Passion Is the Gateway Drug Playcast, Episode 834, "A Trance State"

Uh, he's in another meeting with a mental health person. All this stuff, bro, it's like a bunch— all of us are falling into or coming up with the same thing in different perspectives from different angles of looking at it.

Right on.

That's definitely like, what's wrong with the world? Oh, we're all fucking crazy.

Shit.

Until we address that we're all crazy, we're just band-aiding everything.

Everything. Right on. I hear you. All right, let's get going. It's 8 o'clock. It's 8 o'clock sharp here in Germany, in my current home away from home. I know Mark, I believe, is on the West Coast. Are you in California or Oregon, or where are you?

I am. I'm in California, just Uh, 3 miles from Laguna Beach east.

Nice, cool. So listen, I'm just gonna do a couple of house— a couple housekeeping things and a little tiny intro, and then we're just gonna jump right in. Is that cool with you, Mark?

That's perfect, my brother.

Right on, right on. So this is the Playcast, Passion Is the Gateway Drug. I call it a playcast instead of a podcast, and I'm gonna share a little bit about why that is in a little bit, Mark. I think you'll enjoy that. This is episode 834 because we don't go in order. So who knows? And I've entitled— I've also titled this one A Trance State because I like to create a topic for conversation with my title. So I guess it's quite obvious why I've called it A Trance State, but I'll use that as a springboard in one second as well to get into our conversation. So we're here basically. I used to do this playcast once in a while, not professionally. Oh, here's Hillary. Yay, we've got our— my co-pilot Hillary is here. Hang on.

Yay!

Oh my God, what a beautiful picture too.

Oh, thank you. She's a lot bigger now. I wouldn't be able to hold her. That was 2 years ago. But I just love it so much because she was our little— our COVID baby. And so she was a gift during COVID I keep that because it's a good memory for me.

Right on. Perfect timing, Hillary. I'm just doing a little mini type of intro and then we'll jump in and you can just go with the flow if that's cool.

Perfect. Love it, love it.

So yeah, so obviously we're joined by Hillary Van Welter, my co-founder of Call to the Mothers Project, along with our friend Romelia and also my good friend. So, um, I was just saying, Hillary, that this is episode 834 of the Passion Is the Gateway Drug Playcast because we don't go in order. Um, And I'll share why. And I'll share why we call it a play— why I call it a playcast instead of a podcast as part of the conversation. And the other thing I wanted to share is basically we're being called together to start a movement, for lack of a better word. We're going for broke, we're going ambitious, and we're trying to create a first step called an Alternative Reality Summit for Mental Health Reformation, which is not going to be a run-of-the-mill summit or conference. It's really a stepping stone. going towards a broader ambitious, um, vision for innovation and changing the planet when it comes to perceived mental illness and addiction. So that's the passion and topic that brings us all together to some degree or another. And we're going to have a good time. We're going to have a conversation. And Hillary, I was saying, I call my episodes— I always try to give them a title as a jumping off point. So tonight's episode is called The Trance State, uh, in honor of Mark, um, because we want to find out the state of— the state of Mark. We want to find out where he's coming from. And I'm very excited because I don't know anything about Mark. I just know he's a good dude who replied to one of my comments and that we're on similar pages. But I'm excited because I didn't do any vetting. I didn't do any research. So I get to meet you, Mark, and vice versa. And Hillary, really in this table of unknowing, in this fresh space. I know. So it has its pros and cons, but I kind of like the pros that we've never actually met before or talked. I think we also have some friends in common, maybe Joel Serino. I think once, you know, Joel.

Joel.

Yeah, Raymond, Raymond Powell. I was—

Oh, right.

Involved with Raymond and still—

Right, that's where—

Still working with the protocols.love and the whole— that whole side of it.

Yeah.

I'm still deeply involved in.

Cool. Maybe at the end we'll touch base on that. So Mark and I do have friends in common and a connection before that. Hillary, would you like to say anything as a hello or why you're here or anything? Or you don't have to as well, but I'll let you at least try if you like.

All I'm gonna say is let's put on our party hats and play.

Oh, all right, sounds awesome. So yeah, so the reason I call this a Playcast is because I have a little saying for myself, which is use your delusion to play on the mental health, um, parody. And that's because the word illusion, um, actually its etymological roots means to play. So Delusion means of play or from play, or illusion means to play. So we use our delusions tongue-in-cheek because we want to play. We want to play our way to innovation. We want to play our way to change, and we want to have a good time. And as the famous Bucky Fuller now said, we're not going to fight the existing reality. We're simply going to create something much better that makes the old systems and the old ideas that don't serve us obsolete. So Let's go for it. Um, let's just do a quick hello check-in. Like, I'll just model it. Like, I'm here in Germany, it's 8 PM, I'm feeling good, I'm present, I'm ready to have a good time and learn about you, Mark, and jam a little bit. And, and I'm good. Uh, how about you, Mark?

I am in, uh, just outside of Laguna Beach. Uh, uh, it's— what is it? It's 11 AM, and I am Overjoyed. I love jamming. I love jamming. Like spontaneity is what is. I've learned now over the years that if I prepare something, it sucks. It really sucks. But if I just go off the cuff, it reveals either I am full of shit and I don't know what I'm talking about, and I better figure it out, or I actually do know what I'm talking about.

Right on. Great. We're gonna have fun. How about you, Hilary?

Well, I'm good. As, as, as Bret knows, um, I, I am living in a constant crisis, um, of mental illness with my, um, youngest son, and it's been a very, very difficult period. Um, but this afternoon, I— it's 2 o'clock. I'm just north of Toronto in, in Canada in a place called Newmarket. And I just put the final touches on a kid's story called The Council of Squirrels, in which the Council of Squirrels teach 2 children about sacred geometry.

As they do.

As they do. And I just put the finishing touches on it. And it's dedicated to my 2 grandchildren who live in Sweden. And I've used their second names so that I got permission to have them in the story, but using their second names, and they discover of sacred shapes. I call it— rather than sacred geometry, I call them sacred shapes and the magic of them in developing ideas for a neighborhood that is dealing with all the post-trauma from COVID And it was so fun because I actually did the activity. I stood in the shape and to see what activity came up. And that's written now in the story. And the idea is the story will go out and we'll collect an inventory of what happens when kids stand in these shapes and what ideas do they get.

So that's—

so I'm very— so on one hand, it's a, it's a shit show here. On the other hand, I try to find those, those, those oases of creativity that allow me to actually, uh, live. That's me.

Beautiful. I think creativity will probably be one of our themes. Um, I also want to just say to the audience and Mark and Hillary, I don't really want to do like introductions and backgrounds, um, but I will invite all of us as we're speaking about these different pieces or our passions to consciously or mindfully maybe try to weave in some personal details or contextualizations just so maybe people get a sense of where we've been and what we care about. But let's just try to do that in a natural way. But it is invited. We can speak about some of our personal and kind of be story livers here and express ourselves. So we'll probably spend about at least minimal half the conversation getting to know Mark and, and what he's about and where, where those connections are. And then we're also going to do a little bit of jamming around this idea of the mental health reformation and a summit. What does it mean to Mark? What could it be? You know, we're going to use some of these opportunities, Mark, to get the collective intelligence and feedback from the community about what this thing could look like. At the same time, we're not going to have all these chefs in the kitchen. We're all 80 people. Are going to try to design something. So really the goal is, is for me and Hillary to come up with a first version of what this thing could be and, and why, and then bring it to the community to start getting more interaction. So we're not just starting on, in a sense, from a blank slate because we have a little bit of a— we already have a vision, you know. We're just hoping that vision is resonant for people and that it's a way they can find their own way to make it part of theirself so it doesn't feel like they're joining something. They're just expanding something, which is really important. So with all that said, Mark, in any broad way, in any way you like, short or long-winded, what— why do you care about the topic? Let's keep it, you know, mental health, mental wellness, or mental illness. It doesn't really so much matter. Tell us, bring us into the conversation to some degree about why this— why this topic even matters to you, whether it's personal or not or anything.

Yeah.

Well, okay, so what brings me to this is my life, right, and my life experiences, right? And so it's kind of— they're integrated. Who I am and where I came from and all that is part of the determination of why I believe and think and do what I'm doing. So I came from an incredibly dysfunctional family, incredible, and I was probably the most dysfunctional of the entire family. Batshit crazy would be a pretty apt descriptor. And, uh, so I had to work my way out. I'm 66 right now, so working my way out of crazy was on me. It wasn't— there wasn't— ADHD meds. There wasn't even a definition of ADHD. There was none of the current psychological profiles were in existence other than paranoid schizophrenic, you know, the, the, and manic depressive rather than, you know, they've been changing them over time. So I was manic depressive, suicidal, blah blah blah, and, uh, uh, eventually burned down my parents' house. Um, and was on the street and had to figure it out. And so I've been working my way out of crazy the whole time. However, uh, I was diagnosed as manic-depressive, and, uh, you know, so I have those huge swings, right? Those huge gigantic swings. But I'm also an artist.

Mm-hmm.

and a musician, and I re— I— those swings are incredibly important to me. I mean, when I'm on the high part, oh my God, it's like I, I did a bunch of coke or something, and I'm excited, and I'm like on this thing, and it's great, and I love it, and it's like we're gonna change the world, and it's bigger and bigger. And then for whatever reason, I'm down in— the bottom part of it, but that's when I write my best poetry, that's when I write the saddest song I ever wrote, you know, and each of them has their gift for me as the experiencer of my own life, right? They're there. And so rather than making me have a problem and accepting that I have a problem, It's that, oh, okay, so I just have to learn how to ride this thing, right? How to ride what's happening without going, you know, doing something stupid at the bottom or doing something stupid at the top. Um, so that brings me here. And, and, you know, so I became a musician. I did pretty good. I did psytrance, right? Which is— And I learned about the group mind, right? And the first time— well, there's a few times I've had actually 3 very strong experiences of group mind. One was in the Army doing a, a 40-mile march, and you're all robotic and stuff, and everybody's in sync, and it's da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and you're responding. So there's vocal and breath work that's happening at the same time, and it hurts so bad.

Mm-hmm.

After about 5 to 10 miles of marching that you're just like, oh my God, I'm gonna die. Your feet feel like bloody stumps and everything. But then after a time you fall into a trance state, right? And I'm in this trance state and I'm like, oh my God, I'm just a head on top of a giant centipede. I don't— I'm no longer marching. I'm no longer moving my feet. I'm no longer a part of any part of my body. It's all doing it automatically, in sync with everyone around me. And I'm in my head going, okay, this could go on forever. I could just sit and be in here and keep going forever. I no longer feel my body. I no longer feel any pain. I'm just part of this group mind. Oh. That's pretty interesting. And then years later, as I was doing you know psytrance stuff, I experienced it there again. But it was drug induced and da da da da. And what? But I'm like, oh my God! We're in the party above the party. We're all connected. I open my eyes and everybody's smiling back at me like they get it. And I mean, it's like okay, okay. So this is what. happens when the laying of snakes on people, the spiritual thing where you get— it's able— this is a thing. And it's a thing that's been perfected in the spirit, in the religious world, in the military world, all over the place. It's very rarely talked about. But we are a collective consciousness, a singular consciousness. And the idea that we're individuals and separate from that consciousness, and that we have to— that we live in a dog-eat-dog world and we have to go out and learn how to eat dog and learn to like eating dog. And if we don't, then we're just some, you know, it's like put your love away and learn how to eat dog, right? And so in order to do that, those of us with the biggest heart Right? Had to sedate ourselves in order to do that. We had to salt that dog with a little bit of alcohol or drugs or whatever our addiction is in order to eat the dog. And it didn't work. It doesn't work. Because it isn't a dog-eat-dog world. It isn't that. It hurts us and we become dependent on alcohol or drugs or even money or whatever it is. And that's what brings me to— brought me— well, I mean, I did huge shows and parties and friends of mine are raging alcoholics. I took one to— he was jaundiced last year, 2 years ago.

Mm-hmm.

And I became— I saw the rehab world. The— and I was like, oh my God, you guys suck. I mean, you guys really fucking suck. I mean, this industry is a $4.5 billion industry with an 85% failure rate, and that's the rehab— drug and alcohol rehab industry. The mental health industry is really good at making docile robots through drugs, and it's all about Both of these industries about rehabbing you so that you can go back into the world and eat dog, and nobody wants to do it, and everybody fails because wait a minute, I don't want to be in a predatory reality. I just it sucks. So we get a recidivism rate. We get all these failures and stuff because nobody's addressing the fundamental. civilization that is absolutely abhorrent. It's just absolutely vile that we have no value after 1,000 years of civilization, struggling and working and doing all this stuff. We still have no value unless we work, unless we become— so, you know, we're constantly devalued. In the world unless we're playing the game of dog-eat-dog. And that's where I'm at now, is building a Rehab the Rehab thing. But the, the bottom line is rekindling your love, like bringing your love back in and your community, and finding— falling in love with your life. Falling in love with people around you and with nature and with everything that— like, unless we do that, everything's gonna fail. Everything, no matter what you do. And that's— I've run out of juice.

Wonderful, thank you. It was perfect, perfect, perfect start-to-finish contextualization of sort of your journey in a nutshell and what you care about. Um, A lot to, a lot to, to relate and, and, um, explore there. So let's, let's dive in for a little bit about the few different things you— well, the several different topics. And then I also want to get to what the work you're doing now, uh, with the Rehab to Rehab as well. But Hillary, do you have any opening relation things you would relate to or, or want to comment on?

It's absolutely phenomenal, the synergy, uh, in terms of what you expressed, Mark, and the— and the context of it, um, and the, uh, this, you know, the dog-eat-dog going into this world, going, you know, finding a world in which, um, you know, that is fundamentally different. And how we have, we have said for a long time that those that are sitting, um, in labeled mental ill, mentally ill, are actually the pioneers, um, of a new way of well-being, a new way of living. And, um, and they're canary— we're canaries in the mineshaft in in terms of saying, if we don't do something about it, then, you know, our world's falling apart. And by the way, we have the answers in us in terms of what needs to happen. So, I— there's a great deal of synergy with what you said. And, you know, for— I'm 34 years sober. And I was really lucky that I was lucky that I found a story 34 years ago that allowed me to enter into the world of recovery. Um, but it was becoming a healer and doing intergenerational trauma work, and also doing that with clients as well as I, you know, first of all, as a patient and a client, and then having doing it myself, um, that I really found what the core was in terms of addiction for me. And, and, and it just produced a whole different understanding of, of why we're here and what we want to do. And the last piece I want to say is I'm just finishing a book that I found absolutely fascinating. It's called Hospicing Modernity.

Ooh.

And, and, and it is brilliant, because it is helping you through the understanding that— and I've been grieving a lot lately for all kinds of different reasons, but I'm also grieving. And while I can say I hate the world that, you know, that we've become and the dog-eat-dog, it brought me up. So I've been brought up in a world like that. And even though it's like being in an abusive relationship, even though I really don't like it, there's a sadness in seeing it go and a grieving in seeing it go. And so, so I'm in this really weird, weird place of wanting to do so much to, to build, you know, to bring what's waiting to be born. That's already there. We just have to take the veil off. It's already there. But there is a grieving that's happening. And that, and this idea of hospicing, I'm having to hospice a part of myself that is letting go of a world that really did bring me up, that brought my parents up, that brought my ancestors up. And now I don't want it to be for my grandchildren. So that's where I'm at.

It brings tears to my eyes, like literally. I mean, it Like, you nailed it.

Great.

I mean, about 3 or 4 years ago, I came to the stillness, right? And I had to find stillness to find the wounds that were underneath the pain I was experiencing. I found that the pain was actually like a little X that I put on my body to find where I had hidden and buried my love.

Yes.

Right?

It was disappointment that went, oh, oh, my love is bad? Oh, I better hide it away in this little spot right here. And then years later this spot hurts. And it's like, what the fuck? And then underneath it is the hiding away of the love. And I'm like, oh. And then watching the world decay, I'm like, oh. But this is the only world I've ever known.

Mm-hmm.

And I really, even though I want a new world and, you know, it's, it's not here yet other than in my mind, possibly, right? But the one that I've known and the good and the bad and what makes me a good person, what makes me a slacker and all that stuff, is embedded in this old world, and I'm coming out of it. I'm product of that. And there— you're right, there's so much joy at the coming world, and yet an incredible sadness at the passing of the old world. And it is incredibly sad.

I mean—

Yes.

Because it's all I've ever known.

Yes.

I mean, I speak English. Like, I'm like, okay, so language is part of the prison, right? It's part of what creates the reality I'm experiencing. And I didn't invent that language, and nobody alive now invented that language. So we're in a prison of linguistic structure that was invented by dead people, perhaps.

And Unless they're not. Wonderful. Well, I'm finding even this part of the conversation quite cathartic, actually, Mark. So Hillary and I know each other well now, so we've shared a lot of stories. So hearing a fresh take, like a new voice in our space, I think— I won't speak for you specifically, Hillary, but it feels very good to like Brought in this mission we've been on, you know, her and I and her friend Romila, when we started this Call to the Mothers project. It was the first kind of project where I was going to put effort into this mental health story of mine and journey and the things I care about. So, but Mark, you're kind of giving me a glimpse into the reason for the summit and a movement. And like you were saying, all the people around the world, which I'll tell a quick story about later, how I didn't even know you existed. to some degree because I've been working in other fields, other passions like software and system design. And this mental health thing has always been a bit of a, a big dream or a hobby to some degree, or I was working on my own healing. So I never really went out and researched everyone. But now that I put this video out and Jen McDonald, the amazing networker, started tagging everyone, um, and I'm like, oh my God, like everyone is talking about the same thing. Like they've had all these experiences like I did. So I feel quite cathartic listening to you. But even more specifically, because the last couple months, we were— my wife and my good friend Nico here, we— they've been trying to help me. And I basically used the metaphor that I had this black box, you know, where I put all, all of my emotions. Because to feel, to feel the, the level of intensity of a sensitive, loving heart, it was almost really too much for me to handle, almost in a positive way. I actually thought like, there's a part of me that's scared I'll have a physical heart attack. If I, if I could feel the love that I know is true for me, but also, like you're saying, from conditioning and all the experiences you start to disassociate from. So on a personal level, it's, uh, it's quite beautiful and cathartic to just even hear you describe. And then we're gonna— I'm sure we're gonna hear this hundreds and hundreds of times over and over. So that's one of the reasons to do these playcasts. This is not just a hand-waving conversation. This is about building coherence. You know, building relationships, learning about each other so we don't do it overnight, and finding out what do people love to do, where are their skill sets, what are their resources, how, how can we all co-create something greater than the sum of our parts. So, um, I'm really ecstatic, um, and the conversation is living up to my expectations, uh, in that sense. So, Mark, thank you for being eloquent about How you feel and what your experience has been. I don't know if I've always— I think that's part of my wounding. I don't know if I've spent enough time trying to describe some of that and trying to move beyond it. So for me, this meant this summit and a TV show I want to create is really about, for me, the final step of the hero's journey, like coming home with the elixir, which is some of the solutions and cures and things we're going to be talking about in this conversation and going forward. But I kind of— there's still things I need to let go of and cry about in a sense. And I feel like I'm going to have that opportunity because I'm going to be received and met by people. And it's almost impossible to put into words when you feel like people understand your experience. I'm going to get into some other stuff, but first I'll just pass it back if anyone Wants to popcorn back again based on anything anyone said?

Well, I, I would just like to add that I think what makes this so magical is having us all feel in the same— we're in the same field, if you will, in terms of, uh, we've come into it through, through different pathways, um, but we're now in a very similar field and, and with the opportunity to say, well, now what? You know, like, like, like We can, having established that we're all in the same field, what we would normally do in our old mindset was spend the next 2 weeks, 3 months talking about how we're all in the same field and exploring what that means, as opposed to saying, okay, we've understood, we understand we're in the same field. It doesn't have to, we don't have to spend a long time describing it, you know, because we're all going to have our own unique experiences with that. But now what do we want to do with that? What do we want to do in this field? field. And I think that that's what makes this so exciting because it's now what?

The interesting thing that I see is that, uh, I don't want to be very spiritual, but Creator is driving it, right? And I'm seeing a, a synthesis of every— and I mean everything. So the Holochain, right? The Holochain network, the decentralized server, the decentralized currency, because without changing the currency and the financial aspect, that's one of the key things that keeps us enslaved. The other thing that keeps us enslaved is the idea of life and death, that we're mortal and that we can be killed if we're— if we don't follow directions. So these 2 things are fundamental, and they're fundamental to both mental health, to general well-being, to to everything, the, the well-being of the planet, the well-being of, of all of us collectively. So, and there are people working different parts of this giant thing. And Bret, you were involved, I think, with the Holochain group, right? Somewhat?

I'll share a little bit, yeah. And that's what— I know that, yeah.

That's what brought me to Raymond. That's what brought me to this whole Among other things. It's like, oh, so the current— the financial system is part of the key. The concept of life and death, without emerging it into some cheesy-ass religion or something, um, that causes reactions, uh, it's all on the table right now.

Mm-hmm.

And the connectivity among people is amazing. I mean, like this right now. There's— this will grow. This will, you know, it will attract, and people with different, um, things to bring to the table will show up. Because it's not us, it's Creator doing it.

Yeah.

And we got to do our little parts and shit, but it's still Creator wants the world to get Yeah, I resonate with that.

You know, the word that keeps sticking with me that you've said a few times is fundamental. So, um, part of me, part of me is a very kind of geeky, nerdy sort of philosopher, academic, academician or something like that, and, and spiritualist or whatever the word is, right? Who gives a crap? But fundamental is the key word for me. Um, I put it— I was talking about it in my first video, which is And it relates to your life and death point, which a lot of people don't want to talk about or haven't understood that metaphysics, philosophy, every— like you said, everything has to be on the table for reformation.

Right.

The reason I use the word mental health reformation is based on the Protestant Reformation. They were like, we need to change not the religion, but just the idea that they wanted to change from the institutional level up. They weren't talking about horizontal changes. It was like the policies, the institutions, our thoughts, our beliefs is where things need to be reformed. So, so this, this idea of— I mean, there's plenty of people that will hear our conversation. I could use the word consciousness or awareness or spirituality. I mean, there's plenty of people that will, will be cool with that or resonate. And of course, a wider audience might get lost or confused. But this is the— like, to me, 50% of the mission. of my work that would be part of the summit and a reformation and a TV show, which is having people start under— re-understanding what we even mean by consciousness, sentience, mental well, wellness, illness. Um, because until we get that straight, like you're saying, Marg, we can't act. We can only act from a new set of beliefs, a new set of thoughts, or else, like you said, it's just going to be recreating the same thing in a different guise, a different brand or whatever you want to say. So let's just have a few thoughts between us and share like about this re-understanding. So for me, for example, just as a story, I don't believe that there is such a thing as mental illness. The label, the name, the semantics. Like Mark, I have had experiences. So I often would say I have had the bipolar experience. So first of all, I'm not bipolar. I'm not schizophrenic. I've had a bipolar experience be quite prevalent in my lifetime, to be more specific and precise. So first of all, it's just not an illness because why have we decided to pathologize, which means to sort of victimize or denigrate or whatever the different words, but we've basically taken a spectrum of experiences and created some and said some of them are pathological. Pathological. They're diseased. They're, they're ill. They're wrong, which connotates wrong and sick and less than and all the other things that come with taking infinite experience and pathologizing it rather than celebrating it and saying we all have a different experience. Some of us struggle time to time with our experience. It looks like mood swings. It looks like locking a door 150 times a day. It looks like hearing voices. But those are really just the effects or the appearances of an experience that someone is having. So another reason I don't believe mental illness exists is because it's stupid to call it that because it's not a mental— it's even if I was to say, okay, fine, it's an illness, which I don't agree with, it's just not mental. Most of our neurotransmitters are in the gut, for example, and they keep looking for brain imbalances. It's ludicrous to call these experiences mental illness when they have to do with society, Our conditions, our DNA, and our gene— you know, and our bodies and our minds. It's just actually stupid. So all of these doctors who spend millions of dollars getting their degrees and going to Harvard, who sit in their offices, go around talking about mental illness, they look like jackasses, to be honest, as far as I'm concerned. And I'm not saying that to pick on any single one of them on a personal level. I'm kind of saying that tongue-in-cheek to make a point. That things have to change on the most fundamental level, to bring it back to that word, in order for us to know how to even respond to that. Because once we have a different conception of our experiences, Mark, like you're saying, love, we will then construct or respond with different types of solutions. So instead of the hospitals and the police stations and the drugs and the white jackets, we have— what I call the life part, you know, freely accessible. People go and find their love, and the whole community helps them do that. And they find their love, and they create beautiful things, and they give back because, because they're, they're taken care of and everything is, uh, in flow. So thanks for listening to that part, but I think it's really important. I really want to hear both of your, uh, reflections and, and insights into the, again, re-understanding, reimagining mental I call it perceived mental illness, by the way. I always try to say perceived mental illness because there's no such thing. It's just a perception, Mark. Like you said, it's a linguistic trick. I don't believe it was created out of maliciousness, by the way. I think it's just an evolutionary thing, and that's okay. But the time is over for that. And a lot of people like you, Mark, and a lot of people that I've now discovered because I'm into this are on the same ship, and I couldn't be more excited. So thanks for listening for that riff again. But I'll turn it over to whoever wants to reflect first.

I love the fun part of fundamental and the F-U-N-D part of fundamental.

I don't know if I've done that one yet. Wow, fundamental. That's the tagline of how we're going to get economic support for this. Fundamental. I'm a mental, you're a mental. Yeah. So that's awesome.

So identity, right? So part of the problem in our world is we think we have an identity and it's one thing, right? And we're told, like, you know, we've cut— like, uh, I'm heterosexual, or I'm a homosexual, or I'm this, or I'm that. These are all transitory states of being. You're not heterosexual. When you're having sex, that's when you're heterosexual or homosexual or whatever. Other than that, you're a human being.

Right.

You're not— when you start taking on identities that society presents for you, you start taking on boxes and boundaries of who you are and what you are. Instead of being an infinite possibility that you can be anything at any moment, right? You've closed yourself off to what you could be. And that makes you mental. It makes you crazy. Because you start perpetrating what is clearly a lie. It's absolutely not true. And It's made up because we live actually in our imagination. That's where we really live, right? Everything comes through the sensory stream, it gets processed through our mind, and it gets projected on our imaginal screen. So I see you in my imagination. It's really light particles coming into my eye and getting transformed and turning into a picture of you. And then when you go, that picture remains. And then the next time I see you, I get more sensory data and I update the imaginal thing. But I'm not actually seeing you, ever. There's no way I can ever actually know you. All I have is the imperfect sensory data stream that's coming into my mind and the imperfect linguistic construction patterns that's constructing you. In my imagination. So I never actually get to know the real you or even the real me because it's fluid. In the now, everything is happening and that's the only time it's happening. And what is actually happening is myself interpreting a gigantic amount of sensory data. And turning it into an imaginal reality that I'm living inside of, and then I don't take responsibility for that. Right? It's like, well, but I'm the one doing all the work of creating the reality and experience that I'm living in. I'm the author of my reality, and if I don't accept that, which is illegal in this world. You are required by the external world to accept that there is an external world that happens independent of you. And that may or may not be true. But what is true is that my experience of reality is is my responsibility. I'm the one telling the story of where I came from, who I am, what I am experiencing, who you guys are. I'm the one telling the story, and I'm taking data from you, but it's also coming into this world that I came— that, that I'm— that I came from, that created me, right? It's coming through the language, it's coming through The biases. It's coming through all my training and all my stuff as a child that grew up and is here now going, okay, well, if I become the stillness and remove everything and I'm just sitting here, then I get sensations and I call it hunger or thirst or loneliness or whatever, but they're just sensory sensations. So then I can get to where the programming Oh, okay, so they're just sensations. My reaction to it is something that I made up. Everything. My identity, all made up. Everything is made up. Everything about me, everything about everything I know is all made up. And I'm the one that made it up. I'm the one that made the decision, I'm going to fold my arms like this. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna smoke my cigarette like this, and it's because I saw other people doing it and went, hey, that's the way I'm gonna do it, and then I chose it. I don't have a personality outside of choice. I don't have an identity outside of choice. What we have is choice, and we think we don't have it.

Yeah.

I have to have a drink. Well, that's a choice you made. And it's a choice you're making now, and it's a choice you made then. If you empower yourself and know that you're the one making your reality, you're the one making the stuff, and if you get to that zero point of stillness where you know there's— it's just data, it's just meaningless data coming at me and I'm constructing it. Oh, that hurt my feelings. Well, okay, is it useful that it hurt your feelings? Because if not, you can change the little algorithm that says, whenever I see this, I'm going to have my feelings hurt, right? Whenever I hear this, I'm going to have my— my react response is going to be that my feelings are hurt and you did it. It's like, no, the algorithm did it.

Yeah, choice is the key word. I'm gonna come— I'm gonna— I, I mean, for me, I love I love that word, actually. I'm gonna come back to that. Hillary, do you have any thoughts that you wanted to share on the last couple shares?

Yeah, I guess I'd just like to share one of my big— one of my big peeves is the fact that we've given the brain all of this power, and we've said that we, you know, we have separated ourselves from nature because we have these big brains. We have separated ourselves from lots of living beings because we have these big brains. And yet, I would love to see how the brain can become a partner with the other players in the body. It doesn't drive it. It's a partner. And it's very similar to moving what we're talking about, moving hierarchical structures. One of the first hierarchical structures I think we have to change is the one in our body. And saying, okay, brain, you run the show. And, and I've done healing with people where I've literally had to, I've literally had to undam the, the, the energy field between the head and the heart because it had been so clogged with somebody telling them, oh, your brain is the most important, your brain is the most important. And then, and then of course, we've discovered, of course, there's mirror neurons in the stomach. And so we, I don't even think it's a 3-brain system. I think it's an integrated system. I wouldn't even give Just because they're neurons doesn't mean it's a brain. It means that's a communication network. And, and they're all part of the control. There is no one saying you're in control and the rest is— so we— so my whole thing is, and I remember going into a session and asking nature, do you have mental illness? Of course it doesn't.

Right.

Because What it would deem mental illness is evolution. And it's saying that there's a breakdown of the current reality in order to evolve. And that's when a species, when any species does a breakdown, it's getting ready to change into evolution. So those are the 2 pieces for me, is that, is that the biggest hierarchy is all the power we give intellect, all the power we give brains, all the power we give— and they're amazing tools, no question. But they've come at a cost of that power has come at a cost, just like it has in our governments everywhere else with hierarchical structures. It's come at a cost of what's going on inside our own bodies and how there's I think the liver has a lot to provide. I think the kidneys have. I think that they have knowledge inside them. Our kidneys hold our qi, and they have enormous knowledge that we have buried ancestrally that we don't connect to. So so again, I just think that you know in terms of of understanding the and out the algorithms have been very much. geared to brain dominant. And I think that now if we start to shift those algorithms to be much more decentralized in our own bodies, then we start to have a— we start to have a very different experience, which then can get manifested in the outside world.

Excuse me one second, I have to go to the bathroom.

Right on. Well, we'll, uh, we'll continue. You know, it's funny, Hilary, I'm quite a fundamentalist around this idea of— it's popular now called idealism. Well, idealism is not new, it's old, but there's a new breed of physicians, metaphysicians, philosophers reinvigorating this idea of idealism, which is also highly tied to original philosophy from the Indus Valley known as non-duality or some Eastern type of religions and spiritualities. And then during the Enlightenment time, it was sort of the Immanuel Kant and, and then the German philosophers were talking about it's always— and really the, the premise is, is that everything is mental in a sense, that there is really no such thing as matter. In and of itself, as Mark said, matter is not something that is outside of consciousness. So according to idealism, it's more like everything is mind. Everything, everything is actually mind. And then what appearances are what mind looks like from a separate border. So in a sense, and I think we'll have a part 2 sometime where we'll go more into specific conversations someday. In a sense, there really is no such thing as a brain. There is no such thing as neurons. This is to an idealist, really, in a sense that like they only become They only exist when we start putting words and some— again, the linguistics is how we tell the story of the experience we're having of the mental processes. So there is a mental process like chi, you know, like a liver. It's not that that thing doesn't exist on a fundamental level. It's just that even the idea that we have a brown thing in a body called the liver and there's neurons and blood That's our fiction. That's the way we conceive of something that's almost intangible, you know, that's almost unknowable. It's almost this infinite thing that has patterns according to idealism, by the way. Again, it's just that it's all about patterns of energy of this, of mind. And it just looks like things when one of us as a separate individual, you know, looks inside my skull or takes an fMRI, we see what it looks like. A brain is like what your mental activity looks like when you're looking at it from across a separate boundary. So I'm quite interested in, in really going all the way to some degree with the, the idea of the fundamental nature of reality, and then bringing also those cutting-edge physicists and philosophers into the conversation, because that is an important piece of the puzzle of redefining mental health in general. So there's a big sea change going on just for the geeks out there. It's everywhere, Mark, like you said. It's on the table everywhere. In economics through decentralization and cryptocurrency, in governance through new forms of governance, and also in physics and metaphysics through this idea of idealism coming back on the stage because quantum mechanics experiments are actually showing that there's only infinite awareness.

Right.

That's where the quantum mechanics and the math are are going, but there's a big inertia with what we're all talking about here, which is an overreliance on the appearances known as the story we tell. That is the imaginal realm, like you were saying, Mark. So anyway, that's just a riff for me on idealism and this consciousness or awareness being fundamental. Experience, like you're saying, Mark.

Yeah.

Experience is fundamental. Everything else is up for grabs as far as I'm concerned. Everything else, the way we name it, is all up for grabs.

And even the experience. So, so here's the thing. I think that we've cut— we're coming out of 1,000 years of being hypnotized by the concept of mortality. Everything that is the problem in our reality revolves around the concept of mortality. And I tell And I— when I identify as mortal, I suffer, but, but only 100% of the time. When I identify as immortal, nothing here has any— nothing can fuck with me. I'm immortal. You can't kill me. You can't tell me what to do. You can't fucking— my mind can't even tell me what to do.

to do.

My brain can't tell me what to do. Everything physical about me emerges from the concept of mortality, right?

Mm-hmm.

Am I actually here? Do I actually have a liver? Well, as long as I believe that I'm mortal and believe that I'm in a duality world, then yeah, I got a body and I got a thing and I actually have hunger. So if I'm in my Zen place, right? I'm in meditation and I'm all in perfect bliss and everything. Then all of a sudden my body goes, dude, there's a sensation here. And I'm like, okay, what's that sensation? Well, okay, our programming says it's hunger. Well, okay, well, let's pretend that it's not hunger and it's just a sensation. And it comes and it passes. That Zen place, that immortality place where you actually reside, right? And then we descend down into this thicker and thicker dimension of duality, which— is it actual duality? Do I— I mean, it looks like it. It really looks like it. But it only has meaning If I'm mortal. If I'm immortal, there is no real duality. There's just eternity, and I'm it, and I'm the eternal consciousness. And when I identify with that, that's that group mind, that's that totality, and I'm in bliss. I'm like, nothing can get me.

And then we can play. We can, we can incarnate all the time, anytime, in, in whatever potential or character we want to. This is a massive thing. I mean, it gets quite philosophical for some people, but ultimately it will be part of the mental health reformation because it's, it's ageless. This is like the perennial wisdom coming back to be applied again to different disciplines and different parts of civilization. So—

But I also think, but I also think it opens up, and I think what— if I could say this and then open it back over to Mark to talk about the rehab concept you're working on. But to me, a lot of what the healing is that people are actually undertaking is soul healing. It's not personality healing or just everyday trauma. So while— and that's immortal work. That isn't—

Right.

You know, so, so that isn't just— it's not only bliss that we can feel when we're in that infinite field and that feeling of— and it certainly is fabulous when you could go to the place of your own immortality. And how I do it when I put a sort of a healer's cloak on and go into circumstances that are very difficult, and that I can only hold it so long because, because I'm tired. But, but, you know, where anything's possible, where it doesn't get you down, where it's just part of the journey, where, you know, all that stuff. But at the same time, I do think that the opportunity to do, to do soul healing, I think, in this realm is probably some of the most magical work. And that isn't— that is with using the fun and, and not having to go back and relive past lives or any of It's about bringing that sense of joy back in, but recognizing this is a path that's been traveled by that soul many times. And here is an opportunity to do some healing, that some fundamental healing of the soul, and, and, and for other— so that for other incarnations it doesn't have to carry that burden. anymore. And I think for also for some— I look at my own son and I think in many cases he is doing intergenerational healing for, for, for the whole family and carrying intergenerational healing as part of that.

Right.

So, I think this— it's the yin and yang of both that beautiful bliss of feeling immortal and that, you know, don't touch me because I know you can't touch me because I'm immortal. On the other hand, there's also I think that work that is so precious, that is really in the realm of, of, of, of very— and healing isn't even the right word. I don't think we've got the right word yet, but that, but that soul regeneration and, uh, to allow for the soul to come forward in its magnificence, because, because, which is what, why that, why we've incarnated in the first place, in many cases.

The identity structure. So I'm in the entertainment business, right? I created this character, Mark Trance, right? And others around me helped me. They were like, dude, you do this repetitive music that's hypnotizing, and you talk kind of slow. Did you take NLP? And all this shit. And I'm like, well, okay, yeah, it's just how I just arrived at this. I don't know, man. But I have identities, and I remember making the choices. I remember making the choices, and part of it was because I was—I had trauma as a child, right? Mall station and da da da da. So I had a secret, right? And the secret. That I held was in me, and it informed my making choices about how I'm going to stand, how I'm going to smoke my cigarette, how I'm going to stand in the hallway, or how— whether I'm going to cross my legs this way or this way. All these things were choices that were embedded in my masculinity, in my projection of self that I present to the world. world. And I remember them. And so thusly, I remember constructing my identity. And once I got that I can construct any identity I want, and they're like clothes hanging in a closet, it's like a jacket that I can— oh, this is Mark Trance, now I'm Mark Trance. Okay, that's— there's a set of stuff that I've picked out that represents that guy. And then there's Mark Dillon, which has a set of stuff that represents that guy. It's kind of because he didn't really have— he didn't think he had a lot of choices.

Hmm.

In creating that identity. He thought those choices were imposed upon him, like you were born on this day, uh, you know, these are your parents, this is where you came from, this is your socioeconomic background, all these things. But Mark Trans, all the choice was mine. Other than people going, okay, you're kind of monotonous, and therefore, like, you're the trans guy. Okay, cool. I'm going to be that guy, the monotonous guy. So that's the power of creative creation, creative self-responsibility for creating your own identity. how you respond to things. You can take control of those algorithms that, like, instead of knee-jerk reacting or reacting, you're taking in the sensory data, processing it through your heart. Because the heart, that's where you were as a child, loving everything, every little thing. That's what I found in my Mm-hmm. Months of stillness and isolation was, oh, I was a loving child, I loved every single thing, and then I found out, or something said to me, like, you know, you got to put your love away, you got to toughen up that part, you can't just cry when you're sad, or, you know, you got to use your mind to overcome these emotional reactions to things. And that's when I started to put my love into little compartments. And because I can't go out and win the race if I love my opponent and feel sad that my opponent is going to lose because I won. So I have to take that little piece of compassion that I have for my fellow human being and put that away somewhere in a little black box somewhere so I can go compete and win. And we all got this at some point in our young lives. We all got this. And that's where the separation from heart going into mind and physiology happens.

Right.

Instead of coming from the heart in this loving, I love everything, That we started compartmentalizing and taking the love and stuffing it away somewhere so that we could be more intellectually, well, that's right and wrong, and decide shit like that. Like, and that's what makes us all crazy because there isn't that. There's no payoff actually there. Like, we don't become happier, more well-adjusted people. We don't become better. We don't— we get a little bit more money, we get to win the fucking 50-yard dash. I mean, but so what? So I got a little fucking running gold guy on a pedestal, like big fucking deal. What I had to do to get that.

We're gonna make the Trance Award— we're gonna give out the Trance Awards at the mental health— at the summit. In honor of you, we will, we will have a little gold statue. So I agree with Hillary. Mark, tell us a little bit about what you're up to as far as like creativity or the production out, like your external, with the rehab. Is that a project? Is it a vision? Is it your daily life? What— tell us something about that.

Well, I had to save a very good friend and take him to rehab. And Raymond, uh, um, so Raymond was staying at this house. I don't know if you know, uh, American Apparel.

Mm-hmm.

Um, the guy that owned American Apparel has this big mansion in LA. He's a friend, he's a mutual friend of another friend who is Charlie, who I didn't know was such a raging alcoholic. And me and Charlie and Ray were staying in this mansion. And, uh, I'm like, okay, Charlie, you're behaving a little weirdly. And it turns out that he was pounding a half of a handle of vodka a day, approximately. And, uh, so I'm like, okay, dude, we've got big things we're doing. I, I— you're going into rehab. Ray had already left. You're going into rehab. Uh, I got a little bit of resistance, but not really. But I, I have very little money, so Ray kicked down 6 grand to put him in a rehab facility. And I got somebody who cut us a deal from $1,500 a day to $1,200 a day. And so I put him in this rehab facility. Ray paid for it. I'm like, okay, Ray, you're a brother. You did something. for out of the blue for another just because, you're golden. And putting— they— I put him in there all kinds of like— he was like almost toxic in his alcohol level, like it was almost poison, and I didn't— couldn't even tell at all. I mean, not at all. And so they called me the next day Saying, hey, can you come and get your friend and take him to the ER? We found him last night out on the street talking to invisible people. I'm like, wait a minute, I paid you $1,500 fucking dollars a day. You took all of his belongings. You're basically a house that's operating as a semi-jail. And you can't keep track of him? I gotta come up from an hour away and grab him and take him to the ER and walk him through the ER room and all that. Well, I paid you 6 grand up front, you know. And then I started digging into the whole thing and I'm like, oh my God, this industry is just like atrocious. I mean The, the— this and the mental health industry, these 2 industries. This one, the, the rehab is big money, really big money. So you got the rehab industry, you got the mental health industry, and then you got the end-of-life industry. And these 3 things are the core fucking problems in our world right now. We ignore end of life, we pretend that it's not going to happen. Even though we tell ourselves that we're mortal and it absolutely is gonna happen. But we hide all that shit away. We hide dysfunction. We hide away the inability to integrate into a dysfunctional society and call that mental illness. And then we call the sedation required to integrate into a dysfunctional society, we call that addiction. It's like, wait a minute, the problem is the fucking dysfunctional society. It ain't fucking people's reaction to it, right? And so that's where I came to with, like, I was like, okay, I'm in the music business, I've been in the entertainment business, I've been part of the psychedelic movement and all that. And it's like, all right, so I have a certain level of responsibility here. Not only because I— well, just a certain level of responsibility. So I've gone now to all the major promoters in the world who I know, and I'm enrolling them in the concept of rehabbing the rehab. And they, they get it. They get that they have a certain level of responsibility here, and they really want to support So a big part of me has been trying, going around trying to get some funding and some support for this thing, because without the support and without the correct conversation, it's just throwing a band-aid on the same thing and trying to integrate people into a dysfunctional reality and da-da-da-da-da-da until we get the deeper level. of hiding our love away and suppressing our heart over our mind, we're not really going to fix anything. Not that anything is broken. We're transitioning to this beautiful world. So the sadness that you feel for the passing of the old world is legit because it was beautiful. I mean, it took men to be men bashing rocks together to build this huge crazy-ass thing that we got. Okay, cool. I'm living right now like a king 100 years ago. I mean, no king had it as good as I do. I mean, not nobody, nobody on earth.

Right on. I want to ask you a couple questions about that, but I, I'll just point out that This is a perfect segue, you know, for the last 10 or 15 minutes of tonight's conversation. I'm happy to do it again, Mark, by the way. These ones I want to do like the hour and a half version. I know some podcasts have now gotten into the 4 or 5 hour. Some of the podcasts I even watch have gone into that. I'm not even opposed to that, but I didn't mentally get prepared. So today's going to be more of the hour and a half version. So I want to ask you a couple questions, but yeah, it's really— I mean, my part of my big story is how I was treated when I was first— I'm 47 now, so my first, uh, spiritual emergency slash psychotic episode was 1994, and, and I was treated the way you can imagine, blah blah blah. And everyone, we've all gone through— Hillary has had similar experiences now with her family members. Like, her only options are these terrible options that create more trauma than, than they— than you have going in. So fun And again, fundamentally, to some degrees, the Mental Health Summit and the movement that I— I don't mean I like just me, I just mean because I've made the call. Like, so in a sense it's me or I because I put a call out and I have to, to some degree, I want to steward it, or at least like you're saying, be responsible for the call I put out. I'm not saying it won't change maybe, but until it does, it's like I say I, but really it's me and Hillary and Romy and all of you. And Mark, like, it's, it's a fine line, but I'll just use I sometimes, you know, because I feel strongly creatively, like you're saying, Mark, like the creative, a creative, we all have a creative inspiration, like certain things we'd like to see happen. But, um, so for me, that this movement and Summons, everything is not about changing minds or destigmatization. I've said that in my original video. I'll just say it again here because it's a fresh audience someday, maybe. This is about innovating. This is about coming up with solutions like post-entrepreneurial, post-philanthropy, post-creative, meaning we can take any pieces, for me, of any of those things, but we've got to build something emergent, something we've never seen before. And I want it planetary-wide, and it has to be these new solutions. So I'm super excited that you've been looking into it. I want to do a part 2 where we just talk about these things. And my one question mark was, how has it been going? Have you found any people, for the love of God, for the love of everyone, everyone, I will ask this question. Have you found any people that at minimum might be open to calling in their networks or sharing some resources so we can get on with the business of like doing it?

Yeah.

Like, have you had any success or how has it been going for you? Because I'm going to skip all the boring shit. And I don't mean it because we need to, uh, get money tomorrow, but I want to know, like, how has it been going and what can we do? Is there anything we can do as well to come together and inspire some of the people you've met to, like, step into the next level and kick something off? Music is the best place to start, man. So I'm, I'm so thrilled that my first conversation about this summit was with someone who loves music so much. So it's really, for me, the most— The most appropriate thing to have happened. So yeah.

Because it's sublingual, it's, it's vibratory, right? And because I've lived the last 30 years in Hollywood, right, uh, the, the most damaged are the sons and daughters of the elite. Yes, right. These kids are fucked up, man. I mean, like, over and over in rehab Over and over with the same cycle, which they pay exorbitant amounts of money for. Right. Oh, dude, they're pouring billions of dollars. I mean, collectively, it's like gigantic. So that's who I'm targeting first. Like, I'm go— I've got a couple of poster boys, right, that are well known in Hollywood and in the entertainment business that have alcohol problems, mostly alcohol. I'm finding that alcohol is Really, really insidious. I mean, it's just deeply like just like oh my God, and I'm getting kick-ass responses. I mean, killer because I'm also kind of parade parading well-loved characters, right? In the the milieu that are well known. Like he's a problem. He keeps driving the the— his— like, well, you know, Coachella, the art director for Coachella is a really good friend of mine. He is a raging alcoholic. They kept finding him in the ditch with his golf cart turned over, and he's drunk, and like they got to take— get care of— and you'll hear this over the radio, like, oh, you got to go get Phil, he's like, blah. So saying to— and, you know, rather than Because he's the founding member of a lot of things, right? Like, it's like, okay, so what are we gonna do with this guy, right? We're just gonna like, you know, let him go self-destruct over in the corner because like he doesn't want to. He wants to be a part of things. So how are we gonna do this? And I, I've approached, uh, Insomniac, uh, Live Nation, Coachella, all these people, uh, Cool World, I think that's, uh, Disco Donnie. So I know all these people. So I'm putting together a business plan. Actually, I'm not putting together a business plan because I suck at that kind of thing.

Go figure.

But I put out to various people, look, we need a business plan, some kind of a business plan that I can take to people, because I've got the one-pager, the elevator pitch. I mean, I have an elevator pitch that goes, okay, so look guys, we have a problem. It's the rehab industry is a $4.5 billion a year industry with an 85% failure rate, right? Which is to say it has 11% or 12% self-admitted success rate, 11 or 12%. That's their success rate. And, uh, you know, and I know, and everybody knows failures in this thing. With all this money, we can't get above an 11%. This is an industry that is up from the brain section. This is the industry that needs disruptive tech. This industry is ripe for whoever steps in here. And actually brings it up to even 50% or 40% or 30%. Whoever steps in here is going to be incredibly wealthy if that's your motive, right? But also instrumental in making the world a better place.

Okay, so I just, just sort of— I've been dying here because you— because what you're saying is right up our alley. Like, this is is right up, right up our alley. Like, there was a— we have a show on CBC called Cross Country Checkup, which is on radio. And 2 weeks ago, there was a spot on the opioid crisis, and then the fact that the British Columbia government is now going to allow small amounts of hard drugs to be decriminalized because— for whatever reasons anyway. The woman who opened that show was a mother whose daughter had died of an overdose, and not suicide, it was an overdose because of unclean drugs.

Right.

And her daughter had— she had spent half a million dollars on rehab, and, um, and her daughter had cycled in and out. She's— all they are are glorified 12-step programs. They'll tell you all this other bullshit, but that's all they are. And they're not doing anything. They didn't do— and my daughter would get all excited over because it was dressed up to look different, but in reality it was the same old bullshit.

And because of the insurance companies.

Yes, exactly.

Insurance companies only fund 12-step programs.

Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely. So here's what, what, what we have done to try and tackle this, because there is no silver bullet for any of this.

Right.

We're all individualized beings. We have a very different rehab story. We're going to all have different rehab and recovery stories, because there were different circumstances and conditions and chemistry and soul and all that stuff we've been talking about. So what we've created is a process to try and bring to light, first of all, and we based it on Alice in Wonderland. And it's a process that starts with the Hall of of doors, which is where she fell down the rabbit hole, and all she had were these doors, the big doors, little doors couldn't get through. And, and so we created our own hallway of doors, which is looking at the cracks and the problem and, and, and the breakdowns in the system, which is starting to become a tipping point of where it's really bad. But you've got to start looking very candidly at where the breakdown's happening. The next part is the grieving, because in the story she cries so hard, poor Alice, that she creates pool of tears, and which becomes the sea of tears. So we're focusing on the pool of tears, which is what's the grief that we're experiencing around this. So if it— if addiction services, or if that is the topic, then in the system, that's what we're looking at, the grief. And then we profile really different ways of even seeing addiction, or looking at addiction. And like John Harry has done this— Johann Hari has done this amazing work in looking at the fact that addiction isn't the chemical break, it's a connection that's missing.

Right.

There's some other things that are missing in someone's life that is causing it. And, and so to be able to tap into that is going to take different things. It's not going to take a silver bullet or an app, or a 12-step program, it's going to have to be very carefully, you know, it's like, it's like, what we see, for an example, is having these wonderful, wonderful series of services that navigators help you identify combinations of things to look at how that might help. And to have these physically located somewhere where you're actually in this amazing park, and we call it the Life Park, where you can experience all kinds of different things, equine therapy and sound therapy, as well as looking at different kinds of of creative activities for your own inventions. At the same time, you're, you know, you're dealing with, with, with what is the patterns that have become addicted. So what we do, what we do in the Taste of Wonderland process is that we profile some of these new modalities. And then the last part at the, at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party is you take a crack from the Hallway of Doors, you take a pain from the Full of Tears, you take a new idea You get a wow, cool concept that coming out of the looking glasses, which is where we put all the cool new ideas, and you put them together into a different approach. So everything is grounded. It's not just flippant, imagine, oh, this might work. It's grounded inside a breakdown. It's grounded inside a grief, but it's elevated and, and, and, and literally transformed through the new idea. And then we collect The whole idea is that we collect these, these, all of these concepts that are emerging, and we start to see what is the overall picture that's starting to form when we have all these people playing with these different ideas. And so it's about doing action research, number one, on breakdowns and pain points and new— and we continue to collect all these amazing new modalities that are coming that are amazing. At the same time, There are ideas that get generated at each session that actually can be implemented right away in someone's life. But the idea is that is bringing consciousness to the situation in a way that is research-based, but it's also inspirationally based. And it's based on the fact that this is a movement to create. If we if we put rehab in the middle and said we're going to look at the rehab system, what it's causing, but also where these new modalities are, what they look like, and have people do this research collaboratively together, then something new will start to emerge, something that meets a range of different needs, a range. And, but also what's so fascinating about it, Marc, is that as people go through the Taste of Wonderland process, hope comes, real hope. hope comes. That's not airy-fairy hope, but you can see the possibilities. And we just— just one last thing on it. We did run a physical version of A Taste of Wonderland in Malawi, Africa, last month.

Really?

And— or in March, because we had— Bret was phenomenal. He got us a donor. And so we found $20,000 US that came in, and we were able— and how it happened was I was doing a broadcast about the Taste of Wonderland and Call to the Mothers in Canada a year ago. And this young man from, from Zomba, Malawi heard it, and he contacted us and said he would like to bring Call to the Mothers to Zomba, Malawi. And that's when we did a physical version of Taste of Wonderland. And we'll send you a little link that you can get, you can see that, what, just a little presentation about what happened. But it was magical. And these women, there were 35 women who did the physical Hall of Pool of Tears down by the river where they grieved and they— and all of that. And then they went into a looking glass marketplace where they got to experience different, different experiences of healing. And then they created new projects for their village. And, and, and what was so magical about it was that these women had 4 days before been part of a cyclone and, and, and flooding that had come through their village.

Wow.

4 days later, they're doing a pilot of A Taste of Wonderland and came up with such amazing ideas that one of the members of the— who participated gave a piece of land to the Cult of the Mothers as a demonstration center for the ideas that came out of it. So we know that the process works. And I'm just suggesting it as a way of saying how to get these— how to have conversations with people that is rather than a business plan saying this is the answer, is saying there's a process we'd like— I'm just suggesting this is something often— there's a process that you could get involved in that actually brings to light the issues that, and at the same time starts to look at some different modalities in which to tackle this massive, massive problem that we have.

Yeah, it's going to take all of humanity to pull this off. Part of the— for me, the connectivity, right? So the connection between— the heart connection between human beings, right? Which is really the connectivity. That's what's been kind of like percolated out of our civilization, right?

Yeah.

Even though we can connect on Zoom and whatever, the real heart connection Is difficult, right? And but so Ray was up in Crestone, Colorado. I went up there to visit him. There's like 18 different spiritual retreat centers there of different spirit religious backgrounds. And I was like, holy shit, this is a whole— this is a trippy place right here. And then I've been doing these healing, these, uh, ayahuasca, these ceremonies, plant ceremonies. Ayahuasca, yeah. And I'm getting people from ashrams in Pennsylvania and, you know, and monasteries. And like, you know, one couple came and they're not really a couple, but they came and they're like, yeah, we're going to San Francisco to start a new monastery there. We've been living in this one here. And I'm As I'm looking at this, I'm like, okay, okay, so I don't have to invent the wheel here.

No.

Right? There's a whole bunch of places that are already set up, right? All I have to do is connect the fucked up with the heal. So Ray passed away. He left me this giant RV. It's like a 40-foot huge-ass RV. And I'm like, okay, so this is my bus.

Okay.

Okay, my poster boys, 2 poster boys. Okay, you guys are the sons of the rich, you've got serious— so what we're going to do, I'm going to put you on the bus and we're going to take you to Crestone, Colorado, and you're going to go to any one of these retreat centers and you're going to go through that. And then we're going to go to this monastery over there and you can hang out there. And we're going to go to Sedona so you can look at beautiful things and feel the whole spiritual stuff, and we're going to connect you to these centers. Rather than me trying to build a center, although I've got that also going in Lake County, but rather than doing that, I want to connect everything that's already going on, and then the person can pick where he gets off the bus.

Right.

It's like you get on the bus. Who are you and what's your purpose? Why are you here? Who are you and why are you here? Who are you and why are you here? Who are you and why are you here? Who are you and why are you here? And we go to the different places and they can figure it out. We're helping you, and here's all these different modalities we can bring you to. You pick what works for you. You pick what gives you joy. You— and if you find a spot, like you're in Sedona and you go, Mark, I really— this is it. This is the place I want to be. I found my passion. Well, then get on the bus— off the bus and live that. And, you know, so that's where it's at for me, is the connectivity is really critical. And that's why I'm excited here. And that's Why, when you mentioned that on Facebook, I was like, okay, bingo, I'm in.

Well, what you're doing, what's really fascinating is how, how similar it is to what we're doing with— on a virtual scale is we're saying all the answers are out there. You don't have to invent them. You don't have to create them. You've got to connect them. And we're saying that, like, a lot of these services that people desperately need are not being connected. And there's no synergistic pathway. There's no map that says, here's these various options. So what you're doing is on the physical plane of saying, here's some physical spaces and my bus is going to—

But they're also not accessible. Like, let's be clear about that. No matter how much we could see they were connected, it costs a lot of money for people to take an RV across the country. or to live somewhere or to eat organic food.

Yeah.

So the other side of the coin for me is like, how do we make this stuff, for me, freely accessible? We should be finding more creative ways to actually support the money side of it, like using like concerts, NFTs, private donations. You know, with permaculture and technology, one, in the past they would normally might have needed $200 million to build the Betty Ford Clinic or something like that, right? Maybe like in the old days. But now if some— if somebody actually gave a $200 million stipend, you could build— I'll use America because I'm from America, you know, that's because that's— I know it better. Like, you know, if you had $200 million in America with our intentions, you could automatically put one center, physical center, in every state that can house 100 people because you would grow your own food, you'd have solar energy, you'd have Earthships, you know, you'd have 3D printing, like the— and then I would tell the— if I was looking at like a business plan, I would tell the investor, look, what we're going to do is those people, we're going to give them the tools they need on every level to become who they are, like you're saying, Mark, and they will naturally give back with cryptocurrencies and NFTs and the new— they will come up with new innovations and art that is just I mean, the story of it alone would generate money. And if you documented it and you had it on Netflix, blah, blah, blah. There's actually a lot of ways, although I personally don't believe a movement has a business plan, but I totally get— I would also, by the way, Marc, if you ever ask them, say, do you need a business plan or do you need a plan that shows you how we're going to use your money and how it's not going to be for nothing. So, like, if I, like, you know, you say to them, if I could show you, if you gave me $10 million or $50 million, how that's going to do this, and then that is going to be sustainable this way, that might be all that they're looking for. Unless you got only people that are looking for, like, you know, they're angel investors. But I assume some of your contacts would be happy to be philanthropists.

Yeah.

If they just felt comfortable that it wasn't going to be a one-off thing that really didn't lead to anything. But I think it's more about what is it going to do more than a business plan, so to say. It's just like, what is your— what is your plan in a sense? Like, what is your plan to make— to make this thriving, you know?

I mean, years ago, 20 years ago, I thought, okay, so I'm going to gather people out in the desert under the full moon, have a giant sound system, Dose them all with LSD and fucking transform their fucking lives. And I did it. I, I've been doing it for almost 30 years, right? We just celebrated our Moon Tribe 30-year anniversary, right? But what I found was, okay, one night, oh, that's a little bit dangerous. Okay, we better have at least 2 nights. Well, fuck, we better have actually 3 nights because you guys are all fucked up and you can't be driving home when you're all fucked up, so we're gonna get you stabilized and grounded before you go home. Unfortunately, they had to go home, dude. They have these transformational fucking experiences and then they got to go home.

I love when you said that about the dog-eat-dog. I— my whole vision is they don't go home, they go inward with each other and create something new. There's no— you had it so right for me. Like, I have no inclination to have people get well and then send them back into the rat race to work 80 hours a week. That's another ludicrous thing. But you're right, the whole mental health system, which I know better than the addiction system, by the way, the whole mental health system is premised again fundamentally on materialism, that we're just machines who are mortal. So therefore, we must get you well to get back on the gravy train and take care of your family and pay your bills and make sure that you're— mortgages on time. And that is just like, this is why we're talking such an inversion here. I mean, this is like, it's no joke. I'm not going backwards. Like, we're gonna go like boldly go where no addict has ever gone before.

And everybody's doing it. The DAOs, right? The digital autonomous organizations, the, the TAS, the temporary autonomous zone. The, you know, I mean, these are— it's coming. It's the, the thoughts are coming from everywhere. The ideas are coming, and they've been coming, right? And it's just a culmination of this group consciousness that's bringing this all together.

Yeah, right on. Cool. Well, let's have a final round of, um, any kind of summation, version, conclusion slash Gratitude, whatever, whatever kind of finale either one of you can muster.

I want to close with this. Okay, so when I came out of my stillness, I found out that, okay, so basically I want to be an oxytocin junkie. I want to be addicted to oxytocin, and I want to be able to administer it to myself at will. And how do I do that? So the way I figured out how to do it is that I love you. I grew up with, oh, I love you, and feeling it, right? Falling in love with people, places, and things, but mostly people. And I had the happy ever after notion. And so I love you, and then it didn't turn out too happy ever after, and so I hate you, and blah blah blah, and all this stupid shit. But the I love you releases oxytocin into the bloodstream. So if I just start saying, I love you, and programming myself, programming, hacking my endocrine system, so that when I go to sleep at night, I just repeat, I love you, I love you, and then I imagine somebody I loved and feel the love and say, I love you, then I'm training my body to release the oxytocin and I feel it. And then I start loving everybody and everything and I say it. And I say it all the time to every human being I encounter, and it is the best fucking weapon of life I've ever encountered. It's like the people that don't respond positively look fucked up. I mean, they just look fucked up to everybody else, anybody that's in hearing distance or visual distance. So there's— you raise the bar. of any relationship encounter automatically to a heart-centered level when you come in with joy and love and expressing it freely. They either respond and feel the oxytocin released in themselves, or they've— they're so blocked off that they can't do it. So if my mantra in life now is I go to sleep with I love you on my lips and I wake up with I love you on my lips, and I repeat it throughout the day, and it works. It's the fucking key to everything. I mean, it works self and externally, internally and externally. So that's it.

Right on.

I love that. It's very similar to what I was taught years ago with HeartMath. in terms of freeze frame and bringing someone you love into, literally into your heart or thing, whatever it was, and just allowing that energy to come in, connect to it, and allow it to flow. And, and sometimes I would just bring a little bunny rabbit in, you know, just the idea of the cutest little bunny rabbit. It was just— and what that— what was funny is that rabbits represent fear for me in a lot of symbolism. And so it was like I was bringing my fear in and to love it. But I totally agree with you, Marc. And my final thoughts are around the fact that how do we support each other in the various endeavors we're at? And how could this summit be a vehicle of supporting what you're doing and the kind of— this such a wonderful passion to really totally— let's get rehab out of the way. We shouldn't even have rehabs. They're not about rehab, right? It's not even about rehab. It's about individuals that are struggling to find life again, and to reconnect to life in a form that means— makes sense for them, that has meaning for them, that has power for them. And once— we truly believe that once, from the mental health view, and I believe this for addiction, once you start to feel a connection to something that is higher than you, not a higher power, but a calling, an invocation of something that is your heart and your body just responds. You can't wait to get up in the morning to think about doing that. That then leads you into saying, okay, well, how do I get healthy in order to do that? How to find and cutting through all the shit to find what is that? And I think that whatever we want to call it. It's, it's got— we're gonna say our goal is gone. Gone will be the days where you talk about mental illness. Gone will be the days when you talk about addiction. Gone will be the days when you talk about rehab, because they won't even be part of our vocabulary, because it would be a very different scenario.

Right? Yeah, we want to be on the other side where those things don't even exist.

Alternative reality, most definitely. I'm gonna keep it really simple. And maybe you two can follow me. And then I'm just gonna hit the end button. 'Cause I wanted to end like that. So Mark, thank you. Hillary, thank you. I love you.

Love you all.

I love you guys. I love you guys.