The late Alan Watts, a philosopher, scholar, speaker, writer, and seminal figure in the counterculture of the Beat Generation, is getting a new publishing deal more than 50 years after his death.

Independent music publisher Third Side Music (TSM) has signed a new global creative publishing deal withThe Alan Watts Organization to foster creative music opportunities with Watts trove of 500+ hours of audio commentary, lectures, and radio programing for use in new songs by contemporary artists and in films, TV series, advertising, and other media.

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In recent years, Watts recordings, commentaries, and other works have been used in campaigns for major brands such asVolvo,GoPro,Cunard Lines,X-box,Netflix,Uber, andJack Daniels, among others.Although he was not a songwriter, hes credited for lyrics on hundreds of songs, and his works have been incorporated into thousands of lyric videos on YouTube and social media.

His words and compelling vocal delivery have sparked aviral TikTok sensation(#alanwatts has been used over 224 milliontimes) and inspired some of the worlds most influential artists and tastemakers, including Harry Styles, who overlaid WattsquoteThis sensation of being a separate lonely individual is a hallucinationas part of the intro inhis recent tours.

Watts has also been sampled by such artists asNas,Logic(The Incredible True Story, 27 million Spotify streams),INZO(Overthinker, more than 43 million YouTube views), andNuages(Dreams, 73 million YouTube views and 20 million Spotify streams).

As one of the first to interpret Eastern philosophy and make it relatable to Western audiences,Wattscommentaries andaspirational lectures on themes of unity, self-realization, and the spiritual world have proven to be evermore mainstream.He is perhaps best known for a multitude of famous quotes such as,What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?andI wonder, I wonder, what you would do if you had the power to dream at night any dream you wanted to dream.

Way Beyond the West,his Bay Area radio show that started in the 1950s, is still broadcast on KPFK in Los Angeles. By the early sixties, Watts radio talks aired nationally, and the counterculture movement adopted him as a spiritual spokesperson.

This is a dream come true. We are elated and honored to be entrusted to represent Alan Watts, whose recordings inspire and resonate today more than ever. Our global TSM creative team is excited to develop new music opportunities and work closely with Mark Watts and the Alan Watts Organization tohelp expose new audiences to his prolific recordings and legacy., saidAlex Kelman, EVP creative & A&R.

Mark Watts, director and cofounder of the Alan Watts Organization, said: Working with the wonderful team at Third Side Music brings abundant real-world experience and great talent to our focus on crafting creative relationships with musicians and labels. It will also help us foster conversations in the areas of filmmaking and commercial use. We are excited about the possibilities!

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Alan Watts, Beat Generation Philosopher And Seminal Counterculture Figure, Gets His Recorded Works Recycled - Yahoo News Australia

Todd Central Greenhouse Offering Expanded Variety Of Plants | WKDZ Radio

The Todd County Central High School Greenhouse is offering an expanded selection of plants for sale to the public this spring.

Todd Central High School FFA Advisor and Horticulture Instructor Shayla Berry says the students in the greenhouse and horticulture classes she teaches have worked hard this year to offer a great selection for their customers.

click to download audioBerry says they are selling everything from ferns to succulents.

click to download audioShe adds the horticulture-related classes she teaches provide several important lessons for all students who take them.

click to download audioThe students spoke with News and Farm Director Alan Watts about their work in the greenhouse and through the horticulture classes.

Visit with Todd County Central Greenhouse Students

Visit with Horticulture Instructor and FFA Advisor Shayla Berry

Photos by Molly Skipworth and Susan Watts

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Todd Central Greenhouse Offering Expanded Variety Of Plants - wkdzradio.com

Taylor says that the course and Harnishs senior thesis, a play she wrote about the course material, This is Your Computer on Drugswhich she is also directing on April 29 and 30 at Columbiarepresent the culmination of their three-year collaborative relationship.

Harnish took her first class with Taylor, Philosophy of Religion, during the spring semester of her freshman year, after which she decided to become a religion major instead of the double major she had declared in philosophy and theater. This was also when COVID hit, right when Harnish was writing her midterm paper, so the course was completed over Zoom. She then enrolled in two more courses with Taylor during the fall 2020 semester, Theory and Recovering Place, because he had hinted at retirement. Both classes were conducted virtually.

It was the depths of the pandemic, and Harnish, who had returned to Indiana, where she grew up, was having a hard time. She was living alone in a government-subsidized apartment for artists in Indianapolis, working two jobs, taking 16 course credit hours, and trying to cope with life during COVID.

Come midterms, she emailed Taylor to alert him that she was planning on withdrawing from Columbia for the rest of the semester because of her difficulty managing everything. He offered to Zoom with her later that day.

He talked me into staying in school, said Harnish, and its a good thing he did, because my final project for Recovering Place was my first full-length play, The Foundation of Roses.

The 60-page script is a ghost story about her challenging childhood experiences, said Taylor. It was so remarkable that I nominated it for the Religion Departments Peter Awn Award, which is given annually to the most outstanding undergraduate paper or project in the department. My colleagues agreed with my assessment, and Alethea won the award in 2021.

Harnish has since written four more plays. One of them, Phantasmagoria, a one-person, autobiographical show, made its Off-Broadway debut in June 2022 when she performed it at the Downtown Urban Arts Festival, where it won second place for the Best Play Award. The work was about leaving her rural roots in Indiana to attend college in New York.

According to Harnish, she was the first person from her high school to get into an Ivy League university, and traveling halfway across the country to a big city was a culture shock. Meeting Taylor, who became a mentor, was very beneficial for her.

Over time, the relationship has morphed from a mentor-mentee one into something more reciprocal, said Harnish.

Taylor, who started teaching at Williams College in 1973, and arrived full-time at Columbia in 2007, said that early on he detected something very special about Alethea. It was not just her exceptional intelligence, interest, maturity, and determination, but also a rare imaginative creativity.

Once campus came back to life in fall 2021, at the start of Harnishs junior year, the two continued their conversations in person, and Harnish started sending Taylor examples of her writing. They met regularly during Taylors office hours to discuss her work. One day, she asked him what he was working on for his next book. Hegel and quantum mechanics, he said.

In one of those strange moments the theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli and the psychologist Carl Jung labeled synchronicity, said Taylor, Alethea said, Thats weird because I want to write and produce a play for my senior thesis about quantum physics and New Age spirituality.

Out of that convergence came the course theyre now co-teaching. They started by delving deeper into their shared interest in the material through reading and further discussion. Few people realize that personal computers, the Internet, the World Wide Web, and the Metaverse all trace their origins to hippies and the drug culture of the 1960s, said Taylor.

The more I thought about it, the clearer it became that this would be the perfect subject for my last course, he continued. My professional career spanned precisely the half-century from the 1960s to the present.

When Taylor asked her to co-teach the course, Harnish was initially terrified. We had spent almost two years in conversation by that point, and I knew that this would be the opportunity of a lifetime, she said. His insisting that he was also learning from me gave me the confidence to take on such a role.

Although Harnish has fully embraced her leadership role with the course this semester, she is not sure if she will pursue a career in higher education. Her immediate plans after graduation are to travel to Greece this summer with a Brooklyn-based theater company, providing administrative support for its apprentice program. She then wants to spend a year in New York, completing the applications for various playwriting fellowships and other writing programs.

Back in the classroom, the next time Hippie Physics meets, Harnish, dressed in a jean shirt, long, pleated skirt, and cowboy boots, leads the discussion on the assigned readings from The Book by Alan Watts and Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. One of her touches has been to start every session spending a few moments listening to one of the eras classic rock songs, and then opening the floor to a parsing of the songs meaning. Todays selection is Led Zeppelins Stairway to Heaven.

After she stops the music, she says, What is the implication philosophically of there being a stairway to heaven for us? Were down here, and we have to get up there.

As he watches her effortlessly command the classroom, Taylor says, Strangely, the success of this course makes it both easier and more difficult for me to stop teaching. We hear much, perhaps too much, today about the problems with higher education, and especially with the humanities. But as I watch Alethea teach and her fellow undergraduates respond to her, I have hope for the future.

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A Student Graduates, a Professor Retires, but They Will Stay in Touch - Columbia University

Formed in Los Angeles in 1979, the familyhood known as Fishbone shares All We Have Is Now, a sentiment with which were familiar but can be hard to grasp in our everyday lives.

Founding member Norwood Fisher says it best: Sometimes a note-to-self finds its way to the song form. 'All We Have Is Now' is a prime example. Philosophically, its far from a new concept. Eckard Tolle, Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, and many others have contemplated and pontificated on this topic the pursuit of self inquest, in the hopes of experiencing an extended, extraordinary sense of Being. The song, wrapped in a fully blown Fishbone party, reminds me to take advantage of the gift of the ever-present now. Feel free to interpret it however it speaks to you. Aint nuttin buttah pawty

See Fishbone LIVESunday, May 21 - Fishbone open for Les Claypools Flying Frog Brigade @ The Observatory North Park - San Diego

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Fishbone: 'All We Have Is Now' | Today's Top Tune - KCRW

Estoy cansado, my students will almost always say come Monday like clockwork. Im tired.

I teach Spanish, and the post-weekend reply is automatic, nearly scripted. But its also accurate. For many in todays world, to be a student is to be tired.

But their exhaustion doesnt just follow the weekend. My students often return from lengthy holiday breaks with similar responses not long enough, or I wish I was still there.

Many adults feel that way after their weekends and vacations, too.

Why is it that the times we set aside for celebrating and resting from our work are in fact very unrestful, even stressful? What is the point of taking a holiday if we never find rest or fulfilling joy in our break?

During this past Christmas holiday, The New York Times reported that 41% of 2,000 polled adults felt an increase in worrying and 31% said they expected to feel more stressed than they did in 2021. The reasons given for the lack of rest and increased stress varied from social obligations to gift-giving woes, family tensions, travel challenges, financial concerns and so forth.

Of the many causes listed, however, the article left out one key reason inherent in the etymology of holiday itself.

The word comes from the Old English word hligdg, meaning holy day or consecrated day. Holidays, or holy days, were once a time to rest from ones labors by communing with the Divine at a specific time of the year. According to late cultural writer Alan Watts, the idea of a holiday was one in which a religious (specifically Christian) people would present the ritual reliving of the Christ-story through the seasonal cycle of the ecclesiastical year.

The holidays were days of holiness, and not just days off from work. On these holy days believers acted out the great spiritual stories of Christs mortal life. For example, during Advent or Christmas, believers would pause their labors to remember and symbolically re-live the birth of Christ. The day for the celebration was on or around the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, symbolizing the hope in Christs birth at the beginning of lengthening days into summer.

Then in the springtime, believers would (and still do to an extent) pause and celebrate seasonal growth and floral renewal as a mirror to the resurrection of Christ.

Many of our most common American holidays come from this tradition: Valentines Day, St. Patricks Day, Easter, Christmas and even Thanksgiving originated as a time to give thanks to God for our bounties. The embrace of the Divine was the relief from the mundane for in this embrace one symbolically left the mundane world for a higher one and thus could rest.

My students and the extant tradition of holidays show that this sort of rest is something our contemporary world craves though no one seems to fully understand how to attain it.

Its no wonder so many feel exhausted. Our holidays have become the very opposite of what they once were. They are now more like unholy days in which it is common to embrace the profane monotony of Netflix binging, gross laziness or drinking away the conscious mind. A colleague of mine once told me of a visit he made to Miami. I asked if he enjoyed himself and he answered, Yes, but I dont remember anything, literally anything with his eyebrows shooting up into his hairline. You know, spring break, he said.

American holidays are now about stressing over expensive gifts, decorating and travel, all to our own increased stress and anxiety. But it doesnt have to be that way. If we look to the past and embrace our ancestral heritage, we can find real rest and conserve the rejuvenation once found in our holy days.

My wife and I experienced a glimpse of this holiday spirit while living in Spain. I was a lecturer at a university there and had All Saints Day (Nov. 1) off. As the good commercial Americans that we are, we prepared our kids for a fun time at the mall, going out to eat before catching a movie. But when we got to the mall, everything was closed.

Quite confused, we learned that only the American fast-food chains (KFC and Burger King) were open. All other stores, including grocery stores, pharmacies and the movie theater, were closed it was a holiday. At first, our capitalist-driven minds could not understand what the Spaniards would even do on a holiday if not spend more money than necessary. But over time those holidays in Spain became moments of peaceful rest in which we grew together as a family. As the culture shock faded, we came to love this practice.

Of course, not every Spaniard takes these days as strictly holy days, but the vestiges of what once were holy days could still be felt as the people actually paused from the hum and drum of toil and spending.

If we truly seek rest in our holidays, even our spring breaks and Labor Days and Memorial Days, we must look to embrace something greater than ourselves. Ideally, we would embrace God and not social media, entertainment, money or the many other things we hope will distract and fulfill us but never do. It is only in transcending the mundane that we can find peace beyond daily life. It is only in the making holy of holidays that we will ever get back to real life refreshed from the break, and grateful for what we are given.

Scott Raines is a writer and doctoral student at the University of Kansas.

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Religious holidays: Why they matter more than secular ones | Opinion - Deseret News

Hotelivate Hotel Investment Conference South Asia

Hotelivate is all set to organise the 18th edition of Hotel Investment Conference South Asia (HICSA), on April 12 & 13 at Hilton and Hilton Garden Inn Bengaluru Embassy Manyata Business Park. The theme of the conference is Artificial Intelligence, Astute Investments, and Aesthetic Interiors is in sync with the changing scenario of the hotel industry.

HICSA has been an unequalled gathering platform for the hospitality industry the world over. The conference is valued for its content-rich sessions and excellent networking opportunities attracting the hospitality industrys top brands, hotel owners, bankers, developers, and professional advisors from around the globe.

The prominent speakers sharing their knowledge from the HICSA platform are: Alan Watts, President Asia Pacific, Hilton; Andrew Langdon, Senior Vice President Development Asia, Accor; Anthony Capuano, Chief Executive Officer, Marriott International; Anuraag Bhatnagar, Chief Operating Officer, The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts; Chris Nassetta, President and CEO, Hilton; Cyril Jacob, Founder and MD, Ascentis; Dillip Rajakarier, Group CEO, Minor International; Dimitris Manikis, President & MD-EMEA, Wyndham Hotels and Resorts; Hari Marar, Managing Director & CEO, BIAL; Harshavardhan Neotia, Chairman, Ambuja Neotia Group, Irfan Razack, Chairman & MD, Prestige Group; Jitu Virwani, Chairman and MD, Embassy Group; Laure Morvan, Chief Development Officer, India/ME/Africa/Turkey, Accor; Megna Shankaranarayanan, Industry Head Travel & FoodTech, Google; Mehul Patel, Managing Partner and CEO, Newcrestimage; Neil Jacobs, CEO, Six Senses Hotels Resorts & Spas; Pierre-Jean Malgouyres, Co-Founder and General Director, Archetype Group; Priya Paul, Chairperson, Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels; Puneet Chhatwal, Managing Director & CEO, IHCL; Rahul Chaudhary, Managing Director and CEO, CG Corp Global and CG Hospitality Holdings and Rajeev Menon, President Asia Pacific (excluding Greater China), Marriott International amongst others.

Manav Thadani, Founder Chairman, Hotelivate said, The conference also moves to Bengaluru for the first time, which is the tech start-up capital of India and where many hospitality companies are adapting to the technology trends. Bengaluru also opens doors to a whole new set up of leading real estate players in the South.

For editorial related queries, reach us at edit@eventfaqs.com

The conference is valued for its content-rich sessions & networking opportunities attracting the hospitality industrys top brands, hotel owners, bankers, developers and professional advisors.

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Hotelivate organises the 18th edition of Hotel Investment ... - EVENTFAQs

I am both the poison and the antidote.

Rupi Kaur

He who creates a poison, also has the cure.He who creates a virus, also has the antidote.He who creates chaos, also has the ability to create peace.He who sparks hate, also has the ability to transform it to love.He who creates misery, also has the ability to destroy it with kindness.He who creates sadness, also has the ability to convert it to happiness.He who creates darkness, can also be awakened to produce illumination.He who spreads fear, can also be shaken to spread comfort.Any problems created by the left hand of man,Can also be solved with the right,For he who manifests anything,Also has the ability toDestroy it.

Suzy Kassem

It is the summer of walking. I walk until my body aches. Already exhausted from working from home with four kids, I shove my feet into scuffed Nikes, double knot the laces, and walk out my front door. I never look back. Sometimes I slip in earbuds, other times, opting for quiet, I walk for hours and miles around the Pennsylvania valley in which I live.

I know the path I take through the emerald summer countryside as well as I know my backyard. I know which Amish farmers I am likely to pass depending on the time of day and who among their many children likes it when I wave to them and which ones will duck their heads shyly then goggle-eye me after I pass. The English woman with the scandalous skin-bearing tank tops and short shorts.

I know which animals are interested in my appearance and will keep pace with me as I pass their fields and the ones that startle and bolt when I enter their senses. I know which dogs will bark guardedly, the ones who will wag hello, and the ones who will disinterestedly sniff my scent on the air before lazily returning snouts to front paws.

I know exactly where I turn and the green hills open up like a wide smile and allow the breeze somersaulting down the valley to lift the damp hair from my forehead and dry the sweat. I know the exact part of the steep road that leads past the centuries-old cemetery I rest in where my quadriceps muscles will begin to burn in a way that pleases me.

With your feet on the air and your head on the groundTry this trick and spin it, yeahYour head will collapseBut theres nothing in itAnd youll ask yourself

Where is my mind?

Pixies

Three notable things happened to me in 2020. The first, obviously, was a pandemic that also happened to everyone else on the planet. The resulting lockdown allowed me the privacy and time to finally grow out my eyebrows after three decades of violent over-plucking that would be notable thing two. Anyone who has tried to grow out their eyebrows knows it is a daunting process requiring dedication and seclusion. Lastly, I experienced a great what some people call awakening.

One of the most simple definitions of that which is so difficult to define comes from psychotherapist and meditation teacher, Loch Kelly:

Because were in the habit of focusing on fast-moving thoughts and strong emotions, and of seeking happiness outside ourselves, we dont notice awake awareness, which is always here. Were too busy focused on the past or the future and not on what is right here. Awakening begins with shifting out of the way we organize our current mind and identity. When you shift out of your conventional sense of self, theres a gap of not-knowing. Awake awareness is who we are prior to the personal conditioning we usually turn to for our identity. Rather than looking to our thoughts, memories, personality, or roles to identify ourselves, we learn to know awake awareness as the primary dimension of who we areOne of the most important things to learn is how to separate awareness from thinking. Only then can we see that thoughts and emotions are not the center of who we are.

A different way of existing in the world. Another vantage from which to take in reality. It changed the way I perceive and experience my life. The newfound ability to transcend not just the labels and categories we rely on to organize the world but to be able to shift out of my ego-driven personality into a kind of limitless awareness has resulted in the most intense relief I have ever experienced.

Like everyone, my life has been riddled with anxiety, stress, shame, sadness, guilt, anger, and hurt until I realized that all these emotions stem from being lost in an identity created and operated by my thoughts and perceptions.

I am both the poison and the antidote.

On the walk around my valley, I play with my awareness and perception in delight and incredulity.Thishas always been here and I never knew it. How can that be?

Neo unplugging from the Matrix.

I try to send my consciousness somewhere outside of my head. In fact, I try to forget I even have a head. Sometimes, I walk behind myself and see me as if Im following myself. Or I send my consciousness to a bird and view me from that drone perspective. A carload of people drives by and I see myself the middle-aged woman walking on the side of the road from their eyes. I shoot my consciousness into the horses and cows and experience me this strange, other being staring back at them with grave curiosity. What is it like to be a cow? How do I appear to a cow? How does a cow perceive the universe with its cow retinas and corneas and other cow senses?

Humans are vision-based but some animals have different dominant senses. They say cows can smell something up to six miles away and as I stare into their enormous, doleful eyes I wonder if they knew I was coming long before I arrived in their field of vision.

Often they trot right to the fence to experience me. Ever seen a cow run? Its the fucking meaning of the universe, I tell you what. Breathless, they arrive.Weve been expecting you, they seem to stoically impart.

Cows have almost panoramic, 360-degree vision. They can see nearly all the way around them so they may appear to be looking at you but they may be checking something out in an entirely different direction.

When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique.

Alan Watts

During that surreal pandemic summer of 2020, after years of yoga-ing, Namaste-ing and mostly frustrating meditating and wondering what the hell all this non-duality talk was about I finally empirically understood the concept of No Self. Full, experiential awareness that Monica is just a construct. A collection of experiences and memories my brain clings to in order to create an identity and validate all the bullshit in which I immerse myself.

That psychic construct stands firmly in the way of new dimensions of experience for most people. Its your ego running your mental show like some kind of wild-haired, frothing conductor forcing the orchestra to play the same song over and over even though thousands of achingly beautiful symphonies are out there for the listening. For the experiencing.

At first, it was scary. This new existence felt all loosey-goosey, like riding in a car without a seatbelt. After years of believing I was a unique soul, a special child of God, capital G, elevatored down from Heaven, capital H, to live in this world before returning home to Him, capital H, I was terrified of this vast, interconnected oneness with everyone and everything.

Turns out, understanding that the thoughts that Monica thinks are just random projections on the screen of my mind based on the way experience has conditioned my brain to respond over the years is a DELIGHT, all caps. It is a delight to realize that this internal dialogue of thoughts I previously took to be me is mostly bullshit. They are clouds passing in the blue sky of the ever-present awareness.

How do you describe what is ultimately indescribable? That which transcends language? The thing about most Buddhist-y/awakening notions is that you can read and listen and read some more and feel like you know and understand a thing intellectually but experiencing it is an entirely different matter. Or you read and Reddit and it all sounds like unobtainable mystical/self-help nonsense.

For years a decade, even I thought I understood the point of meditation. I believed it was a kind of struggle to tame your monkey mind and attain some mysterious bliss or nirvana state that maybe looked like someone enjoying a summertime 7Up in a nineties commercial. I just needed to keep working at disciplining my rowdy mind.

I became lost in the mechanics or performativity of it: How long should I do this? Am I sitting right? What if I cant do full lotus? Can I put my legs like this? That hurts. Does hurting mean Im doing it right? Or is that bad? That person looks like they know what theyre doing. What cushion are they sitting on? I should buy that. Do I need to hold my hands and fingers in the ways I see supposedly enlightened people doing on TV and Instagram? The longer I could sit, regardless of aches and pains and squirming the closer I was to Buddha-hood, I thought.

Funny how my meditation endeavors ended up so much like my experiences in Mormonism. Striving, struggling, always trying to do better but feeling like Id never be good enough. Just like praying to the Mormon god as a child, my meditation practice was all posture and no substance. I was trying too hard for frustratingly little gain. Finally, I realized that trying so hard was actually the problem. I shouldve known. Time and time again in my life I have learned that its in the letting go where the true leveling up occurs.

Meditation, for me, is no longer a quiet mind, a mental place or state I try to reach. It is in recognizing what is already here. The universal awareness that is omnipresent beneath minds constantly spinning their thought webs. After all the struggle it was ultimately as easy as changing the channel on my perception. A shift, an upgrade of my awareness, mind, and self. I finally understood that my limited perspective is only a small part of a vaster reality.

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusion.

Alan Watts

Sweating, bonneted Amish women wield gas-powered whackers and give roadside weeds the same flat-top haircut the Walmart stylists round these parts will give your kid no matter what haircut you ask for. The weed-whacking brigade wears cumbersome dresses defying the temperature and black plastic, wraparound gas station sunglasses. They dutifully throw the obligatory Amish Wave my way, tan lines befitting a long-haul truckers window arm peeking at me from beneath their sleeves. We are so different. But the same.

I am he as you are he as you are meAnd we are all together.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon.

I routinely rescue caterpillars and centipedes from certain tire death, gently placing them in the grass and weeds alongside the road. The wind blows deliciously. An Amish kid scooters past throwing a nod as conspiratorial as the ubiquitous motorcycle wave. In the distance, some country bro with a custom exhaust system revs his rig and I realize Ive been having an argument in my head with someone in my life with whom I constantly struggle.

The same fucking person. The same tired argument.

Once I clock that Im lost in thought I snap back to now. Sometimes I imagine a thought as if its a bird in my hands and I open them wide and watch the bird/thought fly away, like a wedding day bride releasing some sad, imprisoned dove-for-hire in a strange celebration of love. Other times the thoughts are cars driving past me on a road. I observe the cars as they pass. Inevitably I get in one and it whisks me away. When I realize Ive been kidnapped by a thought again I come back to the present, stop the car, get out and watch as it continues on down the road.

Keep releasing birds, getting out of the car.

We spend most of our lives lost in thoughts we mistake for reality. Over-analyzing the past which almost certainly invokes shame and guilt or anger and self-righteousness. Or we experience dread and anxiety about future eventsthat havent happened and likely may never even happen.

Thoughts arent reality, just projections on a wall. They dont even exist. As Nancy Colier astutely points out in Psychology Today, We are all in our own separate theaters, witnessing entirely different shows, and yet we behave as if we are in the same audience, watching the very same event we call life.

Our thoughts do not exist outside of our own awareness. Think a thing about your mom, your partner, your spouse. Or your ex. Think something, a familiar narrative, about someone you dislike. You are certain it is the truth. Fact. It is a thing you know. You righteously tell it to people because it is your truth, dammit! But the person you think the thought about isnt thinking that thing. They have an entirely different narrative. Quite literally, if you stop thinking the thought, it doesnt exist.

POOF. Gone. Magic.

Furthermore, you didnt even choose to have the thought. It just clouded the blue sky of your awareness when you were enjoying your day. You can choose to make a thought real by focusing on it and talking about it with other people and trying to convince them of its validity and then it seems even more real. You are manifesting a reality, essentially.

Conversely, if you observe the thought without judgment, let it pass like watching a cloud take different formations as it moves overhead or a car passing you on the road Its gone. Like standing up in the movie theater, turning on the light and looking at the wall where the movie you were just lost in was being projected. Nothings there. Its just a wall.

A little scary to realize most thoughts are just mind projections we dont necessarily choose or control but also super liberating! Because I think a lot of fucked up shit, mainly directed at myself. To let it all go as random bits of mental phenomena is a gift. As Pema Khandro Rinpoche wrote, the more willing and able we will be to let go of this notion of an inherent reality and allow that precious pot to slip out of our handsWe start to see how conditional who-I-am-ness really is, how even that does not provide reliable ground upon which to stand.

The future is a concept, it doesnt exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be, because time is always now. Thats the one thing we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now.

Alan Watts

If you think about it, the present moment, RIGHT NOW, you realize it is all you have and the only true reality. The past is gone and any thoughts you have about it pollute your present. The past only exists in your thoughts. A study from Northwestern shows your memory is like the Telephone Game. Every time you remember an event your brain networks change in ways that can alter the later recall of the event. The next time you remember it, you might recall not the original event but what you remembered the previous time. Eventually, what you remember may barely resemble the original event.

A memory is not simply an image produced by time traveling back to the original event it can be an image that is somewhat distorted because of the prior times you remembered it, said Donna Bridge, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Your memory of an event can grow less precise even to the point of being totally false with each retrieval.

What Id say is forget about trying to become more present; that can just be another form of seeking. Its a beautiful idea, but its still the same seeking mechanism. One day Ill be present! Ultimately, you cannot become more present; for you are presence itself. Like the word non-duality, presence is just another pointer to life as it is. Its another pointer back to who you really are. There is already presence and there is only presence. Everything is already appearing in presence.

There is only this moment. The past and the future happen now; they appear in this presence, as this presence. There are memories about the past and thoughts about the future appearing in this presence. It all happens now. Every sound is a present sound; youve never heard a sound that wasnt now. Youve never heard a sound in the past and you dont hear a sound in the future! Youve never smelled anything that wasnt smelled now. Ultimately, youve never seen anything that isnt seen now. Its all present!

I have spent years of my life obsessing about the past whether it was self-righteous anger over what I perceive someone did to me or, more likely, shamefully reliving what I perceive as my own embarrassing or bad behavior. Similarly, I have lost hours to dread and anxiety aboutpossiblefuture scenarios usually about work, money, and relationships.

What a waste. All I can react and respond to is right now. The future will be now at some point and I can deal with it then. I want to be an open space in which all stories come and go without me holding on to them or rejecting them.

As I walk I allow my mind to gently slide into a hyper-aware, panoramic flow state, fully experiencing my little part in the universe expressing itself. Millipedes and ants trundle between my Nike steps, birds chirp, swooping and diving overhead, rustling leaves create shifting light patterns on the road, and cars pass over the kaleidoscopic leaf impressions.

The people in the cars are on their phones talking to loved ones in other states or countries. Those people living their lives stepping over ants and under birds. Those birds flying elsewhere above people walking along roads as other people drive past them talking to their loved ones All of us are interconnected, our lives like waves forming for a few brief moments before cresting and rejoining the ocean. The wave is separate from the ocean but it is also the ocean.

Its a miracle any of this, any of us, exists at all.

Reality is thin ice and most people skate on it their whole lives and never fall through until the very end.

Stephen King

The awareness that is always there beneath my thoughts doesnt feel attached to my Monica-ness. Its the space that opens up in my consciousness when I smother my ego. My mind resting without attachment to my narratives. Free-floating, timeless space where I can mercifully drop out of the stories my thoughts tell me are reality. A place of no time. No past, no future. No want or need. Empty, open, awareness revealing itself.

Stop trying to improve your experience. Let it be what it is. Experience what you are experiencing without judgment, without labeling it as good or bad, and without trying to alter or escape it. Play with your awareness. Observe how your mind works. Eventually, youll find whats deeper than the obvious narrative e.g. I am late for work and stuck in traffic and this sucks.

What lies beneath the experience? The awareness that is always there, even when you arent aware of it. Im not talking about the self you have constructed as the experiencer. YOU ARE THE EXPERIENCE.

You are a verb, not a noun. Be aware of that as often as you can. Author and psychologist John Astin explains it so nicely:

What are you? Look at your experience right now. This vast symphony of sensations continually arising and then passing away. This multitude of energies that appears and then vanishes in a flash. This kaleidoscope of flickering thoughts and feelings, here for an instant and then gone. An infinite array of experiential textures and qualities bursting forth and then disappearing just like that. Could it be that all of that is what you are? Now ask yourself if this matches the conventional notions you may hold about yourself as a fixed, solid, bounded creature. Really look at whats here and you may discover that youre not, in fact, fixed but are forever on the move, always shifting, always being reshaped. Maybe what you are is this ever-flowing ever-fluctuating dynamism that has no discernible edge or boundary to it. A ceaseless unpredictable explosion of life that never holds still for even a second. Could it be that what you are is quite literally beyond any definition or classification? Maybe the best we can say about ourselves is that we are cosmic shape-shifters. Never resolving as any one thing but only ever a universe of inconceivable, indescribable qualities and characteristics, like a thousand, million flavors being tasted each instant.

Wake up, your consciousness whispers to your cluttered mind and it all comes together in a lightning strike of awareness.

Yet, the present is so slippery. We flail. We grasp for The Next Thing. The next identity.

I am learning to pause and float on my back in the river of life. Full awareness within as many moments as possible. A kind of gut check, eye contact moment with myself as often as I can.

Hey girl, heeey

So much life wasted. All of us are burdened by deep canyons weve climbed out of or steep mountains looming ominously on the horizon. Most of us spend all the moments between birth and death in that past/future thought trance. As Alan Watts said, No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.

All of life is one big transitional state between birth and death. Be here now. Drink it up. Big thirsty water gulps or savoring red wine sips. Whatever your pleasure. Savor it all. Unzip your skin suit and let your awareness fly free, you beautiful freak.

I see you baby, shakin that thang, shakin that thang, shakin that thang

Now Reading/Watching/Listening:

Reading: What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing From Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo. This one was recommended by my therapist and Im seeing so much of my own life struggle on every page. The perfect mix of memoir and self-help, Stephanie chronicles her diagnosis with C-PTSD and the work shes doing to heal herself.

Watching: I dont pay attention to pop culture as much as I used to so maybe this one is obvious for most, but if you havent seen the movie The Worst Person In The World, its streaming now on Hulu. It has subtitles. I watched it alone in bed when Cory was out of town and it was the perfect experience.

Listening: Daisy Jones & The Six. This was my guilty beach vacation audiobook. I always have one or two books going on Audible and one or two actual books on my nightstand. I finally caved after all the praise and listened to this and I really loved it in a guilty pleasure, watching 90210 reruns kind of way. The audiobook experience was superb because there are so many characters and its really well done. I suspect I wouldnt have liked it as much had I actually read the book. If you havent read this one yet, go for the audiobook! Then wormhole Fleetwood Mac, listen to the Rumours album and google Stevie Nicks & Lindsey Buckingham. Stevie Nicks, man. What a powerhouse of a human. A real womans woman.

Read more here:
A Broad View: You are both the poison and the antidote - PRINT Magazine

Disco Riot: 'Ex Nihilo'

Dance

Contemporary dance company Disco Riot is about to embark upon a series of performances in the Bay Area with San Francisco-based FACT/SF, which was cofounded by Oceanside native Charles Slender-White. FACT/SF will then come to San Diego next spring to perform a show together.

Before Disco Riot goes, however, they'll do one performance of their new piece, "Ex Nihilo," for local audiences. It's a 35-minute quintet, informed by lectures by philosopher Alan Watts and also has original music from Jonny Tarr.

Details: 4:30-5:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 30, 2022. City Heights Performance Annex, 3795 Fairmount Ave., City Heights. Free/donation based (RSVP required).

Theater

Watch for my feature next week on this world premiere play, coproduced by the La Jolla Playhouse and Tectonic Theater Project known for 2000's "The Laramie Project," based on the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard. "Here There Are Blueberries" follows the true story of a young archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum who receives an album of photographs from Auschwitz. The photos show the lives of the Nazis who ran the camp in their free time and the archivist set out to figure out who they were.

The play uses projection to give the audiences their own relationship with the photographs.

Courtesy of the La Jolla Playhouse

For playwrights Moiss Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, telling a story that addresses the real lives of Nazi guards and workers came down to the clear distinction the creative team drew between humanizing and thinking of the people in the photographs as human beings.

"Our play is not exonerating. It is not forgiving," Gronich said. "As one of our characters says, the Holocaust did not happen in a passive voice. People actively determined to do this."

Kaufman said that historians' approaches to the Holocaust are transforming. "There is also a great interest now in the perpetrators, and how did they do what they did, and how did they become what they became," Kaufman said.

Details: This weekend's preview performances are 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday; and 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday. Performances continue Tuesday Aug. 2 through Aug. 21, 2022.

Visual art

Tijuana-born artist Armando de la Torre's Park Social project is a mini festival at the Southcrest rec center, in a part of the neighborhood that's separated by the 94 freeway. The pop-up is informed by folk arts like puppetry and storytelling, particularly in a community gathering model with music, poetry and artmaking. De la Torre is a teaching artist with the San Diego Guild of Puppetry.

Audience members can participate in workshops or create their own art, or listen to or watch performances throughout the mini, one-day festival.

Details: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, July 30, 2022. Southcrest Community Park, 4149 Newton Ave., Southcrest. Free.

Doug McMinimy

Dance, Visual art

Contemporary, modern dance company LITVAKdance will collaborate with a handful of other dance companies for a set of performances on Saturday: Los Angeles-based Whyteberg and Entity Contemporary Dance, Tijuana's Lux Boreal, and locally based The Rosin Box Project. With live music by Perla Negra Latin Jazz Quartet, the dancers will perform outdoors at the ICA San Diego North campus.

While you're there, check out the visual art currently on view. It's the final days of Aaron Glasson's "Primordial Refuge," which closes July 31.

Brian De La Cerda

Details: 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 30, 2022. ICA San Diego North, 1550 El Camino Real, Encinitas. $25.

Visual art

The Athenaeum Music & Art Library in La Jolla will open its annual juried exhibition the 30th year they've done it. There were close to 900 works submitted to the call for artists, from a record of 316 artists. Juried by Anita Feldman, deputy director for curatorial affairs for the San Diego Museum of Art, and visual artist Marianela de la Hoz, 40 artists were selected, including Carlos Castrejon, Brandie Maddalena, Bridget Rountree, Sibyl Rubottom and more.

Details: Opens with a reception at 6:30-8:30 p.m. on Friday, July 29, 2022. Additional gallery hours this weekend are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday. Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 1008 Wall St., La Jolla. Free.

Music, Choral

The San Diego Gay Men's Chorus has a new artistic director, Dr. Charles Beale, and this is his first show with the group. It's also a great way to wrap up San Diego Pride month. The chorus will perform arrangements of '80s hits, including Journey, Whitney Houston, Pet Shop Boys and more.

Details: 8 p.m. on Saturday, July 30 and 3 p.m. on Sunday, July 31, 2022. Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., downtown. $30.50+.

More music: Check out my story on the La Jolla Music Society's SummerFest, which kicks off Friday .

Visual art

In a one-evening-only pop-up event, The Hill Street Country Club will show works by artist Addy Lyon, including a 6 p.m. screening of her short film.

Lyon's work is informed by her own experiences with mental health, and she uses her art as both a tool of healing and a way to normalize the societal conversations around mental health. Lyon also uses sustainable art practices in her art, including the use of recycled canvases and other materials, including donated paint.

Details: 4-8 p.m. on Saturday, July 30, 2022. The Hill Street Country Club, 530 S. Coast Hwy., Oceanside. Free.

For more arts events, to submit your own, or to sign up for the weekly KPBS/Arts newsletter, visit the KPBS/Arts Calendar here.

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San Diego weekend arts events: 'Spring Tide,' 'Here There Are Blueberries,' lots of dance and more - KPBS

This is an opinion editorial by Maxx Mannheimer, a former sales account manager with a background in training and industrial-organizational psychology.

Ill begin by stating that I do not suggest that anyone take psychedelics. Each individual knows what is best for them and it is not my intent to challenge your free will in any way. If what I have written connects with your life experience, great. If it does not, feel free to ignore every word. But if you wish to debate about what I am presenting, I would only request that you carefully read this article in its entirety. I do not recommend participating in any activity which is illegal where you live and I do not recommend taking psychedelic substances without professional guidance. Psychedelic experiences can be profoundly liberating and inspiring, but they can also be existentially earth-shattering if used without proper preparation. As always, do your own research and use your best judgment.

Im not the first to draw a link between psychedelics and Bitcoin. Articles about billionaire investor Christian Angermayer have highlighted at least one anecdote of psilocybe mushrooms assisting with the understanding of Bitcoin. However, I believe this wont be the last time we see these two topics mentioned together. If my intuition is correct, we will be seeing many more articles along these lines as Bitcoin and psychedelics both enter the mainstream consciousness.

A financial revolution without a spiritual one will fail to create a better world for the majority of life on this planet. A spiritual revolution without a financial one will fail to enact lasting change due to the corruption that is built into our current monetary system. Both are needed to fix the world. It is important that we acknowledge this dynamic period in human history holistically and ecologically rather than making blanket statements about quick-fix solutions to the issues that humanity is facing.

The Bitcoin community often discusses the potential for a second renaissance. I hear much of the same talk in the psychedelics space. However, the two worlds often dont consider the potential synergies between the two. My hope for this article is to support the ice-breaking process which has already begun. The 1960s were a time of ranging counterculture with no concrete direction. It represented a powerful lashing out against a system that doesnt serve humanity. But after creating a cultural movement and some excellent music the flame was extinguished by draconian government intervention.

Not only did all use of psychedelics get pushed to the black market, but all scientific research was completely halted for about 50 years. Many psychedelics were being used recklessly at that time, but psychedelics were made illegal for political reasons, not health reasons. The loss to human progress is impossible to calculate.

In my assessment, the heavy handed prohibition is unraveling before our eyes. Various city and state governments have opted to decriminalize or legalize the use of psychedelics for therapy. Well known authors, comedians and other public figures are openly discussing psychedelics. Netflix is airing documentaries about psychedelics and many podcasters are covering the topic in a way which would have been shocking ten years ago. Publicly-traded companies are even working on psychedelic pharmaceutical development.

More conservative-minded Bitcoiners may pause before seeing this in a positive light, but the data regarding psychedelics potential for therapeutic use cant be ignored. Therapy using MDMA the chemical abbreviation for the drug known more commonly as ecstasy or Molly seems to be the most effective way to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a lasting manner. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is moving through U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) trials to have the substance rescheduled. Their phase three trials have demonstrated 67% of PTSD patients no longer met the criteria for PTSD two months after their sessions. Even after the fiat fiasco collapses well still need to support these people who were traumatized by it. Note: MAPS accepts donations in bitcoin.

The psychedelics community may have some hesitancy about the Bitcoin community as well. From my interaction with plant medicine enthusiasts, I have gathered that theyre a sensitive bunch. I genuinely mean that as a compliment, but sensitivity doesnt always lend itself well to the self-identified toxic Bitcoin community. As a generalization, they are wary of anything that could be used to exclude people and deepen inequality. These concerns are valid, but are often projected onto the bitcoin life raft rather than the fiat sinking ship. As a result, there isnt a sturdy connection between these two communities, but I am predicting that there could be for a number of reasons.

The first bridge is the one that leads towards personal and collective liberation. Psychedelics have the potential to liberate us from old systems of thought and all of their downstream effects. Bitcoin has the potential to liberate us from Modern Monetary Theory and all its downstream effects. Both are interested in reducing violence against humanity. Both are interested in reducing government control over what we decide to put in our bodies. Both carry an inherently egalitarian questioning of authority.

The second bridge is the novelty of thought required to understand Bitcoin. As I mentioned in The Bitcoin Customer Service Department, Bitcoin is a complex paradigm-shifting topic. Despite the simplicity of the Bitcoin white paper, understanding all its implications requires a dramatically novel understanding of the world. In Michael Pollans book How to Change Your Mind, the following metaphor is used by Mendel Kaelen to explain the effects of psychedelics on the human psyche.

Think of the brain as a hill covered in snow, and thoughts as sleds gliding down that hill. As one sled after another goes down the hill, a small number of main trails will appear in the snow. And every time a new sled goes down, it will be drawn into the preexisting trails, almost like a magnet. In time, it becomes more and more difficult to glide down the hill on any other path or in a different direction. Think of psychedelics as temporarily flattening the snow. The deeply worn trails disappear, and suddenly the sled can go in other directions, exploring new landscapes and, literally, creating new pathways.

This metaphor is an excellent way to visualize what has been observed in psychedelic patient trials. Neural pathways become more flexible. New connections are created that allow for novel thought, understanding and behavior. Have you ever had a conversation with someone where they fully understood your viewpoint and agreed with everything you said just to see them revert back to their default assumptions a day or two later? Thats the snow metaphor in conversation form. The more concrete our neural connections become, the less likely we will be to understand new emergent technologies.

The third bridge relates to the counterculture which gravitates around both Bitcoin and psychedelics. Radical rejection of conventional norms seems to be inherent in the Bitcoin ethos. Bitcoiners generally dont accept mainstream media, political corruption or dishonesty. Psychedelics enthusiasts generally dont accept moralistic arguments, violence or inauthenticity. Both groups seek fair treatment of humanity. Both groups avoid processed foods. Both groups are opposed to mindless materialistic consumption. Psychedelics enthusiasts are proponents of meditation and if Bitcoin holders havent been meditating through the 2020-22 market, I wouldnt know what else to call it.

Psychedelics pose a threat to authoritarian systems of control because they show users a deeper potential for spirituality and connection with their environment. They enable a novel view of circumstances which allows people to notice that what they are used to may not be the truth. What happened in the 1960s, exactly? A ton of young people realized that the game they were playing was making them and the rest of society miserable. They dropped out in the hopes of finding a new way to live. Most of the hippies in the 1960s were deeply distrustful of the government and of the fruitless wars politicians were creating. They knew the game was rigged and the best course of action was to opt out. What are Bitcoiners talking about today? Essentially the same thing.

I know that both of these amorphous groups may balk at the fact that I have categorized them into groups at all. They are not really groups, but rather millions of individuals who share common interests and many of whom will never meet. Thats the beauty of it. Bitcoiners and psychedelic enthusiasts seem to be under a constant centrifugal force. As soon as I begin to categorize or wrangle them into any semblance of a group identity, they sprawl out even further. They span the full scope of human backgrounds and experience.

The propaganda war against psychedelics has largely lumped them together, in the mind of the public, with dangerous addictive substances. I would recommend a more nuanced approach to understanding drugs and their uses. Every drug is a tool and each has its proper use. To simply ask for any random tool when what you really need is specifically a Phillips-head screwdriver, youre unlikely to meet your needs. A closer inspection of each substance will clearly demonstrate that lumping all drugs together, simply due to legal status, is absurd.

The federal government has clearly lost its grip on The War On Drugs. In direct opposition to federal drug scheduling laws, Oregon has decriminalized all drugs and made psilocybe mushroom therapy legal. As Ryan McMaken points out in his recent article, 43% of Americans are currently living in states which have legalized recreational cannabis. Again, in direct opposition to federal drug scheduling laws. If there was a War On Drugs it is fair to say that the drugs have won. Right or wrong, this trend is likely to continue.

The continuous lack of understanding regarding drug use in America has had a devastating impact on the psyche and freedom of the country. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world and approximately half of our prisoners are locked up for non-violent offenses. Drugs and alcohol play a critical role in many of the violent offenses as well. Those incarcerations damage families for generations which ultimately increases future crime rates and use of addictive drugs. Rinse and repeat. The harder we press down on drugs, the more harmful the drugs on the street become. Opium, heroin, oxycontin, fentanyl. Overdoses have never been worse. The criminal justice system is totally broken and people are suffering. Is it possible that people are turning to these drugs because they are disenfranchised by a system which has done nothing but abuse them since the moment they were born?

Dont worry though! Big pharma has a solution for us. Theyll use their cantillon-bucks to lobby for their interests and pay doctors to prescribe psychotropic pharmaceuticals to numb the populace. Its helpful to keep folks docile as we push them back into the massive machine which is crushing their souls. Western medicine really shines when it comes to saving people who are in dire need of intervention, but largely falls flat when it comes to improving quality of life in a sustainable way.

In addition to treating PTSD, psychedelics have shown remarkable potential in assisting with anxiety, depression, addiction, birth trauma and fear of death. I personally have witnessed resolutions of serious physical ailments which were thought to be permanent medical conditions following ayahuasca ceremonies. Is this a result of the plant medicine or is it a result of the plant medicines ability to unlock human potential in self-healing? In either case, the effects could only be described as miraculous.

Due to the lengthy prohibition, empirical research in this field is just beginning and the potential benefits are much broader than most realize. As John Sanro argues in The Mindbody Prescription, many of the ailments which we think of as physical in nature originate in the emotional body. If used responsibly, psychedelics can create lasting emotional relief which does not require repeated use. Most psychedelics are also non-addictive. Many have said that one profound experience is enough to create a permanent positive impact in ones life. To my knowledge there are no pharmaceuticals which can make that claim.

The understanding of self-interest in human action is a critical component for understanding society. The understanding of what constitutes the self is a critical component for understanding spirituality. At the core of every spiritual practice is the same lesson. The litigious dogma which separates religions simply distracts from that. This has been said at least since Baruch Spinoza, Sri Aurobindo and Alan Watts. Some have argued that the core spiritual message has been lost since the original teachings of Buddha, Christ and Muhammad were passed on to their followers.

As eloquently discussed by Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth, humanity has simply missed the mark and that is the origin of suffering. The boundary between our self-interest and the interest of every other form of life is merely a condition of our perspective on the separation. You may discover that acting exclusively in self-interest without any consideration of others gradually becomes self-destructive. Most actions taken for the exclusive benefit of others, at great personal cost, typically prove themselves fruitless as well. There is a good reason for this. In his 2001 book, No Boundary, Ken Wilber presents a thorough case that all separation is simply an illusion. It is my belief that we all get the chance to see through this illusion upon departing this physical realm, but if we can look through the door, before permanently crossing the threshold, the broadened perspective can be beneficial to our experience until the departure.

However, all of these words have very little consequence if they are not accompanied by first-hand experience. The metaphor I like to employ for this understanding is that of the mountain. Throughout human history the great prophets and mystics have arduously made their way up the mountain using various methods. Many have done their best to describe the sights, sounds and viewpoints from the paths that they chose. Those who reached the top have seldom had words to describe what was there and many never make the attempt to explain. That place is not describable to those who have not experienced it. This is true of every aspect of life. How can sight be described to a blind person? How can sound be described to a deaf person? Words ultimately only point to truth, they do not contain truth. Without a shared context of reality, words are empty.

What psychedelics may be able to assist with, if the seeker is prepared, is to find a temporary view of various parts of the mountain. The glimpses into those heightened states of consciousness are simply that: glimpses. They do not contain the same value as thousands of hours of meditation, years of yoga practice or pilgrimages to holy sites, but the glimpses they provide can be profoundly liberating. To hop in a helicopter and visit the top of the mountain for fifteen minutes has the potential to alter your life permanently.

The permanency is what many people fear when they hear about psychedelics, but what if the changes that remain with us are largely beneficial to our well-being rather than harmful? What if the expansion of human consciousness is exactly what is needed to slingshot us into the next phase of human evolution? The lowering of time preference alone seems to have a spiritual component, but is it enough to shift human nature away from the darkest parts of our past? The answer will come in the form of individual choice and expression. I want to believe that the separation of money and state will benefit humanity as a whole, but I wont be entirely convinced until I see how it happens.

What I would ask from the reader is a gentle approach to both psychedelics and to Bitcoin. You may benefit from listening for the true intent of those you are communicating with, not the intent you may have assumed they have. This speaks true not just for Bitcoin and psychedelics, but for all topics of discussion. The lack of understanding of a topic is not the same as malevolence. Assume the former even if you suspect the latter and your ability to support others in learning will improve significantly.

Have a nice trip.

This is a guest post by Maxx Mannheimer. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

See more here:
What Psychedelics And Bitcoin Have In Common - Bitcoin Magazine

Glenn Watts River Rat

Graveside services for Glenn Watts River Rat, 56, will be held Feb. 7 at 2 p.m. in Salem United Methodist Church with the Rev. Dennis Lewis officiating. Burial will follow in the church cemetery.

Mr. Watts passed away Feb. 4.

Born Oct. 2, 1964, in Conway, he was the son of Joyce Watts Privette and the late John Paul Watts. Glenn was a member of the Methodist faith and supported Salem United Methodist Church. He was a certified auto technician at Palmetto Chevrolet, having retired after 35 years. Glenn was an avid fisherman and hunter. He never met a stranger and loved everyone.

Along with his mother, Glenn is survived by his wife of 30 years, Iris Watts Tator of Conway; two sons, Randall Roberts (Samantha) and Jacob Watts of Conway; two grandchildren, Marshall John Roberts and Marley Jean Roberts; one brother, Alan Watts (Dora) of Conway; two sisters, Karleen Hardee and Paula Rabon of Conway; and many nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles and other extended family members.

Memorial donations may be made to Salem United Methodist Church, 2376 S.C. 90, Conway, SC 29526.

Please sign the online guestbook atwww.goldfinchfuneralhome.com

Goldfinch Funeral Home, Conway chapel is in charge of arrangements.

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Watts loved fishing and hunting | Obituaries | myhorrynews.com - Myhorrynews