MAD HATTER SUMMIT VIDEO 2023 PART II - Mental Health & Beyond - Unity In Neurodiversity

I wanna live with some peace of mind, with who I am at all times, with who I am at all times. So I think life, think love, think righteous, solely and deep, all in together, all about We all will remember 'cause it's all beyond me, all about free, so my spirit flow at ease. Light is beyond my pride, just to carry over to shine inside my life.

Who I am beyond the light. Who I am throughout the light. Who I am throughout. Who am I beyond the line?

Maybe it was all the exception or a different perspective. Maybe I just had to learn a lesson, a confession, or get a sense of direction. Playing the game so limited simply was the process involved. So we suffered, fought us, failed lovers, covered and concealed, not revealed. Who we truly are, and through the light years, so many stories we told. But no matter how intense or the depth, nothing keeps the truth unexposed. Nothing keeps the truth unexposed. Nothing keeps the truth unexposed. Nothing keeps the truth unexposed.

Nothing keeps the truth unexposed.

In a mind far beyond all space and time, a phenomenon lives ever crystallized. Thought victimized in the infancy, love always rules, there is no other dependency. Exposed how my throne stayed aligned just to open up so that a storm may arise. Maybe I could catch it, maybe I could spare the pride. Humbly in greatness, I'm no longer surprised. Rise in the mind, I don't have to jump ship. Living what I'm not holds molds that don't fit. How does it exist? It's something like an art. Only way to shift Let it be, then no one's arguing why. I just wanna live my life knowing that I'll be alright. I just wanna play with my heart still major. Play for creative nature. Never meant to feel pain, so I danced when the rain came. All the stories and the change, worth it every time. Never meant to cause pain, but it still served in my mind frame. All the roles we had to play, still living, loving life.

Fly.

Never been afraid to fly till your wings got torn. Now the sky looks so far away from the ground below, and it feels like there is nowhere left to go. Remember that you can be fearless. You can be fearless. When the whole world falls and everything breaks and you're standing alone, you can be fearless. You're not alone. You always knew how to fight until they knocked you down. Now's the time to show them that you will survive and know. That I'll be right by your side. To tell you that you can be fearless. You can be fearless. When the whole world falls and everything breaks and you're standing alone, just close your eyes and take a breath. And then you'll know you can be fearless. You can be fearless. You're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone. You can be fearless. You can be fearless. When the whole world falls and everything breaks and you're standing alone, just close your Open your eyes and take a breath, and then you'll know you can be fearless. You can be fearless. Remember, you're fearless. You're not alone. I'm not alone. Never been afraid to fly.

All right, love that song. That's actually a friend of ours, so we've got cool like rights to that. Can be part of the summit and movement going forward. So welcome. This is Brett Roshowski, 5 PM Eastern time on Saturday, part 2 of the Mad Hatter Summit, where we've had events happening around the planet today. We had early on in the morning in Zomba, Malawi, our friends sung and danced into existence to stay together. And then in Vreeland in the Netherlands, our friend Annalise ran a Taste of Wonderland at a farm. based on mental health as a topic. And Hillary will be joining us, my co-founder of the summit, in about half an hour. She just did 2 different, uh, well, the same process in 2 different times in Toronto, Canada at the University of Toronto. And we have our friend Joshua Robertson coming in in a few minutes, hopefully. Um, he's going to be running an event in California in a beautiful place, so hopefully we'll be able to see the background there and the mountains. or whatnot. Um, so I'm happy to be here. We had a great first session earlier. Um, I may play— excuse me— a couple more videos. Uh, I thought Hillary was going to be here now, so it's just me going solo. So I've got to figure out what I want to talk about, how to fill the time. Maybe some people will come on, and Andrea is here, we can talk a little bit. Um, the beginning of the first, uh, video we did today lays out what this summit is about, what Taste of Wonderland is about. Um, so I'm not sure I'm gonna go fully into that for part 2. I know if you're just tuning in live, um, maybe that's a problem being out of context, and I really apologize for that. Um, the most important thing with today's live stream is going to be the video we have from it. We had an amazing conversation earlier. Here's Joshua coming. I said Robertson before, I'm sorry, it's Joshua Roberts. I always mix that up. So Josh, let's see where Josh is at when he's up to me and him can take it away. And Andrea, when you're ready, you can come on camera if you'd like.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! What's up, my international fam?

Oh man, so good to be with you.

Likewise, Brett. You're looking like a, a master there, some sort of a martial artist of the metaphysical terrain.

Nice social aikido.

Yeah, social aikido, using the energy to flow with it instead of fighting it.

You know what's up.

Yo, I do. So it looks like you've got nice weather.

Yeah, dude, it's perfect. It cooled down a little bit and it's just going to get better and better. We're about 2 hours away from the event starting, and by the time it starts, the shade is going to be in the perfect spot, and I think we're gonna have a grand old time. How's it been your side today?

I'm gonna get to that, but just quickly, give us your full name. I want to hear you say your name, where you're coming from now, um, and then we'll get back into what you're doing. And how much time do you have? If you're comfortable, do you feel you have right for right now?

About 15 minutes, if that's cool with you.

Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Do you think you'd be able to, before we go, turn the camera around a little bit and show Where you're at and everything?

Yeah, man, I wouldn't mind taking you on a little tour, as a matter of fact. Obviously, we're still setting up. We still got some time. We've got 2 hours, but maybe I could take you on a brief tour to just show you some of what the experiences will be like.

That would be amazing. So you're in California, right?

Name's Joshua Roberts, born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa. That's why I sound peculiar, but I am indeed in Southern California, in San Diego. Man, I think this place is paradise. I think that, um, it's a perfect alignment of things, but really stoked to be tied into the international currents of what we're doing here with mental health, reforming the game. California has always been a game changer. Hey, let's, let's start a mental health and spirituality revolution.

Awesome. And what kind of property are you on today? It's a pretty big space, right? In the mountains? Are there mountains in the background? Is there any lakes on this or anything, or water on the property, or do you know?

Oh, believe me, I know. Yeah, man, this place is amazing. Um, so I will give you a little tour of it, but it's a 400-acre property with the largest waterfall in San Diego County. That thing's just a trickle right now because it's summer, but I was here in winter, a torrent of energy, man. There's a little stream that runs down there.

Beautiful.

We're surrounded by, by nature as far as the eye can see. It's very quiet, man, very peaceful.

Beautiful, beautiful. So let's—

before we—

I think we've got enough time for you to share basically what you're kind of doing today, and also just a little bit about what you're into, what you do, and tiny bit about your background and why you're even doing mental health. I know you're good at— you could probably say it all in 10 minutes. So I'm gonna basically give you the floor with one request. If there's someone there later on when you get started who can hold the camera up and put it on mute so we can see things happening, somehow in the background, like even from far away. Because what we lost today is when I was talking to everyone, we didn't have like Toronto in the background. So when people tuned in, it was more like I'm doing a podcast rather than somewhere live. So even if you can do that for 10 minutes, even just to give us a sense of like there's something going on out there, uh, no expectations on that, Josh, but if it works out, please keep it in mind. Otherwise, the floor is yours.

Sure.

Tell us about why you care about Mental health, spiritual, and beyond too. And just best life for all and neurodiversity. Give us, give us, give us a 10-minute Hunter S. Thompson, Russell, Russell, what's his name? Just lay it out, man. Have a good time.

If I've got the floor, the first thing I'm going to do is a dance move. I'm going to do a little dance move and I'm going to say, what's happening, Mark? And hey, Andrea, it's so cool to be here with you guys. Um, okay, so the name is Joshua Roberts. Uh, after graduating high school, I traveled the world for about 10 years But the most interesting place I ever discovered was the territory of my own mind. I had a so-called psychosis experience in San Francisco when I was 22 years old. Do you know what I discovered though, Paul, is that the mystical world, this world that I grew up hearing about in the Bible that I thought wasn't really real, it was so abstract. Dude, that stuff's more real than real. And so, so-called psychosis pierced me through the veil. And since then, I've made it my life mission to explore what on earth the nature of reality is. what on earth the role of the mind is in penetrating this veil, this Maya. And so I was raised Catholic, but it never really stuck with me until I had these mystical experiences, which helped me discover Jesus in a fresh way. So we started a movement called Aslan's Way, which is a Jesus-lit mental health path. Like the millennials and Gen Z, they use lit as in cool. Oh, that thing's lit, man. And so it's Jesus-lit. It's bringing back the coolness to to the Jesus movement, to the way is what it was. He was a revolutionary man, and he met all the DSM criteria for being bipolar type 1. Think about like John the Baptist cruising in the wilderness screaming repent and eating locusts and wild honey. Man, these guys were neurodiverse and they were game changers. So my whole mission with neurodiversity is to reframe these altered states of consciousness in terms of prophetic insight, visionary capabilities. And I find one of the best ways to do that is in nature. Right here. So yeah, man, I mean, let me flip this camera around and show you a brief outline of what we could do. I don't know if it'll even let me do that from the phone. Might not, eh?

Oh yeah, it will.

Watch out.

Okay, so we've discovered that there's a uniting theme to the nature of reality called the hero or heroine's journey. where we start in the world that we know. And then there's a call to adventure. And so people are going to pick up this adventure packet when they arrive. And there's going to be 3 different experiences. We're going to start and end at the fire pit. Then we're going to have metaphorical inkblot art, the Taste of Wonderland experience, which is itself broken up into 3 experiences, and then have a vision quest and return back to the same fire pit metamorphosized. It's kind of hard to see, but there's unfortunately an abyss In every— oh, would you— were you not seeing my video? Were you seeing that, Bret?

You're on mute, Bret. No, we couldn't see it, Josh.

You're back.

Yeah, you're back. Go ahead, Josh.

Oh, great. Such a little eloquent explanation, but you couldn't see anything of what I was showing you. Okay, I was showing you the hero's journey. Okay, so you were supposed to— that was for the auditory learners. All right, now we're addressing the visual learners. We start in the world that we think that we know until there's a call or a push to adventure. We cross into the world of the great unknown where it's not all rainbows and butterflies forever. Challenges and temptations come our way to define and refine the heart, and in almost every case, to the hero's dismay, we find ourselves deep in the dark, the cave of abyss where all the light has gone out and all hope seems lost for our plight. But as the old self dissolves in the nest of cocoon night, out of the ash a new life starts to rise. Revelation dawns and metamorphosis is born as the old self reemerges Transformed and comes back to the world that we left once before, bringing gifts of perspective and more. Yes, the same terrain that the caterpillar crawled on is now seen from vibrant new heights as the butterfly soars. All the scars and the stories are upward currents on which we take flight, on which we take flight. And so that's what we're doing. So people will pick up this little adventure packet on their way in, and they're gonna actually have to cross through a door, bro. We actually stuck a door in the middle of the forest, and you can't go through, you can't go through the rope. You know, sometimes life offers you Possibilities. Aslan's Way is based on C.S. Lewis's Narnia series, which is actually an allegory about higher-dimensional Christianity. When you go into some of these dusty doors in the closet of our mind, you might discover a different dimension of reality. Might be backwards for you guys, but that says you're stepping into a living metaphor. May the meaning flow to and through you. So everything that we've designed in this experience is metaphorical. You can't see the whole line, bro. You're never going to see the whole of God, but you can see enough to— that he sees you. Rumi says the, the person who you're seeking is seeking you. Boom, you come through the door. We're going to have a refreshment stand right here because as soon as you come into the dimension, there's, there's nourishment. This is the table being set up for the Mad Hatter Summit where we're going to have tea and we're going to have banana bread muffins. But people will follow the little white rabbits to get to the first Place on their hero's journey. Oh, the little white rabbits on the floor. Sometimes you've got to have discernment. You've got to be able to pick up where, where the rabbits are at, where it's leading you. Another little white rabbit. So we're all going to assemble here. This will be on the first page. Now you can see that it's the hero's journey that starts and ends at the fire pit. So we'll start here at the fire pit. where we're gonna sing the Circle of Life. Got my guitar. My buddy Devin, who works with Naam, he's got his ukulele. We're gonna sing the Circle of Life from The Lion King and then a version of Amazing Grace.

What?

Music of the spheres. And then we're gonna have a prayer and we're gonna begin the adventure. And the adventure starts with metaphorical inkblot art because I don't know, I was kind of told that, oh, the psychiatrists are the experts in interpreting your your experience. You need to listen to how they interpret your psyche. But bro, we're the experts in our own experience, and we can interpret our own inkblot art. And so people are going to draw seasons from a hat. They'll be randomly assigned. But you know, there's something in this. I know the winter's backwards, but they'll be assigned to these different tables, and we'll create metaphorical inkblot art, interpreting them ourselves, turning the picture around to see things from different angles. Maybe you see something different in your mind and your possibility and your personality when you look from different angles. We'll also explore this within the power of community, and other people will be able to share what they see in your art. So we've had— we only issued 30 tickets, but all of those sold out. So we issued another 7, and those sold out too. We don't— I mean, maybe some people won't come, but we wanted to keep it relatively manageable the first time because we think that this is the start of something much larger. So I'm going to pause there, but after that, we're going to go do the Hall of Mirrors, and I'll start cruising in that direction. But just want to hear from you, man, if like there's anything you want to hear about, if you want to take this in a different direction.

Words do not suffice to explain how happy I am to be hanging out with you and Mark. And I was on this crazy awesome call with Mark last night. I am so living my purpose right now. I'm so in the flow, like my life, my outer world is reflecting my innermost Like desires and for the world from the selfless space, from the Jesus space, from the Buddhist space. I'm just on cloud nine. And like, the only way to like visually communicate it would for me to be like jump up and down on my bed, like bang my head against the wall, run around like tap, because there's no other way. It's fucking phenomenal. I love you, Josh. Thank you so much. Before you go, I'd like— I do want you to talk about the future of neurodiversity and you know, CrowdCreation and how you see Web3 and just what are we going to be doing next? Like, what's it going to look like next year? Tell me about the future vision part of it.

Yeah, thanks, man. You're a visionary and thank you for making this happen, dude. We've had events in Malawi to see these kind of messages and videos come through today, to see people gathering in Africa and Malawi, to see people gathering in the Netherlands, to see people gathering in Canada and California, all because of the vision that you have. And you and Hillary, I think it's powerful that we can actually manifest our visions. The New Universe have always been on the forefront of visionary—

Ah, we're toeing the line there, weren't we, Mark? It was getting almost out, but that was brilliant anyway, no matter what. And I hope, I hope, I just— they do have some film, I think, a camera there, at least phone cameras. So what a— it's so funny because to me it's been great today, but really we're going to be able to make a documentary out of this and people are going to see all these different locations. Like, we've done nothing today. To highlight that according to our limitations. It's just amazing. Let's see if he— he's trying to get back on. We'll see if he comes through. Oh, let's see. Next year we'll have a whole crew with live streaming and satellites so we all— we don't have to worry about any of this stuff.

Oh, he squeezed in a lot though. Like, he pretty much covered it even with that choppy signal.

But he got his piece done. I do want the world to hear his, like, kind of The other half of his visionary side. But oh well, for the moment anyway. So Mark, um, thank you for coming earlier. Thank you for coming back. Andrea is there. Thank you for listening. Thank you for coming back. Hillary's going to be here about 5:30 or so. She actually went home from the Toronto venue first, I guess, to get comfortable. So hopefully she'll be home soon. Um, and then we'll kind of maybe obviously kind of review a little bit of the summit and all that. I'm not really worried too much about context for those listening now who might jump in I will just go cut back to Josh while he's maybe here. Go ahead, Josh, if you're there, just give it a shot again, man.

Yeah, sorry guys, I lost you. But hey, I guess it's not meant to be. I was going to show you the Hall of Mirrors, which is such a trip, and it talks to the visionary capability of the NeuroDiverse, but there's no signal there. So it's a bit of a mystery. I'll tell you what, you got to join us for the next one to be able to see yourself from fresh perspectives in the Hall of Mirrors. But just to pick up on where— what we were talking about, man, the future of this vision and stuff. The neurodiverse have always been the visionaries, and Nikola Tesla, unfortunately, although he was a genius, couldn't navigate capitalism in, in the ways that could have made him more successful. So I think as we bring together our different specialties, the different versions of intelligence according to Howard Gardner's multiple intelligence models, we can do much more together than we can apart. There could be an expert in finance man who's going to team up with Tesla's vision, and then bam, free energy for all. And so I'm thinking that the future of not only the neurodiversity movement, but the world, is a decentralization. I think the kind of oligarchs and the power brokers of the past who held all the power, it's being distributed through Web3, through the internet. We have access to, you know, finance through blockchain, which is opening unprecedented avenues, the internet, sources of information. We're coming together in this kind of collective way Jung's collective unconscious, where something larger than the sum of our parts is emerging. So we're just doing what we're called to do in our place. I think you guys watching, firstly, thank you for watching. Thank you for being here. I think all you have to do is take the next right step. In Frozen 2, where she goes on her heroine's journey, she finds herself in the abyss, the cave of depression, and the magic evaporates. Olaf disintegrates, and a song comes on saying, just do the next right thing. And by just taking step after step, this pinprick of light emerges, and she knows the path. Journey of 1,000 miles starts with a single step. And even by you guys tuning in now, this is a call to adventure. This is your call to adventure. So with Aslan's Way and Inspired Mind Mental Health, we have teamed up with the National Empowerment Center, created a neurodiversity gifts curriculum, a training program, an immersive experience that allows people to tap into their own genius. Their own genius, I know, was the theme in the Canadian Taste of Wonderland experience. And so let's do this, you guys. Like, let's all do this together because the world is ours to reform. And the game is ours to change. So coming back to you guys, any final thoughts before we call it a day? I wish I could show you more, but I guess the powers that be, aka Signal, won't allow that.

Thank you, man. No, you said everything I could say in your own way, but the same story from your lens is freaking phenomenal. I love it. We're gonna just— this is it for me. The old story's over. As far as me and my life, it's not about the future or 6 months or 10 years from now. Like, I've reached a new tipping point. I'm not like not done by any stretch of the imagination, but I believe this event, at least I'm again speaking only for my own soul's purpose and everything, like this is a line in the sand. There is no more old story. There is no more poverty. We're not putting up with any of this stuff, whether it's climate change, poverty, inequality, discrimination, whatever. We all, like you said, Josh, we're going to find a way together from the grassroots up to figure out the solutions and provide the solutions that we need rather than waiting for other people to do it. Forget this victimhood stuff. So I'm with you 100%. I love you. Have an amazing time, and please film as much as you can. Mark, you want to say goodbye?

We will, man.

Good luck out there, Josh. Excellent work.

Thank you, my friend. Thanks, bro. You guys, it's amazing. Brett, thank you, dude, for who you are. Mark, thanks for being in this. Andrea, everyone watching, this is big. This is beautiful. This International Global Summit, and this is the threshold. You know what? Once you cross the door, there's no going back, bro. Actually, this door doesn't open the other way. You're stuck in 9-year, bro. You better learn to enjoy it because it's the future. I'll tell you what. But thank you guys. Appreciate you. God bless you guys. Chat soon.

Lots of love, my friend. Have a great time.

Love you guys. Thanks, man. Bye.

Thank you. So, wow. I love his energy, man. Sometimes it's hard for me to find people that can match my intensity in terms of me wanting to run through a door when— speaking of doors— run through a door when someone like gives a motivational speech of some kind. To be honest, it only happened to me once in my life. Um, a woman named Lisa Nichols, uh, 10 years ago, I went to something called Awesomeness Fest, and when I heard her speak, it changed my life. And I ended up writing a story about my first mental health spiritual mercy in a little collected author book.

Um, wow.

And that was the first time— like, I'd been inspired by concerts, I've been inspired by reading the words of Martin Luther King, for example, But never in person beyond music did I ever feel like the Tony Robbins type thing, like I'm just ready to run through a wall for this person. Like a coach, almost like a sports coach, like really like in a movie, like where the sports coach just gives this rousing speech. So, but Josh reminds me of that, man. It makes me feel good. Like he makes me feel excited and enthusiastic and positive. And we have a very similar story, Josh and I, as well. He was also, uh, 6 times, I believe the number is, put into the psychiatric ward. So not just one time. Now he has a master's in theology and a family and everything. So again, to reaffirm what I said earlier, this, this is about beyond mental health. This is neurodiversity. This is interdisciplinary. We have people already on the team, for lack of a better word, in the community with anything from PhDs in all different subjects and mothers, fathers, scientists, artists. Like, this is about coming together. As Josh said, this is beyond boundaries. And in my own words, not speaking necessarily for the summit because it's kind of a co-created thing, but I'm calling it a civil rights movement for the soul. For me, like, if I were to go down in history for something, if it mattered, you know, I don't care about the ego, I'm just saying like if it were to matter as a demarcation point, Mark, I would be proud to put on my fucking grave, that's the guy that fucking catalyzes civil movement for the soul. That's like, as much as I'm grandiose, that's enough for me, dude. I think like Just sparking it too, not even finishing it, completing it. Like, I don't know what will happen, but just like putting it— a name on it. And by the way, Neale Donald Walsch talked about in this book Conversations with God. So again, it even comes back to God again, Jesus. Like, we're using all different words in this conversation. Earlier today we had another person very much also a believer and a lover of Jesus, not necessarily fundamental in any way, but same. We're just covering all the bases in a way that's super inclusive about unconditional love and a party. We can all get along, right? What is that famous saying Rodney King, you know, in the, in the, in the, in the riots and back when I was a kid in '92 or something? Why can't we all just get along? I think it was a famous something like that he said. And when he got taken away or beat up, or I think someone will have to correct me on that. But anyway, it's an epic day really. Like, and it's funny, you know, I'm sure there's 5 people watching on Facebook right now, but again, for anyone watching And the object— the objective today was to have this footage, to also put it together with the other events, and to put out a documentary that we can send to film festivals, that we can send to philanthropists, that we can send to TV stations, that we can send to Oprah, whatever we need to do. We'll cut it up in a zillion different ways. So we'll be looking for editors and graphic designers if anyone wants to lend a hand. But, um, this day is about much more than coming on Facebook or talking, but it is also brilliant at the same time. makes me come alive. So what's on your mind, Mark, as far as these matters go?

Well, I was pretty energized too, um, by Josh's speech there. And I often find that people who are more neurodivergent or who've had psychotic breaks or just an opening to maybe this other experience of reality, they have a high linguistic fluency. And you're just gifted that way. And you're one of those people too, Bret. It just flows. And they've done studies to show that the way that you construct meaning in sentences has something to do with the way your mind is in touch with reality.

Mm-hmm.

And, uh, I feel blessed being around such positive, powerful words, such powerful, positive people who've gone through basically a version of hell and come out the other side, uh, of the door, you could say, stronger and more inspired and, you know, ready to help people through those experiences or even prevent some of the stuff that has happened to them from happening again to anyone. And we're going global, like global. Like, you guys aren't thinking— we're not thinking small here, we're thinking big. And I love how it's so interconnected, like all the reference you're pulling. You're pulling from like Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, like it's, it's many different modes and it happens in many different ways and expresses itself in many different ways. But I really feel like we're doing a good job communicating something different is happening here, that we do have self-determination, even in these states that look like they're incoherent or however you want to describe it. There's a kind of wisdom there that we don't yet understand. So I really feel like whether we call it civil rights movement of the soul or a mental health movement or any kind of movement, spiritual movement, movement of spirit, I think we're on to something here. And I think you're right, people will watch this and have courage because there's a huge power differential in the current system and it makes people not want to speak up because it's, it's very disempowering. And I think when people see other people rising up, And shining their lights, it'll light the lights of other people to come and shine. And I think we need that. We need it kind of soon, given the trajectory of our planet, our culture, our global culture, our technologies. I think we need to get into a direction that's more wise. And if it's crazy-wise, probably even better.

You know, so I realized I'm gonna make the theme of the next couple hours I saw underneath him the shoulders we— the giants whose shoulders we stand upon. So throughout the next couple hours when we have time in between reconnecting with Hillary, and if Josh were to come back, whatever we talk about, I want to weave this in, this idea that there's a lineage, there's a history, that we stand on the shoulders of giants. And also, by the way, for those who are on now, if I do this, it means kind of start wrapping up, like don't rush too much. I'm gonna try to conduct a tiny bit if I feel like I wanna, but— and also remember, even if I do this and you stop, like, it doesn't mean you can't finish where you left off. It's not like the final word you'll get. So I want everyone to feel comfortable that they'll be able to finish their thought or hit the other points they want. But I want to see if we can get— how much— if we can create a little bit of a vortex in that sense. So Marlena, if you're there, come on video and you want to talk. If not, just stay actually off video. That'll be the cue. Andrew as well. Anytime you feel like you're really ready to talk or want to interact that way, just come on video. So, um, and then I'll know as a cue that you're kind of ready or that maybe you have something to say, per se. Um, I mean, you can stay on video anyway, just an idea. Um, does anyone have access to like an open Google tab or something where they can do searches for us and like pull up a quote or an image if we need? Is anyone like in a position to do that?

Yeah, I definitely have access if needed.

Yeah, would you mind looking up an Aldous Huxley quote? It starts with, the man who comes back through the hole in the wall. It's about 3 or 4 sentences long. It reminds me of the door, and I was— I would like to share, just share it as an homage to Aldous Huxley, who was a massive influence and inspiration for me. And, um, basically I'm a type of channel, so, um, I don't talk to dead people per se, but I'm like a different kind of channel. So I basically connect with like the essence and artistic through the memetics, right? It's like DNA epigenetics. I call it epimemetics, right? So the epimemetics is something you— is a way to like converse with someone like Jim Morrison or William Blake or Aldous Huxley or Florence Nightingale or Shirley MacLaine. No, she's still alive.

Is she dead?

Who knows? Shirley MacLaine, I don't even know. That was a funny one that came out of nowhere. But the epimemetics allows us to basically grok this essence. It's almost like a simulation, what the AI people think you can download the consciousness, which will probably never happen. But you can sort of download any, anyone, like any, any essence of a soul, like in that sense. So that's my gig. And, um, all this is like, yeah, like one of my best friends. I never realized it, but I guess I'm like one of those little kids. I wasn't like that when I was younger, you know, like imaginary friend kind of space. I was an athlete, I was very like mainstream, but now I'm like a little kid who's playing with my imaginary friends to some degree. I just had that realization as well as you guys. So, Clara is going to join us. I see she's coming in. She has an amazing, awesome story. Marlena, do you want to check in and say hello or relate to anything that's been shared or anything?

Yeah.

Um, hi, I'm Marlena Kolaszynska. Um, I kind of missed out on some of what was shared so far because I just joined a few minutes ago, so kind of hold back on sharing too much.

I'm glad.

But, you know, have lived experience with ADHD diagnoses and bipolar 1 diagnoses, mania, psychosis, hospitalization. Um, I love to talk about altered states and the crossovers with spirituality, mysticism, and, um, like psychedelics and drug use and just kind of exploring for now. Um, getting involved, baby, baby involved in activism. And I'm an artist as well.

Artivism, don't forget it, man. Artivism.

You can do both.

You can have your cake and eat it too.

Exactly. Yeah, I'm trying to, trying to make it bigger, I guess, is where— what I should say.

Yeah, you got to show us your art again later. Hillary needs to see your art.

It's—

I mean, yeah, I'm hoping it— I mean, not hoping, I'm kind of intending slash anticipating that you could be one of the first really like artistic representatives for this summit, for this movement. We get you some funds going for that, and you, you're kind of like the, you know, the publicity in that way. Like you're just creating memes and beautiful art. So I hope we can talk about that, um, yeah, coming weeks, because your art was really cool.

I would love to. Um, and then, yeah, If you guys are interested, I also have a song I could share if that's something.

All of it, all of it, all of it. We're gonna be in it. We're gonna be in a band together. Claire, how are you?

I'm doing well. I'm so glad that this is such a convenient time for me. Thank you for doing this. I'm excited to be here and to learn more, and I have a poem to share and maybe Which really speaks to interconnectedness of all things and poetry.

Beautiful. How long are you able to stay with us? I'm trying— I'm just gonna judge when to call on people based on maybe how long they might be with us.

I can stay until 7.

Okay, great. So then there's no rush necessarily.

No rush.

I am going to invite you to speak about your experience and who you are and all that. There's no question about What we want to do is Hillary's tuning in. She just spent all day in Toronto, so we're going to get the report how the Toronto Taste of Wonderland was. She's probably dead tired, so we want to get her in, talk about it, and let her get to sleep or to rest. So everyone, please bear with us, be patient. But that's what we're going to do is get the download from Hillary and enjoy her and to get to tell her about what we've been doing today, because Marlene and Mark has been with me all day. So I think Hillary will be excited to hear.

Fabulous.

The nature of the conversation has been pristine, like, like a Joe Rogan podcast for going beyond mental health. Like, you know, like it's been really pristine people and really pristine people in service to things, people creative, people that have gone through all these things and come out the other side. It's just been absolutely brilliant. So your camera's not on. Is that intentional?

I know, I'm trying.

All right, take your time. Just see if you can figure it out, just because that would be obviously ideal. So, um, Here we go. Oh, you're in the car. Oh, there you go, there you go, there we go. Let me put my glasses on. By the way, Hillary, I've decided when I put my glasses on, I'm Clark Kent, and when I take them off, I'm Superman. So I do the inverse.

I love it. Yeah, well, you're always inverse, honey. You're always inverse.

I know, I know. That's what they tell me. How are you? Tell us, check in. We're not going to do— so, Hillary, we're not going to contextualize anything. We're, we're seeing this as a, an overall broadcast for footage. Let's just have a good time. And really do the most important thing, which is share the brilliance of everything rather than thinking about marketing and the right way to do things or anything like that. So give it— it's your floor until you otherwise say you want to ask a question or invite us in. You take it first.

Well, we had a phenomenal day. We really did. And, you know, we have—

Well, start with where you were. I guess that will be helpful. Just go back over the day.

Yes. So we were in the Information Technology Building of the University of Toronto. And we had 2 classrooms that we converted into the various stations of A Taste of Wonderland. We had just an amazing— we had to do a lot of juggling because we had one of our activities in the Looking Glass was to do freeze— flash freezing of sending information and thoughts into water and then freezing it. And the freezer wasn't cooperating very well. So we had to— it was taking a lot longer for things to freeze. So we had to juggle around that. But we had an amazing, wonderful group of brave souls who bared their souls and who really allowed themselves to go into the cracks of what they were experiencing in their lives and in their families.

Mm-hmm.

We also had, you know, the pool of tears in terms of some of the depth of the grief. In our Looking Glass, it was really fun because we did 6 hats with 3 that people chose based on— they did a quiz, and the quiz then showed them which hats they would actually go to to do the activities. And the activities were all very unique, and one of the most I guess the real awakening was how little introspection many people do and don't take the time to actually sift back through their lives to look at what needs to be hospiced and what needs to be let go and what needs to be grown and in a very— in a conscious way. So, we actually did some fascinating stuff with using 2 of the activities were based on Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Decote. And, and a very— it's a very— it's in-depth work, but we did it in really fun ways. For an example, one of our— the beanie hat, which was about comfort, was about identifying 3 people on your internal bus that have different points of view about your life, about the direction of your life. And they had— you had to identify the 3 people on your bus. bus, your internal bus, where they were sitting, what they were like, who they—

what they were—

describe them, what they were saying to you about your life. And then to get to identify what self-care did they need. It wasn't about shutting down the different people. It was definitely all about talking and looking at honoring the different aspects of ourselves and looking at the kind of care they needed. And then every single station looked at what does this and how does this inform you of what you considering to be a best life. Because in Toronto, ours was all about describing a best life and exploring what a best life could be. And then at the Mad Hatter, we had some really— we had a very fascinating conversation, a lot about men and about men and look at— and again, about not having the time for or taking time for introspection. what that meant, and what the opportunity was to look at introspection in a unique and creative way. And how could introspection be done in a— not sitting in front of a therapist, but doing art and doing— and, you know, I talked about what Matt does with, you know, looking at hypnotherapy when you're doing deep dives, doing hypnotherapy on a hike. You know, going and integrating outdoors with different modalities of exploration. And I don't even want to call them therapies. It's really, it's about exploring and exploration. So, at the end of the day, it was because ours was focused on best life. Each individual walked away with a new formula for themselves around what did they think about, what was the best life for them. And they had Each one had an epiphany around what that was. And then looking at that collectively, what does that tell us about what, what it is, the work that needs, you know, where we take this in terms of exploring supporting best lives that, that are very different than what people think they are? So that was Toronto. Are you muted, or am I?

Is it me?

No, I was muted. You know, when I was a kid, we used to get— we get up, we get somebody high, like, for the first or second time, and then when we, we would make a cue and everyone would start going like this, and then they would say they can't hear, and then we'd say, why can't you hear us? And then we go— and it totally just had a flashback of doing that with all my friends. It was so silly. So you did 2 sessions, right? Like you did—

No, we ended up merging. We ended up merging them. And which was good because you know what? It was such an intense experience that to do that twice, it was— it was—

no.

So we did the one. And it was very— it was beautiful. It was powerful.

It was—

and now— and we've now got people— Maya, our wonderful Maya, so excited. She goes back to school at University of Waterloo. Lou in 2 weeks, and her first thing she's going to do is talk to her guidance counselor about how do we bring A Taste of Wonderland as a hope, a process for university students to explore a different kind of career path.

Yes.

You know, there's a— speaking of meaning-making and mental health and psychology, there's a professor at Toronto actually named John Vervaeke who does pretty cool cutting-edge, like, interesting stuff. So maybe our friend there at University of Toronto who helped put on the event today, who's a professor, can find a way to get this video to him at some point. We'll pull out a clip, but, uh, we wanted to invite him as well next time to be part of the next conversation. And just plugging on synchronicity has been a big, uh, big theme of the day today, Hillary, by the way.

That's fantastic. And we also, you know, it was also an opportunity to actually advocate around the— our, our concept of of looking at the paradigm shift of going from— and, you know, because many people don't even think about that, that we're going— that going from psychotic breakdown to it's actually evolutionary breakthrough, going from looking at a disorder and pathological diagnosis to on the other side of the paradigm, if they're actually signs of human evolution along with, you know, neurodiversity and spiritual awakening and breakthroughs. So it's not about clinical and, you know, medical intervention. It's about an ecosystem of very different kinds of support systems that we're looking at exploring. So it was really great to be able to advocate, to showcase that shift and how we're focusing on, in our term, the right-hand column, the evolutionary column, not the pathological column. And also how we are putting together the whole idea of polycrisis that, that it's all kinds of experts are dealing— they're saying they're dealing with, and yet they're all converging, and that we need very different radical thinking to understand how do we even approach these polycrisis in their holistic nature, not in their fragmented nature, in their holistic mycelium, how they're all joined together. All of these crises are— there's a mycelium network that runs underneath all of it. And our neurodiverse community understands that and can actually look at these polycrisis in a way that no one else can. So we are again able to advocate around that. And so when we got some great film footage, so that's all going to be part of it as well.

Uh, you know, I— somebody mentioned something today in another chat I was in earlier today before we set off, and, uh, I think the planet's basically at the point where we need a miracle.

Yeah.

The great thing is there's enough people on the planet. Sometimes it's known as something like the Maharishi effect, and there's other numbers and whatever principles, but like, I think for me today's the day that at least puts the anchor in the ground and says like like, I'm standing for that. Like, I'm not saying that's how it is or everyone will agree with me, but on my personal journey, this is a watershed moment. This is a tipping point for me. This has been a day of like awesome full purpose, full passion, full like what makes you come alive, go do that. I'm loving it. And I think we do need a miracle as a planet, literally on the, let's say, religious level. I won't go into any specific religion, but where I think that's what we need But it's no different than at the end of Star Wars or when Rocky knocks out the guy in the 12th round. Like, humanity is drama. All we need to do is write a screenplay that evokes these kind of sentimental, nostalgic, emotional— it's media. I mean, it's communication. So one thing we need to take the power back with is that, first of all. So we're doing that. It's part of everything we're doing here. Um, and I'm gonna touch base very soon on, on the media point with our good friend Janet here, and Laura and Claire are part of that project, so I can bring them in through that angle. But first, we're going to finish with— I mean, still stay with Hillary. Does anyone have any questions for Hillary that they can think of asking about the experience she had today? You can just feel free to open your own mic and go for it. Anyone?

Maybe I'll just say something quick, Hillary, is I know you're helping to organize this from the start, right? And this polycrisis, people are underestimating it right now, but the fact that you're able to pull off a worldwide event in the middle of all that's happening and it went— it's going well, I am blown away. Like, it's, it's getting harder. People don't realize behind the scenes our lives are getting harder in multiple ways at once, and you pulled through it, and I think it's brilliant. I actually think it feels right. Everything seems to be clicking right. Like Bret said, we have synchronicity happening. Not just in one city, this is around the world.

Yeah.

So I just want to say, wow, I think we're blessed to have you. And don't retire. I want you to keep doing this for our benefit and the next generation. So thank you so much for putting the effort into this. I think it's really beautiful.

Well, thank you. And, and, and, uh, I will— you know, one of the interesting things that we did today with, with was these water prints. I got the sun doing some really interesting things here, uh, was these water prints. And in mine, I have a distinct little— it looks like a baby footprint that has some fascinating patterning in it. And it feels like that this is the footprint of Taste of Wonderland. That is now— it's a beautiful baby. It's in the world. It's happening today. We've been doing these, as we did in Malawi last year, and we've done them online. But today was a focused, concentrated effort with beautiful singing and dancing from Malawi bringing us into, into being. And then with the Netherlands and now Toronto and then moving over to, to, to San Diego, just outside of San Diego, you know, like, and it's very few people have pulled this off, you know, with no, with no money. With all self-financed and with, but with a lot of motivation and And just one last piece I wanna say is that all of this is totally experiential. Nobody is telling anyone what to think. No one is telling anyone what to feel, what to believe, what to sense. We're not— we are providing— it's like we are providing this kitchen without even the cookbook so that you can come in and make whatever it is that you want with the utensils you have. And that are available, and and because it's so experiential, it's a it's a totally different outcome. And and people are walking away asking questions, wondering, pondering, explore ready to explore more. Every one of the participants wants to sign on to to be part of the the ongoing process. So you know that's that's something.

What an amazingly important point you just brought up, that this is again about invitation, not obligation, you know, invitation, not dictation. It's all it is. And the more people that come to that party, it's actually simple math, right? The truth can't be fractions, right? It's just simple math. The truth can't be fractioned like that. So like, we'll build capacity now. We've already done that in our little way the first year. to get to this point. This next year we'll do it again. In the next 2, 3, 4 years, whether it's next year or 4 years, we're gonna have that big worldwide event with a billion people because there's just no question about it. And because I think finally the planet will understand that without that— again, the miracle. We need a miracle. And that's good. That's fun. That's also part of the evolutionary process. It's also, again, talking about inversions and ratios. When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Like, things are that bad. But when things are that bad, that means the resulting neutralization of them from the positive and the inspirational and the building and creating is equally as— look, think of how bad it seems with AI and climate change, the end of the world. Well, the counter to that is the beginning of the world. I mean, put that in your pipes and smoke it, right? Sit with that for a second. If it could be that bad, we know it could be that good. So what is that, that goodness part of it? Think about that and stay with that. that for a week or a day or an hour. And you know, in your logical mind, you have to at least agree to that fundamental deal. Like, if it could be that bad, everyone in life has had that experience. Things are always in balance like that, whether you're a Taoist or not. Everyone knows there's good and bad in life and that things kind of balance out. Everyone's had a version of that. So that's miraculous.

And we also, you know, we, in, when we're conducting these, we, we realize Some things that you would say in the conventional world is something that you don't want to happen. In our case, you do. I'll give you the example of one of the participants, fascinating guy. In fact, Bret, it was your blog that brought him. And he was very resonated a lot with what you said. And one of the projects he's working on is using AI to actually talk to rivers and other water bodies. And, and he was a lovely, lovely gentleman. And after he did the, the, the Mad Hatter, and then he came over to me and he said, I have been so moved by something. I am, I am speechless. I need to go. I need to go. I have to go now. I want to thank you so much, but, but I got to get out of here. I have— this is totally unexpected what's come to me. And In the old style facilitation, you'd go, oh God, no, what did we do wrong? We did the, you know, somebody's leaving. In fact, that was for me a point of success.

It's psychedelic, man. It's psychedelic.

It's by something that he experienced in his Mad Hatter strange brew development that he had to leave. I thought, wow, that's success.

How amazing is that? Honestly, like, I, again, I like drugs. and, and, and chemicals and experimentation. Like, no, I'm all for that. But the Strange Brew is like a natural ayahuasca. Mark talks about like a natural mushroom high. The whole thing you just described was like a psychedelic experience with the Alice in Wonderland theme and the love. Like, it— yeah, it doesn't seem hard to push somebody who's a highly sensitive person or an open person already, who's willing to love, who's willing to be in love, who's willing to be creative, but maybe just needs a family, you know, in a community to bring that out. And like you just described, psychedelic means mind manifesting anyway. That doesn't mean take drugs, by the way, for anyone who's not familiar. The word psychedelic just means mind manifesting. So, um, so amazing, Hillary. Everything you shared has been honestly like super—

And, and one last thing. Well, I, I, I actually did the Mad Hatter in the end too, and I came up with this idea that's really crazy. I called it Open Mic for the And so it's like you do an open mic thing, but it's not open mic in the thing. It's, it's, it's actually you do art instead of standing up and singing or, or comedy or whatever. And it's called— the whole thing's called Magic for Strangers. Um, and it's, it's, uh, anyway, it's this whole— I have it in my head, but it happened as, you know, again, it came, it came as I was writing, as I was going through the process of the Mad Hatter. And this whole idea that strangers bring magic. And that's when— and, you know, because it was looking at the loneliness and the very depth of loneliness that was expressed on the boards today, how lonely people are.

Mm-hmm.

And how in often case— and how they're triggered by things in their family. So in many ways, if we can bring this idea of stranger magic, That we can actually express things and see things and talk to people who are strangers in some respects. That it's easier to do that than it is with family members, and, and to explore through the lens of strangers and magic and art. Anyway, it was, it was— something's gelling in there. I don't quite know what it is yet, but it'll appear. It's great to see you, Janet.

I want to thank you. I want to Bring a topic up. Um, it's so, it's so amazing.

Janet, what's that?

Give me, give me one second. I just wanna, I just wanna get a sense of time, of who can stay how long, because I'm trying to understand like the flow of everyone talking. So how long can you stay till, Janet? Can you stay till 7?

Probably, yeah.

Okay, and Claire can stay to 7. Laura Scott, how about you? Can you stay till 7, another hour, or what's your schedule? I think she's frozen. She's frozen on my screen. Yeah, I think she is. Okay, cool. All right, go ahead, Janet.

So yeah, it's, it's really more the, you know, finishing up the Hillary piece. Um, it's, it's fabulous to hear and see you, and, um, I do value what happens behind the scene, what it's like for a leader to work to get here. and then what the leader has to do after. So, you know, often we see the event, the success point, and so, you know, briefly, because there's so much before and there's so much, you know, mental challenge before this event, and then there's a lot more to come. So anyone who has led a project or is a leader, you know, knows when we show up, there's so much before and after. So I don't know if you want to comment But your stamina, your endurance, your spiritual strength, you know, prevails.

Yeah. Well, it has been a roller coaster, as you know. And there's been times— there were times with the Toronto team that we thought, do we even do this? With no money, no— we at one point, we had no money, we had no location, no, nothing. We had ourselves and our ideas and the process. And, and I'm really glad that we persevered. And I'm really glad that we, we kept going. And it was an enormous amount of work to get it all done. But now every— now, now we have all the tools that we need to run it. We've got the posters done. We've got the, you know, the tools are made. We've got all of those things have been done now that, that we know we have it. We have the kit bag. And the big work will start now in terms of analyzing all the data because we got a lot. And we're going to start adding that to what we've learned for the online programs as well as what we're going to learn today from the Netherlands and San Diego. But, you know, Bret's been wonderful in terms of, you know, as the co-founder. When he goes down, I go up. When I go up, he goes down. You know, like we have this yin-yang thing that happens. And, and together we are able to keep, to keep everything going. Would you say that, Bret, the yin-yang thing?

Yeah, for sure. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? It's like, I mean, we would get along anyway, but I can say in this movement, it's not always about like people you want to have a beer with. Like, there's a deeper calling. That's why there's a lot of alchemy and emotions. contradictions and friction and alchemy happening because we're being called, all of us, by whatever we name it. I think that evolutionary impulse to, to show up and, and, and make the changes we want to see. And we have to learn how to get along too on some level. So we need to be the change we want to see in the world, to keep it simple. Yeah. Is there anything else?

I heard you just joined. I, I just want— I heard you did a great job today. My sister was tuned in and, um, and she said, wow, Bret was just on fire. He was just, he was just grooving. He nailed the description of the Mad Hatter Summit. He just— anyway, I just think I just wanted to share that.

Oh, that's lovely. Yeah, it's been great fun. Like, yeah, I mean, everyone else too. Everyone did— Mark did this awesome 10-minute like super concise, like, monologue on the state of the world and then shared his experience, like the reality of his experience.

Wow.

And Marlena is like multiple discipline artist, physics, science, like she shared. This guy, this another guy from Miami who was here is really tuned in. And Mimsy, who I've known on Facebook for like 7 years, and she's doing this amazing work in the community with hip-hop and gun violence, and she's so devoted. Like, I've seen her like me over the years, and she was sharing in the first part, you'll see in the movie, like how much progress she's been making. And we're going to connect her to someone I met in Arizona who does the same kind of work to connect—

Wow.

Like the South to the Midwest. Like, so again, these recordings, this is a transmedia-like project. This is game of infinite gamification. This is breaking all boundaries. This whole movement, this whole platform, Mad Hatter's Son and Taste of Wonderland, is really a bigger platform that we've been calling Wonderland and just in general. And we're going to be using DAOs and AI for good, all this stuff. So these pieces of info are going to connect people. We've got technologies we've been working on in other parts of our lives for 10 years, like blockchain. There's other projects I'm part of, and everyone in this space is bringing literally innovations with them. We're not starting from scratch, hardly anyone in this space. I think it's our job to create the things for the young people, to be honest, and the people that need to find more direction. And in doing that, we find our own direction because we're So much in service. So, um, I have an idea how to transition, but Hillary will still open the space. Is there anything you want to share? Do you feel comfortable?

No, actually, I just want to— what I do want to do, I do have to run in and get— I have to run in and get— take dinner home, and then I'll drop back in. Um, but I— because I do want to listen to all the— I'm going to be, um, I guess, eating up all of the, um, uh, the recordings that you've done today. I do want to be there to pass the torch to Josh. Uh, he was here earlier.

He came earlier.

Okay, so is he coming back on? Do we know?

We don't know. I begged him at— I begged him to put a camera on because we want to see the background so people feel like they're in the, you know, in the event with us while we're talking. So I don't know, but he did check in. He did an awesome job. Like, he did an awesome— his version of both what he does in his life and also like his bigger sense of the movement and the vision. And it was amazing. That dude, I was saying, he makes me want to run through a wall like some kind of motivational Tony Robbins, like Jesus Tony Robbins mystical pirate dude, and like with the South African accent and all. I love that guy, man. Yeah. Oh, like, what a— what, what a— like, just the real deal. So yeah, so he was here. We got good audio from him. His video was not good, but you could see he was in a beautiful location, which is nice.

That's beautiful.

But his audio came through pretty good most of the time, so at least we have that.

Yeah.

Great.

All right. Well, go enjoy your food, and we'll welcome you back.

I'll check back. I'll, I'll come back in before, before you close off.

Okay.

Okay.

Thanks for listening, everybody. And thank you for, for all the, the energy that we felt throughout the day. It was, it was palpable. There were moments where, where it was, you know, you, you knew something really amazing was happening, but you can't describe it. You can't articulate it. And it's like the little baby's footprint in my, in my water method. You know, it's just starting.

Right on.

Awesome.

Love you.

Take care of yourself. Love you too. All right. So what I want to do now is because we're celebrating innovation and genius and the heart and how we're all going to contribute in the different ways to whatever it is we want to call it. So we're going to do, we're going to do some like what brings you here first, like what's like your name, where are you you calling from and like what brings you here. And then we're gonna do another round that's more about like what you're up to. And then like, if like we're gonna just popcorn a little bit. So I'm inviting people to be brief to start so we can get some flow going, and then we'll find the right time to go deeper into any specific person's project according to like what the flow is. So let's— and we're gonna get everybody in on this one, even though Mark was here earlier and Marlena. That's why I wanna try to be brief in that, in that way, just because we're gonna bring everyone in. already, you know, 7 of us, so that could take 50 minutes if we don't kind of do that. So let's go for it.

I'm Bret.

I'm in New Jersey. I'm here because artivism makes me feel excited— art and activism put together. I want to see a world that works for all. I was unceremoniously put through the mental health system in a way that was not very nice for 10 years. I don't want to see other people go through that on a mental health level. But beyond that, I'm all about creating a world that works for all. name is homage to the great Bucky Fuller. I'm here to change the game, change the planet, and through whatever ups and downs we were talking about, that's the game I'm in. Um, I'm gonna— I'll ask people to go just so we can keep it easy. Janet, how about you?

So I'm—

excuse me—

I'm Janet Warner. Um, most of my life business consulted out in corporate America, but I found myself called to create a movie called Calling God to the Witness Stand and a documentary Calling Breaking Down, Breaking Open, Breaking Through. And it is about a collection of people around the world who have been misdiagnosed when having spiritual experience or spiritual emergency, of which I did. So this is my retirement work, and many here are already involved.

So yeah.

Awesome. And I love that we have women here. You know, it's A lot of spaces I can get in can get very masculine and male-oriented. It's so nice to be actually outnumbered. That's the way— I know it needs to be right now. Mimsy, where are you from? Where are you calling in from? And do a quick— just what you're kind of about. I mean, what brought you here again? Why do you care about this?

Okay, so I'm learning, relearning the app. Um, what called me here is, is basically, um, from where I was when we first met to where I am now, I had lived a very, very very hard and even tragic life. And I was able to get my children away from that so I could break the cycle. I too was misdiagnosed. And after surviving all of that, have found what I love to do. I'm a hip-hop artist. So I have a lot of things going on with my project as an artist. One of my main goals with that is to include my children as much as possible because I was very unincluded. I was included as a child when it came to my family doing art and music. And every single chance I get to get on a platform when I'm being interviewed, I make sure to include any form of activism when it comes to children and giving them an artistic space and an artistic voice, no matter what it is, whether it's art, rapping, doing graphic design. You know, children need to have that space to do So, and so do adults. Um, and when it comes to the area of hip-hop, there has been a crisis going on when it comes to the violence. And so at this point in time, I am really doing a lot of activism where it comes to settling disputes, uh, within hip-hop so it's not so competitive. It's more of a— it is competitive, but it's more of us sports. Like, you know, you shake hands after you play baseball instead of like, hey, I'm going to shoot you with a gun, you know, pick up a mic and spit a verse instead of fighting somebody. You know, it's really, really complex. I guess that's the generalized description of what's going on here in Shreveport, Louisiana. But that's why I'm here.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Claire, how about yourself? Oh, is she frozen? Let's see.

Claire, can you hear me?

Nope, she's not frozen. Oh, you need to unmute, Claire.

Okay, sorry.

I—

for some reason, your voice became very faint, and I couldn't— it took a bit for me to realize you were saying my name. So, I'm Claire Bien, and I am here because I'm a voice hearer. Became a— have had 2 hospitalizations and 3 extended periods of longer than between a year and 2 and a half years of active voice hearing and physical manifestations. And I wrote a memoir, and as a result of that, I'm now president of ISPSUS, a national professional organization. the International Society of Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis. And also I'm on the board of directors of Hearing Voices Network USA. And I was lucky because I was older when I had— when I started hearing voices external to myself and also my spiritual breakthrough. So I knew enough not to say too much. And I also knew I had a master's degree, was married, so my treaters treated me as a human being and they listened to me. And that was so much luckier than so many people. And I became a mental health advocate and educator because I wanted people to know that the array of experiences associated with psychosis do not represent an intractable, incurable disease of the brain. And that with care and support and understanding and active listening, all of the stuff you know about. And I'm, you know, at first I was going, oh my gosh, well, I'll talk later. But anyway, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you.

Thank you so much. So, I'm going to go to Marlene and Laura, but I need you guys to be quick because we were on earlier and you shared a lot. So, just do a quick check-in, name, where you're from, and like a minute if you can, just like what brings you here just try to sum it up. We'll get back to things.

Yeah. So I'm Marlena, Marlena Kloszynska. I'm in my hometown right now, actually, in South Carolina, Fort Mill, South Carolina. And what brought me here is I have lived experience with ADHD and bipolar 1 diagnosis. So went through—

It's very weird.

I know Marlena.

I'm one— gone through one hospitalization and A few other encounters with psychiatry. I'm a current psychiatric consumer and kind of getting my feet in the door with activism and, you know, transforming the mental health scene. You know, I'm really interested in personal and collective liberation and breaking spells, not just making spells, but breaking spells that are not serving us. So that's what brings me here.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Laura, go ahead.

Hi guys, I'm Laura Lee Scott. And I am also a voice hearer and an HSP, highly sensitive person. I definitely identify— I would probably assume that all of us are HSP. I would, I would assume. But yeah, I definitely found that like, oh my gosh, bells going off, you Yeah. That definitely resonated with me. I'm a lifelong spiritual seeker. And I came out of the womb believing in a higher power, born into a very religiously kind of, well, a family of Lutherans. And they were really Lutheran first. And I kind of walked away from it. It was from like early childhood, always looking at things going, why do we—

A little, a little too much information for this round. We did a whole spot with you earlier. Just see if you can just share like—

I'm sorry.

What you're excited about.

Yeah, yeah.

And we'll come back. Don't worry.

Okay.

Yeah.

No, no worries. Thank you for the redirect.

I appreciate that.

Cool.

It's, it's tough because I'm, I'm jumping in and out of elder care issues and literally I've got two parents I'm trying to take care of, and I'm I'm not even supposed to be here right now. So deep breath. Let me let me just redirect. It's hard when you have ADHD and people interrupt you. It also gets really hard to continue with your train of thought. So I'll just say that you know H I H S P like voice here couldn't hear any voices though until I become a spiritual warrior as a surrendered Christian and having walked away from. Religion, but walking toward Jesus. And now I'm on the front lines, kind of just feeling like I've been led to stand with with every every force of good, Jesus being part of that, to say that you know all war is egregious and unethical and inhumane, and that includes spiritual war. So you know us being used as pawns on some type of cosmic chessboard, all of that. I know is happening, that's ending. And, uh, but I've had to kind of feel like, um, I've had to stand against that, and while being surrounded by people who have not even believed that spiritual experiences can be real.

That's it.

All right, so I'm gonna go to Andrea and then Sage. When I do this, please, someone just finish your thought to the best of your ability, like go deep. Don't feel like you have to just stop in 3 words. But just pay attention if I do that, please. And I know it's not always—

Thank you for sharing that.

I'm a Gemini, so I would talk a lot.

Like, a lot.

Yeah, cool. So like, I just want to hear from everyone, you know? I just want everyone to have a chance to talk and to flow a little bit. So I'm obviously— and I'm a little bit— that's my archetype. Like, I want to try to see that happening. So I will cut you off. It's not personal. I'll ask you nicely. Like, I'll do this. Like, again, I want you to finish your thought, but please respect that so we can And kind of have a good— there's 6 people, it's not easy, 7, 8 people. So Andrea, just check in where you're at and what brought you here, please, what you're excited about.

Um, I'm Andrea, I'm in Vancouver, BC. I've been part of the meetings for the, um, Taste of Wonderland but not participating in the physical stuff, so more like an ideas person. Just tiny quickly, I was diagnosed bipolar 1 with psychotic features in 2011. And I wrote a book, The Bipolar Game Changer. I actually am presenting at the ISPS conference in late October, virtually.

Is she going out, in and out for everyone?

She just muted.

Oh, I don't know how I got muted, but, uh, I guess just a glitch in the matrix, um, which is totally appropriate. Um, so yeah, I'll leave it at that.

Thank you. I lost the signal. I think it's my computer's overloaded. Hey, man, where are you from?

Uh, you're—

I'm—

I feel like you said my name.

I can't really hear that well, but, um, I'm from California, and my friend is Marlena in this group, and she, uh, invited me to it.

And she, you know, has cool interests that are similar to mine, so I'm kind of coming in blind, but, you know, I'm trying to, uh, gain some context, you know. Curiosity brought me here. Oh, that is just super awesome. Curiosity is one of the utmost important kind of things in the whole world, in all of existence and reality. All right, so now we're going to go into a space we started earlier. We mentioned the idea of media and the power of media, the power of story. And, um, as far as I'm concerned, it's the actually most important thing we have to do on this planet as far as externally In terms of what I mean is disciplines, like economics to me is not actually the answer. Governance to me is actually not the full answer. It's communication, it's story, it's Joseph Campbell myth. It's, it's the words that we live by, that we live within. So media to me is the utmost important thing on the planet to reclaim and then express ourselves. So with that, Janet, I'd love for you to share a little bit about your background and what your projects Sorry. And you feel free to take 10 minutes or so, like, if you want, if you need, it's up to you, but you have some space.

Okay.

You're on mute, Janet.

I will not take 10 minutes because there are a number of people here already involved, and it's great to have a chance. So as I mentioned before, we have 2 media projects. One is a feature film. Calling God to the Witness Stand, a fictional court case, but all based on real true life stories of people being misdiagnosed, put in a hospital against their will, and forced on meds. So any number of you who have also gone through that, definitely find me. I'll put my email here because I, I want to find out your stories too. So that one's happening, and that came up in 2005 when I was in the hospital and the nurses said, do you know why you're here? You know, it kept pushing it. You know why you're here?

No, no.

And I finally said, I'm here to make a movie. And then she wrote that down. And I'm like, why are you writing it down? I said I was kidding. Anyway, so it's kind of funny that we have a movie going. And I was reprimanded a bit for even saying I was making a movie. The other piece is a documentary which has all true life, you know, people around the world. And again, I'd almost like to invite a few moments of everyone here that's involved. So the documentary has experts, many of the universities represented, cultures around the world, and primarily people who have been mistreated in the mental health system and locked up. But mostly from a spiritual experience and bringing in that part. So I'm going to just toss it to Mark for a moment. Mark, Claire, Laura, and Bret, actually, you're in it too, to just comment briefly, you know, if that's useful. I'll use my 10 minutes that way.

Mark?

Sharing is caring.

You saw the video piece.

You saw the video.

So did Laura. Our brief video, maybe you can even start there. I don't know.

Yeah, we have this like pilot video. It's about 15 minutes long of some of the stories, and I was blown away by how professional and well done it was. I wasn't expecting it to be that polished already, but it was just like, it inspired me. And I know some of the people in the film, so it's like, you know, going from a very personal understanding to a sort of curated message was surprisingly powerful. So I think, Janet, you're working miracles and magic already. Bret says we need a miracle. I think we're ahead. And this, this 15-minute video, I think, set the right tone in many ways. It's very contemplative. It's very serious what happened to us, right? So we don't want to be too cavalier, but you don't want to be too somber that there's not a lot of hope, you know. So I think the balance was struck very well. And we have a different kind of vernacular, a different kind of spirit around this type of mental health movement. There's something new here. And I think we have the right stuff combining, the right synergy to unlock a new movement that we desperately need and very quickly. So, and you know what, we, I wish Hillary was here. She put this all together with no sponsorship, no money from Big Pharma or anybody. So doing it purely on passion. We're all doing this on passion. And I think that's really incredible. So I know you're doing that too, Janet, for the most part. And I think we're lucky to have heroes like you guys pulling us all together. So I think we're heading in the right direction and this video proved it.

Yeah.

So again, I'll share these. We'll keep it still tight. But Laura, if you wanted to comment on the video, because you were a big part of— we had a Fab 5. group in the last 2 weeks. Laura was part of the Fab 5 just pulling together proposal and video, etc. So, and then Claire, you did not see the video yet, but I will send it to you. So I don't know, do you want to comment, Laura?

Yeah, I just, uh, I'd love to. I think that, uh, you know, the timing is right for, for a movie like this, and, um, I definitely feel like we are a David up against a Goliath. And the more we can just speak earnestly about not, not just like from a place of feeling wronged, but like, and not placing blame, but, you know, just recognizing that we all are fallible and we all make mistakes and that, you know, this world is a work in progress and humanity is a work in progress. And so, you know, just trying to do things, taking steps to make it better. And I think that this project and the synergy, like Mark said, such a beautiful word, of all of us coming together, uniting gives us, gives our voices power that otherwise separately we would not have. So I'm really grateful for that.

Yeah.

So it's going to be really excellent to see, you know, if we get some funding for the documentary, especially right now, and just keep moving forward with it. I think every forward step that we take is a step Right now in the right direction of just bringing awareness that is so desperately needed.

Yes. Yes. And when you complete a short video, that is such a step. It feels so good. Claire, you were, you are featured in it because you came down to New York. And so, if you want to comment on either that experience of being a part of this at all, and then I'm going to ask Bret, you know, a specific question. So, Claire?

It was wonderful being part of it in New York and speaking to it, and I've become such a storyteller that it was hard to shut me up, and so I went on way too long, and the editing process was perhaps difficult. But I'm excited about this because we offer our various experiences and stories And the array of symptoms and diagnoses we have are varied and often really considered profoundly debilitating. And yet, and yet, we're all here and we're who we are. And that offers such hope and possibility for people and should, if there is any justice begin moving people toward changing perspectives.

So I'm going to do a quick connection. Andrea, Claire, and a few members of the team will be at ISPS in Delaware, and we will be showing clips of the videos. So we'll be premiering and getting input on our way to it. So, Bret, you and I had some fun going to court and we got some clips of you. So, and this is all sharing how we're doing this. Some is on Zoom, some's in New York, but Bret and I actually went to court. So what was that like to go to court and speak for yourself?

Oh man, me and Janik were walking to this big, crazy, old-looking, antique-y, beautiful courthouse in Ocean County, New Jersey, where we're from, this area here in New Jersey on the East Coast. And as someone who's not an actor by trade or anything, I just love movies and I'm extroverted and I kind of like to be a thought leader typey futurist speaker. So I'm not— it's not hard for me to speak or anything. But as soon as I walked in there and felt the courthouse and like usually I would be in there for the wrong reasons and all that kind of stuff, that's also part of it, right? And then I'm there and I put on a jacket for Janet and like I don't usually wear suit jackets and stuff. And and the idea was to just do a little demo reel of giving me giving testimony on the stand for this movie. Got when I got to the witness stand about my experience, and really it felt so easy for me personally to just dip right into the emotion of it just by talking about it. I thought it was just fun. I mean, from a creative standpoint, it's also art cathart cathartus. Wait, cathart art and cathartic cathartic. Cathartic. Yeah, right. Totally cathartic. Only in 2 seconds. So even the making of this— I mean, we're gonna get into this someday, maybe. Like, the making of it is the thing. The artifact will just be a nice icing on the cake. But the real work— also why AI will never fully take over, by the way, for everyone worried about movies, because there's an art to filmmaking. There's actually people who act and hold cameras, duh. And that's actually part of the experience of making a movie, not just the thing you see on a screen. So AI can make awesome movies, go for it, but it will never replace the art of filmmaking and cinema that we've always known and loved. Even if we have hyperdimensional holograms, and it won't be the same as going into a dark theater with a bunch of people. We all know that. So yeah, so making it's amazing, John. I'm so grateful that you invited me and, and you're playful like that and just let's just go do it. So it was, it was quite, it was validating for me too. I should say again, we're all helping each other. We're helping each other become our best persons to find our gifts. gifts to become the great artist we want to be. I say I want to do Bob Geldof. All of us have these different dreams and things we want to accomplish. So in that sense, you were playing with me like kids, like, yeah, you're bringing that out in me. So I'm grateful for that. I thought it was an amazing experience, and I think it's going to bode well for me being able to act even more in the future, just because I see— I can feel the emotions came right up as soon as I started talking about what happened to me. So yeah, thank you.

So yes, and that is a great feeling. We We're going to be renting the courthouse going into the fall and having more people actually sit on the witness stand and be able to demo for an actor someday. That's why we're doing it. So, yeah, yeah, we'll be practicing. So I think we probably used our 10 minutes, but if anybody wanted to ask a question or comment, please email me or Bret if you wanted anybody to comment. You know, Marlene, you're shaking your head. I don't know if You wanted to comment, but we would love you to contact us if you're interested.

Well, yeah, let's open the space. If anyone wants to relate to anything we've just shared the last 10 or 15 minutes or has a question, let's just open that for a minute. And then I'm going to come around to Claire again and ask her a little bit more about what she does and then go around again. So yeah, would anyone like to share anything else on Janet's thread?

Yeah, I just wanted to ask, um, because I've been kind of aware of your work for a little bit now, Janet, um, or like working on this documentary and movie, um, and I've been super interested in it the moment I heard about it, right? Um, and I've heard of like Vesper Moore being involved in it too.

Yes.

And like others. Um, so, but I was also wondering what a place would be for someone like me where I don't necessarily not identify with said diagnoses that I have, but I also kind of view it as like a both/and sort of situation, as in, in some lenses it is bipolar ADHD, in other lenses it's transpersonal or spiritual emergency awakening, etc., right? Like, I kind of view it through a both/and system, especially under like capitalism and all of that, right? So, yes, if there's any place for that in Any of the work?

Yes, because it's truth. It's only truth.

Oh.

Documentary is only truth. And we have a psychiatrist that comes on and said, I have a— I had a spiritual experience, but I also have major depressive order. I'm on meds and I can't be off meds. So he— but he also says, and Janet, you are not bipolar and you don't need to be on meds. So we cover it all, you know. It's really true. The documentary is all The movie is all truth except for the court case. Every single story is not made up. I won't allow things to be made up. It's like real, real, real people's stories. Yep. Yeah. So that would be a great example.

Yeah.

Okay.

Because it's real and helps people to say, oh, okay, I could be this and this and, you know, a little bit of that. Yeah. Perfect truth.

Because, yeah, I'm having to build a wild, wild time travel story involved.

So I've definitely Wild experience in there, but I'm sure many of us do.

But absolutely, they're similar and different. So yes, follow up with us. Bret?

Wait till that collective intelligence hits the scene, all of us with the neurodiversity. That's, that's, that's the singularity, by the way. But, um, on another note, I want to just build on that very quickly because Janet, when we filmed with Dr. Chatelos in New Jersey at his home, and I actually stayed after, and you probably haven't seen the footage which Calvin and I had an extra conversation.

This is a—

this is this Rutgers psychiatrist who's had both experiences and takes the medication. And I was trying to get to the bottom of like, what is bipolar disorder to him and this and that, because we have some clash around medication and philosophical differences. So, for example, Marlene, we're on the project together. He's a psychiatrist. Normally, he's somebody I'd want to like chop his head off, to be honest. You know, I'm saying that facetiously.

Yeah.

But to express like, I don't really like hanging out with psychiatrists. Like generally, I've never very few that could give the benefit of the doubt in a way that is necessary. So I basically broke his model. So I'm probably like you, because the way he defined bipolar, I was like, and spiritual emergency, he's like, I think you've had both. He basically said, because, well, that's his position, obviously, but I basically broke his model because they basically, he was saying ultimately it would be defined by, um, kind of not having a choice. Like, and he described it like, we just wake up one day and like you feel like out of sorts and then you're in a down mood. But, and then I just simply asked him, so wait, you're saying because you can't identify the variable that might have caused that to happen, that it's random rather than Jungian? Like I said, so you're telling me if that person is a highly sensitive person and on Sunday watched a movie that made them cry and feel emotions, and then on Wednesday they woke up in a major depression, those are not connected? And I broke his model. And I was like, you see what I'm saying, Calvin? Like, it's— you don't understand bipolar. You still think it's a disorder. And I'm saying this fairly. I'm gonna have the debate with him on TV and everything, you know what I mean? But like, so, so yes, Marlena, yes, collective intelligence, end of story. Collective intelligence for me. Yes, Marlena, yes, collectively. Scott, hold on. Let me bring you in, okay? And come on camera if you want to talk, please. We're just in the flow, so I want to make sure I bring you in and introduce you. And hold on. Let me come on camera if you want to talk, please.

I made a mistake. I was watching the Facebook.

Scott, Scott, just just hold on for a second. Scott, Scott, hold on a second. Hold on a second, please. Please, I'm muting you on purpose. Please hold on a second, okay? We're just trying to create a flow here, and we're gonna— we're in a conversation. I want to bring you in properly, let you introduce yourself in a couple minutes, whatever it might be. Um, so please be patient, and you'll have an opportunity to share and, and show up, okay? That cool? Just give me a thumbs up if that's cool. Yeah, yeah, right on, right on. Um, so Janet, back to you. If you wanted to reflect back anything else or ask any more questions.

I—

we just— meet us on Facebook, follow me, you know, find me on email and we'll keep going because we, we have a lot of roles. If you don't want to be in the documentary, you know, we have a lot of roles that we need help with, even sorting and vetting the content. So, but yeah, that's it. I think I'll leave it there.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Awesome. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna invite Andrea and Mimzy to like chime in and whatever like they feel called to, if they feel called to. And you can just pass or just do this if you don't have anything you want to say. Please don't talk just because I asked you to. Like, no one's ever forced to talk. And then I want to go to Claire. I want to hear Claire.

I hope—

yeah, we're on time. So I want to hear a little bit more about Claire's background and where she works with the foundation and all that and ask her some questions. And then once we do that, Scott, I'm going to bring you in because that to me feels complete with, um, with Claire. And then I'll bring you in, Scott, to introduce yourself. And then Laura, I'll come back to you. And like, so we're kind of trying— that's, that's my— at least that's my plan. So, Mimsy, how do you relate to the film stuff, the movie? What have you heard? Or do you want to just pick a point and, and— So, um, I'm—

I have been in school for some time for mass communications now, learning the film industry and the music industry and just the industry in general. Um, and so, you know, right now I have all of my projects and everything that I'm doing on my end, and at this point in time, I am just thoroughly enjoying being here, holding space, and listening to everybody.

Thank you, my friend. Love, love hearing your accent. Louisiana, I'll bet.

Um, so yeah, I'm really excited about that film. I did look through Janet's websites a couple months ago, and— but my memory gets wiped out, so I need to go and revisit it. And I actually feel called to reach out and maybe share some experiences. Maybe some would fit into film. I don't know how much room there still is. I'm just doing a puzzle. I, um, I'm kind of in a lower state, so my— I'm not as fast as usual, so I'm doing my own like mini, uh, ward type experience.

Yeah, yeah, great, great, awesome.

So at the very least, Andrea, uh, we will— we're gonna actually film a little bit in Delaware, and so we will find each other. You know, yeah, we'll find each other in Delaware. But call, let's talk before then.

I'm supposed to be virtual for Delaware. I'm actually afraid. And, but you know, something might change. I don't know. We'll see.

Cool. I'm gonna, I'll get back to you on that. So Claire, do you mind? And you can go in a different direction if you don't feel comfortable or whatever it might be. It's not in flow for you. Would you mind just repeating the 2 organizations slash businesses, you know, whatever foundations that you you are involved in and what you do there, maybe in each one of them. And then I'd love to ask you some questions and see if anyone else has questions about your experiences in those organizations and in the zeitgeist you've been in. You know, what people— I mean, I can't wait to hear the title again of what you— of what you're part of, like the International Exam— you know, Research of Psycho— I'm like, are you kidding me? How epic and legendary is Claire? So please tell us something about— Oh no, I'm telling you, this is exciting. I mean, I'm a nerd, right? I mean, I'm a nerd. Tell me. I mean, this is what gets me off, I guess.

I also still work part-time at Yale on a wonderful research study looking at the efficacy of making music in groups on the brains of people who hear voices. So that's a fantastic study. And for those who live in the tri-state area and are voice hearers, or actually even further afield, We are looking for people who hear voices and can get to New Haven for 7 in-person meetings, and it will help research and it will be great fun. But anyway, so—

So we're looking—

we're in phase 2 of a 5-year NIMH-funded study, and there's the musical intervention, which is writing lyrics, creating a tune, According to a set beat, practicing and working with 4 other voice hearers, with an amazing Adam Christofferson, who— one of whose claims to fame is being Michael Bolton's nephew. Adam's mother had a schizo— has a schizophrenia diagnosis. He's doing pretty well. I've met her. And— but anyway, so he is amazing. And I am— I wrote a memoir, Hearing Voices, Living Fully: Living with the Voices in My Head. When I became was involved with the organizational meetings of the New Haven affiliate of NAMI, and I met people. I kept silence for let's see at that time twenty-seven years, and I began speaking out because I knew that people needed to know that it was not that hearing voices experience having a. Diagnosis on the schizophrenia spectrum is not a life sentence or a death sentence, depending upon your perspective. As a result of writing the memoir, I was drafted to by the next president who will take over in January by Marie Brown, who decided it was not the right time in her life to be in her young career to be president. president of our organization. And so I said, no, I'm not qualified, I don't have a PhD. And the former president insisted. And so I— it's the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis, U.S. chapter. It was an organization founded in the 1950s by psychiatrists who were critical of the in which the array of experiences associated with psychosis and a schizophrenia diagnosis were being understood and treated. And lots of psychoanalysts in the organization, as well as psychiatrists and psychologists, but really progressive psychiatrists, not those who typically essentially incarcerate people who are in crisis. I also, as a result of my experiences, I learned about the Hearing Voices Network USA. And quite curiously, I— a lot of the methods that I used to bring myself out of psychosis before I'd ever heard of the HVN are tried and true methods of the HVN. And part of my— the spiritual nature of my experiences is that I was guided by the spirits of my ancestors, by my spirit guides, or I called them guardian angels. And they gave me advice and sort of helped me through a pretty horrific time in my life, 1989 to '92, when my son was just 3 years old. I almost took my own life but didn't because my son needed a mother and I could not force my husband to assume full care of my son and also to allow him to grow up with the knowledge that his mother was a suicide. And another spiritual aspect of my experience is that I My life turned when I took responsibility for my young son and said, "By golly, I'm going to do what's necessary to make the best of my life and do whatever it is that I need to do." And at that point, I I had struggled with depression for a decade, 22 years prior to you know standing on the 15th floor balcony of a downtown. office building. But at that point, things began to get better. And I have come to believe that it is because for all of the years that I considered suicide as an option, as a way out of my unhappiness, I stayed in a dark place. And perhaps I strained a contract that we have with that which we know or believe to be God or the life force. But I began to get better, and I've lost my train of thought, so I'm going to stop if you'd like to ask another question or if that's enough.

Well, first of all, I want to say I started the evening off earlier. I'm not sure if you were here saying one of the themes of the second part tonight was going to be the shoulders whose giants we stand upon. I know, whatever, you know what I mean. So what an honor. Let's all give a round of applause to Clara. I mean, you've been in the game for a while. Like, you're making— you're doing radical stuff. Like, you're doing cool stuff. So thank you. Just thank you. I mean, what a pleasure. This is what I mean. This is why the summit and the movie and the movement are something more than just nothing. And it's like, there's something in it for everyone. It's like, I don't want to always go down to the White House and picket like for Trump or this or the other. I've never been into that, but this makes me want to get up and do something because it's like incorporating my own calling, my own individuation. So honestly, like, I love reading. I love the past. I love people even from Yale and Harvard and Timothy Learys and the Ram Dasses and then the physics that took place in that area. And then the brain machines and the fMRIs. And you're living like— you're living like this cool, creative non-conformist in your own way, and then have your family. So just thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'll open the space if anyone wants to ask you a question or also celebrate.

And I'd like to say one thing. I was struck when Laura said that— said, I began hearing voices when I became a spiritual warrior, and that really caught my attention. And I want to ponder that, you know, in relation to my own Thank you.

Beautiful.

I'd like to actually just— yeah, Claire, I actually would love to connect with you a little more behind the scenes, and we can maybe talk and continue the conversation. But I definitely have felt that, you know, the lexicon of language is divisive, and, you know, it turns us against each other when we actually are so close to being so aligned in so many beautiful ways. But like psychosis, like the word psychosis just like grates on me, you know, because it's like, it, it turns a spiritual seeker who's having spiritual experiences into somebody who's being identified as having a broken brain and disease, incurable mental illness, that kind of stuff. And it changes the whole dynamic Of your family, because you've become discredited. You know, you become an outlier, a black sheep, somebody not to be trusted or believed. I know personally I was discredited in a way that took away my family or my parental authority. You know, really just created an imbalance in my marriage and allowed my children to grow up. Even now, at nineteen and twenty-two, my kids don't want me to breathe a word about spiritual awakening. Or God or anything that has to do with this. They don't want me to mention that I'm involved in Janet's project. They are just shut down. And that's what the mental healthcare system did for me, you know, by pathologizing it, all of it, and not allowing there to be even room for the possibility that there could be something else going on there, as you know, which actually destroys the fundamental fabric of who we are as humans. You know, because we are all, whether people are conscious of it or not, we are all spiritual beings. So having a human experience. But I do have a survey that I really felt led to write and create last year. And it's for HSPs, you know, highly, highly sensitive people, which I honestly, I work with houseless people all the time. And I really believe that a whole lot of the people people who are, you know, on the streets, really as the marginalized, stigmatized, ostracized, you know, they don't have family to turn to anymore. They've, you know, tried to escape their even some unconscious pummeling by maybe, you know, what would be schizophrenic kind of, you know, the hearing of voices that are negative, all of that. that, um, I feel like they really, uh, have, have a gift, have a spiritual gift that you would call discernment. And it's a highly, um, it's like a, it's like a curse until you start using it in a way that it becomes a gift, right? But like with X-Men and, you know, like all the movies that we watch on the people having these gifts, and I think of like the guy with like the laser eyes in particular who was a teenager and And you guys know what I'm talking about, the scene where like he finds out that he has this x-ray vision too, or laser vision that he will use, you know, and but he can't, he can't, he can't train it. He needs to go to school and I, and, and, you know, foster it in a way that's healthy. And in that same way, you know, this gift of discernment needs honing, it needs our prioritization, and that requires spending time with God and allowing God to kind of lead us forward to a higher level of consciousness. But anyway, Claire, I do have this survey that I believe, you know, with your research, you might actually find really useful. I'd love to be able to send it your way and see what you think about it.

Absolutely. Okay.

I'll connect you to—

Does anybody else have a question or comment for Claire? Scott, go ahead.

Yes, Claire. And again, I must apologize. I'm often regarded as a crank because, you know, damn it, I don't know how else to say it but just straightforwardly. This is not an ego trip. I'm trying to be as analytical and objective as possible. I have a very strange experience. I had to rebuild my perceptual mechanisms, you know, growing up. I believed that I had some kind of permanent imbalance. Indeed, I believed I was a freak of nature because the symptoms were so bizarre. And This almost sounds like a joke, but believe me, it was not funny. I realized I needed real food and exercise. Yeah, for real. And given the extremity of what I went through, which is very difficult to explain because it's so bizarre, but one of the aspects of this— And believe me, I had so much time on my hands because I've lived on SSI. Because my ability to sleep on a regular basis was destroyed by psychiatric drugs in childhood. But I've had a lot of time to work on this, and I would like to email you, if you don't mind, about my experience with voices. Um, I believe in a divine being, but being as a verb. Seriously. Because yes, we're all spirit, because matter is— matter is energy. And I've gone round and round, particularly with it, with a couple few Marxists who don't seem to grasp that you, you, um, spirit and energy are the same thing.

Scott, let me bring it back a little bit. I just want to keep it to the question.

If you just wanted—

because we're not going into deep metaphysics at the moment. Yeah, okay, it's cool. We're all into it. We're all into it. It's just I want to just—

But I'd like to, to outline what I went through vis-à-vis voices. And the reason I brought up that other aspect is because I believe that they are Neurometabolic phenomena. And yet they are also spiritual phenomena at the same, the same time. There's no separating, there's no difference. And if you don't mind, I would like to email you as to something I observed over the last few years about the voices.

Yeah, that's cool. I'll get, I'll get her email if she wants to share it. Don't worry about it.

I have it. I already have it.

Cool.

She makes poems too. She's holding out on you.

She makes poems.

Scott, why don't you— the ICOS group is going to— the evening group, which I am going to start co-facilitating with Dorothy Scott, and we'll start meeting on Mondays from 7:30 to 9. Come and share it. With a group, you'll have more than one listener, you know, you'll have many pairs of ears and we can respond. And you might not be able to read the whole thing, but we can read, you know, if you read parts of it, we can respond.

Beautiful.

That would be great.

Thank you, Claire.

Thank you.

So let's wrap it up then. We just had a little—

These are in my purse.

Oh yeah. You had a poem, Claire. Would you— do you still feel like you'd like to share it?

Yes. And now I can't decide which one to share because one is about sort of some of my voice hearing experiences. But I just told— but I just told you a bit. And I'd like to share this one because it's a bit about the interconnectedness of all things and spirit and the beauty of the planet. And all of that. So I feel thank you for indulging me.

Yes.

So let's see. Okay, this is oh, and I also have to say that when I was actively voice hearing in the eighty nine to ninety two time frame, I would often ask the voices who they were, and I would also. Visualize the caterpillar sitting on the mushroom and going, who are you? And I would just— and I would howl, and that would cause the voices to go away for a while. But anyway, so this is entitled Salmon: The Face of the Divine, a Unitarian Poem. It was startling to see the words on my desktop suggesting that to look on the face of a salmon was to look on God.

God.

Perhaps it was blasphemy. And then realization— not salmon, but sermon. Kathleen's. The one I'd missed most of because I was traveling back from Concord that morning. The parts of the sermon I heard, listening at the back as Kathleen's voice rang through the sanctuary, were an affirmation of my faith. In response to the question, do you believe? She offered God as the weaver in the woods of the world, as ruach, the wind of life, as prairie grass, as the invisible thread linking all hearts and minds, all life. God as elemental nature and of pure energy. If that is true, then a salmon is as much God, and the face of a salmon the face of God, the woods of the world, or the prairie grasses, or the dark nebulae and the sifted rings of interstellar dust. And these are all phrases from her sermon, not mine. Or the wilderness next door. And though I cannot know the mind of a salmon— but this is mine— and cannot know whether it also possesses the thread of pure energy that links all hearts and minds and That knowing is not necessary, for the salmon is a creature of nature and of nature's God. And because the energy of its mind, of its astonishing instinctual nature, is a vital part of that invisible thread of life, I already know its mind is at its essence. And we HSPs know what we can't know. Even though we have never held conversation over dinner, though that is not entirely true, for of course I have eaten salmon on occasion when I have spoken about matters of faith. Many believe you are what you eat. Oh, and forgive me for this, for vegetarians, I'm sorry. Shall I stop or may I continue?

Yeah.

Should I stop?

No, keep going.

It's traumatizing for some people, I'm sure.

It's beautiful.

Keep going.

It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

Many believe you are what you eat. I am resolved to eat more salmon prepared in delicious and creative ways so that I shall become more familiar with salmon and in that way too know God. Times have changed since I've read it, since I wrote Thank you.

Deep, deep, deep.

I'd like to comment on the salmon because the salmon is one of the— if you would have noticed in our, in our promo for the Mad Hatter Summit, we, we actually have salmon at the end of it. And we talk about the fact that salmon find their pockets that when they, when they want to go home, they find the pockets of air that are running in the absolute opposite direction of the water stream. And they— in fact, the word somersault comes from the word salmon salt that they would flip as they went up. And so that's where the word somersault comes from. And, and they make their way finding those pockets of air, pockets of air, pockets of air, until they reach the place where they can rebirth. And we believe that that's what— when we started the idea of the Mad Hatter Summit, that we were finding those pockets of air that were running against the mainstream. And that were literally— we were jumping, we were leaping, we were throwing ourselves into those pockets of air, somersaulting our way up to the headwaters where birth is possible and new possibilities are possible.

So your poem couldn't be more Thank you.

That was an insanely genius little, little, little vignette there, Hillary, making that connection and talking about the air pockets. That's so freaking evocative of the artistic religious side of what we're all doing here, and then the science of it too, that it's biomimicry. And, and, and your poem is so deep at the end of the day, Claire, about like we're all God in that sense, and like is eating I mean, you can get really deep into that, like a divine solipsism space. Like, if we're all one, are we eating? Or, you know, that's really deep. So someday I'd love to even go deep.

We'll have a—

I'd love to have a whole session where a bunch of us— I don't mean deconstructing a boring, like, grammatical poetry day, but just, yeah, to explore the poem or how it relates to them or whatever that might be.

I love it.

Thank you for sharing.

Thank you.

Can I offer a couple of quick thoughts too as a fellow poet? And also someone who lives on White Salmon Court. And my husband is a fisher, and he has spent all of his time since we moved to Portland 20 years ago learning the incredibly high level of fishing skill that is required to be a salmon fisher. He is an incredible salmon fisher now, and he brings home salmon to us, and I just read on a boat. I don't I don't actually have anything to do with the actual, but I eat it because it is one of the most incredibly nutritious foods that we could possibly eat. And I, and I do love the fact that you're seeing God in the salmon because really God is, is everywhere. Omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omni, you know, omni, omni. And so when you look at the food chain and you think the food chain starts with fish, right? It really, they're the bottom of the food chain. And then we think about biblically, who were the, who were the disciples of Christ? Fishermen, you know, fishers of men, right? And so the fact that you're talking about something and seeing God in something as lowly as fish, but seeing also that, that there's sacredness there in that life, is absolutely profoundly beautiful and so appropriate. So thank you, Claire, for sharing that poem.

Thank you.

Beautiful.

Amazing.

Oh, wow. I just left a message in the chat saying there's a completeness to the way that you're facilitating, Bret. And I think it's amazing. You're doing this all in real time. It's very flowy. And I noticed that other people in the chat were referencing each other's works in a sort of completeness. So I want to say, Mimsy, your work spoke to me in particular, so I feel connected to you, and I really appreciate the work you're doing on the activist front. It's very peaceful, it sounds like, but very practical, especially with children. So I just want to say, hopefully to complete the meeting a little bit, to say your work spoke to me, and hopefully we get to chat too. So excellent poems. We've had everything here, um, so I think this is excellent. Thanks, Bret.

Welcome to Annalise, who's coming in from the Netherlands late at night. She was the catalyzer and coordinator of the event earlier today out there in the Netherlands. Do you want to say anything? You want to just chill out and listen? Annalise, how's your— what's your energy like? Your choice.

Well, Just checking in and saying hello and being so grateful for this amazing day where we had such a beautiful transition for people, and we trusted the process. We started this morning, we went through a real taste of Wonderland. We had so many cracks, we had so many pains. We flew, flew so high when we were able to go into immersions. And really, the magic was in the last part of this, making this brew where some people were so light, so beautiful light, and they wanted to leave because they said, oh my goodness, do I have to go through this again? But no, they did not. They were really, really Opening up, and we saw them struggle. Shall I go? Shall I stay? Shall I go? Shall I stay? And they stayed, and the relief in their faces when we left. We will put up the pictures for that, but that was amazing, and that was everything worth the thing we went through with the team, which was very, very challenging because. Well, sometimes we all are our shadow and we do not see that, or we all are in a place that you really think, oh, I'm not that, but why do people do not get me, who I am? And the beauty was one thing that— There was, it was some strange things happening this morning. Because we had announced the Mad Hatter at a local, um, internet page, and then suddenly this morning it said it's, it's, it's not going to happen, it's, uh, annulated.

Huh?

Who did that? So a girl who was coming, she said, oh, I love to come, I have all these voices and I have all these things, and I think This is for me. And she was still not there. And I said, OK, why are you not there? She said, you put it on this page. It's not going to happen.

I said, yes, it's going to happen.

Please come over. I come, she said. I come. And this was so good for the whole team because she came. Because she came, everything had to be— was deranged. We could not— Of course, we had organized it very, very optimal at front so that we could fly in the process and trust in the process. But then we had to change anything. And halfway the afternoon she wanted to go. She said, I'm so sad about that. I cannot live my life in this way, as I would love to be with all these people now. We see today. But I cannot in my life. And then I said, do you know what you have done for this process? You cannot go. You're such a beautiful, um, um, gift giver because only you are too late.

That's—

that makes this whole process renewed. We all have to come from a different place now. We cannot be the— our controlled selves. And that made a difference. And her face when she heard that some people used her quotes to make a magic brew, well, that made my day. That made my day because then she knew, okay, you could see she was so relieved that she had stayed for this, this, this particular part. And people used her words And she heard that back. It was amazing. So I do not know what conversation you are all in. I'm really in this conversation of playing the Taste of Wonderland and bringing that to the ground. And because I really believe that I'm— well, there's a lot to, to, to, to win here. To open up to, and also to get connected with people who think likewise or work.

I think we just lost her. I would just like to show really fast. I talked about the water print.

Hold on one second. One second. It's seven o'clock, so I just want to mention I originally had said seven o'clock.

Right.

So we're now going into overtime. For anyone who wants to stay, you're welcome. If you don't, if you're ready to go, you have to go, etc., etc., um, please do. Actually, like, who needs to go? Because I want to at least have you say a final word or something. So, Laura, you're gonna check out? Claire, you're gonna check out? Is that— and Janet, you're gonna check out? Okay, you guys cool with hanging just for 5 minutes more so we can have the 3 of you say a final minute or something? Yeah, cool. Awesome. Uh, Janet, how about you first? You mind? Just a goodbye, gratitude word, gratitude, or whatever you might want to say. You're on mute. We want to hear your voice. We want to hear, we want to hear you take— what's your takeaway?

See you at the movies.

See you at the movies. Brilliant.

That's it.

Awesome. Laura?

I just want to, uh, thank you guys, all of you, for your bravery, your courage. You know, courage is, uh, not about running away from pain. Or, you know, what it's really about is, is knowing that you're in pain, facing it, and walking through it. And that is what it, what it means, and that's what it takes to move the dial forward. We're all pioneers here, and we are going to all have knives in our back because of that, as all pioneers do. But know that you're not alone. You're never alone. And, you know, this is worth staying in the trenches for. is for and, and rolling up our sleeves and truly being like whatever metaphor I can use here, boots on the ground, you know, to, to try to propel a healthy paradigm moving forward. So God bless you and keep you. May God's light shine upon all of you. And, and I just hope that, you know, that you will be held, held with love until we meet again.

Awesome, awesome. Check out Courage is Contagious. That's my new— that's what I take away Claire, bring it home for your segment. Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you for creating this space and for sharing your energy. And I came— I'm really looking forward to being able to put aside my administrative at ISPS-US hat and really embracing creativity and possibility, which all of you embrace and embody. So, I feel energized as a result of having—

I'm so excited. I'm so excited, Claire. I'm gonna— I have this thing with my music I made when I was gonna kill myself and the fMRI machines and the thing you're doing at music therapy. Like, I am so following up with you. I might even move in next door to you, like, and like try to win the lottery and get an Airbnb so I can just live there for a while. So, yes, thank you for being here, Claire. Thank you, Laura. Thank you, You're all greatly loved and appreciated. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I just want to share screen as people go. This is the footprint I was referring to. This is the message from water today about A Taste of Wonderland.

Yeah.

And that was putting water in a petri dish and sending a question in. It was about the future of A Taste of Wonderland. And then letting it flash freeze. And that's the pattern that came. And to me, it was a, it was a little baby, it was a child's foot. And it— that's all that's got so much lineage, so much opportunity, so many neat patterns inside it that I just couldn't believe when I held it up to the light and I saw that. It was like, wow.

It looks kind of like a little leprechaun. Go ahead, Lindsay.

A cocoon.

It does look like a cocoon as well. Absolutely.

Little action going on up there in Toronto.

Yeah, who knows? Anyway, I just wanted to— I just wanted to share that as an example of what we did in Toronto and the messages that we were getting, especially from water today.

So, Hillary, we've got some people that want to share some art. Scott wants to—

yes.

Oh, Mark, you want to go or you want to say goodbye? Oh, you're waving to Janet, maybe. Okay, bye Janet, I missed that. Um, so I'm— in a second I'm gonna call on Scott, and then, um, Marlena has really cool art as well, graphic art. And now she said she had a song maybe, and she's got a really cool picture of her in a hat. So I think honestly we found one of our first like supermodels, but not just supermodel meaning like traditional look at woman, but supermodel meaning a model Yeah. For us, but, and then a little play on the feminine and being a woman just for fun, like, and that whole thing, just because she's like super dynamic and like, well, some, in some scenes in the movie we'll kind of dress her up and sometimes maybe she'll do this character. I think Marlene has got a lot of casting potential here, so it gives me super cool to see her art. Um, we have a lot in common. She's into physics, psychology, and neuroscience. She's did it, she's kind of done it all. So, um, it's really cool. So let's start with you, Scott. You got about 2, 3, 4 minutes, whatever you need. You have a couple Try to keep it in that kind of range. And tell us the title of the poem. Tell us the title of the poem if you have. And if you could do a quick context, like just say quickly, like what it means to you or something.

Well, The Lingerer Goes to the Movies, it was the first attempt to put the truly bizarre and agonizing, physiologically agonizing symptomatology into a recording. Form, recording something about it. It's called The Malinguer Goes to the Movies, for Colin Kempner and for Judith Wright. You're sitting there. It's getting harder to breathe. It seems like a little man, like a gnome, has climbed up the back of your seat and dropped a net into your head. You glance at the woman sitting next to you, and she isn't there. You turn back to the screen, and it seems unreal, like a bad film. Are you in a theater at all? Are you in a room filled with water? Are there any people here? Show's over. You're out in the parking lot wondering how to get home. And this one, which is also short— most of my work is short.

short.

This is a ballad, and I composed this riding a bicycle, because exercise— I exercised very heavily because I was rebuilding my nervous system. And there's a lot more detail, but I won't go into it now. But it's called the Wheel Rider's Hymn. I was under the influence of an organic neuromuscular relaxant. That's all I'm gonna say. It didn't come out of a Tell you that. I've left off portside brawling. I've left off steamy siren dreaming. Show her rise through the morning's tide. A sailor comes home from the sea. Swells of road we run along. We'll be spinning wheels for speed before we reach that old front gate. Sure, a sailor Sailors come home from the sea. Tell of strange, tell of heathen land, tell of great monstrosity. Smiles and frowns round every word as a sailor winds through from the sea. There is this earth, these very hills, roads may come to be. Far, fair windows send along a sailor does home from the sea. That was a— I actually see I had grown up believing that I was a freak of nature in all sobriety. It wasn't some kind of weird self-pity trip. It was, I believe, very straightforward because the symptomatology was so bizarre. The psychiatric drugs, of course, made it worse. You know, that's how they, that's how they make their money. And then I realized through alternative medicine that I could change. that I wasn't a freak of nature. I was out of balance, or sick, if you will, physically. I could get back in. And that's kind of what it's about. You know, I was riding down a road on a, on a red bicycle. That's important. Red is the color of creative energy. And I was under the influence You know, and it just happened. The lyrics just happened. But this I want to mention, that the first version, the synta— the, the, the tenses, I guess you'd call them, of all the, the words were more rigid, and eventually I edited them to be more of a fluid— to portray more of a fluid process. You see, I just had today 2 people get mad at me because I don't believe in autism as a condition, but as an effect. I don't believe in capitalism as a, as a thing, as a— I think in terms of verbs, not nouns. And if you look at everything going on around, so politics, The processes that are going on in our bodies, our minds— if you look at all of it as energy, which is spirit, but you look at it in that dynamic, it looks different, truly. And it makes sense, it really does.

You know, thank you, Scott. Both pieces are really awesome. Scott's actually a fellow He's from New Jersey originally. I think he's up in Vermont or Connecticut now at the moment, living. But—

Well, I, I had to— I, I don't want— I want to say this because we people in the movement should think about this. I had to move to Vermont where I'm literally, I'm literally dying. I'm losing my life. Yet you heard me read my lips again. It's not a self-pity trip, but I'm not going to keep quiet about it either because I'm unable to exercise because it's just a crazy juxtaposition that I wouldn't be in if various localized entities and Housing and Urban Development, HUD, them, if they weren't committing criminal actions and violating the ADA and keeping people from, such as myself, from getting housing because it's reserved for consumers of mental health. I believe I have not been a consumer since the age of 14. Now, I'm not, you know, I'm not saying that people have no right to go and be consumers of mental health. But in my case, they damn near killed me. I didn't want to give another chance. I did attend a man who was licensed as a psychiatrist, but that's another story. Another issue. He was also a mentor. But because they reserve that housing, which violates the Americans with Disabilities Act— it's a violation, it's a crime they're committing. Everyone involved in that is colluding with a criminal act. I had to come 500 miles to get affordable housing. And if I'd known what it was like up here, I would never have done it. But I had no housing. I was living out of a van.

Wow.

You know what, I'm gonna call Marlene in a minute with— for more art, but I just want to follow up on this topic first. Mark, do you want to chip in from your experience of social justice and hunger strikes and the serious side of things in terms of just— I'm sure you might want to say something. I would try to— I say try to do like or 4 minutes or let you know in that space rather than 10 or 20, but unless you don't want to as well, I'm not— you don't have to, but I want to give you that space. And then Hillary, I'm going to bring it back to you to see if you have reflections, and then if we feel complete or if Scott needs to reply to kind of close the loop, we'll do that, and then we'll move to Marlena's art to honor this space and your journey, Scott. So Mark, go ahead.

Yeah, Scott, you're really interesting. Amazing. And the way I interpret what you've been through, it's like you have an unacknowledged superpower that if you had to rebuild, you know, what children do in a higher consciousness, that's really hard. Like the way you're talking about, it's really intense. And the fact that you're here singing is overcoming obstacles most of us will never imagine. And then to face the social, you know, political, economic stigma, stigmatization, and the marginalization, just getting the basic you know, sustenance of life while you're already dealing with this huge burden that most of us will never have to even imagine is— yeah, you're right, Brett. It's like what all people in the mental health system are going through. And it's like, even if you don't have anything and you're misdiagnosed, the words on a page create a gravity that pulls you down, and you have to, you know, work harder for literally everything. I think, you know, intuitively it feels like people who have have mental illness diagnoses have to work somewhere between 3 to 8 times harder just to do the same things that people who aren't stigmatized are doing. And I feel, Scott, you have a really incredible story and a heavy dose of this, and you also have a lucidity. You're articulating something that's probably impossible to articulate, and I really feel like you're a gem that is undervalued, and I feel very called to bring this sort of social justice movement, the holistic nature of what we're trying to do with Spirit to you and figure out how did you overcome something so incredibly severe and bizarre, like you said, and came out the other side, you know, you're here. And I feel like there's some kind of strength here that society as it currently exists completely undervalues. And maybe we can do something miraculous Because it sounds like you've done something miraculous on all fronts. So I— what I'm— what I'm perceiving here, because I've dealt with homeless populations, I've kind of— I grew up in poverty myself. There's some— there's a level you're at that's like so incredibly rare. I've not— I haven't heard this before. I haven't heard a story like yours. So I feel like you need somebody to hear what you have to say and in a very deep, like, get metaphysical with it. Because even your parallels between, like, science and spirit, the way you're talking about it, sounds very Hegelian to me. And I feel like there's a potential peaceful revolution to unite these worlds in a way that modern global society can respect and, you know, take seriously as part of this mental health movement. So I, I feel moved.

I'm—

I've dealt with a lot of Interesting people. So I am going to email you after this and maybe we can talk about what role you're supposed to play in the tapestry that is coming together with the Mad Hatter Summits. The brilliance that Hillary's done here to bring our energies together, and Bret, your facilitation. Thanks for giving me a chance to say this extra piece. But I feel like at this point, I'll be touching base with you to play my role. So thanks, Bret.

No problem. Hillary, do you have any reflections? And then Scott, I'm going to turn it back to you to relate to what Mark and Hillary have said. Go ahead. Unless you don't, Hillary, just pass.

I just think we live in an amazing world of and. I think it's, it's how we each weave into each other. And it's not about, about replacing, replicating. It's about the and. There is no one answer. And, and it's how we weave together and how we sit with each other in sometimes in absolute But we sit with each other in that contrast, and we learn with each other in that contrast. And in that place, we find something new. And it's how— it's not about coming in with answers. It's coming in with the curiosity, the inquiry, the desire to find what we don't know, the desire to express what we haven't expressed, and the desire to see what we haven't seen. from individuals who haven't been heard and parts of us that haven't been heard. So I think that what I heard Scott talk about was something that is bringing his unique brilliance, his genius into the world in a way that is so beautiful in the song that talks of such tragedy, but in a way that has such beauty in it. And I think that that's how we, you know, we groove now in terms of looking at— we're going to see beauty in the strangest places. We're going to see beauty in the most interesting ways. And when we stay curious and open, and we weave that, that, that, that together, that's why I can't wait to listen back to the recording. I have a feeling there's an amazing tapestry that got woven today.

Right on. Hey, Scott, I'm just gonna ask Mimsy and Marlene and Andrea if they want to just quickly relate to like everyone should have an opportunity if they want to relate to what you shared. Mimsy, is there anything you'd like to relate to Scott share or something you want to say to him?

So the poetry, man, like very, very so surreal it was real, you know, um, really brought me to the focus of where you were while that was occurring with you. And for someone who has never heard the word synchronicity, to write a poem so in-depth of the simplicity of the synchronicities was just very, very heartfelt, beautiful. It was just— it's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. And I would love to have a book I would love to have a book to read of your poetry. Um, you know, I would love to have a book to read of your poetry because you were just so simplistic and to the point to where it's— you're just right there in the moment of where you were. And then the fact that I was able to hear it and see you and it coming directly from you made it even more special in this very moment. And so thank you very, very much for sharing that. It's just absolutely beautiful. And then I just want to say you reminded me of my grandmother when you were singing. Like, she used to sing these old, uh, folk songs, uh, when I was a child. And so it really took me back to my childhood with my grandmother. Um, and I shared a very, very— and still do share a very, very special bond with her. Um, so just thank you.

Thank you.

Very much. Very, very good.

Awesome share. Thank you. Marlena, is there anything you'd like to add?

Yeah, um, I would just like to resonate too with what Mimsy said about, you know, the simplicity of explaining this synchronicity type experience. Like, that's something that I struggle to put into words, and I have for a long time. And just hearing that come from you so organically, so naturally, was Really powerful, and especially the, like, kind of sailor-style ballad singing. Love that. Like, really resonated so hard. And, oh, you're a very interesting person, and I'd love to hear from you. And like Mimsy was saying too, like, I, I would love to, like, see those 2 poems and any else— anything else that you've written, just written out or somewhere that I can, like, view it again. Because that was powerful. It was beautiful.

Right on. Well, that's why we've got these recordings. We've already started. I mean, these are products, goods, and services right here and now, Scott. Like, we'll help him if we need to get him some extra cash. We'll turn them into NFTs. We've already got 2 of them, right? Then we'll make a little bit bigger. We've got experts here. So yeah, we'll find a way to help with that, no problem. Andrea, is there anything you want to say or relate to Scott?

I just want to say thank you for sharing. I feel like I disappeared and like I was transported into nothingness, and it was like you there sharing.

So thank you for your share. Awesome. I'll say one thing. I actually love the first one so much, Scott, just because of the, uh, like I said, my epimemetics. Jim Morrison's one of the souls that I channel. There's a lot of souls that that left before they finished their actual life's work. So it's not like they're in hell or something, but they still haven't like finished their life's work. And Jim Morrison is one of them, Bucky Fuller is one of them, Aldous Huxley, all of these people that have influenced me. There's a great chain of being on some level, whatever you want to call it. But anyway, Jim wrote a great poem about being in a movie theater. I don't know if you've ever heard it, where he ends with, did you have a good world when you died, enough to base a movie on? And the way you read it and some of the language like brought me into that kind of— it's probably your counterculture age range too. I don't know how old you are, but I don't know if you were inspired or affected by the Beats or classic rock or anything. I don't— like, I'd love to hear someday more of your background to know what has informed some of your language and your metaphors and things. So that'll be fun to get to know more, get to know you better, to understand like the genesis of some of these things from all those different angles. But, um, I'm glad you, uh, persevered with me on Facebook Messenger. Yeah, I'm glad you did too. I'm glad you got the message to come on, and I'll throw it back to you to round up with any conclusions or words you want to share with anyone who fed back to you.

Well, thank you. I'll try to rapidly cover points. First of all, in terms of superpower, I don't look at it that way. I was desperate, and I've been in a juxtaposition of circumstances which have Which, yes, because of societal— largely because of societal bigotry, corruption, and the fact that, if I may use the phrase, the system— I don't like it, but it gets the idea across briefly.

Yeah.

You know, they view me as a cash cow. And my experience is that some of of the vile situations and actions on the part of people, I mean, some of which were indictable. I can assure you that, again, this is not a self-pity trip. I had people do things to me for which they should have been indicted. I understand what the word means, literally indicted. I think conditions, if you want to call it that, such as mine, As I say, I don't believe in conditions. I just two people get mad at me today because I said no. Your ex-husband wasn't a narcissist. I don't deny his behavior, but I just don't believe in the categories.

That's all.

And they got all mad at me and somebody else. But you know, situations, effects such as happened to my body are common. But most people don't. Don't overcome them. And again, I have 100 things I could say about what the system is doing wrong inequitably in dealing with, with problems such as this. Of course, there's a great financial incentive not to, you know, really, there is. You can't make money on whole foods the way you can on On pharmaceuticals, I'm I'm looking at I everything takes me forever because for one thing I run out of not only financial resources but intellectual resources. I have someone who can coach me through my Libra office. I don't know how to work it. I used to run Linux. But I have computers with warranties. I took my bonus money or whatever the hell they sent us, and I got a couple of good computers, a laptop and a desktop. But it— I can't change the Microsoft Word on it or I lose the warranty. So this LibreOffice— see, it's little details like this. It's like little things that just pile up and you can't, you know. But I'm working on it, and I'm actually going to try to through Arts and Humanities in Vermont for a grant. That's again a story in itself. I have— one of the reasons that I took to literary craft, I've also been a still photographer for 55 years. I started at the age of 10. I quit for 4 years in between. I'm going to be 70 in the fall. So if you do it in November, so if you do the arithmetic, I've been at it 55 years. But I also took to literary craft, because I wasn't assimilating the same tension that generated the physiological agony, which was unspeakable. It's unspeakable. And I've seen it in people.

I—

the signs are— the physiological signs are there. This This syndrome, syndrome like this took my mother's life. Yeah, really. And again, I could go on about that, but I'm gonna try to be succinct. You know, I'm going to, I'm going to look to the Arts and Humanities in Vermont for a grant because I do have enough.

Scott, can you bring it? Can you just bring it back to like relate relating to anything anyone said, or maybe something—

No, there's just so much.

We don't have to have as many. I know, I know.

We're with you. We're with you. It's difficult. I get it.

I get it.

I have pushed so far into the margins.

I get it. We love you. We're here for you. We're listening to you. I'm just being a little bit hard on you in a fair, good way.

Right.

And I do want to mention to Mimsy, I have even coached very marginal people in poetry and secured a reading for one woman who had never read her poetry to other people before. Not because it was I that coached her, but everybody— myself, a lot of other people. First time she ever read, you know, to a group of people ever. It was in front of an audience at a Borders bookstore. She did amazingly. I mean, like, really amazingly. And a few months later, because of the cocktail of psychiatric drugs and heart medications, and who knows what else, she was gone. She passed on.

Thank you.

Thank you, Scott. I want to just take a breath for a second. We'll just sit with, sit with the reality of, of life and the seriousness of life and feel gratitude for this is why we're doing what we're doing. Like Hillary and I aren't going to go on a rant right now why we think the Story Living Studios and the summit and Taste of Wonderland can't make us all tons of money that we just reinvest into each other. And we get off all these crutches, because right now in this world money exists, but we're gonna obsolete it. There's no question about it. So I'm not gonna go on a super rant with that right now. Let's just do another 10 or 20 seconds, and then I'm gonna open the space and see if Hillary would like to take it in a particular direction. And I still do want Marlena to share art, so let's just see if we feel like that's the right kind of thing to do after like 10, 10 seconds after I shut up right now.

I just think it's really funny that I had this little idea on with the— with my Mad Hatter Strange Brew was, was open mic but with art. And what we just heard from Scott was open mic with art. And and so it was almost like this little funny idea I got sitting in a in in a you know in a classroom in at the U of T doing a taste of Wonderland actually manifested itself three hours later. So I have to say synchronicity.

Beautiful.

All right, how's everyone feeling? I'd like to give Marlena a chance to share. We'll switch into another— a little bit back to the right brain, a little bit left brain, something. Just mix it up a little bit. Wow, amazing. So Marlena, show us some of your— I think you guys share screen privilege. Tell us about some— a little bit about the art, a little bit about— and then play the song if you had. And So you got like a few minutes just to feel into it, and like if it's all flowing, we'll keep going. We'll see what's happening, but take a couple minutes at least to just share some things to get into it.

Yeah, um, so I guess I also realized I have a few like shorter little poetry bits I can share too to kind of like ease into it a little bit. Um, but, and I think Bret wanted me to show the picture of me in the Mad Hatter hat.

Yeah, that's the supermodel Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Show that, um, the Mad Hatteress.

Hatteress. It's like I'm like, I need to add that goddess, like, mistressy thing, like the Mad Hatteress.

Oh, I like that. Yes, I'll have to start using that phrase.

I'm like, I'm— that's, that's one of my gifts, like casting, central casting for the Universal movie, for sure.

Well, I would happily take on that role, especially like, I don't know if you guys have ever seen the FX TV series Legion with Aubrey Plaza as the Mad Hatter. I would highly recommend it. Super like mind-twisty and very, very good. Beautiful film and like time travel, everything very mental. But excellent.

Yeah, cue the Mad Hatteress.

Let me share my screen.

Enter stage right.

There we go.

Stage zoom center.

And okay, so I guess I'll, I'll start with a little poetry snippet before I go into the Mad Hatter picture. Um, so I can just read it out. So on some real shit, bipolar can suck my ass. I've become comfortably numb, grown used to feeling depression's weight. It's easy to not take responsibility for building a better, freer life when you're constantly in that hole. Sometimes that hole is unavoidable, no matter what measures you take. But perhaps, I've come to realize, I placed myself there because it's comfortably numb. And then I realized I had not been living. I had only been enduring. You can't rush your healing. Darkness has its teachings. I may not be your manic pixie dream girl, but I do know one thing. Hey, maybe all this shit isn't about Excellent. Um, and then another little snippet. Sorry, this is on my Instagram. I kind of put my poetry out there on Instagram randomly, or Facebook. But, um, uh, this short little one: Street professors, ghetto scholars, embrace yourself. The only proper response to existence is radical humility and surrender to the mystery. Right on. Um, so with that, bring us over to the Mad Hatteress.

Look at that. Is that not the Janis Joplin of the Meadow Modern? Absolutely not, right? Absolutely. And a little sound of music, right? She's in the mountains and stuff, like Mary Poppins meets the Mad Hatteress and stuff.

You got a script there.

Oh yeah, look at—

yeah, yeah, there's only 2.

Flower power. Oh, there was something in the first. Can you go back to the first one you read? Oh yeah, there was another synchronicity I just wanted— oh, the comfortably numb. When I, in high school, when we graduated at 18 in Jersey, we, we all got to write a statement like for the future. And I had just— I've been doing more of my inner work lately, and I realized, like, I forgot that even when I was in a deeper depression, like, I never acknowledged it in a sense. And I wrote I Have Become Comfortably Numb on that. And then, as you might know, or people do, the original singer of Pink Floyd ended up having a schizophrenic experience. And a lot of their music is about their emotional relationship to him, actually, which some people don't know, like Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, That's all about their high school friends. So yeah, so there's, you know, again, the epimemetic connections between all of us over the years with pop culture and everything like that. Super cool. All right, what else you got for us? You have any songs or any more picks or any—

Yeah, I guess I'll go with the, uh, art first.

Oh yeah, the art. I wish we could make this bigger.

Um, yeah, is it really tiny for you guys? I don't know.

It's okay for now. I mean, it's— this is cool. Yeah, go through a few of these. Actually talk about a couple, but go through all of them because they're fucking awesome.

Yeah, sure. Um, so yeah, I'll talk about maybe 3 or 4 of them, something like that. But yeah, um, this is the first one that I made, um, when I was coming out of my first episode, quote unquote, mania, uh, hospitalization experience, and You know, intense time travel, very spiritual experience, seeing spirits, whatnot. And I have dabbled in the psychedelic world before and after this experience too, so that's kind of where the Amanita muscaria— I might be mispronouncing that— mushrooms come in on the bottom, although I haven't specifically used that kind of mushroom. But, but to me, of this, um, represents kind of the Buddhist concept of mutual co-arising. And, you know, I have a background in physics and psychology degrees. I was super interested in inner and outer worlds, what is consciousness, um, kind of logically ended up at leaning more towards a more pantheistic kind of view, or panpsychist I should say, not pantheistic, panpsychist view, um, kind of the idea that there's an all- pervading consciousness, right? And so that really inspired this artwork. I kind of just flowed with whatever felt natural, and this just kind of came out. The little dude person, multidimensional being I'll call them, didn't come until much later. It just started with the neuron tree. Like, I kind of think of it as a tree and Nice.

Yeah, yeah, totally. I would have probably subconsciously thought that anyway, but now that you say it, of course.

Yeah, I mean, and I titled this piece All-Seeing Neuron on purpose.

Oh man, it's like Terence McKenna meets Dalí meets Hunter S. Thompson and shit, and Frida Kahlo all put together. I don't mean to, by the way, to compare. I just mean inspirationally.

No, I mean, that's, that's a compliment. Thank you. Um, and then I guess this one I'll share about too. It's kind of relevant.

Perfect for Fractal Impact Entertainment.

Yeah, yeah. Also pretty related to Buddhism in a sense. Um, you know, I, I was thinking about non-duality a lot and, um, finding, um, you know, what is the center of yourself, removing those layers of masks and different layers we show to the world, right? And when you, like, you know, go through meditation— meditation was a huge part of my first episode of mania— and just going deeper and deeper into those layers of the self, a lot of psychosis was super terrifying, but also really healing and, like, self-healing almost for me. And a lot of traumas would come up, but because I had been meditating for a year at this time, I could handle it. Sit with it and go deeper and deeper and then realize the core kind of, you know, true peaceful nature that was separate— but not separate so much, but aware of these floating in emotions, of these masks that I could wear. Um, and just realizing that kind of non-dual core, that changing identity, that lack of identity identity at the core that, you know, we're ever-changing throughout time. So yeah, that's what that one speaks to.

Excellent.

I'll speak on this one too, and then I'll kind of skim through some of the rest a little faster. But this one also very much I was thinking about, you know, being really angry at colonization. and colonial type of ideals. This is actually Half Dome from Yosemite National Park. I used to live there for 2 summers and work there. And so that's a very special spot for me. It was based off of a picture I took. We like, we hiked like 30 miles in one day and—

Wow.

Barely made it to this mountain right before sunset, right before. So we were like sprinting up. If any of you guys I don't know if you guys are familiar with Half Dome, like right in the middle, kind of like where this— these colors split on in real life, there's like a giant ladder that goes up the mountain and you have to wear gloves. Some people even clip themselves in to go up it, but most people just walk it and wear gloves because it's like these boards every 10 feet or so, every maybe 6 to 10 feet or so, and cables. And you just have to like go up the side of this mountain. And if you let go you will fall like 1,000 feet off, off of a mountain. Um, so we were like sprinting up this and everything, but it was a super beautiful ethereal experience. And just kind of that, like Yosemite in general, um, or so-called Yosemite today, um, very much speaks to this energy of like spiritual connection. That's where I found a lot of my first spiritual insight was like out in nature, out with friends exploring, but not conquesting, right? So that's what this piece speaks to.

Do you mind stopping your screen share for a second, Marlena? I just need to check in with something.

Yeah.

We're gonna, we're gonna do a commercial break for a second because I think Hillary needs to go soon, so we're gonna give her a proper send-off. And a proper thank you. And anyone else that wants to stay longer, I still got enough energy to go a little bit longer. So Hillary, uh, do whatever you want to do, say whatever you want to say, ask a question if you want to. It's your gig until— it's your gig until you, uh, hang up.

Well, I just, I just want to say a huge thank you to everybody for, for being with us today. And, and, uh, I have to go. I just, I'm exhausted. It's been a very, very long day and It's, it's, it's, these are very tough experiences to facilitate. They're very intense. They're wonderful. And they're awesome. But just as you saw Annalise, they're very intense. And so I'm now in a place where I just probably need to go make dinner for my son, who is the reason why I do this work, and myself and, and just have a rest. But I did, I did want to do a shout out to you, Bret, for, for this amazing day that you have have, you know, you— this is, this is what we talked about doing. And in terms of we would have the, we would have the events happening on the ground, and we would have a broadcast, and you brought the broadcast, baby. And, and thank you so much. Because it allowed us to go do what we did on the ground while you were doing this very important part on air. So it's a It's fabulous how it's all worked together. And I can't wait to watch the recordings. And it's just— we're just beginning. That little baby footprint or whatever, cocoon or whatever, is just starting. And we'll be now bringing all of the data that's going to be coming from all the different locations together. And we'll start exploring what is coming to us because we've got some amazing, amazing warm data that's coming and stories and insights and epiphanies. We have lots of epiphanies to work with. And in fact, I think we're only working with epiphanies now.

That's what I'm talking about. Exactly. Miracle, miracle, the age of miracles. Yeah, I'll just say, Hillary, in case you want to say one more thing, I'm going to just say, and we're going to start trying to edit this, this footage with all the other footage as soon as possible into a documentary. that would be good enough to win like a film festival. And good— and good— and when I say good, I don't mean comparison, I just mean quality, fun, enjoyable, uh, some kind of impact. And to get some, uh, find some philanthropy, crowdfunding, whatever it is to get the show on the road. Because like we're saying, no joke, we're not resisting money as much as we're not resisting anything else. Like, we're gonna get our asses in gear and use all these different skills. Like people said, like Josh, when he Facebook. As long as we have people that have all these different skills, from business plans to economics to physics to all this different visionary and artwork, we literally have a marketing agency right here among us. And an all-purpose agency, like even using the word agency like a will, like that's kind of what this community is also. The initial community especially has to help bootstrap. So like Hillary and I and some others have done the best we possibly On no funding for ourselves and all that stuff to get to this point. And it's clear to me there's more people ready to step up, like Laura Lee said, and Marlene, and that understand we can do this. And not everyone has to do everything all the time, but there's enough capacity, there's enough contribution, as long as we can organize it and, and, and cherish it and nourish it, it's going to be no problem. So, Hillary, in case you want to just add one more thought and then say goodbye, and I love you.

Well, I love you too. And, and, and the ideas that we're going to be incubating are all about how do— these are all ideas that are for— that support us in our lives in ways we deserve to be supported. And we support each other in ways that we all, you know, have, have an amazing—

you know, we all—

we're trying to— we're carving a new future. And we're carving a new future with different currencies, and with different talents, and with different perspectives, and with different neurons. And I think— and the neurons aren't just inside us. They're in nature. They're around us. They're everywhere. And so when we talk about— my sense of neurodiversity is the fact that neurons exist everywhere. everywhere. And especially in nature, she's just amazing. So I'm thrilled that we did what we did. I'm thrilled we went ahead with it. I'm thrilled that Annalise was the one who threw down the gauntlet and said, we have to find a date. And they said, we want to do it August 12th. Okay, everybody on board? Okay, August 12th. There it was. And now— and we did it. So it's— There were times when I didn't think we would, in reality.

But we did.

And we're far better for it. So I'm excited. I'm excited to, to go to harvest now. Now we can start— we've got amazing stuff to harvest with, and amazing people to harvest with. Because everybody who is involved in this now are all part of the harvesters. So it's, uh, it's going to be grand.

Awesome. Have a great night. Go take care of yourself. Have some nice food and sit back and watch some silly TV or something.

I'm gonna watch very silly TV. I'm there, in fact, very, very silly TV.

So that's good.

Thank you all so much. Love, love, love, and love, and love Brett, and love Mark. Like, you know, amazing. I haven't seen you in such a long time, Lindsay.

I have—

like, it's been, it's been over a year, Lindsay, since I see you.

I know it's probably been much longer than a year.

Yes, probably, probably.

But it's lovely to see you as always, and I'm glad you're here.

Well, thank you. And it's, it's like, but now we've got, you know, we're on it. We're all on this, on this amazing journey together now. And we're all going to be bringing new things and new perspectives and learning together. And we've got what talent. Look at, look at this screen. Look at the talent that just sits on this friggin screen. It's awesome.

Yes.

Yep.

Thank you, Hillary.

All right, I realized by listening there at the end I'm getting quite tired, so I'm gonna be ready in the next 5, 8, 9, 10, 12 minutes to sort of wrap things up. I'm gonna give everyone an opportunity to put something on the table, either a quick question, a quick comment, something that either sparks a couple quick popcorny things or, or whatever, or take your whole 2 minutes and forever hold your peace thing. So, Mimsy, go ahead and whatnot.

How often are these meetings being held? Do we have a, a set schedule, or is there somewhere where I can view when these meetings are being held?

Um, everything is different after this weekend where Hillary and I and some of us And some of you, as accordingly makes sense, like, we're gonna have to figure out what we want to do next. Like, um, we don't really have a plan for— like, this was specifically instead of me always kind of doing strange little podcasts and maybe no one watches, it's like, let's just do the summit, let's have all these great conversations. So we have to figure out— I will say on some level we will certainly follow up, of course, because it's just like the next thing. Like, we're definitely— so yeah, we'll follow up in some way, but actually honestly don't I don't even know what that looks like. But if there's enough of a demand, like if 5, 6, 8, or 12 people show me that they might be interested in doing this every 2 weeks or whatever it is, then I'm more willing. Like, I need people to put skin in the game. So anyone watching this, or any of you, my apologies if it ever comes off different or otherwise, because we're all doing our own thing. But the support I need to play my role in the movement is I need people to like ping me and show up and say I can do this. Like, I can, I can talk an hour every 2, whatever it is. It could be the smallest thing or a big thing. I don't really care, but I need to know and I need the support. Otherwise, I'm too— I'm wearing too many hats, and that's not how I want to live my life anymore. I don't want to wear every hat just because I'm some kind of fucking entrepreneur, or it's a startup, or whatever the hell other language. I'm here to do my role, and we all are. And that's what I've loved about today. So yeah, we'll follow up, Mimsy, on the group And if I ever see— not like, like once you see it that you don't see it, then I'll message you personally. Like if I feel like, okay, somehow missed something or something like that. Yeah, at some point too, I need— that's what I need help with, things like that. Even like CRM, like I don't want to do that right now. It's not my thing. So yeah, I'll follow up. Mark, you want to say something?

Yeah, I was gonna say, Mimsy, if they don't have meetings, we'll snatch you up right away. Uh, same with you, Marlene and Scott. There's a another— there's like probably, I would probably say, 6 big teams that are kind of organizing. And then the Mad Hatter Summit was a nice team here. And between all of us, I think we have enough here to do something really big. And so there's this sort of like universal New World spirit, which is the more activist side of things where everybody's talents— like, I think we have about 30 teams that are growing, and depending on what you're good at or interested in, we're just gonna see if it works for you, and then if you want to lead it, or, you know, it's about a self-determining thing. But all the talent that's across all these teams really could do something global, and I think this summit style has the right stuff to keep going and, and do this kind of catharsis. So there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes, and if, if Bret the Mad Hatter stuff doesn't go the way that it did this year, then we'll revive it for next year as a part of this New World Spirit stuff, like the mega team. And then I think we can do, uh, we can grow it and get politicians in here because I think politicians and psychiatrists, like the people that are a part of the old system, need to be a part of this system. And I was really hoping we could have got one politician or something in here, but the idea only came like 2 weeks ago. But next year they need to—

they honestly, we need to call them out. When I say call out, I don't mean like the competition. We need to make it clear that we want to speak and we're inviting. It's a safe enough— it's a safe enough space. It's not a courtroom. It's not meeting your accusers, but it is meeting the people that you are in its system entangled with. And the first request is to please show up and listen, I guess, just to keep it like most nonviolent and safe. It's like we all can hold the space for not really getting into the blame game. Like, we all have pain and suffering, we're all connected. But this kind— what I've seen today, I know that we can invite presidents, politicians, philanthropists, whoever it might be, into a conversation about how to support this Mad Hatter Summit and the New World Spirit and Togetherland and every one of our projects. They're all going to be in a non-umbrella umbrella, right? So I totally agree with you, Mark. We need to start making that happen. And I would— Just pray that those people in those positions and those occupations and all that will take the time to consider it. And it's in their best interest anyway, because you can't stop an idea whose time has come. And the idea that its time has come is civilization 1.0, like really the first version of civilization, is the modern, I should say. I don't know, I wasn't around during Egypt and Rome and all that. So to be fair to our ancestors, to be fair to our ancestors, in my lifetime, in my lifetime, it feels like reaching. There's even in science, there's something called— what is it? The 1.0, the Kardashian scale for like, uh, I forgot what the name of that whole thing is. But anyway, awesome, Mark. And give it back to you if you had a few more thoughts that you wanted to finish. I know Mark basically—

Well, I got your email.

67. Mark's superpower is he can remember 1,067 He can have 66 conversations at any one time, and if you distract him, he always knows how to come back.

Well, I'm just gonna— no, I think you're the right man. I'm like your accountant or something. I'm like your inventory guy. Um, I think, Marlene, I got your email in the chat, and then, Lindsay, I think somebody on the team has your email somewhere, so I'll get in touch with you through them, or if you want to private message me. But, uh, I'm really kind of intrigued here. I think this child activism thing is really cool. I don't think I've met anybody quite doing it like that. So between you and Scott, that's really interesting. And Marlena, there's a cool art thing, art project that kind of resonates with what you showed us. So I think it's really cool. So I'll just end there, and I think there's a way forward from here.

Cool.

Scott, man, what do you make of everything? What do you want to chip in here briefly? Briefly about, if anything?

Well, I just want to warn people, I'm a very controversial character, and I think one of the problems these days is that people— and yes, it is coming more. Hey, I'm an old radical. I'm socialist from way back, not Marxist, not synonymous, no reactionary, but particularly from the left today there is this intractability. You either see it our way or the highway. We don't care what evidence, we don't care. You know, just earlier today I was on this thing called Quora, and somebody comes up with this Why don't Trump supporters let their kids play with the, you know, non-white kids on a playground? I said, what? Sure they do. Most, like, well, only, like, just only 99%.

Scott, Scott, let me bring you back again. We're kind of in a space of—

Okay, I'm sorry. What I'm saying is—

Hold on. Scott, Scott, Scott, Scott, look at me. Take a breath, man.

love you.

It's all good. Look at me. Listen to me. You are finally among your peers. If you think you're radical, my nickname is Radical Bretminster Full of It. So I will learn from you what I need to learn from you. If you think socialism— wait till you see what we have planned, Scott. This story is over. The story you've lived that you will now contribute to changing is over. Will it happen tomorrow? I don't know. I know that if somebody gave me a billion dollars, I could change the world in 7 72 hours. That's a promise to the whole world.

Until I could do it comes, I could do it with a fraction of that.

I know, but but so be it, right? I could do it with 12 cents too. That's not my point necessarily, Scott. I don't want to compete for that. What I just want to say is the story of all your pain and suffering. We all know how bad it is. We all know we're all very highly attuned to that, and like you've finally found some people. Some people that can stick with you on the weird scale, on the obscure scale, on the outsider scale, whatever scale you want to go to. Like, we are all strange critters in that same way. So we got you, and we're kind of checking out. So I want to— I want you to contribute to that. Like, do you— did you have a good time today? Like, did you— was it enjoyable?

I'm sorry that I came late.

You don't have to apologize.

I was on Facebook, and I didn't realize that I was chatting, but it wasn't getting over here. And then I suddenly pushed that Zoom thing. Maybe they'll get me there. And that's exactly what happened. That's why I was so late.

Better late than never, but better never late, they say.

But one thing, one thing I hope people, not just with me, but with everything, If you— even if you hold something and you've held it forever, and somebody, somebody comes up with a question, never be afraid to completely re-examine.

Beautiful.

And never, never assume, never put too much faith in a label or a noun, because that is particularly the way our time are going. That is the satanic, which, which overdefines things and interplays with the Luciferian, which leads—

I don't want to get into that stuff. Listen, by the way, by the way, it's not because I reject it, and it's not because I don't understand. I'm actually an expert in the occult. I'm actually an expert in conspiracy theory because I'm so radical. So I'm, so I'm with you, dude, 100%. We could talk about it for freaking hours, and I'm, I'm open to doing that. It's only because we're trying to, to leave today, and we're trying to stay in the space of more the emotions rather than our ideologies and all. We're trying to just say good night and goodbye, and it was great. This is what I love. This is what I didn't like. That's the kind of space we're in. So I'm going to give you a chance in a minute to do a last, like, one 3-word checkout. But for the moment, I'm just going to move on to, to Mimsy and Marlena to do their, their version of, of goodbye. Thanks. Uh, Mimzy, why don't you go? You feel okay with that?

I'm okay with that. Um, I'm looking forward to meeting again, and I will see you guys later. Uh, what is it, the, the live long and prosper? I'm all about it. I'm with it. All right, peace out, y'all.

Yeah, I have so much trouble doing that. My fingers don't want to go in my brain.

Right.

Look at her. She's a she's an expert. What's your final thoughts, Marlene? Any and sure any words of happiness or gratitude as well if you want some thanks or anything.

Um, just wow. Um, first of all, like synchronicity again. Like it happened to be my birthday today, my quarter century old birthday, and so it was super nice to be here. Yeah.

Um, wow. Twenty five.

Yeah.

How about that?

It was super nice to spend my time in the very space that I would have wanted to spend my time in, you know, on this day, and to welcome in the next quarter century, I guess. Um, but, um, yeah.

That's like the geekiest thing I've ever heard, but I totally get it. And I— that's amazing. I honestly, because I'm honored to be be there with you. I've been wanting to meet younger people. I'm 48, and like, I feel like I don't know what younger people who are also kind of like me are thinking and stuff. So I'm really like, it's an honor. I want to hear way more about what your life's been like and how you see the world, because it— on some levels it doesn't matter that we're different age, and then on some levels it does. And the real— it's always interesting to me, the generation gaps. And I don't know what music you listen to and what the world looks like to Growing up from whatever, almost 2000 on. I'm in the middle, I'm Generation X. So I like to describe my generation because I think we have our unique special, and I'd like to hear how everyone might metaphysically kind of existentially look at their— just for fun, by the way, not super academically, but I like that whole thing. So what a pleasure, what a gift for us to spend it. Happy birthday! I'm not doing the whole thing, I don't like it. Happy birthday to you, man.

Happy birthday.

Maybe a year, maybe A year of your greatest expansion, growth, peace, prosperity, love, beauty, joy, and all good things mysterious.

Oh, well, thank you. That was lovely. Thank you. Yes, I could use some of that. So, um, but yeah, um, I'm really happy to have met with you guys. Very synchronistic, very synergistic, and mycelial, to put some words onto it. Um, And I do think that we do have a powerful group here that is capable of doing a lot, you know, um, what— no matter what time span that is. Um, there's a lot of people who are kind of waking up to this sort of side of things too and are on our side. And there's a lot of radical movements in different directions, some of them kind of not against or what we wanted to be doing, right? But there is a lot of people Doing what we want to be doing, and we just got to stay strong and keep going with it, you know, keep making those co-creating connections. And I'm glad that this happened here today, glad to be present here with you all.

Awesome. Uh, Scott, give me one more time, minute or less, a goodbye, thanks, whatever it is.

3.

Beware of woke. With the final words have to be the just the, yeah, the social commentary. Love it. Beware of woke. I'll take it with me. Mark, your final sentence, 2, 3, 4 sentences, whatever it might be.

Yeah, I guess I'll end on this note is, um, you know, You said earlier, Bret, I'm amazed. I like the way you did this. I'm like, wow, it takes a lot of acumen to do what you've done here. But I'll end on the note that you mentioned about miracles. We need a sort of miracle because we're, we're in a pretty serious situation. So I think what we've seen here today is, you know, a miracle is happening and we all are the spark. So I think that's a good one to end on.

Awesome. So I'm just gonna I'm gonna say a few words to close out the evening, close out the Mad Hatter Summit, I guess.

Wow.

I mean, it's just— it's gonna go down in history at some point. So the 4 of us will be the last Hatters standing when Bret gave his final soliloquy, which I'm under pressure feeling now. I'll probably end up just hitting end call and leaving you guys with a bread hanger. But, um, what could I possibly say? I will say when I get off, I'm actually going to show some videos from Malawi this morning if I can get them to work. I might show the video again of the Malawi, what we did last year in the Mad Hatter video. So I might just keep playing some videos for people that want to listen or check out, or just in case someone hops by. So, but this will be my final words. First of all, Mark, Marlena, thank you for co-piloting with me most of today on both calls. Forever grateful for that. Extra special icing now on the birthday cake. Okay, from Elena. That's super awesome. 25, nice round number. 7. Mark, like I said earlier in the day, we were kind of new friends but feel like old great friends, and I'm just so happy you ended up being able to co-pilot today. Like, I didn't know what would happen today. I just knew I had to come on and try to hold the space and do what I could. So thank you for really, uh, playing the Andy to my Conan and the Conan to my Andy. Um, you're probably more Conan actually, right? I guess you're definitely taller and I'm more Andy. I'm all fat and pudgy, so I guess it's probably most likely that. But thank you so much, Scott. Thank you so much for the perseverance to find that Zoom link. Your poetry was great. Your singing was evocative and heartfelt. We all understand to varying degrees. Of course, we're not here to compete for suffering, but you can rest assured we understand for the most part the suffering that you. endured, at least on some level enough to know to say that, like, we're sorry that that's happened. And we just— I guess the only thing most of us can do is try to make it better for the younger generation. And that doesn't mean leaving ourselves out. I'm not into that thing. I just mean, like, generally speaking, next 7 generations— the future is always coming, right? So, like, we have to somehow figure out how to live in the moment while designing the future at the same time. Um, I'm just gonna bridge to that saying the Mad Hatter's Summit Taste of Wonderland is about designing, you know, really the best case scenario future. In physics, high-level physics and quantum mechanics, they talk about like different realities and different possibilities and a wave collapse to the one. Oh, art is fact, right? Artifact. We're here to produce art as facts because artifacts are what are the actual currency of the manifest world. So we're gonna, an old-school way, take the power back. We're gonna do it non-violently. We're gonna do it in such a strange way that we can't be caught. And I say that for fun. We're going to take back, in a fun gamified way, it's just a story, right? We're going to take back our innocence and our agency and our creativity. So the Mad Hatter Summit is all about Good times, good fun, unconditional love, and somehow manifesting this beautiful world, as they say, that we all want to live in. Thank you, anyone out there who's been with us. Thank you to everyone who's helped out during the physical spaces today. You're all legends in my own mind, so I really appreciate it. And I'm gonna play a video in a second, but you're more than welcome to stay or go, but I'm gonna stop talking in a second.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Bret. See you guys.

All right, I'm gonna try to show a video that we got sent from Malawi this morning. Let me see how easy this is to share my WhatsApp screen.

Let's see.

Share sound. I was gonna also add, if you wanted me to share the song at all or in any form or fashion, I'm, um, open to doing that. If not, no pressure though. I don't want to like be like, listen to my song everyone, right? But just throwing it out there.

Yeah, I would say it depends on how long I end up like staying here playing a few videos. I know I'm down with giving myself a break from talking and showing these other things, but if I end up just doing this for 15-20 minutes, then definitely 100%. Like if I realize I'm too tired after like this video, then I might just, I might just head out, but, but I get you totally. I'm down with it. Trying to find the play button there. Trying to find the play button. I don't know where it is. Oh, my, my Zoom panel is like, uh, is, uh, in the way or something.

All right, let's see.

Come on. That was our friend Brown and his community out in Malawi dancing and singing this morning as a sort of ritual. Evoking of the whole day that we had in the Netherlands and Toronto and California. I'll just see if any, if any of these other videos will play. Try one more. Oh, there's a picture. Let's see. That looks like— oh, where is it? Oh, that's in Toronto, actually. So we're going to have all of these artifacts coming out of all of these things to make some art with, which is going to be really cool.

Let's see.

Like to see if we can see Malawi, the outside of Malawi. It's always so vibrant there. They're just hanging out, like doing nothing, like just hanging out, and it's just like beautiful colors. It actually reminds me of your art a little bit, Marlena. Right? Like you know that like the the color scheme and somehow like the simplicity at the like calm juxtaposition or something.

I don't know.

It's quite actually reminds me of your.

I can see that. Yeah, I can definitely see that.

I mean, I could see you making like little figures by that rock, but it was more like a different scene in a sense, like your style with those colors. This is the— some of the people in the Netherlands. They had dinner together. So just to reiterate, we all know how powerful things are in person. And that's from Toronto. Unleash Your Genius. All right, so that's that. Yeah, let's play your song. You play it, you go ahead and do it.

All right, sure. Um, share this again.

Oh no, I hope she comes back. I want to hear the rest of it and see if she has any more. Scott, I know you have to go. You might as well go now. We were the last two New Jersey boys standing, so it's gotta be—that's gotta mean something, right? Gotta mean something. I don't know what. Thank you for showing up. All right, so I'm in after hours now. If anyone's out there and happens to come by, just gonna give Marlena a chance to come back. She was just sharing some of her music, which was really cool. So hopefully she'll hear me soon. Yeah, I hope we can make some music together. That'd be amazing. Um, and I think I'm going to just play a video right now in this after hours and see if Marlena comes back. So let's see, related to the Mad Hatter Summit.

Never been afraid to fly till your wings got torn. Now the sky looks so far away from the ground below, and it feels like there is nowhere left to go. Remember that you can be fearless. You can be fearless. When the whole world falls and everything breaks and you're standing alone, you can be fearless.