that kind
24:37
Speaker 4: of thing, and that could just that could be a
24:39
Speaker 4: little bit more problematic because now you have a financial
24:42
Speaker 4: incentive for some of the big players to come out here,
24:45
Speaker 4: and they're more thinking in terms of profiteering versus being
24:48
Speaker 4: in terms of you know, kealing. So when we talk
24:51
Speaker 4: to city council members really do talk about like how
24:53
Speaker 4: do we what's the best way to help our communities out.
24:56
Speaker 4: We're not trying to push down everyone. We're just saying,
24:58
Speaker 4: let's not arrest people, because house throwing someone in jail
25:01
Speaker 4: a safer scenario that letting people have the engagement experiences.
25:04
Speaker 4: We really see decriminalization as sort of a risk production strategy.
25:08
Speaker 4: By decriminalizing, a lot of the people who are underground
25:11
Speaker 4: can actually come above ground now and talk about their experiences,
25:14
Speaker 4: can share with the others. They can you know, have
25:16
Speaker 4: supports for folks to come in and learn about these experiences.
25:20
Speaker 4: So and you know, I've been really amazed actually how
25:23
Speaker 4: many cities, especially now that we've been doing this for
25:25
Speaker 4: a while. Hobviously, council members are pretty familiar with these
25:28
Speaker 4: kinds of mushrooms, and so you know, sometimes they're just
25:31
Speaker 4: waiting for someone to ask. But our approach is really
25:34
Speaker 4: to try and remove some of the fear grumblings through
25:36
Speaker 4: through education, you know, bringing people the information that's needed,
25:41
Speaker 4: talking about the risks, talking about the benefits, you know,
25:43
Speaker 4: but the risks for a lot of these kinds of
25:45
Speaker 4: mushrooms are solow. You know, we have alcohol on every
25:48
Speaker 4: street corner, you know, tobacco everywhere. You know, pharmaceuticals are
25:52
Speaker 4: being pumped to children all the time, right, nobody asked
25:54
Speaker 4: questions about that. We talk about risk and you know,
25:57
Speaker 4: we need to make sure that the uh, there's low
25:59
Speaker 4: risk for mushrooms as well. At the same time, we
26:01
Speaker 4: have FDA approved pharmaceuticals like opioids that have caused that
26:05
Speaker 4: think what ninety million or ninety thousand deaths I think
26:08
Speaker 4: last year or something like that. So so we're talking about,
26:11
Speaker 4: you know, what is risk and what is approved and
26:14
Speaker 4: what is safety when there's already a model that allows
26:16
Speaker 4: very unsafe things to be moved down to people. But
26:20
Speaker 4: what's unsafe in this scenario is that people are thinking
26:22
Speaker 4: about new ideas, new approaches. Maybe it's about like this
26:25
Speaker 4: system isn't working really well, right, and so the status
26:29
Speaker 4: quode doesn't know if I can make you know, a
26:31
Speaker 4: judgment club, they're the statistical often MS doesn't like that
26:34
Speaker 4: as collects to be stagnant and certain static, right, and
26:37
Speaker 4: so this is trying to push people beyond that, and
26:39
Speaker 4: so that could be challenging or difficult for sort of
26:42
Speaker 4: the system, so to speak. So so I think the
26:44
Speaker 4: way we approach it, just like you said, is really
26:46
Speaker 4: to sort of let people know about the benefits, talk
26:49
Speaker 4: about the risk risk analysis, and you know, even the
26:51
Speaker 4: risk analysis is a relative. For my friend I spoke
26:54
Speaker 4: to about earlier, who has the evil gain experience, he
26:58
Speaker 4: had he had had some dreams and he is like, oh,
27:00
Speaker 4: you know, after twenty some years of doing heroin, he
27:04
Speaker 4: might not make it through the next month or two. Right,
27:06
Speaker 4: these are the dreams that started havings. Like, Wow, I
27:08
Speaker 4: got to really do something because I don't want to
27:10
Speaker 4: die in a month or two. Right, So I went
27:11
Speaker 4: to the study, and the study scientists for like, you know,
27:15
Speaker 4: you're super toxic. We don't think we're going to be
27:18
Speaker 4: able to take you in. You're too high risk. He's like,
27:21
Speaker 4: high risk. I want to die in two months. We
27:24
Speaker 4: talk about high risk. Let me make that choice. Well, right,
27:28
Speaker 4: you know, you're worried about your grants and you're worried
27:30
Speaker 4: about all this other kind of stuff. But at the
27:32
Speaker 4: end of the day, like, this is human being in
27:33
Speaker 4: front of you who's telling you, I might not make it,
27:35
Speaker 4: I might not survive in two months. Give me an
27:37
Speaker 4: opportunity to do something to help my life. And so
27:40
Speaker 4: risk is also kind of relative to that. Fair that's
27:42
Speaker 4: also the case with traumas or other different types of
27:45
Speaker 4: things that these are helping people with, But the risk
27:47
Speaker 4: level is something that that person should be able to
27:49
Speaker 4: make that decision around. So so yeah, so you know
27:52
Speaker 4: the types of benefits that people can have, you know,
27:54
Speaker 4: outside of first one, spiritual growth. Obviously, there's a lot
27:57
Speaker 4: of studies that are looking at, you know, substance usisu
28:00
Speaker 4: use end of life anxiety, which is a fascinating idea
28:02
Speaker 4: because you're sort of again you're speaking to a spiritual
28:06
Speaker 4: experience in a medical framework, right, So people that are
28:09
Speaker 4: working with people for hospice or anxiety type of stuff,
28:12
Speaker 4: what are people coming out of those studies saying. They're saying, like, Wow,
28:16
Speaker 4: I realized that I don't have to be afraid of
28:18
Speaker 4: death because I just continue on after that, I have
28:21
Speaker 4: a soul that their spirit. These aren't conversations that were
28:24
Speaker 4: typically having in the medical model so again, these are
28:27
Speaker 4: kind of different paradigms rubbing up against each other, you know,
28:32
Speaker 4: and one that's so powerful for these psychedelics or entigetic medicines,
28:35
Speaker 4: and one that's sort of more stagnant and mechanistic. And
28:37
Speaker 4: something's going to have to give, you know, because once
28:40
Speaker 4: somebody has these big experiences, they realize like, wow, well
28:44
Speaker 4: we don't have a full picture on this side of right.
28:46
Speaker 3: And it's a different dynamic than the one that's been
28:49
Speaker 3: purported for centuries. From a religious aspect, the beliefs in
28:54
Speaker 3: things that have been written about the past and history
28:56
Speaker 3: and not I don't want to throw the baby out
28:58
Speaker 3: with the bathwater and see that all really is bad.
29:01
Speaker 3: But the religions tend to focus on a god that
29:05
Speaker 3: is out there somewhere outside, you know, the man on
29:08
Speaker 3: the cloud idea. Whereas this experience where whether it's in
29:13
Speaker 3: indigenous culture, whether it's in with plant medicines or music,
29:20
Speaker 3: or the different different ways that that tribes over time connected,
29:24
Speaker 3: they connected into that space of oneness to a God
29:28
Speaker 3: inside them, not not something outside. So you know, and
29:33
Speaker 3: we're and we're using religious words to describe something that's
29:37
Speaker 3: really ineffable. It's not something that that you you have
29:40
Speaker 3: an experience and then you're say, well, describe it, and
29:43
Speaker 3: then it's like, I don't know how to describe it
29:47
Speaker 3: because it isn't what I was told my whole life,
29:50
Speaker 3: and there's no there's not words within that language to
29:53
Speaker 3: be able to describe what it is. We're starting to
29:55
Speaker 3: meet lots of people like you. You're like this bridge,
29:59
Speaker 3: who how's the scientific background, how's the study, the the
30:04
Speaker 3: linear thinking part? And it's like you said, then you
30:07
Speaker 3: went to Hawaii for eleven years and you discovered this
30:10
Speaker 3: experience that you had with ayahuasca. What took you to
30:14
Speaker 3: Hawaiian were you were you still studying and teaching or
30:17
Speaker 3: what were you doing there in Hawaii?
30:19
Speaker 1: And then and then when you had.
30:20
Speaker 3: That experience, how did that? It sounds to me what
30:23
Speaker 3: I was picking up from the conversation is that's kind
30:25
Speaker 3: of when things really shifted and you found where there
30:29
Speaker 3: was a bridge between the form less, the ethereal, the spirit,
30:34
Speaker 3: the God, whatever you want to say, and this world
30:36
Speaker 3: of form that we're living in, which is a linear
30:38
Speaker 3: thinking and the equations and the drugs and all of
30:41
Speaker 3: the other things.
30:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally, yeah, So definitely that was the case. You know,
30:47
Speaker 4: living outside of trade area Trode, the heavy, big city place,
30:51
Speaker 4: and they kind of forget that you have a body
30:53
Speaker 4: and they protected to the earth, and you know, I mean,
30:55
Speaker 4: obviously it's changed a lot since since I moved from there,
30:59
Speaker 4: but coming to where you're like, you know, you're embedded in.
31:02
Speaker 5: There's beautiful flowers everywhere, there's whales, dolphins jumping, and be
31:07
Speaker 5: in the water whenever you want, be in the forests,
31:09
Speaker 5: you know, you know, volcano craters, waterfalls, all that kind
31:12
Speaker 5: of stuff.
31:13
Speaker 4: Just reminds you like, oh, yeah, wow, I'm here. You know.
31:15
Speaker 4: So that was a really good for my own personal growth,
31:18
Speaker 4: Like just kind of rewind just for a second there.
31:21
Speaker 4: You know, you said speaking to a little bit about
31:23
Speaker 4: how these are sort of the sort of generating this
31:26
Speaker 4: divine within. Even that sort of phrasing is something that
31:29
Speaker 4: we really strategized a lot about in terms of the
31:32
Speaker 4: framing of these experiences. So, you know, psychedelic is the
31:35
Speaker 4: one that most people work with and that has fifty
31:39
Speaker 4: some years of baggage, and people hear the word psychedelics,
31:41
Speaker 4: they're thinking all the stuff they're seeing in the particular
31:43
Speaker 4: air they're taking some kind of music or some arts
31:46
Speaker 4: or whatever else. There's all these different things that psychedelic
31:48
Speaker 4: initially like, and unfortunately, for a lot of folks that
31:51
Speaker 4: have those fear gremlins, that kind of conversation is the
31:55
Speaker 4: triggers some stuff that maybe isn't the best. So we're like, well,
31:57
Speaker 4: let's use this word n fugeen, in which vice source
32:01
Speaker 4: mean is basically generating the divine within, like you're saying,
32:03
Speaker 4: it's sort of the sort of spiritual sort of framing.
32:06
Speaker 4: And we're like, well, because when we were talking about
32:09
Speaker 4: the resolution, which we use sacred, sacred, plant, medicines, well,
32:12
Speaker 4: they might take out they could edit. Maybe they'll take
32:14
Speaker 4: out sacred, maybe it they'll take out plant. Maybe it'll
32:17
Speaker 4: just be medicine. Then they were talking about pharmaceuticals. So
32:19
Speaker 4: what can we do to embed the sacred into public
32:22
Speaker 4: policy that's happening all over the place now, The word
32:24
Speaker 4: empygen is in public policy all over the place, and
32:27
Speaker 4: most people, you know, have to have to well, what
32:29
Speaker 4: does that even mean? Give us an opportunity to define
32:32
Speaker 4: it all over again. And so that was kind of
32:34
Speaker 4: my plast too, coming from more of a psychedelic mindset,
32:37
Speaker 4: if you will, as a psychedelic science, which has kind
32:39
Speaker 4: of been co opted now by some some pharma and
32:41
Speaker 4: other folks. They are talking a lot about psychedelic science
32:43
Speaker 4: and the FDA trials that type of thing versus it
32:46
Speaker 4: being the sort of more spiritual, this more inner, it's
32:48
Speaker 4: more natural versus synthetic experience. And so that was my
32:51
Speaker 4: process when I'm with wy, you know, became very much
32:55
Speaker 4: in touch with myself and my inner experiences and those
32:57
Speaker 4: different types of things. And then that's why I also,
33:00
Speaker 4: you know, going to California's to divientrical studies versus you know,
33:02
Speaker 4: another sort of mainstream institution is because they talked about
33:06
Speaker 4: trans personal psychology. Transpersonal psychology meaning like the spiritual is
33:11
Speaker 4: really important and essential when we're talking about psychology in general,
33:14
Speaker 4: you can't just dismiss them. You know, it's not just
33:17
Speaker 4: the sort of stuff that's in your brain, but also
33:19
Speaker 4: these others like you know, parapsychological experiences, dream states, you know,
33:24
Speaker 4: drumming as you were speaking to earlier, otherwise of getting
33:26
Speaker 4: altered states of conscious, psychedelicy experiences, near death experiences, you know,
33:30
Speaker 4: spiritual emergencies as stands Grop talk about those different types
33:34
Speaker 4: of things. There's a whole variety of different types of
33:36
Speaker 4: experiences that leaving those out of the conversation around psychology
33:40
Speaker 4: is silly, you know. And so that was another thing.
33:43
Speaker 4: Going to see I as really kind of allowed me
33:45
Speaker 4: to focus on some of these other areas that were
33:47
Speaker 4: the sort of bridge between sort of this more mechanistic
33:50
Speaker 4: science and this more sort of spiritual mystical pursuits or
33:54
Speaker 4: understandings of the mind.
33:56
Speaker 2: It's interesting, it's where there's now what honey, and you
33:59
Speaker 2: said billion, eight billion people, eight billion people, and so
34:04
Speaker 2: it's really eight billion having their very individual experience and
34:09
Speaker 2: having access to something that is tailored to just them.
34:14
Speaker 2: And so with you know, mainstream medicine, we tried to
34:17
Speaker 2: lump it into these big broad categories that say here
34:20
Speaker 2: this is. And every night as I watch the news
34:23
Speaker 2: and there's ads that are just filled with you know,
34:27
Speaker 2: pharmaceutical ads. I always just I'm amazed at yeah, this
34:32
Speaker 2: will help solve your depression, but you may and then
34:36
Speaker 2: the list goes on for like twenty thirty things of
34:39
Speaker 2: the symptoms that may come about. And so it's just
34:43
Speaker 2: and being more depressed depressed. But it's interesting that you know,
34:47
Speaker 2: something very natural could meet people where they are and
34:52
Speaker 2: be the right thing for them every time, and it's
34:55
Speaker 2: never the same experience each time. We're not the same
34:58
Speaker 2: twenty four hours later. Are not the same person that
35:01
Speaker 2: we were twenty four hours before. Scott and I, as
35:04
Speaker 2: we work and coach people, we tell them all the time,
35:06
Speaker 2: you are your own curriculum, and so as you think
35:10
Speaker 2: about that, this is just an approach that can help you,
35:14
Speaker 2: then in that curriculum address those things that are preventing
35:19
Speaker 2: you from having the richness of life that you may
35:22
Speaker 2: be desiring.
35:24
Speaker 4: Yeah. I love that that idea, you are your own curriculum,
35:27
Speaker 4: But I might put that in your facing a posts.
35:30
Speaker 4: Yeah I do by all means do Yeah, But I
35:34
Speaker 4: really I really like how you're touching on this idea too.
35:36
Speaker 4: Of sort of this this tendency towards lumping, and the
35:41
Speaker 4: idea behind it obviously is trying to simplify some complex stuff.
35:46
Speaker 4: But this is not an area that we should be lumping.
35:48
Speaker 4: And this just happens a lot.
35:49
Speaker 2: You know.
35:49
Speaker 4: You hear this idea of sort of perennialism or perennialist theory,
35:52
Speaker 4: which is basically, like all these mystical experiences, all these
35:56
Speaker 4: spiritual experiences are eventually the same experience, and whether or
35:59
Speaker 4: not that's true, you know about duality, nondu ally all
36:02
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff, whether or not that's true at
36:04
Speaker 4: the end of the day, when we're in our individual
36:06
Speaker 4: experience of learning, of growing, of personal spiritual growth, if
36:10
Speaker 4: we're told that all our experiences are A and we're
36:12
Speaker 4: having an experience and through you know Z, then we're
36:17
Speaker 4: not going to relate to A. We need to unpack
36:19
Speaker 4: what's going on through M through Z. So so you know,
36:22
Speaker 4: that was actually part of one of the sort of
36:24
Speaker 4: inspirations for my dissertation was seeing sort of the John
36:26
Speaker 4: Toptins study and they're saying, oh, well this, you know,
36:28
Speaker 4: these experiences are unit of mystical experience and united of
36:31
Speaker 4: mystical experiences are kind of like defined by state, and
36:35
Speaker 4: then it came up with a questionnaire by hood, and
36:38
Speaker 4: so there's a sort of these different qualities you know,
36:40
Speaker 4: everything's everything's all one, you know, you know, it's positive,
36:44
Speaker 4: it's blissful, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So there's
36:47
Speaker 4: like seven different sort of definitions forward that orcagulation for that.
36:53
Speaker 4: But then there's what about a piece of people that
36:54
Speaker 4: are having experiences that can be really difficult, you know,
36:57
Speaker 4: like a definite dismemberment experience or definitely birth experience, and
37:00
Speaker 4: you know, there's a lot of nuance in there that
37:02
Speaker 4: maybe wasn't being approached by lumping everything into one category
37:06
Speaker 4: and saying, you know, hey, this is your experience. And
37:08
Speaker 4: so when we're talking with people with integration work, that's
37:11
Speaker 4: what's so important, the meaning making. And that's the meaning
37:13
Speaker 4: that I'm trying to make for them, or the doctor's
37:15
Speaker 4: trying to make from the therapists trying to make for them,
37:17
Speaker 4: but the meaning that they're trying to understand. They're the
37:19
Speaker 4: only one that's going to know the full meaning because
37:21
Speaker 4: they're the ones that's able to attach and connect with
37:23
Speaker 4: all the different things that came up in the experience.
37:26
Speaker 4: Maybe you know, it was traumas, or maybe it was
37:28
Speaker 4: past experiences of they're in their life that they just
37:31
Speaker 4: sort of had to sort of reflect on, or maybe
37:33
Speaker 4: it's you know, about their own experience of the extension
37:36
Speaker 4: of consciousness. You know, who we to sort of judge
37:38
Speaker 4: or decide how that looks for they're really leading a
37:41
Speaker 4: space for the person and the individual and not homogenize
37:44
Speaker 4: everything into this one sort of static category, but allow
37:47
Speaker 4: for that richness diversity. You know, there's this idea that
37:50
Speaker 4: sort of there's the unitive theory, which is like all
37:52
Speaker 4: goes to one, and then there's sort of multiplicity theory,
37:55
Speaker 4: which is that one is in everything. Right, Yeah, So
37:58
Speaker 4: saying one is that everything allows that richness and diversity
38:01
Speaker 4: to come through and for people to sort of participate
38:03
Speaker 4: in their own way, to have culturally relevant ideas and
38:06
Speaker 4: understandings of what's going on and still speak to everyone,
38:09
Speaker 4: but allow that sort of to develop. And I think
38:11
Speaker 4: that's where we want to see a lot of emergents
38:13
Speaker 4: coming forward and have to sort of, you know, you know,
38:15
Speaker 4: come up with these regulations that this is how you
38:17
Speaker 4: do it, but give it some space, with some time
38:20
Speaker 4: for people to say, hey, you know what this works
38:22
Speaker 4: for me or over in this community, this is actually
38:24
Speaker 4: a better way to do it instead of just saying
38:26
Speaker 4: everything has to do this one idea. So I think
38:27
Speaker 4: this conversation about lumping and splitting is really important.
38:30
Speaker 1: I agree.
38:31
Speaker 3: You know what I find interesting is, you know, the
38:34
Speaker 3: old beliefs that have come through religion, whether it's through
38:38
Speaker 3: Christianity or or any of the religions that, like I
38:43
Speaker 3: said before, look look for this God outside of themselves.
38:47
Speaker 3: They're in this place of trying to figure these things out,
38:52
Speaker 3: speak of the inefftable. But hidden within each of those
38:55
Speaker 3: religions are these truths that, like I said before, we
38:57
Speaker 3: can't cast the baby out with a bathla are because
39:01
Speaker 3: there are these truths that sit deeply within all of
39:05
Speaker 3: that information that we've been.
39:07
Speaker 1: Trying to figure out about God.
39:10
Speaker 3: And the experience that we have of trying to figure
39:14
Speaker 3: out the information, you know, takes us within, within ourselves
39:17
Speaker 3: and within that frame of form. So we want to
39:20
Speaker 3: get ourselves to a place where we can then get
39:22
Speaker 3: a reward when we die and go to this other place,
39:26
Speaker 3: a reward or punishment. And if we continue down that road,
39:31
Speaker 3: we're going to continue to get what we've been getting.
39:34
Speaker 3: So this gives a different kind of a language to
39:36
Speaker 3: what we're experienced because it's direct experience of this divinity,
39:41
Speaker 3: and it's this divinity within.
39:43
Speaker 1: Each of us.
39:44
Speaker 3: And I'm sure you've probably heard the saying from religion
39:47
Speaker 3: where God says or Jesus as I can't remember what
39:49
Speaker 3: it was, but I am I think it was Jesus said,
39:52
Speaker 3: I am one with the father, and the Father is
39:54
Speaker 3: one with me. That's I'm not going to go into
39:58
Speaker 3: the religious debate of what that'll means and what it's written,
40:01
Speaker 3: or if it's even was ever written, or was even true.
40:05
Speaker 3: But that space of oneness is what gets created in
40:07
Speaker 3: that kind of language. It's I have a theory. Another
40:14
Speaker 3: version of the Bible says in the beginning was the word, Well,
40:17
Speaker 3: what is word?
40:18
Speaker 5: Word?
40:18
Speaker 3: Is our ability to communicate, our ability to interact one
40:22
Speaker 3: on one with each other and have an experience of
40:24
Speaker 3: what that was. Well, we had to evolve into language,
40:28
Speaker 3: whereas before what was language? Maybe we didn't have to
40:31
Speaker 3: speak before, maybe we had the capability of communicating without language.
40:36
Speaker 1: I don't know.
40:37
Speaker 3: It almost seems like the language is what confounded everything,
40:41
Speaker 3: because because I see it my way and you see
40:43
Speaker 3: it your way, and then I try to articulate what
40:45
Speaker 3: it is, but it's all that articulation is based on
40:49
Speaker 3: my own experience, it's not based on yours. And so
40:51
Speaker 3: then you've got to reconcile it in the noodle to
40:55
Speaker 3: try to get the brain to reconcile that stuff. Where
40:58
Speaker 3: just be together or playing creating something together. Music is
41:03
Speaker 3: a great experience that I've had personally through that, because
41:07
Speaker 3: we start just creating something in the moment, and there's
41:11
Speaker 3: no end to the music that can play through that,
41:14
Speaker 3: there's no end of the creativity that can come through that.
41:17
Speaker 3: And as humanity, I hope we can get to a
41:20
Speaker 3: place where we can understand that and be more open
41:23
Speaker 3: to that rather than you know, like you you had
41:27
Speaker 3: said earlier, the extraction process were extract from the earth.
41:31
Speaker 3: We go we take what can I get, what can
41:34
Speaker 3: I use? And how can I turn that into the
41:36
Speaker 3: most money possible so that I can you know, all
41:40
Speaker 3: of those things or things that are in the process
41:44
Speaker 3: of shifting. You see it, We see it. It's a
41:47
Speaker 3: slow process and it's probably going to be a painful process.
41:52
Speaker 3: It is happening, and that that that brings me, It
41:55
Speaker 3: gives us both a lot of hope when we see that.
41:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think, you know, you touch on such
42:01
Speaker 4: a super interesting point there about communication and ineffability, and
42:10
Speaker 4: and I would even go to say that maybe it's
42:13
Speaker 4: verbal communication or written communication that's challenging because those sort
42:18
Speaker 4: of like you know, words, whether written or spoken, are symbols,
42:23
Speaker 4: and those symbols have to be sort of stamped and
42:26
Speaker 4: we all have to agree upon sort of agree upon
42:29
Speaker 4: what that meaning is. It might be a variation. But
42:31
Speaker 4: when you're talking about music or I paint all that
42:34
Speaker 4: so art, those are sort of fluid communication styles, right,
42:40
Speaker 4: It's sort of there's a there's allowance for tangents, there's
42:43
Speaker 4: allowance for a sort of a I'm not static to
42:48
Speaker 4: some degree process there, you know, that whole creative process,
42:51
Speaker 4: all that kind of thing. So so we're looking at
42:53
Speaker 4: there's a different sort of type of communication oftentimes when
42:56
Speaker 4: we do the meeting making process. Yes, sometimes words are
42:58
Speaker 4: great to be able to speak to the experiences, but
43:00
Speaker 4: a lot of times these alternative ways of communicating can
43:04
Speaker 4: be really really valuable for folks to be able to
43:06
Speaker 4: understand this super layer. And so you may have heard
43:09
Speaker 4: this before, but I think you know, the idea of
43:11
Speaker 4: ineffability is also just social profound. There's actually a couple
43:14
Speaker 4: of different definitions I think could talk about this ineffability.
43:18
Speaker 4: The first one would be basically like, I can't possibly
43:20
Speaker 4: put words on it. It's sort of beyond my vocabulary,
43:23
Speaker 4: it's beyond my understanding of consciousness, it's beyond all these
43:27
Speaker 4: other different types of things. The second one would basically
43:30
Speaker 4: be like, ineffability is an experience where I don't feel
43:36
Speaker 4: it's right to share. This is a sacred experience for me,
43:39
Speaker 4: and I'm going to keep it with myself. So that's
43:41
Speaker 4: not an affability in the sense of like, you know,
43:43
Speaker 4: I don't have the words for it, but it's just
43:45
Speaker 4: something that's a little bit more private, right. But the
43:47
Speaker 4: third ineffability I think is really interesting because this speaks
43:49
Speaker 4: to even the idea of like, how do people who
43:53
Speaker 4: have had these types of experiences speak to people who
43:55
Speaker 4: haven't had these types of experiences. And the third type
43:58
Speaker 4: of massability is basically like unless somebody else has had
44:01
Speaker 4: a similar experience, there's just no way to relate to
44:03
Speaker 4: the words that you're saying. But if you have had
44:05
Speaker 4: a similar experience, all of a sudden, those words that
44:07
Speaker 4: might be static change. They have a vibrancy to them.
44:11
Speaker 4: There's a story behind there, there's more embedded in it
44:13
Speaker 4: because you're both sort of thinking about these other spaces,
44:16
Speaker 4: these other conscious spaces that you sort of participated in,
44:19
Speaker 4: and that word now has a little bit more flexibility.
44:21
Speaker 4: It's not so sort of static, it's phrasing. So so
44:25
Speaker 4: I think that's really fascinat when we talk about communication,
44:27
Speaker 4: we talk about how do we move this forward, and
44:29
Speaker 4: we talk about these ideas and that's ability, and we're
44:31
Speaker 4: talking about consciousness. We really have to sort of, you know,
44:33
Speaker 4: there's this other term all that if you heard this
44:36
Speaker 4: effingly ineffable trying to share the experience is just like
44:41
Speaker 4: it's just a mess. But it doesn't mean we should
44:44
Speaker 4: stop trying. You look at some of these old spiritual texts,
44:46
Speaker 4: they're going to try and get down to that nugget.
44:48
Speaker 4: You know, let's keep trying to define and understand and
44:51
Speaker 4: use words or phrases or art or music or whatever
44:53
Speaker 4: else we get to that nugget of what it is
44:55
Speaker 4: that we're all trying to like figure out, we just
44:57
Speaker 4: kind of give up. There's so much space that we're
44:59
Speaker 4: sort of using and the opportunity to really communicate or
45:02
Speaker 4: sort of explore these realms these other places that we
45:05
Speaker 4: don't really have a sort of a system for right now.
45:07
Speaker 4: So I think, you know, the idea of an affability
45:09
Speaker 4: and communication I think is really critical as we move
45:12
Speaker 4: forward and sort of being open to these conversations that
45:15
Speaker 4: maybe sound a little stranger unusual for somebody that hasn't
45:18
Speaker 4: had these experiences, but allowing the mistakes, you know, but
45:20
Speaker 4: in these integration circles we have, it's so amazing to
45:24
Speaker 4: watch somebody like trying to like f the ineffability or
45:27
Speaker 4: trying to put a word on something, and they're like,
45:29
Speaker 4: it's not this, and it's not this, but it's like
45:31
Speaker 4: this and like combined two words, and they're making up languages.
45:34
Speaker 4: They go to discuss this experience and then somebody's like, oh,
45:38
Speaker 4: I totally get you know, Like so there's a moment
45:40
Speaker 4: where we're having to create new language. We're having to
45:43
Speaker 4: create new ways of expressing things for these experiences that
45:46
Speaker 4: we just don't have any sort of framework for now.
45:48
Speaker 4: So that's really beautiful to see this kind of emerge
45:51
Speaker 4: and see this in our integration circles and a lot
45:53
Speaker 4: of other places as well. To allow to allow the
45:55
Speaker 4: acting of the ineffable, to allow the opportunity to sort
45:58
Speaker 4: of make mistakes, to the mumble over words, to you know,
46:02
Speaker 4: to try and combining words or whatever, just because we
46:04
Speaker 4: are trying to describe a place that is just beyond
46:06
Speaker 4: what most of us think about.
46:08
Speaker 2: Well, and I think you bring up a good point
46:09
Speaker 2: that when we are in that space where we are
46:12
Speaker 2: beyond what we can logically sometimes frame. We've had those
46:18
Speaker 2: experiences all our life, the birth of a child, the
46:21
Speaker 2: loss of a loved one. You know, at times there's
46:24
Speaker 2: things that cannot be put into words. But when there's
46:27
Speaker 2: a shared experience, people can look in your eyes and know,
46:32
Speaker 2: I know you've lost a loved one, and there's no
46:34
Speaker 2: language that has to be exchanged, but there is a language,
46:40
Speaker 2: perhaps not of words, that definitely connects and helps someone
46:45
Speaker 2: know I know that you've been there. You know, I
46:48
Speaker 2: know that you've been to that place. And I think
46:50
Speaker 2: that's very similar here is that it's it's a place
46:55
Speaker 2: that takes you beyond any framing that we've done in
47:00
Speaker 2: you know, in language and in agreement that this is
47:02
Speaker 2: a This is a good way to express it, in
47:04
Speaker 2: a bad way to express it, to just say I
47:06
Speaker 2: can see in your eyes that you've been there. You
47:09
Speaker 2: know you've been to that place. That says I know
47:13
Speaker 2: how big the world is or how much bigger I am,
47:16
Speaker 2: or how limitless my potential is, and I can't put
47:21
Speaker 2: it into words.
47:24
Speaker 4: It's beautiful. That's kind of like an emotional communication that
47:27
Speaker 4: you're seeing.
47:27
Speaker 2: Really there a vibrational communication or a vibrational communication, right,
47:32
Speaker 2: it's it's at that level of frequency or vibration.
47:35
Speaker 3: Well. And what we've found since we've had our own
47:39
Speaker 3: experiences when when we're out in public now, or we're
47:43
Speaker 3: we're going to the store, or we're walking around, or
47:45
Speaker 3: even if we just walk into a certain room, that
47:49
Speaker 3: you can you can sense now what what is the
47:52
Speaker 3: mood of the room, or what is the mood of
47:54
Speaker 3: what's going on. Since COVID, it's become this this very
48:00
Speaker 3: palpable thing that you can sense all the time because
48:02
Speaker 3: people have gone into such a special fear uh and
48:06
Speaker 3: and for many many times you could say right rightly,
48:08
Speaker 3: so you know, people were in fear of their lives.
48:10
Speaker 3: They're protecting themselves so that they didn't didn't catch this
48:14
Speaker 3: disease and perhaps die. And we'd never experienced anything like
48:18
Speaker 3: that before. So it took us to this place of
48:21
Speaker 3: now I feel I can feel that more, there's no
48:24
Speaker 3: judgment around it, and I can be in my own
48:27
Speaker 3: fear space too. But there's an author that we read
48:30
Speaker 3: named by the name of Paul Sellig, and he's a channeler,
48:34
Speaker 3: and we've listened to his words. He's when he's speaking
48:38
Speaker 3: these words and channeling these words, talk about new language.
48:41
Speaker 3: There's there's way different ways of saying different things. And
48:46
Speaker 3: when he when he comes in and talks and channels
48:49
Speaker 3: this information, you can feel that this is new stuff.
48:54
Speaker 3: But it's just one way of seeing this new stuff.
48:57
Speaker 3: Plant medicine, entigens like we talked about earlier, drumming these
49:02
Speaker 3: different ways, but they're all different ways for us to
49:04
Speaker 3: find a way to quiet the mind down, allow the
49:08
Speaker 3: thoughts to dissipate the things that get stuck and get
49:12
Speaker 3: in the way to our own innate wellness, which is
49:15
Speaker 3: we all already have. It's already there. We're already, we're
49:19
Speaker 3: already just fine. All we have to do is let
49:22
Speaker 3: go of all the all of the baggage that we
49:24
Speaker 3: keep carrying along with us to settle into that and
49:27
Speaker 3: have the experience of that. And that's that the experience
49:31
Speaker 3: of being able to have that experience in our consciousness
49:35
Speaker 3: by just quieting our thoughts down. But we're human beings,
49:39
Speaker 3: so we have to be able to use thought as
49:41
Speaker 3: well to create. It's how you create your paintings is
49:44
Speaker 3: in the thinking, yess. It's thought is the gift, that
49:47
Speaker 3: power of thought is that gift to be able to create.
49:50
Speaker 3: But now as we come into the space where we're
49:54
Speaker 3: going to be allowing society to shift and recognize this
49:59
Speaker 3: one one oneness through all of the different ways of
50:02
Speaker 3: doing it, we can come into a space of creating
50:05
Speaker 3: from there, creating from the space of presence, creating from
50:08
Speaker 3: the space of oneness where we're not again extracting, taking,
50:12
Speaker 3: but realizing that and you do it for one reason.
50:15
Speaker 3: There's only one reason, and we got it. We always
50:17
Speaker 3: have to mention this word because I could and I
50:19
Speaker 3: could feel it when Ray was talking. What she was
50:22
Speaker 3: talking about is recognizing when when you've had a shared
50:26
Speaker 3: experience with someone else who's lost a loved one or whatever,
50:29
Speaker 3: it is that that feeling, that's a high vibration. That's
50:33
Speaker 3: that love, that's compassion, it's kindness, and that love. Truly,
50:39
Speaker 3: love is a power. It's not just a word, it's
50:42
Speaker 3: a really a true It's the power that holds everything together.
50:46
Speaker 3: All the galaxies, the entire universe is held together by
50:48
Speaker 3: that power. I believe, I feel. So that's that innate
50:54
Speaker 3: wellness that is there if we can go into it,
50:57
Speaker 3: and the plant medicines and indigens that have give us
51:01
Speaker 3: that capability to go and have a little taste of that,
51:05
Speaker 3: a little experience of that, right, and we've held it
51:08
Speaker 3: in the sixties.
51:09
Speaker 1: You know, things got a little bit out of hand.
51:12
Speaker 3: In the sixties and seventies, and then it got out
51:15
Speaker 3: of hand the other direction. Let's outlaw everything, you just
51:19
Speaker 3: make everything a crime. And now we're coming back into
51:24
Speaker 3: a place of using them in the way that they've
51:27
Speaker 3: been used for, like you said, millennia.
51:30
Speaker 4: Wherever, you know, And I think it's so it's so
51:36
Speaker 4: interesting often think about this. You know, there's a lot
51:37
Speaker 4: of people who are maybe didn't have the experiences of
51:40
Speaker 4: the sixties and seventies, or maybe just coming into this
51:42
Speaker 4: new or maybe have heard about the research or whatever else,
51:45
Speaker 4: and they're like, okay, well, on a purely, you know,
51:49
Speaker 4: basic level, I could see people shouldn't have to go
51:51
Speaker 4: to jail for having their own experiences personal liberty with
51:54
Speaker 4: when your body is your thing, you know, then that
51:56
Speaker 4: should be fine. And I often think like there's going
51:58
Speaker 4: to be a moment in time in the future where
52:00
Speaker 4: people will have that breakthrough experience and they'll be like,
52:05
Speaker 4: this is what everyone was drying about, right, you know,
52:08
Speaker 4: because like, right on the other side of this is consciousness.
52:12
Speaker 4: I mean, we're rain conscious too, but like you know,
52:14
Speaker 4: it's like it's just on the other side. Nobody even
52:16
Speaker 4: knows it's there half the time, and so I think
52:18
Speaker 4: a lot of what we do too, and even you know,
52:20
Speaker 4: you talk about the fear of the pandemic and all
52:22
Speaker 4: the other fears that are going on there. Like sometimes
52:24
Speaker 4: if you don't know how connected you are to source,
52:26
Speaker 4: it's really easy to be fearful because there is a
52:29
Speaker 4: feure of death because there's a cure, because there's this
52:32
Speaker 4: other thing, and not saying that having connection the Source
52:34
Speaker 4: is going to help people or make them that slip
52:36
Speaker 4: for any of those sets are not stopping from dying,
52:37
Speaker 4: but there's a sense of like, wow, Okay, I know
52:40
Speaker 4: where my center is, and my center is connected to
52:42
Speaker 4: the Source, and it's harder for the powers that be
52:44
Speaker 4: or authoritarianism or totalitarianism to kind of push you off
52:48
Speaker 4: of that center because you're like, I'm grounded in my being.
52:50
Speaker 4: I'm grounded in this experience of consciousness. I know that
52:53
Speaker 4: there's more that exists. It's not just having to buy
52:56
Speaker 4: more products so I can feel better about myself. It's
52:59
Speaker 4: saying like wait a second, wow, Like we are all connected,
53:02
Speaker 4: we are all part of this bigger thing called consciousns.
53:05
Speaker 4: So I often think about that, you know, like there'll
53:07
Speaker 4: be moments in time, maybe five or ten years down
53:09
Speaker 4: the road, we'll get to certain waves of like people
53:11
Speaker 4: having these experiences and being like, wow, I had no
53:13
Speaker 4: idea how big it was or how much was there,
53:16
Speaker 4: you know, And then how beautiful that is to know
53:18
Speaker 4: that we're kind of like really sort of helping the
53:20
Speaker 4: steward some of this conversation for folks that you know,
53:24
Speaker 4: may not even come you know, they say, you know,
53:26
Speaker 4: I forget how it goes exactly, but something about like,
53:29
Speaker 4: you know, plant a seed for a tree you may
53:31
Speaker 4: never see right, you know, And that's kind of where
53:33
Speaker 4: we're at right now. You know, we're planting a lot
53:34
Speaker 4: of seeds for trees that maybe are going to be
53:36
Speaker 4: seen for many years down the road, you know. And
53:38
Speaker 4: so and so that's really an amazing thing and sort
53:41
Speaker 4: of be sort of on the process of helping the
53:44
Speaker 4: steward that conversation, helping steward changes and policy to allow
53:48
Speaker 4: people to have access to consciousness is just such a
53:51
Speaker 4: beautiful thing and it's really an honor to be able
53:53
Speaker 4: to participate in that.
53:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great service that you're doing. And I
53:57
Speaker 1: can't remember who said it.
53:58
Speaker 3: Someone said it was one of the gurus that are
54:02
Speaker 3: well so called gurus that have been in the plant
54:04
Speaker 3: medicine space. That antigens can show you that you're God.
54:09
Speaker 3: You come out of an experience and you realize that
54:11
Speaker 3: you're God. But the problem comes about when you don't
54:14
Speaker 3: think everyone else is too, because the reality is is
54:18
Speaker 3: not only everyone, but everything is part of that wholeness
54:22
Speaker 3: and that oneness, and you can tend to get set apart,
54:25
Speaker 3: and that's when things get out of balances, when you
54:27
Speaker 3: start to the ego gets in there and says, oh,
54:30
Speaker 3: look at me, I now know.
54:32
Speaker 1: Come follow me.
54:33
Speaker 3: I'm going to create my own belief system and come
54:36
Speaker 3: and follow this. And that's not what this is about.
54:39
Speaker 3: This is about everybody. I mean, a deeper understanding of
54:42
Speaker 3: what it is and that connector I think again, is
54:45
Speaker 3: that word love. Because love organizes itself. When it's really
54:50
Speaker 3: truly that that unconditional love like exists in the universe,
54:55
Speaker 3: it organizes itself. We don't need a whole lot of
54:58
Speaker 3: structure around it when we live in that that place
55:00
Speaker 3: that's utopic, you know, but I think eventually that's what
55:06
Speaker 3: we're meant to discover as a collective. That's where we're
55:10
Speaker 3: headed to discover that as a collective, because that's when
55:12
Speaker 3: we realize what God actually is. It is all of us,
55:15
Speaker 3: It is all of us.
55:18
Speaker 4: I just like that idea too about you know, even
55:21
Speaker 4: differentiating between love and traditional love and a lot of
55:23
Speaker 4: times I like to use the word compassion because compassion
55:27
Speaker 4: doesn't mean it's going to be rainbows and puppies and
55:29
Speaker 4: everything's going to be great. It's saying like, hey, this
55:32
Speaker 4: might be difficult for a period of time, but I'm
55:34
Speaker 4: going to sit with you and I'm going to help
55:35
Speaker 4: support and steward this process with you. And that's sort
55:38
Speaker 4: of also a process of love. So we're kind of
55:40
Speaker 4: in this sort of big cultural experience now where you know,
55:44
Speaker 4: you hear this kind of toxic positivity where everything will
55:47
Speaker 4: be great for him about those bad things. But that
55:49
Speaker 4: doesn't necessarily always help people. You know, you have to
55:51
Speaker 4: be sometimes like Okay, this is going to be difficult,
55:53
Speaker 4: there's gonna be challenges, maybe there's gonna be some shadow here,
55:55
Speaker 4: but let's sit together, let's collaborate on how to move forward,
55:58
Speaker 4: and let's sort of make like a saying, have this
56:00
Speaker 4: unconditional love for each other that even the mistakes that happen,
56:03
Speaker 4: or the challenges that happen or things like that, that
56:05
Speaker 4: we're going to try and help heal each other as
56:06
Speaker 4: a community, because you are all parts of this divine being,
56:09
Speaker 4: you know. And I think I don't know who was,
56:11
Speaker 4: but I heard the same similar story with the ram Das.
56:14
Speaker 4: I think was talking with his brother, and his brother
56:16
Speaker 4: was a businessman and had like a more sort of
56:18
Speaker 4: mainstream life, and he, for whatever reason, I think that's
56:21
Speaker 4: how the story goes went to. So it was kind
56:23
Speaker 4: of go to a mental institution or however you want
56:26
Speaker 4: to call that, you know, And and he's like, I
56:27
Speaker 4: don't understand why I'm here. You're the one that's going
56:29
Speaker 4: off in these spiritual places and doings and da da
56:31
Speaker 4: da da and and all this kind of stuff. And
56:33
Speaker 4: to the rum Das is basically like, well, do you
56:34
Speaker 4: think you're Jesus? He's like yeah, and he's like, well,
56:36
Speaker 4: the difference is I think everyone right, And so exactly
56:39
Speaker 4: what you're saying there, like realizing that everyone's in my
56:42
Speaker 4: presence and then you sort of relate because you are
56:44
Speaker 4: speaking to divinity in front of you, even if it's
56:46
Speaker 4: somebody you like or don't like or what have you,
56:48
Speaker 4: realizing like we're all part of this grander being.
56:51
Speaker 2: I love that you talk about being a steward of
56:54
Speaker 2: you know, the movement that you're doing with Decriminalized Nature
56:57
Speaker 2: is such a stewardship role to play. So tell us
57:01
Speaker 2: a little bit more about what's on the horizon for
57:03
Speaker 2: you right now with Decriminalized Nature, maybe the number of
57:06
Speaker 2: cities you're working with or at the national level, and
57:10
Speaker 2: if our listeners would like to get involved, how they
57:12
Speaker 2: how they reach you, how they start to become part
57:15
Speaker 2: of the community to join that stewardship.
57:19
Speaker 4: Absolutely, and and you know, I think that's that's right now,
57:21
Speaker 4: and that's something that I've been so sort of proud
57:26
Speaker 4: of the underground community for stepping up all over the place,
57:29
Speaker 4: you know, to watching you know, and we started, you know,
57:32
Speaker 4: in on Oakland. We didn't have any idea that people
57:34
Speaker 4: were going to move forward with this, that people would
57:36
Speaker 4: want to come out of the woodwork. There's a lot
57:38
Speaker 4: of different there's a lot of big difference from voting
57:40
Speaker 4: yes on something versus coming into a city council being
57:45
Speaker 4: on public record and saying I broke the law. Just
57:48
Speaker 4: transform my life. I wouldn't be here today without it,
57:51
Speaker 4: and you need to change the law now. That takes courage.
57:54
Speaker 4: That's impressive, and that's you know, it's just like every
57:57
Speaker 4: time I think about how many folks all over the
57:59
Speaker 4: places are doing, it's really incredible. So we look to
58:01
Speaker 4: have probably about three more cities passing in the next quarter.
58:05
Speaker 4: We have, like I said, I've been doing a lot
58:07
Speaker 4: of influencing on statewide legislation. I think there's like twenty
58:10
Speaker 4: different twenty different states now that have some sort of
58:14
Speaker 4: legislation going through related to psychedelics, plants, and mushroom. We
58:19
Speaker 4: also have, you know a lot of different folks, you know,
58:24
Speaker 4: kind of like working on educating the community. So everyone's
58:27
Speaker 4: kind of different in terms of where they're at. You know,
58:29
Speaker 4: sometimes boom happens, it moves to really quick. City council
58:32
Speaker 4: members like we're on board. Sometimes there's a little bit
58:34
Speaker 4: more challenging. Sometimes there's a need to build that local structure,
58:36
Speaker 4: so we really want to kind of keep this decentralized.
58:39
Speaker 4: Have those local supports systems sort of embedded in those
58:42
Speaker 4: communities as they're also working on passing legislation. So building
58:46
Speaker 4: you know, educational groups, building psychedelics societies or entagenic societies
58:50
Speaker 4: or whatever, building integration circles, you know, you know, creating
58:54
Speaker 4: a community. So if somebody does have a challenge or
58:57
Speaker 4: differ experience, they know where to go. They don't have
58:59
Speaker 4: to sort of go go you know, kind of like
59:02
Speaker 4: you know, make it make it difficult for the rest
59:05
Speaker 4: for so we always sort of advocate and courage people
59:07
Speaker 4: to sort of build those local communities as well. But
59:10
Speaker 4: you know, the process is not that difficult. You know.
59:12
Speaker 4: It's like we basically we have the resolution already written up.
59:15
Speaker 4: We said, it's been vetted by cities attorney's offices all
59:18
Speaker 4: across the US. Just change some names and maybe some
59:21
Speaker 4: some of the sort of the who's who or who
59:25
Speaker 4: the direction goes in terms of who directs who to
59:27
Speaker 4: do what kind of thing. But that's really easy to do.
59:29
Speaker 4: We give people all the tools in terms of you know,
59:31
Speaker 4: emails to spend out to the city council members how
59:33
Speaker 4: to do it. We do opportunities for people to you know,
59:38
Speaker 4: meet as a team. We als sometimes will meet up
59:41
Speaker 4: with the city council members as well to let people
59:42
Speaker 4: know what's going on on a national level. So those
59:45
Speaker 4: are all the different things that are happening, and we
59:47
Speaker 4: continue to grow, which has been really beautiful to see.
59:49
Speaker 4: You know, if if you're any of your listeners would
59:52
Speaker 4: like to sort of reach out to us, you can
59:53
Speaker 4: go to Decriminalized Nation dot org. That's their website, or
59:57
Speaker 4: for their social media friends, we can go to a
1:00:00
Speaker 4: Realized Nature for Instagram, also for the Instagram for my
1:00:04
Speaker 4: other nonprofities at EURI vision e r I E e I,
1:00:07
Speaker 4: s IO, lend or my personal pages at learning r
1:00:10
Speaker 4: s PhD, any of those places we can contact. You
1:00:14
Speaker 4: can contact me there or Carlos or any other folks
1:00:16
Speaker 4: in Decriminalized Nature and we can help gets it started.
1:00:18
Speaker 4: H Like I said, usually we'll probably do like little
1:00:20
Speaker 4: intro meeting with you, kind of give you the heads
1:00:23
Speaker 4: up in terms of how to how to how to
1:00:25
Speaker 4: make it happen in your local city, give you some strategies,
1:00:28
Speaker 4: you know, help you with sort of analyzing your city
1:00:30
Speaker 4: council members and then starting the educational process. And at
1:00:32
Speaker 4: the end of the day, you know, I didn't know
1:00:35
Speaker 4: anything about engaging in policy when I started this. So
1:00:38
Speaker 4: people are like, well, I don't know how to do this.
1:00:40
Speaker 4: I've never done it before. Great, nobody that's done this,
1:00:42
Speaker 4: you know, all across the US has been the case,
1:00:44
Speaker 4: you know, and and and that's good because we're learning
1:00:46
Speaker 4: about this together and we're learning. Okay, So now I
1:00:48
Speaker 4: have a lot of skills because I've done this over
1:00:50
Speaker 4: and over and over again. And it's kind of surprising
1:00:52
Speaker 4: that we like to think we're all individuals, but every
1:00:56
Speaker 4: single you know, it's like a city in Florida, a
1:00:58
Speaker 4: city in Michigan, a city and main in the city
1:01:00
Speaker 4: in California. They're all asking the same question, the exact
1:01:03
Speaker 4: same thing over and over again. Yeah, variation in terms
1:01:06
Speaker 4: of that the experience.
1:01:08
Speaker 3: That you've had, you know, you know what the pitfall
1:01:10
Speaker 3: falls are going to be, what the questions are, the
1:01:12
Speaker 3: press we're going to have on all that kind of things.
1:01:15
Speaker 4: So that's awesome, right, exactly exactly. So yeah, so have
1:01:18
Speaker 4: them reached out to us, and then we'll give you
1:01:19
Speaker 4: all the tools you need, you know, really help you
1:01:21
Speaker 4: build your community, help you engage with your city council members,
1:01:25
Speaker 4: and then you know, keep moving forward, and you know,
1:01:26
Speaker 4: we think that if we can continue to this on
1:01:28
Speaker 4: the city level, that will eventually give us an opportunity
1:01:31
Speaker 4: to speak at the state level in terms of being
1:01:33
Speaker 4: at the table, being making sure that types of conversation
1:01:36
Speaker 4: we're trying to have isn't just sort of swallowed up
1:01:37
Speaker 4: by farm our medicalization. But we're really talking abouts mushrooms,
1:01:40
Speaker 4: really talking about nature, being able to cultivate your own
1:01:43
Speaker 4: being able to engage in community based practice. All those
1:01:45
Speaker 4: things are really critical. So we're getting that voice out there.
1:01:48
Speaker 4: We're operating an opportunity for a lot of the voices
1:01:50
Speaker 4: that aren't being heard to come out and speak as well.
1:01:52
Speaker 4: So we'd love to help out however we can.
1:01:54
Speaker 1: Well, it's fantastic.
1:01:57
Speaker 3: We're so honored to have you on. Thank you for
1:01:59
Speaker 3: taking time to come on and share this because it's
1:02:03
Speaker 3: we've seen. We went to a psychedelic what they call
1:02:06
Speaker 3: a psychedelic conference that they had here.
1:02:08
Speaker 1: They had James.
1:02:08
Speaker 3: Fatiman came and talked and there were several others from
1:02:12
Speaker 3: that Maps came and they had this big thing.
1:02:15
Speaker 1: We show up for it and along with six hundred
1:02:18
Speaker 1: other people.
1:02:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was sold out.
1:02:20
Speaker 3: It was sold out that they were getting people away
1:02:23
Speaker 3: because there were so many people that were interested in
1:02:25
Speaker 3: this because they know that it's a wave of healing
1:02:30
Speaker 3: that needs to happen now with everything that's gone on.
1:02:33
Speaker 3: And that was even pre COVID.
1:02:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a long time.
1:02:36
Speaker 1: That would probably be double that for one now.
1:02:38
Speaker 4: So oh yeah, for sure.
1:02:40
Speaker 3: But thank you so much for coming on and sharing
1:02:43
Speaker 3: some time with us. We truly appreciate it, and we
1:02:46
Speaker 3: look forward to connecting with you again. Sometimes we love
1:02:49
Speaker 3: to have you on again with Carlos and maybe have
1:02:53
Speaker 3: some more further conversation and continue this.
1:02:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that as well. Thank you very much
1:02:58
Speaker 4: for having me. It was really great to talk story
1:02:59
Speaker 4: with Thank you all and really get into sort of
1:03:01
Speaker 4: the depths. You know. It's nice and sometimes you know,
1:03:04
Speaker 4: when I do podcasts, you really just talk about policy stuff,
1:03:06
Speaker 4: but we are able to sort of cover a lot
1:03:07
Speaker 4: of different topics that I really appreciate that. It helps
1:03:10
Speaker 4: you get my mind excited as well, So thank you
1:03:12
Speaker 4: very much.
1:03:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think that was great. So again, thank
1:03:15
Speaker 2: you so much again, doctor Larry Norris with Decriminalized Nature.
1:03:20
Speaker 2: Talk to you soon.
1:03:21
Speaker 4: We'll see you bye, Thank you, bye bye.
1:03:24
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