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Before I start, here is an unusual invitation for women only. My partner Magdalena is starting an intimate women's circle, a 29.5-day exploration of women’s cyclical nature, the mysteries of the Feminine realms, the Moon & the Womb space.

Circle starts tomorrow, September 14th. More details on yin.institute

A few days ago, I wrote about receiving one of my first healings during a daytime ceremony while walking in nature in Peru.

I have received this comment:

Great story again. Thanks. But you leave us expecting more when saying it’s healing... then “healing what? It’s not the right time to discuss this.” 😀... oh well, let’s be patient!

You received healings, but for what? Good question.

It will take many newsletters to answer this question more comprehensively, but I can already share one healing.

“Healings” come in many ways and many forms.

In our Western societies, we get mainly healing when we are sick. We see a doctor, take medication, and sometimes get surgery or hospital admission. It generally works well. I use it too when I need it, fortunately quite rarely.

Mind health and depression, the so-called “silent killer,” are much more subtle and harder to identify and solve.

Back to the question, healing what? The mind.

“Change your story, change your life” came to mind.

Spending time with my baby, I noticed an apparent behavior only babies have to such an extreme. He is busy with something, like, say, a car toy.

There is a story going on about the car. What is it? What is it for? What color is it? Has the baby made the connection with the cars in the street? He suddenly seems fascinated with the car until he decides it’s not interesting anymore and drops it on the floor.

Then, he will turn his attention to a flower in the garden. Everything is of interest and to be discovered. The flower contains all the magic in the universe for him. Baby will touch it, smell it maybe, and even grab it. It’s like he saw the stars in the sky for the first time. Until he sees enough of that flower, and let’s say the cat shows up, it’s all about the cat for only a few minutes.

We would call this behavior in an adult “Attention Deficit Disorder” and see it as a problem, but it is beautiful for babies, right?

What I see here is the extreme flexibility of a baby's brain.

A baby's brain does not have much past knowledge, memories, and experiences; therefore, the baby is interested in everything and keeps changing his attention from one point of interest to the next. The baby’s brain is pure and open to everything, especially to constant change.

As we grow older, we lose that flexibility as our mind gets heavily busy and packed with conditioning, stories, habits, things we like, dislike, etc…

I once heard an investor’s wife say, “My husband has been an investor all his life, so he cannot do anything else anymore; that’s all he knows; he cannot even retire as this is how he likes spending his time.”

Nothing is wrong with this, but if we pay attention, there is a strong story here.

The wife projects negative thoughts (which might or might not be true) that “he cannot do anything else anymore.” The story is so strong it could be a spell, as her influence is strong.

Change the story, and maybe it is the opposite, and it is the investor who keeps telling a negative story to his wife: “I cannot do anything else than investing that’s all I know,” and she repeats him, making it even more accurate and real. The conscious crowd calls this “manifesting”.

Change the story again, and maybe they are both very happy not to change anything and therefore “manifest” that nothing should change and “we're happy this way”.

Change the story one more time, and it might be the complete opposite; they are both completely bored with this life and want to change it, but for some reason, don’t hit the remote control and do not change it.

Who knows? Do they know themselves? What is their story?

It does not matter as long as we are conscious that an infinite number of stories can be created or “real” for the same sentence I heard. I might understand one thing, and someone else nearby the opposite. There is no right or wrong, just several stories, often creating misunderstandings and sometimes unnecessary conflicts.

The Chariot card comes to mind in both the Dali and the Jodorowsky/Camoin decks. I studied Tarot a bit and loved it.

The Chariot represents the necessity for someone to decide his or her destiny, not to be bounced around by stories.

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Writing the stories of my shamanic journey has been fun. I am only getting started as I write about two stories a week. What’s essential for me is to find the teachings and “gifts” for growth and personal improvement; otherwise, this would be just a collection of experiences.

I wrote about my first and second ceremonies in Peru (where Aliens changed my brain), a year of secret healings, being injected a frog poison, the magic of indigenous songs, a snake teaching me to sing, landing back in the world, learning silence, receiving healings from muppet show doctors and powerful group healing sessions.

In these stories, I also share teachings, like removing the limits of the conditioning of my brain.

All the shamanic experiences I wrote about above were mainly during the night. I discovered I could also have visions and see magic during the day…

Did I say Magic? Please take a look at what my friend Daniel Pinchbeck wrote about it in a serious attempt to define what it is.

I am excited to tell you about the first course we do under the PAUA umbrella, which is a 6-week gathering on Zoom where Dirk Nellens guides us through the world of Human Design. Each Thursday from October 5th to November 9th - from 18:00 to 19:30 CET. With a Master’s in Social Anthropology, Dirk is a dear friend who was introduced to the world of Human Design in 2002 and studied it for many years directly with its founder Ra Uru Hu.

Read all about the course and sign-up now using the code LOIC50 for 50 euro discount for my newsletter readers. The number of spots is limited.

Today, I am taking you to Peru again; this was in January 2018. I flew back to the former Capital of the Inca Empire, Cusco, to meet the same shamans that did my first “initiation.”

Edinson who guided my first voyage into the world of spirits died from a motorcycle accident (see story #1). Percy introduced me to new shamans, Alfredo and Puma. I loved going back to Cusco. Nature is stunning, the air is pure at 11,000 feet, and the food is fantastic.

I was not coming for tourism; I was just irresistibly attracted to shamanism and what I did not know my brain and body could do. I spent my life building startups in technology, and then I became obsessed with what technology and science could not explain yet. I was so curious about it.

Is this all theatre and “just” drinking plants in nature?

Or is it an ancient technology we forgot about, killed most of those who knew about it, and then ridiculed their practices?

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The two Peruvian shamans picked me up at my hotel, and we went to old “sacred” places. No idea what “sacred” meant.

Stealth shamans

Their daily job is as tourist guides. They could have guided us to Machu Picchu (here is their website!), and we would have never known anything about their mystical knowledge and practices. It is the same in Mexico or the Amazon jungle of Brazil. The boat or car driver might also be a medicine man; you will likely never know about it.

Looking around, I could only see two tourist guides, a group of tourists in a small bus that included me and ruins in beautiful nature.

I have never been interested in history and have focused on the future through technology all my life, so seeing old ruins was not that exciting but I was curious to see what was coming next.

They started with some explanations while one did some weird things, blowing tobacco smoke from his pipe into his hat… I was intrigued.

Shamanism is hidden because we prosecuted, ridiculed, and killed the “sorcerers” in the past. Tens of thousands of "witches” were killed in Europe, and once that was done, we went to kill them in America.

The shamans took us on a hike that became one of my lifetime memories.

We took a path among natural rocks, and the shamans started playing the flute, which reminded me of the Indigenous songs I had heard during my previous ceremonies at night. It felt very different, though; they were not singing; the flute was singing. It was as if they were talking through the flute.

The flute seemed to tell a story.

We started walking on a beautiful path but also intriguing as the path was highlighted with white rocks, and the entrance went through an elevated cross. I did not wonder why, just another cross; who cares was I thinking?

Magic starts.

As we kept walking, the rocks suddenly seemed to take human or animal forms. I highlighted what I saw on my iPad with my “excellent” drawing skills!

It was like a gigantic “guardian” at the path's entrance between the rocks.

Everything seemed magical, and it was just a start.

I was also about to get another shamanic energy healing during this walk, standing up this time.

I got permission to post the video of me receiving the healing, which is rare as “what is sacred is secret,” they say.

The healing came with a beautiful song and used feathers. I closed my eyes, and it was like a bird touching me. The feathers and prayers felt beautiful and calming.

Here is the healing recorded in a video

More “magic” was coming; this was only a start. What was this healing about? How did they learn doing this? Why were rocks suddenly “alive”?

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In my previous newsletter, I talked about energy healings that most people don’t believe in because science cannot explain them or because it’s really difficult to prove that they do anything. What if our knowledge is just limited?

How has Elon Musk sent reusable rockets to space and revolutionized the car industry without knowing anything about these two industries?

Elon has no limitations in his mind that say, “It’s impossible you will not make it.”

This is how he did it: no limits and no fear of failure.

Most people think, “I won’t create this because I know it will not succeed.” This is why so few people create a startup.

Simple enough?

How about if our limits are also entirely created “artificially” in our minds?

Imagine we own a tiny home, and this is where we live.

We can barely open the main door as so much furniture is inside. After pushing hard on the door, we finally came inside. We can barely move as there is so much stuff.

There are all these things that we carry but do not need.

There are our diplomas, the old photographs of friends you have not talked to for many years, old keys to a place you do not even remember. We look at that old letter that was so important to us, that little box an ex gifted us, these shoes that we “love” but can’t even walk with. Perhaps we kept them because we wore them at a wedding...

This home is our mind.

It is packed with memories and filled with the past. What our parents told us was that we were.

The country where we were born makes us different than the rest of the world. “We are [put your nationality here]” separates us from anyone from another country.

Maybe we were raised with a religion; that belief makes us different and often in conflict with anyone who follows another or no religion.

Maybe we started following a political movement.

Maybe we do not even know why anymore. We just grew up this way. Perhaps it is a family “tradition”. It has become part of “us” being [add your country, religion, or political views here].

These walls inside our home are all limitations.

These limits others have created for us, or we made them ourselves.

This is conditioning. We conditioned ourselves with limits, making our minds smaller and smaller jails.

If you get this diploma, you will succeed professionally. If you read this book, you will know marketing.If you take this course, you will play guitar well. You will be a great product manager if you work for this brand. If you spend years meditating, you will become enlightened. If you behave well, you will go to paradise (otherwise to hell).

“You need time to” become this, achieve that, finally be happy… Really?

Time is also conditioning—a human invention.

Can we be free immediately? Why wait for a would-be enlightenment or paradise?

How about we remove the walls inside our minds? How about we no longer see ourselves as the center of the little jail we created? Is it possible?

How about we stop focusing on the limitations and only on the gigantic space the universe offers?

In the jungle, they explained it to me this way

“If there is no room in your home [your mind], spirits will not come. Make space in your home so magic can happen.”

The non-mystical version is simple: remove the walls inside your mind—all of them. There are no limits.

The only limits are those we allow ourselves to create inside our minds.

The whole universe is inside us.

Here and now, before Earth and SkyWe standWe feel the blessing of your infinite loveIn our bonesIn our bloodIn our breathIn our hearts

We open our eyesTo see beyond what we have seen beforeWe open our earsTo hear what we could not hear beforeBeyond limitationBeyond the Beyond

We feel a new story emerging from our cellsAnd rippling out into our lucid bodiesAs waves of love remind us of who we really areDissolve us into what we have always meant to be

And the layers between usAnd who we are meant to be, fade awayAnd suddenly, we realizeWe are all that we dreamed we could be"To see without eyesTo walk without feetAnd to fly without wings"This is my prayer for you

-a call to prayer, a song by Estas Tonne

Loic's Newsletter & Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Notes--Tomorrow Tuesday Sept 5 during our community call (every week at 18h CET/Paris), we will have a zoom call about Human Design with Dirk Nellens. If you’re interested, here is the zoom link and the link to join our What’sapp community.

-Another dreamer without limits is my friend Yat Siu. His TED Talk “The dream of digital ownership” was just released and it’s worth watching.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.loiclemeur.com/subscribe

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A few years ago, probably like most of my readers here, I did not believe in any “energy healing” at all. I only believed in science and traditional medicine. I am a technology entrepreneur, so there is no room for BS.

“Always write first about what you are the most scared to write about” is a tip from Charlotte, a PAUA community member. There isn’t much I am scared to write; I keep the scariest for paid subscribers. It’s more intimate!

Well, I changed my mind on the healing thing.

“Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.” ― Arthur C. Clarke

Here is how I discovered Indigenous healing and a specific Indigenous technique I admire now. It would be a nightmare for those who feel shame in public as it often involves vomiting in public or being surrounded by people who “purge” right next to you. Not everyone vomits, though…

Loic's Newsletter & Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Email me if you cannot afford it, and I will get you a comp.

In many ceremonies, I have seen no healings to “compulsory” healings for all… The Indigenous Songs are also considered healings themselves and most of them are prayers.

• Some facilitators or “shamans” never do anything other than singing regardless of the possible suffering of the participant (that was my experience in my first ceremonies in Peru);

• Other facilitators offer “energy healings” in complex cases when people lose consciousness, control of themselves, or even when someone bothers the group… I saw a woman turn suddenly into some scary witch one day, I will tell that story later;

• All the way to “compulsory” circles of healing in some traditions where the Shaman will not even ask and perform healing to everyone.

• Some non-Indigenous facilitators entirely invented “their own ways.”

• I have also seen “white shamans” perform healings without saying it was one and even telling people after the fact that it was not healing but “just helping the person feel something herself.”

It might be… or it might not.

No shaman works the same way, even within the same tribe, but there are some standard “techniques.” Techniques and vocabulary are not consistent in this curious world. It is very easy to throw everything as “nothing there; it’s all placebo.”

A gigantic group healing: a triple-row circle with 138 participants!

That in 2018, I attended a very special ceremony, my first time with Huni Kuin. It was in a very desertic place, and even more remarkable was that there were 138 participants and 3 Huni Kuin Indigenous master. This was very unusual, ceremonies are generally more like 20-30 people.

It is always better to sit with the same facilitator for at least two days in a row, as the first night is generally a “discovery” for participants and facilitators alike. In this case, more profound work happened on the second day.

The Huni Kuin healing technique made me believe in some types of energy healing. I felt something I had never felt before in my life.

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The doctors often came during my first two years working with telepathine (I will use this term for “plant medicine.” It’s fun).

They came to almost every session since my second one, where I landed in an alien spaceship’s surgery room. They took very different forms, shape-shifting from one character to another, alternating with a snake teaching me to sing.

Two exceptional doctors showed up during a ceremony I did at the Akasha retreat center in Rio de Janeiro.

They were Kermit the Frog and Telly Monster dressed up as doctors!

They were hilarious and found stuff that needed fixing or connecting in my body. They were always laughing as they saw something cluttering my brain and were taking it out of them and throwing it away.

Loic's Newsletter & Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. If you don’t have the means and want to read the paid posts anyway, ask me by email, and I will send you a comp.

We don’t need this! We don’t need that anymore either. Amazing how much crap he has accumulated. Let’s throw this away too.

Each time I was thinking about something other than observing the doctors do their work, I had the two old guys at the muppet show, “Statler and Waldorf” get angry at me and tell me:

STOP THINKING!

Let the doctors do their work, please! Thoughts are interfering with our work, we ask you to stop having thoughts and just watch us work.

It wanted me to only “observe” and watch what was happening, the two doctors fixing things.

The two doctors were going from my stomach to my liver and moving all around my body. This process was taking hours and as they were “working” they were cracking jokes, making fun of me, taking breaks seated on top of me (there were very small)…

I kept smiling or even laughing sometimes loud during the entire ceremony.

Was the medicine teaching me to stop having thoughts and only concentrate on one? It seemed so. After teaching me to sing as I wrote in one of my previous newsletters, it taught me to only think about one thought at a time.

DO NOT WORRY EVER

Same if I would worry about anything, I was getting a “let us do our work PLEASE” by the old guys in the muppet show. They angry.

After being in the middle of an Aliens story during my second experience, I was now in a Muppet Show episode.

What was going on with that “medicine”?

Was it my imagination going extremely creative using TV shows or movies I know, or was it “the medicine” just using meaningful and easy-to-understand images for me to get the lessons as fast as possible?

It did not matter as long as the healing work progressed during these sessions and the lessons kept being repeated: “Stop thinking and only observe.”

“Do not worry; worrying is a waste of energy.”

The lessons were coming very visually, I loved it.

There are a few seats left for a plant medicine retreat I am going to with a small group of friends, near Rio de Janeiro (fully legal there) on November 10-17 at Akasha, please join this What'sApp group if interested.

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The best Indigenous teachers I have met have one thing in common. They are very silent and very quiet. They reminded me of the few Buddhist monks with whom I have spent little time.

The shaman or master that impressed me the most was almost always silent; I was warned when I met him the first time. “He will not shake your hand, not establish any eye contact, and not talk to you at all.” I was glad I was warned before it helped me feel better in his presence.

They were so quiet that it triggered most non-Indigenous people around them.

From education, we, people who grew up in the modern world, always have questions and want to discuss things. The teachers generally wish to avoid engaging in conversations and do not want to answer questions.

Instead of asking them why they were so silent, which would be another question, I observed them. I have also observed myself always having questions and some fellow visitors even judging them “rude” for not engaging in conversations. It is considered rude not to talk or answer questions in our world.

Here are some thoughts on why they are so silent and not talkative. This is only my experience, and I am tentative about explaining it.

Reception. They are constantly receiving non-verbal information.

Nobody talks to me when I dream or I would wake up and interrupt the dream. Meditating, I observe my thoughts; specific ideas come precisely because I am silent. It does not have to be seated in meditation pause; it does the same to me when I wing-foil flying over the ocean. There are many stimulations from the wind and the practice of the sport itself. Still, I have been sailing since I was eight years old, so whatever I have to do is registered in my body and does not require any thinking, so wing-foiling is very meditative.

The information can come through thoughts, through visions with the help of “supplements,” as some call plant medicine, through sensations (your body showing you something that needs attention or healing, drinking too much, for example), or through animals showing up, anything can be information. Silence means receiving more information, and I keep being constantly surprised by what comes up when I am quiet and silent, observing inside or outside with my eyes open.

Introduce an idea or a judgment that will have an impact on them.

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I will pause telling the real stories I lived in the jungle and start writing what I learned.

I'd like you to please read this as a share of what I learned, not as a lesson. I am just speaking, writing, and sharing. Please decide for yourself what you feel resonates or not. I am not trying to teach anyone here; claim what I am saying should be anybody else’s truth or give advice. This is just my truth at the moment I am writing this. Do not trust anyone other than yourself, including the speaker (me).

My years of work on myself gave me one most important gift from which a tremendous change inside started - seeing everything with new eyes.

It can be achieved in other ways, particularly with meditation, but this was the fastest and most efficient for me.

I naturally started to think about the most important lesson I learned. It might sound very obvious to you.

Separation is an illusion.

• No past, present, or future; only the present existed.

Some call it “the brain’s default mode network going off.” I was not thinking about the past or the future at all. I was very present with either the emotions or feelings I was having, what I was seeing, eyes opened, or even more eyes closed with the new visions I had never experimented with so clearly.

• No separation from “outwards” between me and others or me and nature.

The “I” disappeared. First, I could see “myself” from outside of my body. I was looking at that “I” as a part of the world. Then, in many visions, I could feel that any human being, animal, or plant I saw was no different than myself—a very simple yet impossible to describe in words. There was no “I’ anymore.

I found myself watching the beautiful work of ants for hours or simply the beauty of a tree as if it were part of me. I could hear water flowing inside. I was not separated from the world, and the world was not divided from me.

• Reality is an illusion. I can only see everything from what my mind created in the past.

When I meet someone I have never met, no memories and images I created about that person exist. When I see or think about someone I know very well, I only see them with that mental image that I already have of them from the past. Everything we lived together, all the beautiful moments, but also all the arguments and judgments come in the way, and what I see is not what I see with my eyes but from the image I have in my mind.

I can also “see” everything only with the conditioning of my education and past experiences. My education, how I grew up, the books I have read, the talks I listened to, what my friends or strangers said about it - all of this is conditioning and is not mine.

With the tools I used in the jungle, my conditioning of a lifetime appeared distinct from how things were.

• Hierarchies, systems, nations, and religions vanished.

I have an incredible (sometimes challenging) sense of freedom in the jungle.

A bird flying from the United States to Mexico won’t have to show a passport or stop at the border. Why are we obliged to? What are the fundamental differences between humans? Between a French, a Spaniard, or an Italian? Between a Jew and a Christian or a Muslim? Between a businessman, a factory worker in China, and a farmer?

I have always felt like a “citizen of the World,” so this artificial separation did not vanish for me in the jungle; I just noticed it felt momentarily gone. When I sat in many circles with new friends from around the world and all cultures, there were no more differences between us, particularly going through the challenges the plants were starting inside of us.

Landing and “integration”.

Like modern technology or Western medicine, which learned a lot from plants, the “medicines” I worked with under Indigenous supervision are powerful tools. I only worked in the Amazon forest's most traditional and ancient traditions and context. The Indigenous could not tell me what to do when I returned to the city, as most had never left their villages. This is what we call “integration,” to be fair, I have not had much and learned by myself. I had very challenging times I could have avoided should someone “from our world” and with experience have guided me. There are no mistakes; this is how I worked my path. I learned the lessons one by one, sometimes in a brutal way, as I walked back into the modern world.

Since I started to work on myself in the jungle, I have been looking for Western teachers or sources to learn by myself. I looked at what was available. Religions never appealed to me, but I like knowing what resonates. The practice of meditation in Tibetan Buddhism is fascinating to me, but any mythology tends to trigger me.

The human mind wants to find solutions outside of himself. Countless gurus of spirituality or modern gurus claiming quantum physics explain everything with very pricey retreats and classes. I know people who spent tens of thousands of dollars in those retreats and are not feeling better now. Many modern gurus use science and technology to manipulate people, while spiritual gurus have been using Gods and mysticism to do the same for thousands of years.

I was looking for a way to find clarity by myself and not depend on anyone and eventually on anything, including plants.

Among the many sources I have read, two sound to this day true to me.

I have read the short pamphlet of Sri Ramana Maharshi a few times and wrote about it in “Who am I?”. I highly recommend it.

I am limiting my social media intake to the minimum and now use it primarily for what I see as a precious gift of modern technology. Most knowledge in the World is widely available at any time, and there is an infinite abundance of current and spiritual teachers available through text, audio, and video recordings on Instagram or YouTube—the same abundance with psychology, philosophy, technology, and science authors.

All it takes is to filter and “lock” on the ones I resonate with. I focused only on those teaching me to find clarity inside myself and not in the teacher or the guru. In other words, I have been working on being my own master and not trusting what anyone tells me as they all speak from their conditioning and shadows. I have enough with mine.

All my life, and like all of you, I have accumulated experiences, books, classes, and teachings. I learned a lot, and for the first time, I am looking at all of it as conditioning (some excellent) and working on finding my truth.

The author that I found so far embodying this goal in all his talks and writings while he was alive is Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986), an Indian philosopher. For those of you triggered by the “Krishna” in his name, he has nothing to do with the “hare Krishna” cult that I know nothing about, “Krishnamurti” is just the name given to him by his parents. Krishna is a primary deity in Hinduism, but Krishnamurti encouraged whoever listened to him to avoid religion or cult, so he has only the name. If you are curious like me, do not get triggered by a word; it’s just like me being called Loic Le Meur by my parents. Mine has no deity name, and I thank my nonreligious parents for that. We do not choose our name.

I find everything Krishnamurti explains very difficult to argue with unless it is hard to apply in our complex world, but I will still study it. I am just aware of this difficulty. Krishnamurti also encourages people to rely on something other than any substance or plants to live their lives fully. He was friends with and an inspiration to Aldous Huxley, though, another philosopher well known for his writing and discussing the benefits of psychedelics.

Krishnamurti uses a different vocabulary to explain the same phenomenon I tried to describe earlier, that separation is an illusion. He says that there is no separation “outwards” (with the outside world and other human beings) and “inwards” between the observer and what we observe. In other words, we leave our conditioning aside between ourselves and the object or person we observe.

What I find particularly interesting is his analysis of conflict. For Krishnamurti, the “outwards” and “inwards” separation is the source of all conflict. If we look inside, the separation between us and our conditioning since birth explains all conflict and lack of harmony within ourselves.

I find this particularly powerful and have studied some of his talks and books. I will write more about this, but if you want to hear for yourself, I highly recommend this video on meditation; he even takes his distance from any meditation method, particularly those tainted by any religious or “cultish” conditioning. More soon.

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My previous story was about “seeing music” and the first time I sang in a ceremony (here you can find all my new stories). A very magical event happened during the next ceremony, a little snake started to show me how to sing. I promised unusual and crazy-sounding stories; here is one.

In the next ceremony, I got excited to start singing along now that I knew the basic rules and that the Indigenous wanted us to sing. I was a bit uncomfortable as I knew I was not singing well, but I wasn’t singing very high, so I kept going. I saw the colors instantly coming out of my mouth.

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I would like to invite you all to a very special and unique week of ceremonies near Rio de Janeiro from November 17th to November 25th, 2023. I am planning to be there myself and hope to have a group of friends in attendance who will have read this newsletter. I have a group of 10 seats reserved for us and it will sell out very quickly, so I am saving a few priority seats for paid subscribers. These will be with my teachers from the Yawanawà “Sacred Village”. They have been on a one-year “dieta” themselves and will be presenting their new teachings. The Akasha retreat center is a reproduction of an indigenous village experience, though it’s only a two-hour drive from Rio, so it’s very easy to get to compared to the jungle (and everything is fully legal there). I have been to Akasha many times and it has always been a fantastic experience. If you would like to join or have questions please email Celeste at admin at paua dot life very quickly.

A few days ago I wrote about Kambo (a frog poison in my body) as I am continuing to write my stories. Someone asked me, “What will you do when you run out of stories?” I found it to be fun, so I took my paper journal and wrote down as many of the stories that were in my head as I could. After about an hour, I came up with more than 250 story titles, and more are coming to my mind every day. The more I am writing, the more I am having story ideas for years to come!

Today I write about the power of the indigenous songs, as this is one of the most incredible discoveries and experiences I’ve had there over the years.

During one of the many ceremonies I did during my year of cleansing in 2018, my interest in the songs kept growing. As I already wrote, I could feel that the songs seemed to all have a different purpose, and the visions seemed to respond to the shaman’s voice. The first visible proof of this was when the shaman stopped singing, my visions would stop. They would start again when the next song started.

For some reason I looked at the shaman while he was singing and opened my eyes. He was there with his feathers on, singing with his eyes closed. I closed my eyes and could still see him. Whether it was magic or imagination it did not matter so much, I could still see him with my eyes closed. This alone was very special. Let me write it again: I could still see him with my eyes closed. I was already fascinated by the beautiful geometries and constantly evolving worlds I could see in the previous ceremonies, but this was the first time I had this experience of continued visibility of a real person even with my eyes closed. I opened my eyes and he was there in the same place. I closed my eyes and he was still there looking exactly the same. What was happening? Was my brain just imagining he could see it? Could I actually “see” something without my eyes? The image I was perceiving with my eyes closed was exactly the same as with my eyes opened.

Suddenly, as I kept experimenting with closing and opening my eyes to compare the “two realities”, I started to see something different with my eyes closed, something “better”. It looked like a superimposed reality on top of reality, a bit like the filters on social media that will add a hat on top of your head that stays and moves with it.

What I saw were beautiful colors coming out of the shaman’s mouth. When he was singing, it seemed like a wave of a multitude of constantly changing colors. The color wave shapes were continuing far out of his mouth and spreading in harmony inside the room. They were going around participants’ heads. It was stunning and beautiful. When he would sing higher, the colors changed toward yellow and red, returning to cooler colors as he sang lower. He later started to play his guitar, and colors were also coming out of the guitar itself, with a special pattern at each move of his strumming hand. When he changed notes on the guitar, the colors immediately changed. There were lines of colors coming out of the guitar and they themselves started making geometric shapes as they went to the center of the room. Talk to me about magic…

After the ceremony, I went to talk to the shaman and asked, “How do you do that?”

The indigenous people don’t like such questions…perhaps because there are no answers. We also all see different things most of the time, even though I had many experiences where the whole group saw the same thing, such as in a group telepathy experiment. He simply answered, “Try singing, too.”

I told him that I was forty-five years old and an entrepreneur, and that I never sang in my entire life, nor have I ever touched an instrument. He told me to try anyway. Very few people sing in ceremonies, for good and bad reasons. The only truly good reason is to not disturb the ceremony and the work being done, as well as to respect everybody’s process. This is a valid point, and the main reason that nobody sings in most of the ceremonies I have been to outside of the jungle villages. It is only when I visited the villages that I understood that the shamans wanted us to sing (or at least the Brazilian tribe I was working with, the Yawanawà). They told me that if you sing along you help the work of the medicine, the visions get stronger, as does your own healing.

I said, “I don’t know how to sing, it will be horrible”. They answered that a ceremony was the best time to practice because the plant medicine would help me to learn. You probably heard the term “plant teacher” before. I never understood why would people talk about a plant as a teacher and could not imagine how a plant could teach you anything. This whole misperception of what these plants can do completely changed ceremony after ceremony.

The indigenous people want us to sing along—but nobody does. The energy in the room is always better and stronger when the group sings along.

Here is the basic rule that I wish someone had told me before participating in ceremonies.

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Hi everyone, all my news stories are under this tab you can find at the top of loiclemeur.com and I will keep updating it as I am starting a long series and now aiming at two stories per week, free and paid. I listed all the stories that came to mind and wrote more than 200 stories titles I want to write about! It keeps coming as a constant flow of information when I am awake and even more in my dreams. Thanks for reading and sharing the ride. I am so excited.

October 2016 to May 2017.

After my two deep first experiences with the master plant, I flew back to San Francisco, my home. I returned to normal life, enjoying time with family and friends, traveling the world, and running my startup business called Leade.rs. I wanted to help speakers find paid gigs and also ran two Leade.rs conferences in Paris which were both successful and profitable.

The two nights I went through in Peru were so intense that I had no desire to repeat them soon. Additionally, I felt that I had been in a very special configuration: in the Amazon forest, where these plants come from, and with local “experts”. The idea of doing it with non-native people was not appealing, and I was not looking for such an experience. Every source I read about plant medicine always explained how it is not addictive, and that was the case for me. I was happy to have had the experience, but I was not obsessed with having another. I kind of forgot about it for a few months.

The indigenous say, “once you take the plants, they are always in you, always working from within.” Some even say, “it calls you when the time is right.”

Parts of this newsletter and the podcast are paying. I put lots of energy here and I am creating a small circle of paid subscribers that I am focusing on as they also share some energy back to me in the form of a few dollars every month. It feels important to me as it shows me they care. You can also share this newsletter on your social networks to get a free subscription, or just if you feel a friend would enjoy it.

Looking back at my first two ceremonies in Peru, it definitely called me, but it was not calling anymore. I was feeling great and just going on with the same life as always. I was not thinking about tarantulas and aliens. I was still drinking alcohol at that time and was never lucid in my dreams. I also forgot my dreams instantly as I woke up. I will write a specific note about my work with dreams and how I fixed it, but here is a first tip: I got vivid dreams and could remember them when I stopped drinking.

Eight months after my first plant ceremonies, on May 28, 2017, I went to a retreat in Tulum organized by Zach Bell. He called it “Return, the religion of no religion,” which intrigued me. Return to what? Zach has been very involved in the modern consciousness movement, organizing many events with the “new hippies.”

He has also been involved with the legendary Esalen in California. Esalen was created in 1962 and quickly became one of the main think tanks and centers of the hippie and psychedelic movement in the sixties, which started in the Bay Area and soon spread around the world. Esalen played a key role in the creativity and inspiration of many famous Silicon Valley founders and still does. Steve Jobs visited the Esalen Institute during the 1980s as he was interested in spiritual development and seeking personal transformation.

“This is where, in the sixties, Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary facilitated sessions of “drug-induced mysticism”; where the psychotherapist Fritz Perls led “Gestalt workshops,” often involving crying and primal screams; where Joni Mitchell sang “Get Together” and Ravi Shankar gave George Harrison a sitar lesson. Esalen’s co-founders, Dick Price and Michael Murphy, were Stanford grads turned spiritual seekers.” - The New Yorker

I visited Esalen a few times and was always very impressed by the alchemy going on there, not to mention the breathtaking baths and massages on the cliff where you will be ridiculous if you wear a swimsuit; everyone is naked. I miss California.

So I arrived in Tulum for Zach’s event, a six-hour direct flight from San Francisco. It was the first time I was exposed to the “new hippie spiritual stuff”. I did ceremonies in the jungle and now I was thrown in white people ceremonies in Tulum. To say the least, I was not comfortable at all as my life had been mostly focused on creating technology startups and conferences. I passed on the naked sound bath circle with that long weird and interesting instrument and a local woman doing a weird massage with plants on everyone.

Who are these people? How do they think? Why do they do that? Should I do that? Should I keep my swimsuit? Should I get naked too? What is this lady doing with her plants? Okay let’s stay away and just take a photo it feels safer.

Tulum was the destination of choice for these new, often wealthy, “new hippies” before it fell out of fashion with too many people going there just to party. The party people tend to follow the new hippies, then they go somewhere else because it’s not cool anymore. The new hippies don’t drink much and don’t listen to heavy nightclub music, so whenever the St Tropez or South of Ibiza Pacha crowd arrived, they left. When the St Tropez “Bagatelle” opened in Tulum a few years ago, most of the early “conscious crowd,” as it likes to call itself, left.

Synchronicities

Coined by Carl Jung, a synchronicity is a “temporally coincident occurrence of acausal events. When coincidences pile up in this way, one cannot help being impressed by them,” he wrote.

I met Magdalena that day who was going to become the mother of my fourth son, Falco, who is eight months old now. We met there as friends and went on different paths for three years. Little did I know a beautiful love story would start at the end of 2019, all the way through COVID and Magdalena would become the mother of my fourth Son, Falco.

I also met another wonderful woman in the group, and she contributed to completely changing my life with just one conversation.

We talked about plant medicine casually, and I told her I had done it twice. Without me particularly asking, she said, “Oh! You should go to this ceremony in L.A. next week; very good indigenous people are visiting. They are called the Yawanawà. I won’t be there both nights, but you should go.” I could not help asking for the details, and one email arrived in my mailbox with the very minimalist invitation.

I had no idea what to expect, but as soon as I returned from Tulum, I booked a flight and went to L.A. for a ceremony without telling anyone. I was not in a relationship anymore, so it’s not like there were many people I could tell anyway. I drove to Malibu, where the ceremony was located. I drove for an hour or two from LAX to the hills by the ocean above Malibu and arrived at the home.

I was nervous. I had no idea what to expect. The plants are so powerful; I was anxious to see what they would show me this time. I had no idea who were the shamans of that tribe and their practices or how they would differ from the Peruvian shamans I sat with eight months before.

I entered the living room a bit late; they were about to start. The room was dark, lit with a few candles, and the two shamans were seated, feathers on. About twenty-five people were in that room, mostly wearing white clothes. The atmosphere felt strange and mystical. I was not at ease and was concerned. The thought of leaving came to my mind but my internal guts compass told me to stay.

I had never seen anyone with feathers on their head apart from some people with no taste at Burning Man. Their feathers were real parrot feathers, while the burners generally wear synthetic ones. They were also wearing colorful outfits with snakes on them and collars full of colorful geometries. The Peruvian guys were only wearing blue jeans and t-shirts and no accessories; that was a visible difference.

The ceremony started. I drank a full cup without hesitation surrendering to what the universe and the synchronicities were offering to me. The plants and the jungle called me this time at home and I had to take the call. I was nervous. Fortunately, the same woman who introduced me sat with them a day earlier and left a few pillows I could use so I was comfortable. It felt like flying business class compared to the wood floor of the Maloca in Peru which was completely empty of furniture.

The Yawanawà shamans introduced themselves.

They said they were coming from deep in the Amazon forest of Brazil. I could feel the jungle in the tone of their voice and that felt familiar and reassuring. Then, after a short meditation, they started singing with no instruments. The songs were beautiful and immediately started to transport me to geometries and extraordinary imaginary landscapes. I felt like I was home again. I had visions all night and was enjoying everything I was seeing, eyes closed most of the night.

My first ceremonies were not so much about “receiving messages,” but the most beautiful show I ever saw. Cirque du Soleil I had seen once in Las Vegas was wonderful but this felt divine. It was incomparably more beautiful, precise and let’s say it, magical. Their voices were profound and were obviously inducing the visions as they stopped when they took a break between two songs. It seemed like each song had its own visions. I was fascinated.

I also spent the night vomiting, maybe two or three times. It was not pleasant, but I felt I needed it. I felt sick inside but could not associate it with anything mental or physical; it was the beginning of a deep and long cleanse that would last for years, and I spent the whole night either lying down or going to purge. The vomiting was largely compensated by the incredible visions I was seeing. I felt like a kid, the medicine was my spiritual mother and alternating giving me a hard time and a reward with the visions. She has been an incredible second mother to me ever since. I was in a womb again, protected and learning to come back to life.

One of the Yawanawà shamans kept coming back to L.A., so I kept coming back to do ceremonies with him every two weeks for about a year. I was peeling the onion of all my traumas. "The medicine” was healing me. I could not feel at the beginning exactly what it was healing, but I knew it was healing me. It was tough, but I needed to keep going until I stopped purging. The shaman was laughing at me in a friendly and caring way “cura cura medicina”. I was so grateful for him. He was a brother I never had, taking care of me with the most powerful tools I had ever felt in my life. He was hard and loving at the same time. I felt safe. I felt better after each ceremony as soon as I woke up the next day. Plant medicine does not have any bad effects the next day; quite the contrary, I felt really light and better.

Most people did not have plant medicine ever as they either do not know what it is or are scared of it. The conditioning of the modern world told them it was dangerous and even made it forbidden in most countries. My guts were telling me the opposite. “This is the best gift you have ever received”. I learned to trust my guts no matter what Western society, friends or Google were “saying” about it.

The courageous people that try it once or twice often decide it is too hard and stop. Other people think they can be healed in one or two sessions or expect that miracle to happen. Seven years of “working” with the medicine taught me the opposite. It is a hard and long path, full of the most beautiful discoveries and teachings and also hard challenges. Healing does not come easy, I had to earn it and keep going no matter how hard it would become.

Hundreds of ceremonies later as I write this today I have no regrets. This was and still is the most profound healing and transformational tool I have ever encountered and I cannot be more grateful to the universe for showing me the way. “Love yourself” I could read in some psychology books. I loved myself for having the strength to go through all the hardships.

I participated in about ten or twelve ceremonies that year.

I was not addicted, neither to the visions nor to the vomiting. I was committed to healing myself and trusted my guts. There was so little research available about the effects of these plants. Medical research was forbidden and entirely stopped in the seventies, so there still isn’t much available today. I could only trust my guts. Science does not know much about this.

In addition to healing myself deeply that year, I learned new skills.

I started to see things I had never seen before and to do things I had never done before. The medicine showed me skills during ceremonies I later discovered I could always use without it in my “normal” life. One of them was synesthesia or seeing colors when someone sings or even talks. I also used other incredibly strong and scary medicines such as Kambo, a frog poison, or rapé, the tobacco powder indigenous use.

I am going to write these teachings one by one at the pace of two per week here at https://www.loiclemeur.com. The flow of knowledge I received and feel like sharing with you feels limitless. I am laser-focused on my writing and invite you on one of the most incredible journeys there is on this planet, at least for me, plant medicine and ancient spiritual wisdom.

All the stories from this series about my spiritual path are here. Previous stories:

• My first plant ceremony in Peru - October 10, 2016

• "Just" a dream of aliens changing my brain - October 11, 2016

Thank you for being here with me, I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I enjoy writing it. As always leave any comment here I love reading them.

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Today I wrote about death and NPCs, human bots on my journal. Humans making $6k an hour becoming non playing character bots. Madness.

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I have gone through many "unusual" experiences since I began my quest for consciousness, which inspired me to start writing a book.

When I think about the things I truly enjoy, writing is at the top of my mind. I have been writing online since I started blogging in 2003, and it has become a passion that has endured.

Whenever I meet people, they often ask me to share stories from my journey of consciousness. Hence, I have decided to write most of these stories, as people seem genuinely interested in them. Once I have finished writing the most compelling ones, I will determine how to organize them into a book or potentially use them as material for one.

I primarily write in my journal, and if you aren't subscribed to it in addition to this newsletter, here are the posts you missed since my last entry:

• "The Search for the Divine and When to Stop Seeking?"

• "The Choice between Being 'Conscious' or 'Unconscious'"

• I have also written what is perhaps the most important story that has changed my life in many ways, marking the beginning of a whole new chapter: "My First Plant Ceremony in Peru - October 2016"

Why write a book? The first thought that comes to mind is that a book may be one of the few things that remain after someone passes away.

It has been challenging to write about the plant ceremony experience in Peru with Leila Janah. She passed away in January 2020, and I often think of her as we were together for more than four years. The strange thought of "what remains of Leila today?" crossed my mind. Apart from memories, her two businesses and a foundation still exist, but I noticed that her website, leilajanah.com, disappeared as the domain registration was not renewed. Though her Medium posts are still accessible, much has vanished, and the web archive doesn't preserve everything, or it's difficult to find. Who knows if Medium will endure in the long run? However, Leila’s book remains, and anyone can listen to her voice on Audible. She wrote it mostly in front of me during countless calls with someone who assisted her. The book is still here even though she’s not.

This also reminded me of the time I discussed impermanence with Choeze Kuchen Rinpoche, where we contemplated the only truth being impermanence itself. Why bother striving for permanence when everything is impermanent? I have very few belongings left from my father who passed at 53, hardly anything at all. I would be incredibly happy to be able to read one of his books again or, better yet, hear his voice reading it. Now that I have four sons, the idea of leaving something that remains when I'm no longer here feels like a noble pursuit. Therefore, I contemplated writing stories that could tell them something they may not know or even offer lessons they can learn from—who knows? I will write these stories with this goal in mind, and perhaps others will also enjoy them.

Another personal goal of writing a book is the healing it brings. Over the years, writing has been profoundly therapeutic for me, especially through my handwritten personal journal. When I write here, it's different because I must consider the impact of sharing things more broadly. I could inadvertently hurt someone or disclose something that was not meant to be revealed. It has happened to me before. However, with each mistake and experience, I learn and heal something within myself. I don't believe this process will ever cease; there will always be something to heal or improve upon until I pass away. Writing compels me to reflect on my life, contemplate its purpose, how it has evolved over time, and what I have learned.

I recently turned 51 on July 14th, just three days ago. When my father passed away, he was 53, so it's hard not to think about the same fate potentially befalling me at any time. I'm not overly concerned, but I suppose that's what happens when you reach 50—you begin to contemplate death more. According to the Maya (with whom I spent time), 52 is the age when one should start "teaching." I'm not entirely sure what I can teach, honestly, but I have undoubtedly lived a full life and can share numerous stories and things I have learned myself. Let's write these stories and see where they take me. As always, I will primarily write them in my journal and post a recap here every week or so.

In fact, I have already written a book in 2005 titled "Blogs pour les Pros" with Laurence Beauvais. It was merely a guide for someone starting to write online in the form of a blog, which was a novel concept at the time—pre-Facebook, pre-Instagram, and pre-Twitter. However, writing about consciousness feels like a much more intricate task.

I can obviously sense the difference in writing for a book compared to writing newsletters. For instance, in my plant medicine story, I included numerous photos. However, I can't rely on them for a book and must describe what they represent, such as the visions they conveyed. English isn't my first language, so it will take time to adapt and learn to write in a different manner.

I would be grateful for any suggestions, help, or comments along the way if you're interested in following my progress through these two newsletters.

Thank you for reading, and special thanks to those who support PAUA by being paid subscribers to this newsletter.

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I have so many stories to tell from my years of experience with the plants in the Amazon forest, where it’s fully legal. I decided to share them here and alternate stories and teachings.

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This podcast episode’s associated post is on my journal where I write more frequently, here no more than once a week.

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This is a sad short film, it only lasts a few minutes though, I highly recommend you watch it. It gives an interesting perspective on why we’re here.

It’s from Charles Eisenstein who was never part of the matrix, he grew-up already awakened and writes a fantastic newsletter.

This short film had a deep impact on me as this is exactly how I am feeling right now looking at the world and its normalized atrocities.

Everything is normal. Suffering has been normalized. Many who care find it difficult to know where to start, fortunately few found it.

Charles Eisenstein offers an answer to his own question

“What the heck am I doing here? Who marooned me on Planet Crazy?”

Answer: Me.

His explanation of the mystery of life and why we would still want to have babies in this crazy world (worldwide birth rates declining) would be that we all chose consciously before birth to “fall in the hell pit” then awake in it and realize that we are not special, there are many others like us and that we are here to do something, and do it together.

Charles takes the time to explain it is not the “chosen ones” in his interpretations post:

“Take it over-literally, and you may assume that some few of us are here as saviors to rescue the benighted masses from Hell. Not so. The fallen angels do not incarnate as some people and not others. They incarnate not just “as” but also “in” each one of us.”

In his follow-up post Charles says we can all stay in temporary comfort (enjoying life when we can, it’s summer we could be partying or just keep ignoring how the world is suffering “because we only have one life so we might as well enjoy it”) or we can all become those luminous beings holding hands and plunging consciously into the pit.

“They do so in peace, in joy, in serenity. They do not feel sorry for themselves as they take the plunge. They meet their mission gladly.”

This is a sad film but it offers a very optimistic way to go forward. Charles created this film for himself, so he can watch it again and again and remind himself why he’s here.

The film touches me also as this is how my friends indigenous see what we do to the world. They are working hard at helping to change it, planting trees and sharing their knowledge that they used to keep for themselves. They decided to hold hands with us even though we destroyed or enslaved so many of them. They had no choice than holding our hands and helping us.

I see this movie as an incredible reminder that we can all be one of these luminous beings and find something to work on to make the world a better place rather than ignoring what’s going on.

Now, you might ask me…

Thanks for sharing this lesson you might say, but what is it exactly you are doing?

I’m not pointing fingers. I’m also talking to myself. I did nothing compared to heroes such as the founders of Charity Water (Scott Harrison) or the Ocean Cleanup (Boyan Slat). I had to heal myself first. Now that I think I’m healed enough, I am trying a few things to help and will keep sharing.

Thanks for the reminder, Charles.

notes-

As I started writing more frequently I posted on my journal, please subscribe to that too if you want more frequent posts.

Also, I moved both of my newsletters now to http://loiclemeur.com (weekly) and http://journal.loiclemeur.com (more frequent when I feel like writing). It felt right to put everything back under my birth name.

Finally, we release one PAUA talk every week on PAUA’s newsletter, we just released the inventor of the iPhone’s talk, Tony Fadell's Vision for a Harmonious Future.

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This post is here as podcast only and not emailed to everyone as I committed to not write more than once a week here. If you want all my posts please subscribe to

One of my readers, Jerôme, a philosopher, emailed me to reflect on my “search of the divine”.

Jerôme wants me to think about “over feeding” without taking enough time to think about the sessions and also giving more time to the participants to think about them or network among themselves, this is a very valid comment and I agree with it.

If we sit under a heavy water fall, no matter how pure and abundant the water is it will be impossible to drink every drop of it…

It reminds me of my friend Robert Scoble who told me recently he was trying to read every single update from every source talking about AI, even though it’s just impossible. He wants to know everything about AI and be the source for everything new coming out about it on his Twitter feed, which is somewhat crazy, maybe an only an AI can do that. Even if an AI could do that, what would be the point since no human being can consume so much information. It could summarize it for us, at best, but it feels there is no point.

I feel this way sometimes. I definitely work hard on discovering the most meaningful forms of spirituality or spiritual experiences and have been through quite a number of them. I find balance between new experiences and going really deep in two of them that I have been practicing for many years (you know if you read me, the Yawanawà spirituality and the Red Road).

When I deeply resonate with one of them, I open a new chapter and climb another holly mountain (cover photo). Meeting Choeze Rinpoche definitely gave me that feeling of opening a new path as I have been very impressed by his words and how he lives his life. Should I?

I have been thinking constantly about this. Go deep on one path as I have done for about 6 years with the Yawas or multiply the experiences. I could just learn all my life and many more lives just the Yawanawà spirituality, same with Lakota, Maya or Buddhism. It’s obviously impossible to learn all.

Matsini, a Yawanawà master told me once “if you learn different spiritualities at the same time you are going to be confused and achieve nothing”, so I followed that advice and I now reached a point thanks to this advice that I am able to perform a few rituals of their spirituality obviously with less experience than they have as they started when they were 5 years old and only do that their whole life.

I’m back to the thoughts about “lineage”. I have no lineage. I could decide to be 100% of one lineage and learn just that, I did, for a while.

I feel that our generation might need something different though. The lineage of freedom seems like the way to follow. Achieve and learn “enough” from spiritualities that are worth learning from and it’s a personal choice.

For example for me, it might be just enough to learn some mantras and meditate daily without having to turn myself into a full time monk for a few years in Bhutan… It’s actually the recommendation of Choeze but that was also my own feeling about it.

There is a reason why I was born in Europe and not in the jungle or in a monastery…

It comes down to “when will I decide to stop seeking?” and “why do I keep seeking” or “What do I keep seeking?”

I feel like I have been following three major steps:

• healing (took about 1.5 years)

• reconnection to nature and becoming a student of it

• constant learning of different techniques

Why do I keep wanting to upgrade myself and for what? The answer is quite clear to me.

First I am upgrading myself to be able to help others more.

Everything I do or close to that is now for others. The conference PAUA is definitely a work for others.

Second, I want to know “enough” some of the most powerful ancestral technologies and initiations the world has kept alive. I honestly don’t know what I am preparing myself for, I am just learning always more.

Apart from learning more from Buddhism there are two initiations that I will likely do after observing strictly the Yawanawà spirituality for years. I have up to now only been working and learning from very few plants and practices that were allowed during my many “dietas” processes. Now that I am “free” again I am planning when it’s time to get to know two other animal and plant spirits, one is called “bufo” with this molecule and the other is the “Iboga” tree which I am planning to get initiated with the most traditional way of the Bwiti in Africa itself in the most traditional way, if they allow it.

I do it where it’s an ancestral practice held by elders and where it’s legal.

Why am I planning to do that?

There are many synchronicities that point me to their direction and I learned to listen when I am showed enough times something I need to learn or know. Iboga for example is known as the most powerful plant journey one can take (also the most dangerous) and I have met recently a few people I highly respect as teachers who strongly advise me to.

Will I ever stop seeking?

There is a difference between “seeking for seeking” and just “learning”. In other words my goal is to acquire rare knowledge available to us but that most people will never do. My motivation isn’t to do things that others don’t do. My motivation is to always learn more to help others more. One might argue that I don’t need to know more to help more, but that’s just what my guts are telling me to do and I tend to follow that how I make decisions now, much more than what anyone tells me to do or not...

Will I ever consider I know enough?

I do not think so, for me life has been a constant teaching since I was born. I have never been feeling that I knew enough. The question has never been if I should learn more (yes!) but what to learn next.

In the first 25 years of my life I learned what I consider enough about the business, entrepreneurial and technology world. I don’t know everything, but it’s enough.

I am now balancing it with another 25 years learning consciousness and spirituality tools. I’m only 10 years in so maybe when I am 70 years old I will consider myself balanced enough, time will tell :-) I leave every possibility open.

Who knows how the world will evolve in the next years to come? If you had told me I would have changed so dramatically at 45 years old I would have not believed you.

Here is a topic I will write about soon also brought by Jerôme:

Must we suffer to realize our self?

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It’s not every day that I spend a few hours with a master, Choeze Kuchen Rinpoche, said to be teaching for 801 years in 11 incarnations, trained 250 Lamas and the manifestation of “Yamantaka” which means “the destroyer of the Lord of Death”.

Here is a painting of Yamantaka. A powerful blue buffalo headed creature apparently creating fire by himself. I got intrigued even before meeting Choeze.

Simplicity

I don’t know much about Buddhism, I have just done a few silent meditation retreats and been practicing meditation. Meeting Choeze was a reminder of how simple everything is “just meditate”.

Choeze doesn’t wear fancy clothes or headpieces, he speaks an absolutely perfect english and in very simple words.

No need for psychedelics

12,000 people gathered a few days ago in Denver at the MAPS conference! Colorado and many US States legalized psychedelic drugs use or are in the process of doing so. The World has followed the U.S. in making them illegal I do hope they will also follow it legalizing them again.

Psychedelics send you straight to the highest floor of the spiritual building but you can only take a few hours peak then fly back down (sometimes it feels like free fall). The “Food of the Gods” only work for a few hours.

Seeing what Buddhist practitioners might see after many years so fast is useful though, my experience is that once you saw what people call the divine once it comes then much faster in meditation. I know, any substance is forbidden for the buddhists.

Our conversation reminded me of Brian Muraresku’s talk at my conference PAUA. His hypothesis is that psychedelics are at the origin of most religions. Who knows… It’s great to work with ancient practices that do now require anything.

Life is a ceremony

Choeze has the “medicine” is in his own words and his behavior. Everything he said made total sense to me. I could feel his calm and healing energy just seated in his presence.

The challenge is to see the perfection of the universe all the time, not just in “ceremonies” and behave as we are in the perfection of nature always.

Life is a continuous “ceremony”, our behavior must be constantly impeccable. There are no moments when it should be perfect and others where it’s okay to misbehave. I’m personally trying to apply constantly the discipline I learned in the jungle.

Everything is perfect

We discussed that “everything was perfect” despite how tough the world seems to be these days. This reminded me of Ram Dass must watch “How to keep your heart open in hell”.

No need to scale

I was conscious I was so happy and felt so fortunate to have a few hours alone with him. We talked about how the technology world wants to “scale everything” while in the world of consciousness it’s one by one that the works happens. There is no real “scaling”, everyone has to do the work for themselves.

AI? “It’s artificial”

We quickly talked about AI and spent only a few moments on it precisely because it is “artificial” and we felt we had much more important things to talk about, the “natural” ones.

We agreed that AI will very likely cause much more confusion to the world. I believe that human beings are constantly trying to upgrade themselves for more power but often end-up just making things worse. They forget the simplicity of nature.

Let’s get to use the buddhist technology

Choeze invited me to sing the “Om mani padme hum” Mantra with him and I also shared a song with him. I find singing more powerful than words and often share songs with friends.

The Buddha said that Om Mani Padme Hum is the most beneficial mantra, and it is often thought of as the condensed form of all the Buddha’s teachings.

Here is Choeze Kochen singing it for me:

Easier, here is a spoken version

Choeze suggested I sing it every morning as I wake-up and every night before going to sleep. Wisdom-Om - generosity, wisdom purifies ego, white color. Compassion-Ma - ethics, compassion, purifies jealousy, lust for entertainment, green Body, speech, mind-Ni - patience, purifies passion and desire, yellow

Equanimity-Pad - diligence, purifies ignorance and prejudice, blueBliss-Me - renunciation, purifies greed and possessiveness, redCompassion-Hum - wisdom purifies agression and hatred, black

With this Mantra, Choeze suggested I look and focus in my meditation at this “Dorje Sempa Thangka” (left) instead of his reincarnation Yamantaka (right)

In my work in the forest and the Sundance, I worked a lot with fire energy. I did a 3 months Yawanawà dieta called “Iuchi” that involves eating lots of red hot chili pepper every day with other powerful plants. The Sundance is an intense 4 days also “calling” fire from the Sun as we dance all day under the Sun.

Dorje Sampa (left) on the contrary inspires peace, calm and natural energy (green). “Fire burns and destroys everything” told me Choeze, it’s always here and use it only when you need it. You need something else right now.

I have been practicing the mantra and visualizing this drawing using a “Mala” or “prayer beads” it’s been really good for me and I will keep experimenting with it.

No attachment

There should not be any attachment to anything (especially material), even to our own life. This does not mean we should not own anything or enjoy anything, just not getting attached to it.

Separation and reality are illusions

We think we are separate and act as individuals, this is ego. Everything is connected. Anything we do or even think affects everything, other human beings, animals, nature. When we destroy nature we destroy ourselves. When we hurt someone we hurt ourselves.

Impermance is the truth

Everything changes constantly. There is no past or future, only the present. Choeze explained that even the present doesn’t exist, the minute we try to catch it, it’s gone. It’s called “anitya” in Sanskrit. All existence without exception is “transient, evanescent, inconstant”. All temporal things, whether material or mental are compounded objects in continuous change of condition, subject to decline and destruction.

I have no lineage. “Choeze, you are very fortunate”

I suddenly told him. He asked why. I answered that he was born in an environment and with people that taught him the way and he has a clear “lineage". He knows who he is, the 11th reincarnation of a Buddhist master dedicating his life to teaching. That makes things very easy.

For us westerners “without a clear lineage” and having grown-up in the western world it’s much more difficult. I meant that “he knew who he was” while I have been searching “Who am I” since I started my consciousness work ten years ago.

I’m French, born “Catalan” of a Spanish mother from Barcelona and a French father born in Le Havre, France. My 23andme DNA analysis says I am 53% Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese and only 31% French oh and 9% Northern Europe (Finland, Norway…). I had no spirituality until I started to learn some meditation then some practices in the Amazon forest with the Ashaninka and the Yawanawà. I also learned some Lakota and Mayan ways of Vision Quest and Sundance called the “Red Road”. Sitting with Choeze I feel like learning some more buddhism.

It feels so pure and simple. A tool I can always use without having to become a buddhist, just use the “ancient technologies”.

We, westerners, tend to mix everything because we have lost most of our roots and our ancestral paths. They were destroyed as Brian Muraresku explained in his brilliant talk at PAUA (see above).You can always reinvent yourself today.

Choeze answered it was okay not to have a lineage, it’s always a good time to start from scratch now. It’s always a good time to be reborn and awaken. We can all be “Buddha” and start all over again now. Buddha was shielded from the outside world, grew up in luxury and then gave up everything.

The lineage of no lineage

I will come back to this as it has been on my mind constantly since we talked about it with Choeze. No lineage can also be seen in a positive way, the lineage of freedom. We can learn from the traditions that resonate the most from us. The challenge is the choice between knowing not much about a lot of techniques or knowing a lot about one “lineage”. I spent my last years learning Yawanawà spirituality and the Lakota “red road” and could spend my life just learning one of them. I could embark on a learning journey of Buddhism with Choeze now I guess… Freedom is good and isn’t as to really master some of the ancient technologies I need to learn one for years. I think I have found the right balance so far, we will see what the future brings.

See also Zach Bell’s The Religion of no Religion at PAUA. All our talks are here.

Our real and worst addiction… us!

People are addicted to food, alcohol, sugar, sex, drugs… but Choeze reminded me our first addiction is to be focusing on ourselves. We need to change the focus from ourselves to others and the whole universe. Separation is an illusion.

This makes me think of a quote by Abuela Ursula who thinks alike:

“When you are balanced in your heart and soul you start to serve. There is no material wealth or money that is worth as much as helping others.” - Abuela Ursula

Notes

• Recommended book by Choeze “Words of my Perfect Teacher”, reading it now

• Choeze’s website and YouTube Channel

• If you want to follow our work with PAUA community subscribe to our PAUA newsletter

• Yawanawà on Spotify! - so glad to see the albums of my friends Nawashahu & Ykashahu Yawanawà and of Isku Kua Yawanawà

• Make sure to checkout the beautiful video of one of the songs that UMA SAI did

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I had a conversation with Brian Muraresku, author of NY Times Best Seller the Immortality Key, here are some highlights,

Fasten your seat belts!

• Brian spent 10 years “looking for the Holy Grail”

• the origin of religions might be thanks to psychedelics use

• direct evidence of hallucinogenic drugs use in Europe 3,000 years ago was recently found in Menorca, Spain. National Geographic.

• wine and beer were psychedelic in the past (their “sacred” and ancestral use)

• the church sacraments were also psychedelic. “The most important part of the religious experiences, the connection to the divine, was removed through history”

These are obviously bold statements and hypothesis, but Brian is quite convincing in his book and his video and many recent discoveries seem to prove him right.

Brian will give a 45 minutes keynote at PAUA Paris this upcoming Friday (may 12-13), you can still buy a ticket to join in person or watch it all online.

We use Hopin and high-end video production to offer a great online event, check-it out and join us!

If you havent’ read Brian’s book yet, I highly recommend it.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit loic.substack.com/subscribe

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On April 2, 2023 I ended a very extreme process that lasted one year. If you have been reading me for a while you know it all but for new readers it started with a 3 months in the jungle entirely offline isolation with barely enough food and water (half a banana and half a glass of water a day) to stay alive. These three months were followed by nine more months with no red meat, no fruits, no sugar, no salt, no sex and some more restrictions. In addition to the diet I followed and still follow a clear discipline.

Entering “The Dieta” was pretty challenging but coming out of it is also interesting and challenging in many ways. What was “forbidden” by my own choice isn’t anymore. I can do and eat anything I like. I started to eat some sugar and feel my body react to it. Drinking pure water after a year only drinking lemon juice with water or tea still feels weird. I did not dare eating any red meat yet.

One year is long enough to reprogram many of my habits but also my perception. My taste for example, it changed dramatically.

If I were asked to explain only one benefit about my work in the Amazon forest, meditation and the red-road, it would be “I am much more sensitive to everything”.

I actually think now that I wasn’t feeling much before this consciousness work.

Now I feel I was just a “boiling frog” in an invisible pot that I just got used to. The cooking was very slow.

If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately sense the danger and jump out to escape. However, if you put the frog in a pot of cold water and gradually heat the water, the frog will not perceive the gradual increase in temperature and will remain in the pot. Eventually, the water reaches boiling point, and the frog is unable to escape, resulting in its demise. -ChatGPT

I “feel” and “see” now much more how people’s voices, sounds and anything and anyone around me directly impacts me.

I often see colors coming out of people’s mouths when they speak too. I feel much more if someone is happy or sad, agressive, angry or going through things, starting with my own feelings of course.

What I eat can change my well being or my mood. A single email or what’sapp message can impact me much more than in the past (sensitivity isn’t only good news when you’re not used to it yet).

Everything and everyone around me influences and changes me constantly. It was already the case before, but now I can see it happening “live”.

It’s been difficult to write for some reason since I ended the diet. I want to write today about these “inputs” and how I feel they impact me.

Let’s start with our five senses.

Earing

Are you waking up with the beautiful sound of birds singing or with traffic, police cars and ambulances in a city? Obviously this impacts you.

In the Amazon forest there are literally millions of animals around and they’re not “making noise” all the sounds they produce have a purpose, they communicate between each other. Animal sounds are “healing” in many ways for so many reasons. They generally aren’t agressive sounds (unless you hear a jaguar around as I did once) but some are very loud such as the 130 dB of a rooster! I always find magic listening to them, more on another post.

Human voices also have a huge impact on us.

I spent two days in Paris last week.

A taxi driver’s job is very difficult as his level of stress dealing with traffic, other drivers and his own passengers behaviors are constantly adding pressure. Naturally most taxi drivers are nervous and often very easy to get upset, if not always upset. Taking a cab in Paris generally gets you exposed to the drivers complaining about everything or honking at other cars or people crossing the street. Add to this the background radio inside which is often delivering a constant flow of bad news.

A 30 mins taxi trip from the center of Paris to the airport can increase dramatically your stress level or even get you angry, especially if you get in an argument with the driver!

Vision

Let’s stay on the transportation example with the alternative of taking the metro in Paris (the underground trains) instead of a cab. I always take the metro when I get around in Paris nowadays instead of going around on my motorbike when I lived there twenty years ago. People look generally very sad in the metro. Everyone is in their own world either thinking about their own sadness or watching something on their phones despite the bad or non existant Internet network. Some people read books. You can feel how most everyone’s life is hard by just looking around. Very often crazy people show-up, saying or screaming weird stuff randomly complaining or asking about something.

Watching this scene definitely has an impact on us, especially when it is daily. I need to use the bikes more in Paris next time.

What we see with our eyes gets straight in our brain and always has an impact on us, wether we want it or not.

For example I randomly saw that tweet showing “The World’s First Artificial Womb Facility”

I dreamt about it. This is the kind of impact it had on me, a full dream (more of a nightmare to be honest).

My partner Magdalena saw it and told me “I hope I am dead when this happens”. I noted that she did not say “if” but “when” that happens.

One of my best friends, Martin Varsavsky is already making the “baby steps” of robots creating babies a reality. See this Technology Review story “The first babies conceived with a speak-injecting robot have been born”.

Our baby Falco was born entirely naturally in our own bedroom, we did the exact opposite… A single tweet in my timeline created in my brain lots of thoughts, ideas, visions, positive and negative emotions, interests… I thought about it for days as the robot births becoming a reality will change quite a bit the future of humanity. AI will take those babies to robot school for sure too. People are already so stuck to their phones that they’re already robots in a way. What will be left of our humanity if we keep going this way?

This is our main topic at PAUA in Paris “natural versus artificial intelligence”.

Open What’s app in the morning will focus me on whatever shows up. I could be remembering my dreams instead. I prefer that, if I can of course.

I try to not touch my phone or computer for as long as I can in the morning.

I have no choice but being in front of the screen most of the day. I can feel what it does. I feel its danger for my newborn Falco.

Even writing this newsletter I made sure I closed all windows except this writing tab on my browser. No What’sapp or Messenger or email window around and if I feel like checking I refrain myself from it or I will get sucked-in something else, nice or not nice.

Let’s talk about email for a minute.

“Email is a to-do list that others have decided for you”. A quote from Marc Andreessen years ago. So true.

Going through the inbox in the order emails have arrived is literally giving attention the last person who talked or needs something.

Imagine the same going on in “real” life. Imagine a dinner where everyone could say or ask something at any time and at the same time. One is asking you something or way worse, advertising something you do not want to hear about. That would be a pretty bad dinner right?

Email is great but I cannot believe that in 2023 the issue of unsolicited emails is still so bad. No matter how hard Gmail sends stuff to our spam folder new emails offering stupid services and asking you 10 times “why you did not respond to that amazing opportunity” keep coming. Sure you can unsubscribe when they’re nice enough to include a link but often there isn’t and the new spammy stuff keeps coming anyway.

It’s like someone entering my home 24 hours a day and dropping some trash in the living room hoping I buy it.

It’s quite difficult to live without email but it’s still so inefficient. By the way, this is an email too! Thanks for reading my newsletter, it’s some kind of magic that it made it in front of your eyes and you found it interesting enough to read it until here.

I could go on and on of course. Being surrounded by trees or the ocean during the day won’t have the same effect on you than in a noisy and busy city.

I can only spend a few days at once in a city now. I need to live in nature.

The data picked up and processed for us by the senses are either of a physical or chemical nature. Ears and eyes, for example, are stimulated physically, by sound or light waves. Taste and smell are produced by chemical contact with taste buds or olfactory centers. (NY Times, 1964)

Taste and smell

A study published in 2014 by researchers at the Rockefeller University suggested that humans can discriminate between at least 1 trillion different odors.

I don’t need to spend much time convincing you of how smell can affect us. Just think of that last person you crossed with the strongest ever deodorant or perfume you do not like. There are worse smell examples!

Our taste can identify five basic tastes (source, ChatGPT)

• Sweet: pleasurable, sugar, glucose, fructose

• Sour: acidic. Helps us identify the freshness of foods

• Salty. Helps us maintain the right balance of electrolytes in our body

• Bitter: coffee, dark chocolate, certain veggies. Helps us detect harmful substances

• Umami or Savory: taste for glutamate, an amino acid found in meats, fish and some vegetables. Helps us detect protein-rich foods.

Eating a chocolate cake or a glass of wine offers immediate relief or “feel better” sensation. Sadly it’s also a very short one.

Touch

It is through the sense of touch that we interact with the world. I have a new born, Falco, who is just 4 months and just learned how to grasp objects. Touch is fundamental for him to learn in the near future to walk on his hands and knees and soon to walk.

In my periods of isolation in the forest I was asked to not touch anyone as well as just after, as the indigenous believe energy is also exchanged with touch. I was also asked to not look at anyone in the eyes for some time as I had not interacted with anyone for 3 months.

Beyond the five senses

“The sixth sense” immediately comes to mind such as intuition, psychic abilities or other supernatural phenomena but before +maybe+ going there, here are additional senses that are medically or scientifically explained (courtesy of ChatGPT I will put it in italic as everything else is written by me…)

“In addition to the five traditional senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch), humans have several other lesser-known senses that help us navigate and interact with our environment. Some of these additional senses include:

• Proprioception: Often referred to as the "sixth sense," proprioception is the sense of body position and movement. It allows us to know where our body parts are in relation to each other and to maintain balance, coordination, and posture. Proprioceptors, located in muscles, tendons, and joints, provide this information to our central nervous system.

• Interoception: This is the sense of our internal bodily states, including sensations like hunger, thirst, and the need to use the restroom. Interoception helps us maintain homeostasis by signaling when our bodies require food, water, or other needs. Interoceptive information comes from receptors in our internal organs and is processed in various regions of the brain.

• Vestibular sense: This sense is crucial for maintaining balance and spatial orientation. The vestibular system, located in the inner ear, detects changes in head position and movement, and it works closely with the visual and proprioceptive systems to help us maintain stability and coordinate our movements.

• Nociception: This is our sense of pain, which alerts us to potential harm or injury. Nociceptors are specialized pain receptors that detect potentially damaging stimuli, such as extreme temperatures, intense pressure, or chemicals released from injured tissue. Pain serves as a protective mechanism, helping us avoid further harm and prompting us to take care of injuries.

• Equilibrioception: This sense is closely related to the vestibular system and refers specifically to our perception of balance and equilibrium. It helps us maintain an upright posture and avoid falling.

• Magnetoception: While more commonly associated with certain animals like birds and insects, some research suggests that humans may also have a weak sense of magnetoreception, or the ability to detect the Earth's magnetic field. However, the extent of this ability and its potential role in human behavior and navigation remain unclear.”

So our five senses plus those six describe physical abilities or our “tools” for me.

There are many more inputs that I seem to “see” much more now:

• who I hang-out with. Who surrounds me. What king of people? What are their interests? What is their lifestyle? What do they talk about and their interests?

• where I live as I described. The Amazon forest has me surrounded with millions of living creatures, trees and plants. I feel them. Living in nature anywhere else is great but has really no comparison to this “life bath” which acts like a “supercharger” which I miss the minute I leave. The other extreme are the big cities where I can barely feel any life at all, the kingdom of concrete and materialism where borders and passports were created (the animals do not know them). I still like going to cities but only for a few days, I get exhausted really fast. I miss my friends there and love seeing them though.

• what comes to my brain with my five senses (or 11!). What do I read? What do I watch? What words? What tone of voice? What level of stress around me or whatever enters me creates in me?

There is a reason why meditation retreats, the “red road” path with vision quest or the dietas in the jungle include complete isolation, not seeing people, no talking…

First I thought it was a wonderful way to calm down what’s happening outside and inside of me, and it truly was. Then once my mind calmed down I started so feel much more. At the beginning it was after the retreats, now it’s permanently.

I feel I wasn’t feeling or seeing anything before.

I care a lot about who I spend time with now, this is why we created the PAUA Community that gathers now around 700 people on What’sApp “on a similar quest to understand beyond our five sense or similar energy”.

If what I wrote about today resonates with you, you should also join us at PAUA Paris May 12-13 (in about three weeks now!). Beyond our fantastic speakers you should really enjoy the community and meet more like minded people from around the world. 35 countries last year and likely more this year. A startup contest will also showcase great entrepreneurs in consciousness, AI and web3 (we’re about ancient and also new technologies).

I really hope to see you there. Here is a 10% discount on the ticket price for readers of my newsletter.

An entire day with the KOGI in Paris on May 14th in a very small group.

We have 3 representatives from the KOGI tribe coming both days of PAUA. It’s a very closed tribe, their masters spend 10 to 20 years in a cave from birth, I cannot imagine how much they must be feeling.

We have a very rare opportunity, a full day with the KOGI on Sunday May 14th in Paris in a very small group at a friends’ private home with a garden in Paris.

We organized it to support the KOGI buy back and protect their land, 100% of the revenue goes to them.

It will be an incredible day of teachings and maybe healings in a small group, the participation is 800 euros with a light lunch, the tickets are on our website and it’s small and will sell out soon..

If you cannot do that, we will have them throughout the two days of the “regular” PAUA program.

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Back from 10 days in the Amazon forest sacred village with a group of 14 friends that I invited here, I randomly saw this Elon tweet yesterday (I cannot embed it anymore as apparently the new “notes” feature making Substack more like Twitter made Elon to forbid embedding tweets on Substack!). It said:

Starship fully stacked at Starbase. Team is working towards a launch rehearsal next week followed by Starship’s first integrated flight test ~week later pending regulatory approval

Did you notice “Starship is pointy”? This is fun, Elon made his rocket more pointy because of The Dictator movie. It had to be “more scary” even though the aerodynamics are slightly worse.

“Round is not scary”. Elon wants his Starship to be scary, just as a joke or is there anything else inspired by the Dictator? World domination?

A manager at SpaceX called me yesterday.

“Elon would like you to join the next Starship human expedition”. Did not even think about it, took a plane and here I was getting briefed and prepared for the mission.

I put on an awesome space suit and got very focused on the complex and interesting briefings. I was then transferred to a sealed and secured pod where the 10 or so humans going to space were getting final preparations.

Elon was there with a few other Silicon Valley friends I recognized, he was smiling and seemed happy to see me, I was happy to be here too. We met a few times in the past, Elon came to one of my past conference LeWeb exclusive dinners. We used to book the entire restaurant of the famous Chef Guy Savoy. People who joined one of these are still talking to me about it 10 years later.

I am told that the mission will be two weeks longs, we are going to stay the entire time in the Space Station which orbits around Earth. There is internet connection there but really minimal, I am told, despite Starlink’s progress.

I cannot be more excited but I think about the organization of PAUA happening in a bit more than a month (early bird tickets end on April 10, you might want to grab a ticket today). I try to call Magdalena to tell her I am going to be off for 2 weeks again but hopefully everything will be fine.

We’re finally taking-off (I know, the below rocket isn’t that pointy but that’s all I could find).

Just minutes before take-off one of the participants tells me about the SpaceShip engine. He says it’s the safest and simplest design ever, incredibly powerful and I should not worry.

Worry? I do not worry at all. Worrying is a waste of energy, so is anger. I have been much better at pushing away these unnecessary thoughts as I just closed my one year “dieta” or initiation (more on this later…)

As we pierce the sky on our way to space the engine noise gives room to a different new noise, like a voice. Curious to understand what it is. It feels like a baby talking to me. I feel a gentle bite of a baby with no teeth on my nose.

I open my eyes and here is my son, baby Falco, playing on top of me and working on waking me up with his smile and familiar voice.

This is the best way to wake-up.

Funny that we named him “Falco” for the “falcon” bird (the fastest flying bird in the world) and that Elon named his starship “Falcon9”, we weren’t influenced by this at all, more by indigenous wisdom.

Why am I sharing this dream story?

There were many gifts in the consciousness tools I have been using. If there is one obvious change in myself that I experiment every day, it’s lucid dreaming (among many other changes).

I have now another life in my dreams, every night.

What’s new now is that reality and dreams tend to connect through bridges.

In the case of this dream, it was “primed” by a tweet from Elon. Getting back to the real world was my son Falco playing on top of me. I used to not remember my dreams and not being lucid in them, now I tend to think of what I dreamt about throughout the day and get many insights from them. I am still learning to interpret them. I also pay attention to the “bridges” what gets me from reality to dream life to reality.

We create our own reality constantly

When we dream, our consciousness is much more connected and our brain is much more “free”.

When we are awake, with some work we can create a different reality. We do it all the time without being aware reading a book or watching a movie.

Traveling is a great way to change reality. I was just in the Amazon forest surrounded by millions of animals and plants and hanging-out with indigenous who think of everything in a completely different way.

Living better and happier is for me learning to create a different reality.

Life challenges us all the time, it is easy to fall into focusing on those challenges, problems and getting into a bad mood. It is however equally easy to take a broader view and enjoy anything that happens as an experience we get to live. There is also always the next night for more adventures in dream life (I am looking forward to continuing that dream exploring space!).

I would like to talk a bit about PAUA now as it’s next month and it’s very real.

Creating a different reality with PAUA in Paris May 12-13

Creating a different reality in Paris for two days is one of the reasons my team and myself organize PAUA in Paris in about a month (early bird tickets end April 10, get one now!).

We brought speakers from all around the world on the topic of natural versus artificial intelligence. Indigenous elders, technology and science experts and entrepreneurs will share their own reality and invite you to raise our consciousness.

I am so proud of bringing to our participants such incredible talks, here are some of the speakers-

Straight from the Amazon forest, we just confirmed a few hours ago two members of the Puyanawà tribe, check-out all the profiles on our website.

It took quite a bit of work to have all these people come to Paris for us, we’re doing it because we have the passion to share something different. We talk about AI and technology but it’s an event for self-development and changing our minds. It’s different this way than most events.

Would love your help! Here are a few very easy ways to help. I really appreciate it.-follow and share PAUA on Twitter-follow and share PAUA on Instagram-follow and share PAUA on LinkedIn-like and share PAUA on Facebook

We also understand that the ticket price (399 euros early bird) might be a challenge for some of you so we are offering a referral simple system that if three of your friends buy tickets with your link (every ticket comes with an individual referral link) your ticket is free.

Ambassadors program

We have just started a PAUA Ambassadors program with discount links to your community and a commission, all the details are in our Circle community.

Finally we’re hosting a PAUA community special call next Tuesday at 18h CET, I hope you can join!Tuesday, April 11, 2023.18:00 h CETHost: Loïc Le MeurTopic: PAUA Paris 2023 and future of PAUA communityNew link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87520417983?pwd=d2JUZVdCR3Q3c3BkbFhvSUFrRzNBdz09

...and join us circle, which we are using more and more and post recordings there https://circle.paua.life/c/community-calls

That’s it for today.

For my next newsletter I will share about closing my one year dieta, which just happened on April 2nd. Talk to you all soon!

Oh, before I forget if you’re curious about the Amazon and uncontacted tribes, how to work with Anacondas… do not miss this video of Paul Rosolie with Lex Fridman.

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A scary world Last week, I wrote about the SVB crash and how most Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors got their money blocked. I discussed how consciousness can help us navigate such challenges. I'm glad this issue is resolved...until the next.

The news is full of bad news: the ongoing Ukraine war, an earthquake devastating Turkey and other countries, France protesting and setting fire to public places as the government forces higher retirement ages, and California dealing with floods.

Bad news isn't newWe've survived two World Wars, and the older generations might argue that our current situation isn't worse than what they experienced. The media has dubbed the SVB incident as the first-ever "Twitter-fueled bank run."

What's new is the unprecedented speed at which our world changes.

Trust in Institutions: Who and What Do We Trust? How can we trust governments that have $31 trillion national debt (and going up – this clock is entertaining… USA) or France ($2.7 trillion), U.K ($2.2 trillion), Germany (2.1 trillion), etc?

How can we trust our bank when a very “trusted” and established bank can disappear and block your accounts in 24h?

Media? In the U.S., only 29% trust media sources (according to Reuters and other sources).

Education systems? Trust varies across different countries, but only about half of the people trust it in the U.S., according to Edelman.

Business? In comparison to the trust in business as a whole, trust in CEOs decreased by 5 points from 2020 to 44%, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer 2021.

So what do people trust? I asked GPT… of course:

"Overall, while there is variation across different countries and contexts, healthcare professionals, non-profit organizations, local government, the scientific community, and religious institutions are some of the institutions that tend to be more widely trusted by people."

Speaking for myself, I trust my family, my friends, my community (which includes my business community), myself, and…the work I am doing in consciousness, my connection to nature.

I also trust some non-profits such as the Ocean Cleanup Project that spoke at the previous PAUA conference:

Trust. Either you have it in total or you don’t have it in total; either it is nil or it is one hundred percent. You cannot divide it into slices. It is indivisibly one, organically one.” - Osho

Trusting Yourself I had not thought so much about how trusting myself is so important - before my personal consciousness work. I think it's essential to consider trusting ourselves fully and work for it.

Do you trust yourself? I definitely learned to trust myself through the processes I keep writing about: the vision quest, the Sundance, the Amazon forest…

I trust that if the worst happens, I can work my way to protect my family, the ones I love and myself. I have re-read a fourth time Who am I yesterday, it’s becoming a must for me to kill any negative incoming thought, which is what Sri Ramana Maharshi recommends, keep questioning “Who is this thought for?”, “Who am I?” then come back to silence and “source”.In the previous newsletter, I wrote about Ram Dass's planes of reality and our way of seeing the world. If we see it only from our humanity, the constant suffering of everyone becomes unbearable.

His words are even more important today as panic happens so fast with social media. People spread their own fears and amplify a whole “flock of birds” or people in panic. We do not need to get into it and let it pass, like everything else.

The "New Normal" Here are great words by Bill Gurley collected by Emily Chang. We need to get used to the "new normal."

This is about technology startups finding it hard to raise funding these days, but it is the same for the world entirely.

I will not be worried. On the contrary, my message here is that no matter what happens, we must trust that something good is happening.

I don't have the solutions, but one is to trust the universe more.

We still don't understand so much about the universe and nature.

We don't understand well how trees communicate, but they do. We don't understand most of how nature works or how a soul becomes a baby.

We don't understand consciousness itself. We wonder if AIs can be conscious, but we don't even agree on how humans are conscious themselves.

From a scientific perspective, consciousness is a highly debated topic, and its precise nature and origin are still not fully understood. Some researchers view consciousness as a product of brain activity, while others believe that it is a fundamental aspect of the universe, beyond the physical realm.

The great mystery is trusting what we don't understand: nature, the universe. Some people call it the Divine or God. I trust the universe without needing a religion or calling it "God." I prefer not to name it.

Why do I trust the universe?

First, because it's easier to go through life by trusting that "everything is perfect," as Ram Dass's Buddhist teacher taught him.

It's easier to live life by acknowledging that I don't understand and will never understand everything.

It's easier for me to believe that whatever I experience is what I'm meant to experience in this life, so my soul progresses until the next incarnation.

Many people thought the world would end for many generations, and it did not happen.

I think we live in fantastic times to be alive and experience what is happening.

I am not pessimistic at all. We will figure it out and our system will evolve. Everything is perfect.

So what do I do now? The same, keep building.

“Chop wood, carry water” I just keep working and building consciously. I chose to first work on myself to be more conscious because it all starts by consciousness. It’s fantastic that the Ocean Cleanup Project removes our garbage plastic from the ocean but it would be better if humans were more conscious and not threw it there in the first place.

I don't have the keys nor the power to change everything by myself; I can only do it at my own scale and pace.

I chose to build on what I think I do best, organizing PAUA. It is focused on helping those who participate in the community or join our events to become more conscious.

Upcoming PAUA Event in ParisIf you want to join and learn with us, the next PAUA physical event is in Paris May 12-13. The content and the people we will meet should teach us a lot.

This year we are also launching our PAUA Startup awards, a startup competition in the consciousness, AI, Web3 and green categories. We want many startups and investors to join us along with our consciousness speakers. Here is the application form for startups.

Off to the Amazon forest for 12 days!

I’m writing this note in transit from Brasilia :) I go there to reconnect to nature and to the source. AI is fascinating but I always learn so much there, AI doesn’t even come close.

I am not sure about the Internet connection in the Amazon forest as always (and it’s a good thing) but I will try to journal the trip on my daily journal yawa.news where I haven’t written for a while. It is a good occasion to start writing there again more frequently. I will write a summary here as well but I won’t send more than an email or two a week on this newsletter, you can “trust” me on that.

Who and what do you trust? I'm curious. Do you trust yourself? Do you trust the universe?

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I won’t describe what happened with the SVB bank over the last 3 days as I would be surprised you haven’t read or written about it by yourself. It seems to be resolved now but it inspires me some thoughts about fear and trust in this world I would like to share.

The support of the tech community has been incredible despite the level of fear.

SVB has always supported me throughout my career. I know many current and previous SVB employees who are all great people and feel for the situation they’re going through. I reached out to some. Many of my Silicon Valley friends had momentarily lost some or all their company or personal assets. I was an SVB customer in the past (with all my startup cash in it) and many founders and funds I am friends with or I invested in were impacted, sometimes in a terrible way.

“EVERYBODY banks with SVB in SV”.

Most startups and funds in Silicon Valley were impacted, some startups had all their funds at this bank and weren’t going to be able to pay their employees or survive if it lasted.

Some founders also had their personal accounts at SVB, here is one who shared openly on Twitter:

Maximum fear

Instantly being cut of your company and personal bank accounts, in other words losing everything material in a few hours can only lead to one of the highest level of fear one can experience.

What would be a worse fear level than that? Your own death or even more for most people, the death of your children or family.

As we all did through life, I have been myself exposed to such fears losing my sister and my father and I obviously went through financial ups and downs as well as entrepreneurial challenges.

I have also been doing a lot of spiritual work in the past years so the whole SVB crash and the constant fear on Twitter made me think:

“what are the best teachings to remind myself of as this unfolds”? Here are a few.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Going through many fears isolated almost by myself in the Amazon forest for three months last year, I read Man’s search for meaning. There is no better book I know for getting a higher perspective on worries, fear and how precious life is when everything is lost or when challenges become real. Not that what I went through compared in any way to what Frankl lived, but when things really go hard it’s helpful to read how someone can continue to live going through the absolute worst, and why. I highly recommend reading or re-reading it for perspective.

“The danse”

I was writing last week as I just got back from the Sundance which is an experience of approaching physical death through exhaustion with no food and no water. Going through this enough times taught me to manage my fears and dissociate my physical body, my mind and my soul (or some people would say “my spirit”).

It is a school of life. Life isn’t easy and we all go through challenges constantly. It seems the state of the world is going to be more and more challenging to us and we need to get used to fast spreading events such as COVID, SVB or the crypto crash last year.

Life is a long marathon. You don’t simply go run a marathon, you train for it. Similarly “the danse” and going through intense and hard experiences makes life’s challenges easier by controlling the mind. The real work of the “red road” starts after the Sundance ends. 25 men and women joined to “vision quest” this year and I will be inviting more again next year, always last week of February.

Taking a step back from my ego, everything is perfect

I highly encourage you to watch this video with Ram Dass, a PAUA Community member, Elena, posted on our what’sapp:

“Can’t you see that everything is perfect” told his monk teacher to Ram Dass arguing that nothing was perfect and talking to him about wars or people dying from malnutrition in the world, etc.

Ram Dass says “it’s difficult to say it but I will say it anyway” or something like this.

It is difficult to say that everything that happens is perfect no matter what happens, especially when the suffering gets really intense and few solutions appear, as it happened this past week-end.

It is difficult for me to say this as I am healthy and can provide support to my family and myself. Sure, many people suffer much more than I do I am aware of that, this isn’t the point here and if you feel this way can you just put this feeling aside for a minute?

Don’t you see that everything is perfect? Such a powerful thing to hear when the s**t hits the fan, right?

“Can’t you step back for a moment from your humanity to see the way of things? Can’t you see the way it’s all lawfully unfolding? Do you have the courage to see what you are seeing or does it seem to take away your humanity? If you come down to your human heart the pain is unbearable because there is so much suffering everywhere.”

One thing that people do is they close their hearts down to protect themselves from the immense amount of suffering.

I have seen the worst and the best on Twitter over the last days. Some people cracking jokes at the situation or making fun of those affected or even of the whole technology industry that would “deserve it”.

I know several large investors who lost a lot very fast in crypto last year (as in the Terra LUNA/UST debacle) and it also impacted me. They learned a lesson and at the first rumor of what was going on at SVB they pulled all their funds out.

SVB made mistakes but their assets were good (which is why the situation resolved so fast without the US tax payers having to pay for it) unlike FTX and that Sam Bankman-Fried thief and his teenagers crew running a company without accounting. No comparison except the speed at which it all happened.

My friend Martin Varsavsky makes a good point saying “this is all our own fault creating a bank run on SVB from fear and panicking”.

Top founders and investors from Silicon Valley panicking, that isn’t so usual, the top tech people are reliable and strong. So did SVB. The fear caught us all by storm regardless.

Back to Ram Dass. How do you keep your heart open in hell?

“There is nowhere to stand. If you stand only in your humanity, it’s unbearable.”

Ram Dass adds “if you stand in the everything is perfect, it’s impersonal”.

In other words it’s an ego removal, this isn’t about me, I am those who are suffering, I am one with the universe. Separation is an illusion.

“You do everything you can do to help the people you love but at the same time it is all as it must be”.

Accept everything as it is. Once you accepted it be the best version of yourself that you can be.

Empathize with those suffering (including yourself if suffer, especially your inner child) but at the same time look at the universe, look at the stars and understand that anything tough thrown at you is new “work for our soul”.

It is “just” another experience we get to experience.

Shadow work also really helps even though it’s hard and we’d all prefer doing something else (my highest unsubscribe rate ever on this newsletter). People just don’t want to hear about it and prefer ignoring it.

I wrote about “Who am I” that you can read in less than an hour and I keep reading it and thinking more about it. It teaches that we are not who we think we are. There is no correct answer to the question. We are the consciousness that wonders about “who I am I” and gets to experience life and its challenges.

When you take a step back from “you” and think of you as a part of the universe…

“You begin to see the world as a place that is here to help you grow, to help you awaken, to help you become more of who you truly are. And in doing that, you begin to live in a way that is more open-hearted, more compassionate, more loving, more kind.” Believing in reincarnation helps of course, then this life is just another opportunity to experience and grow, death isn’t about going anywhere it is just about letting go of this body and take another to continue the growth differently.

Easy to say difficult to do? Yes, but…

There are many ways to work on this ego dissolution that eventually removes any fear at all.

The easier to access is meditation.

Plant medicine and psychedelics can help “seeing the whole” and leaving his or her own body. “The dance” through fasting is another (Sundance for men, Moondance for women, see here a rare video of one of the “Abuelas”). Add your own, there are many ways to practice and train yourself to see that you might be seeing the world in from a single point of view while there are many.

Watch the video below, the Freedom of being Nobody to understand “the different planes of reality” I wrote about three years ago. Practicing seeing the universe more than the self really helps.

Beyond fears, the question of trust comes next.

SVB was trusted and disappeared in two days. It happened really fast and if the US government had not intervened to make everyone “whole” it would have likely spread really fast to the entire economy, as it did to crypto “depeging” USDC. Everything is more connected than ever. Two crypto banks died too, leaving close to no banking solutions to crypto startups.

What do COVID, the crypto crash, FTX and the SVB crash have in common even though they’re completely different events?

Trust and how we’re starting to trust less and less. This will be my next post.

We’re talking about all these topics, technology, ancient wisdom and spiritual growth at my upcoming conference PAUA in Paris May 12-13. We started it last year precisely to help us learn how to better deal with ourselves and a more and more challenging world, I hope you will join us, early tickets here. Any ticket sale helps us get more spiritual leaders share their wisdom.

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Hi everyone, I am so excited to share this news today - the Kogis are coming to PAUA Paris May 12-13 it will be very rare and very special.

The Kogis are one of the most ancient and isolated indigenous peoples in the World.

Their masters the “Mamos” are isolated in a dark cave from birth for 9 to 20 years to connect to nature and train to assume their roles as spiritual leaders.

They do not receive groups, do tours or hold ceremonies and have lived isolated in the mountains of Sierra Nevada in Colombia for more than 4,000 years.

Their “medicine” is their “word” and they decided to break their silence and isolation to deliver a strong message to protect the planet at PAUA Paris.

It’s thanks to Lucas Buchholz (a member of the PAUA community) that consulted with them about a sharing their knowledge with us. Lucas has gained their trust working with them for many years and wrote a book about the Kogis available in German and French.

I highly recommend watching this movie for free on YouTube (1.8M views!) about them.

The Kogis will be with us throughout PAUA Paris (get an early bird ticket to come meet them and support PAUA bringing more mind blowing speakers) and deliver their messages as well as exchange thoughts and action ideas with the participants.

"It is your job to work with technology. But it should work like nature itself, not against it."

-Mama Bernardo Mascote Zarabata

Our theme this year for PAUA is Articifial vs Natural intelligence.

The Kogis will be the voice of mother nature and its intelligence. With our constant use of smartphones and now AI tools we are more and more merging with machines ourselves while they have always been one with nature.

I am personally extremely excited to receive them at PAUA and hope you can join us in this special gathering where technology experts, entrepreneurs and consciousness leaders will meet to discuss our future.

Now a bit of personal news with this newsletter…

Back from my third Sundance - a few teachings

Last week, I was talking to you about the 25 women and men entering the Vision Quest and it all went well for their isolation, 4 days no food no water.

In his video about “conscious manifestation” Eckhart Tolle said:

“Something wants to be created through you, whatever it might be, maybe it might be writing a book or creating a conscious business… You may have a vision of what it is you want to achieve, then you focus on that vision and the most powerful way to manifest is in experiencing the fullness of the present moment, life in its fullness. It is a state of being, to experience, to realize the being within you, the -I am-. Then no future moment can be better than this present moment. If you have a vision in your mind of what it is you want to create and you bring this vision into this sense of fullness of the now is the most powerful. Whatever it is you want to have you need to feel you already have it.”

When I started doing my two first vision quests I was alone but strongly seeing the benefits for me I wished that I could share it with more people too.

A handful of friends joined us 3 years ago when Miguel, a Mexican maya spiritual chief, started the vision quest and Sundance of Bacalar. Last year, about 15 joined us and this year we were about 50 people including all the helpers. “Something seems to be happening through me” :-) I want to keep going.

I hope you too will experience a vision quest next year, should be last week of February as well.

Even our son Falco made it, here is Miguel carrying him in our circle in the jungle.

The “red road” starts with the vision quest then heads into the Sundance, it was my third this year, the commitment is 4 years in a row minimum (no commitment for the vision quest). It is a path of transformation and reconnection to nature.

The work of the Sundance isn’t shared much (it needs to be lived rather than told) so I will share some of my teachings but not the process itself too much.

It is a 4 day dance under the Sun, men only that includes like the vision quest 4 days without food or water.

I could write a book about what I learned, so I will share the learnings over a few newsletters.

Here is the main one, it feels like a total death and rebirth, each time.

It was my third but it did not get particularly easier, I just received different teachings. Every year we dance to a different direction, a different energy:-will (white)-transformation (black)-wisdom of the ancestors (red)-tools, our body being one (yellow)

No food and no water, staying in the jungle isolated as a group is very powerful.

With all the other Sundancers, I felt myself getting weaker by the hour. My mouth got dry really fast and going through the need for water was challenging. My body was constantly reminding me of it. It is great mind training to go beyond that most basic need.

Why would I do that now 3 years in a row?

It is about learning to transcend the physical body and its needs for a few days. It is a reminder how life is precious and how important is water and nature.

Deprived of water entirely while still dancing under a heavy sun helps get my spirit stronger. It helps me appreciate everything when the process is done, especially a glass of water (mixed with tea, juice or corn powder for me as I am also still in my one year diet until April 2).

The red road doesn’t stop during vision quests and Sundance, it starts when these experiences end. It is a training for life.

Life constantly brings challenges - the red road teaches humility and how to go through pretty much anything. I “died” a few times already, so any new challenge or fear should be easier to overcome. It’s a process to completely remove fear of… anything including death itself.

We aren’t allowed not only to drink water but also touch it for 4 days (no washing at all, not even the hands), imagine how I appreciated that jump in the Bacalar laguna after.

I will keep more teachings I received from the Sundance for another newsletter.

I really hope you can join us in Paris for PAUA, a good way to get a taste of all these ancient teachings without having to go through the Sundance, I hope to see you there!

Getting a ticket early helps us make the event better. Thank you!

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A few months ago, last November, I posted an unusual invite to this newsletter, an invitation to spend 4 days in the jungle isolated with no food and no water.

I’m here writing from Bacalar, Mexico. The “Maldives” of Mexico.

Many know the Laguna but less know that there is also a beautiful pristine jungle with many animals and incredible nature.

Twenty five friends joined me and decided to go to the jungle 48 hours ago, they are going through their second night as I write this, exposed to solitude, boredom, animals, darkness, sun… Why are they doing that?

Before sharing a bit of my thoughts about this I would like to say that we just posted our first speakers to our PAUA Paris 2023 event May 12-13 and early bird tickets are available while they last (first 100) we hope you will join us this year again! More about our theme “AI and consciousness” and speakers soon.

The most funny answer to this unusual invitation came from a close friend who joked and told me:

“sounds great, can they stake me down naked to a termite mound too?”.

I get it, there are so many other great things to do than starving surrounded by trees and animals. We could hang by a pool with friends, do kite-surfing or just… work.

25 people entered the vision quest this year.

It is the third year I help organize it with our “Abuelo”. Miguel is a native mexican “person of knowledge” with Maya roots and training that I trust like a brother I did not have, or I had in a different way. I helped him support hundreds of women do their Moondance two years in a row, did my own third vision quest and two Sundances with him as a “Chief”, about to do my third in a few days. Miguel also came to a few trips to the Amazon forest with me and supported me during my own 3 months isolation there.

Here is a photo of Miguel and me enjoying the jungle after we “launched” our friends to start their 4 day isolation. Nothing in their mouth apart from air for 4 days!

We were a handful the first year of our vision quest, about 10 last year and 25 this year. Closer to 30 if we include the “Sundancers”. The Sundance is a supercharged version where we not only dry fast for 4 days but we also dance under the sun and practice some rituals.

Why did 25 people decide to put themselves through such a hard exercice?

Getting out of the “default mode network” what people call “normal”

This is the main reason. We all have habits, conditioning by our education and society. Like a 4 day and night non-stop meditation the vision quest takes us out of all habits and conditioning.

Very few people actually take the time to “pause entirely” with no input coming in (no phone, no book, no watch…), nothing coming out (no notes taking…) and in nature day and night.

The simplest medicine there is, nothing

There are no substances at the vision quest and Sundance.

We do not put anything in our minds or bodies while we do it. The medicine is the simplest that there is, the magic of our body and mind themselves. This medicine is always available.

Vision quest is learning to need and do… nothing.

Stopping any activity. There is nothing to do during the vision quest. Going through entire days and nights “doing nothing” else than watching and meditating is incredible.

Leaving everything and… everyone

When I enter the vision quest or Sundance, I leave everything behind. Family, friends, to-do lists are out of touch (no phone allowed). We are only allowed to go with a few clothes and basic protection (agains mosquitoes and cold). There is nobody to see what we are wearing or doing. The only thing we can see is ourselves and our thoughts.

Introspection and time off for ourselves

It’s like a very long meditation. The only possible interruption are animals, trees moving, the Sun, the Stars (which are amazing here) and rarely some rain.

In our modern societies, we tend to be always on. This is the opportunity to be entirely off to modern tools and social life and stay with our own thoughts or observing nature.

Like in long meditation retreats it is a fantastic process to take a step back from what’s happening in our lives to better see what’s going on from the outside, let the mind clear itself from the always-on flow of ideas and make space for something else to come in.

Finding visions with no substances

It’s called “vision quest” for a reason. Isolation in nature and cutting all external input plus fasting create a very special state which can be very similar to taking psychedelics. I experienced myself many experiences of “visions” or being in a total dream like state.

Nature becomes alive, our senses become extremely receptive and real visions often come in such as what people call “sacred geometry”. It can go all the way to complete spiritual experiences or seeing Buddhist type mandalas such as the wheel of time which I saw once.

If it’s not visual it can be incredible insights on problems we were incapable to solve otherwise exactly as it often happens in dreams. See for example how Mendeleev Invented His Periodic Table in a Dream.

Removing the masks

In society, we wear many masks often without even being able to see them. We often get confused between who we are and the “persona” of the masks.

There is no mask to wear in the jungle and nobody to see the mask. We cannot lie to ourselves or to anyone. Vision quest means being alone with nature in the simplest form.

Pushing our own limits

Of course it’s easier to go kite-surfing or walk on a beach than fasting with no water an no food for four days, restricted into a very small space and exposed to nature, rain, sun and the animals (there are many where we do it in Bacalar, Mexico).

The entire process is “medicine”. Going through fears, difficulties to decide, listening to friends and family telling us it is crazy (no food no water will trigger many people telling you it’s “dangerous” even though this practice is extremely old ) before it happens.

During the process we go through thirst, hunger, incoming flow of thoughts until we manage to control our brains. Strong emotions such as bliss or plain anger to better release it have all happened to me as well as the urge to end it and leave as it’s… hard.

We are unable to wash ourselves or do really anything we can normally do and take for granted (such as drinking a glass of water…).

Pushing our own limits and going through them is the best way to realize the power of our minds and bodies.

The teachings of the “red road” (as this path is called) are available anytime, no matter what life throws at us. It makes us stronger.

Modern warriors

Watch these words from one of my red road friends doing his own retreats, Wakia explains very well why we need “modern warriors”. They do not train to go to war or hurt other people, nobody should, they train to be better human beings, protect themselves, protect their families, their communities and eventually nature if they can.

I wrote last year from encountering another “person of knowledge”-

A modern warrior must-control his thoughts, take decisions instantly (without making plans) like quit drinking-control his emotions (don't get angry which is a total waste of energy)-control his words (always be positive and speak good about yourself and others, avoid negative things)-learn from his mistakes, it's a learning process-control his actions and do good things for yourself, for others and for mother Earth -doesn't say something is hard, just say it is easy and it will be easyThe warrior always sees the positive and always thinks positive.

Vision Quest is a training to become the warrior of our own mind.

Redefining the notion of time. No watches allowed.

Time is a human construct. Going through 4 days and nights outside in nature redefines entirely the notion of time and changes it forever.

I could go on and on with the benefits of this exercice.

We are inviting friends to experiment the vision quest for themselves every year around the same period, I will post soon the dates for next year.

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Image created by Midjourney with the prompt “a spiritual seeker a vision quest in the jungle at sunset high definition. The person wears very simple clothes and has nothing with him. The person looks like someone "normal" from a city and not indigenous. He is seated alone contemplating the trees. He is surrounded by trees in the forest, everything is beautiful green and there are many animals.”

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It took me a while to get excited by AI but the tools now available to anyone have convinced me to make AI and consciousness a central theme of PAUA Paris May 12-13 2023.

Here are some tools I played with (and how you can also play with them).

ChatGPT, of course needs no introduction anymore as it is taking the world by storm

A few months ago, we saw many people post LENSA generated photos of themselves.

My indigenous Yawanawà friends loved it too and uploaded photos of themselves painted with their traditional paints called “Keuneuh”, here is young Chief Iskukua Yawanawà on LENSA.

The traditional paints are very old indigenous practices they use for protection and also to help personal transformation. They create them from their visions. I have hundreds of photos of me painted by the Yawanawà and uploaded in LENSA with photos such as this one. The paint is natural fruit juice, they also have a different red one.

There is quite a bit of real-estate to paint on my head…

I then uploaded one of the LENSA image into D-ID.

D-ID makes a talking head from photographies, you can even upload your own voice, here is the result in just a few minutes

I find this fascinating in many ways. This is like making a new version of you alive in a way, with a different mask taking a different identity.

I uploaded my own voice message and D-ID animated the LENSA photo moving my head and lips which is already impressive, they are constantly improving it.

Another company, Eleven labs, lets you upload your voice in mp3 then you can type text and it makes yourself talk, so you could also put there ChatGPT generated text. I have uploaded a file but the voice sounds very artificial from my quick experiment.

I kept playing with AI this time to generate entirely new images.

Dream work

I had a dream with a joker type being that was talking to me from inside a table so inside of drawing it myself on my dream journal (I draw very poorly) I typed in midjourney “a table with magical sacred geometry animations changing form all the time made by a trickster joker with a face full of color squares” and got this result.

It isn’t of course exactly what I saw in my dream but it’s quite close and very impressive as it was created in a few minutes while my dream was still fresh. There is even an AI dream interpreter, haven’t played with that one yet.

Drawing dreams is making them easier to remember and then “work with them” (what was being saying in my dream comes better if I keep a clear image in my mind).

I have been generating many images from what I saw in my dreams and will keep researching my own imagination. I find AI invaluable for dream recall.

Midjourney is very easy to use, just get discord then signup, head to one of their “newbie” channels and just type /imagine and describe what you want Midjourney to draw.

For example a needed an illustration for our new AI What’sapp group in the PAUA What’sApp Community and got this one in a minute…

How much of this image is actually coming from real artist work versus pure computer generated work? What will happen with the collective work of the artists? You can even ask Midjourney to create art based on someone else’s art style that he’d know.

For example, I typed “Valentine’s day drawn by Picasso” and got this

What would have Picasso thought of us generating art on something pretending to be his own art style?

I highly recommend watching “The End of Art, an argument against Image AIs” by Steven Zapata.

Stable Diffusion is another image generator to play with.

We’re going go make AI and consciousness one of the central themes of PAUA Paris this year, May 12-13, please feel free to recommend speakers, we want many of them!

I find both themes together fascinating and very useful. Here is a souvenir photo with all the PAUA community volunteers on stage.

Posts I wrote on my daily journal since the last time I wrote here:Time, places, dreams and memories"White Cultural Loss" and European mysticismBeing spiritual means being aware, not positiveWant Super Powers? Just Watch Animals.Ghost ski resorts, global warming - can we afford to carry on skiing?

Some proud dad personal news! My son Gauthier Le Meur, his main business partner Austin Diamond and his Alongside team just raised $11M from a16zcrypto and other investors (of course I invested too!).

Alongside is a “crypto index”, like a “S&P 500 for crypto” that you can buy, it decreases the risk of picking only one crypto currency to a broader basket of coins, that is always adapted to represent the top coins only.

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I am reading Kogi, a book from Lucas Buchholz, a German member of the PAUA community, I highly recommend it.

Lucas tells the story of how he encountered a young 18 years old Kogi who asked him this question:

“When is it that you consider you have enough to just sit still by a river or listen to nature?”

That’s a very simple question yet so powerful. I have had the same question many times in my stays in the jungle with the Yawanawà.

The young Kogi explained.

“Little brothers (us versus them) all think the same everywhere. They want to buy and sell land everywhere. They all use money and always want to earn more of it. This is why we say that you all think the same way”

Our vision of the world is “standardized”, what we believe in and the way we live are basically the same. It’s obvious when you walk in Madrid, Cusco or Paris most beautiful places and see a Starbucks and a Sephora store in the best spots.

The need for more of everything and more money to buy it and at all times is normal.

Once the discomfort is too high many start looking for something else, as I did myself.

We start seeking calm, consciousness, some would say they are seeking enlightenment as a final destination. I highly respect anyone on “the path” [to become a better human being]…

Here is a trap I fell into many times… replacing the material “I need more-ness” by now the consciousness/spiritual “more-ness”.

It’s a trap because there is no end to the “seeking”. Advanced indigenous or spiritual people I know do not seek anything, they just “are”. Sure it takes work to get there, but at one point the seeking must end.

When we seek “calm” or we finally stop seeking, what do we need?

Community is the “hidden secret” of indigenous. It is so obvious it’s often hard to see.

We always think there is another book, another trip to the jungle, another experience. This time this stay in Bhutan with monks will finally “enlighten me” or… “fix me for real”. This trip to the jungle or that meditation retreat will change me. This book is the key finally, etc… no end to it.

“There is no effort wasted on this path” (hi, Greg, if you read me!) so it’s all good, except that we can get stuck in the seeking. Each effort, each retreat is useful for sure.

Communities are even more useful.

The indigenous live in strong communities that constantly share knowledge, help each other and remember the past from elders who spent their lives learning, then teaching and sharing knowledge. In our societies we put our elders in retirement homes so we do not have to deal with them.

Gabor Mate summarized very well an advice I could have used when I started working with indigenous 6 years ago in this IG video.

You can’t just bring a bunch of strangers together for ceremony. Individuals are social creatures by nature. This ideology that we are individualists, in competition and selfish is a travesty of what human nature really is all about. Trauma on the other hand isolates people. Healing trauma requires in most cases a connection with others. Not only a connection with the healer, “shaman” or the therapist, but connection with people that are your equals and your partners and who will support you and whom you can support. There is a give and take which is the essence of healing. Especially with the vulnerability that psychedelic work opens up, you really need the group support.

I haven’t found that many communities of people working on themselves and sharing, especially embracing the entrepreneurial and business world, which I needed myself.

In May it will be two years we started the PAUA community, at the intersection of consciousness and business, for this reason. It came from the need of friendship, sharing and support of like-minded people on the same path.

We’re doing a few things in addition the PAUA What’sapp community-PAUA Paris, a conference in Paris May 12th - 13th (changed to Friday/Saturday now 100% confirmed, website update coming, we’re working hard on it and I hope you can join, more soon)-a weekly community call, every Tuesday at 18h CET topics go from meditations, buddhist teachings or business as we did with Yat Siu. We don’t always publish the recordings so people can express themselves more freely. -a weekly men’s circle and women’s circles every Wednesday-retreats and meet-ups, many self created by the community, some we organize such as the Vision Quest and the upcoming trip to the Amazon forest.

If you feel like joining our community, it’s here. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a good start and many find it useful, we are all improving it daily as we can, working with the opportunities and limitations of the tools available (whatsapp and zoom!).

If you join, please be respectful of everyone, we’re seeing it as a beautiful garden that needs constant attention from everyone.

Sometimes the most obvious thing we actually need is right in front of our nose, a community.

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Happy New Year to all of you reading this newsletter, thank you for being here in my life in a way or another. Thank you for reading and thank you for your messages in any form you send them.

Writing gives me constant gifts through reconnecting with old friends who reach out to me daily as well as connecting to new ones who seem to resonate with what I share.

This year I was isolated for the first and only time in my life for an entire three months in the Amazon jungle. After I left my “temporary jungle womb” in complete silence and no contact to others I have communicated more than ever in my life through my two newsletters (this one where I don’t post on more than twice a week on and my journal), podcast, videos…

We also built PAUA Paris that gathered 400 people from 35 countries. I guess I really needed more than ever to be back in touch with others and find friends who think alike.

I will share here two beautiful happy new year quotes that friends posted on the PAUA What’s App community. You are welcome to join.I knew the first one from Brel, but it’s so good it’s always nice to read again.

“I wish you endless dreams and the furious desire to make a few come trueI wish you to love what should be loved and to forget what should be forgottenI wish you passionsI wish you silencesI wish you bird songs when you wake up, and children laughterI wish you to resist the rut, the indifference, the negative traits of our time

Above all, I wish you to be yourself”

Jacques Brel - thanks, Waël Mechri-Yver

Children laughter is guaranteed as I will always remember 2022 as the birth of my 4th son, Falco. Whatever happened in 2022, it was a fantastic year for me just for this reason. Thank you, life.

On the stroke of midnight tonight, you can resolve to be better, if you like… to be fitter, to eat cleaner, to work harder. On the stroke of midnight tonight, you can resolve to become a whole new you, if you so choose. Or, you can take a moment to acknowledge, all you already are. Because it’s a lot. You’re a lot. And you deserve to be commended. On the stroke of midnight tonight, perhaps you could congratulate yourself, for coping. For breaking, again, and for rebuilding, again. For catching the stones life has thrown at you, and using them to build your castle that little bit stronger. You have endured, my friend. And I don’t see the need to resolve to become a whole new you, when you are already so very much indeed. Happy new year. You made it. Now let us face another 365 day-turn, arms wide, accepting, embracing and ‘seeing’ each other, for all we are.. Poem by Donna Ashworth (thanks @mihai.love)

I love our community. It’s a real gift. Every day I am surrounded with friends sharing great content and ideas. I will keep working hard on our community in 2023 through sharing and weekly calls.

I have read a few new year predictions and wishes by email from friends too and I paid special attention to the posts of David Marcus and Fred Wilson who posted what happened in 2022 and his predictions for 2023.

They both write about how tough has 2022 been still through COVID and with the explosion of the tech and crypto bubble. They insisted on the end of speculation as David Marcus wrote “Out with speculators, in with builders”

Years of greed will make room for real-world applications. The years of creating a token out of thin air and making millions are over. The music has stopped. We’re back to our regular programming of having to create real value and solving real world problems.

Fred wrote:

Many large centralized entities; lenders, exchanges, crypto funds, etc, blew up when the value of web3 assets declined 70-90% over the course of 2022. The carnage has been massive and reminds me of what happened to the web sector in 2000/2001. Some of this has been markets doing their thing, but not all of it was. There was fraud, mismanagement, irresponsible risk-taking, and more, at play in the web3 sector.

and added courageously expressing what many would not write in public

I understand that this year has been painful for most and devastating for many. I am not immune to it. Our family’s net worth has taken a massive hit. The carrying value of USV’s assets under management has been cut in half this year. And yet, I am fine, my family is fine, and USV is fine. Many are not. I understand that and have a lot of empathy for those who lost so much, including their jobs, this year.

I also remember the 2000-2001 and 2008 tech bubbles burst. They were equally violent and calling them “carnage” seems accurate. The ENRON scandal happened in 2001. I got caught myself in the LUNA/UST debacle that destroyed 45 billion in assets in a few hours. I was in the jungle offline when it happened, what was I thinking leaving these positions open before going off for 3 months… or being there at all.

FTX literally stole tens of billions of crypto holders and speculators money. I had all my crypto in FTX so what I had in crypto got entirely destroyed in ashes and reduced to 0. I have some small DEFI assets left and they are still there but very small and uncertain.

As Fred Wilson said, I got significantly affected but this is nothing compared to people who lost their jobs or lost everything. I feel terrible this happened to them and so many people are suffering.

I am often a believer and really believed in crypto. Many of my friends warned me. I told them they did not understand it was a new paradigm in finance that was going through a major disruption. I was convinced they were wrong and believed in a new world.

2022 proved those who called it b**t right. It’s been full of lessons for me.

In 2000-2001 the same thing happened with the web startup valuations. Many startups died, even huge ones and the disbelief in the tech “revolution” won. Yet, it’s after 2001 that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google exploded. It’s also after 2001 that unprecedented tech innovation happened.

This is why I don’t think crypto and web3 are dead yet. We might be surprised by what happens in the next 10 years. Tech innovation isn’t dead either, it’s still the beginning of a long transformation of the way we live and not always for the better. I am concerned by AI. I am not sure what I see coming in AI for now is really going to be that good for us and the world. I will write more about this.

I will keep focusing on building our PAUA conference and community as well as writing and continuing my own consciousness work.

I will also continue to help others as I can on their own consciousness path.

In 2022 I helped organize and invited for the first time a few friends to participate in our vision quest and Sundance work, many more will join this year in February.

In 2021 and 2022 I organized group trips to the Amazon forest, I might organize another one this year as well, let me know if you would be interested. I am thinking about doing it right before I close my one year intense work dieta, end of march.

On April 2, 2023 I will end my one year dieta, the most intense work I have ever been through. It’s going to be an important step for me and will be sharing the changes I see and some of what I learned.

I will not do predictions for 2023 but just end by saying how obvious it is to me that people are more and more interested in consciousness work. Meditation retreats, Wim Hof retreats, trips to the jungle are all sold out while there are more and more of them happening around the world. I see also more and more events including consciousness content in their program.

Thank you for reading, again, and wishing you and your families the very best in these challenging but also fascinating times.

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I will start by wishing you the best for this holiday season and hope you had a great Xmas if you celebrated it.

Take a few minutes to watch this, really.

I would like to start by encouraging you to pause for a few minutes and watch this video and take one breath around the world. I did not know it despite its 26M views and watched it twice.

It feels very similar to the change of universe I experienced in the Amazon forest and then back to “reality” (make sure to watch until the end). Thank you Tatianna Ohnyeva for posting it in the PAUA What’sapp community. I would like to invite its author Guillaume Néry to a podcast and/or speak at a future PAUA event if anyone knows him.

This video is a perfect illustration of going from one world to another. In this case it’s the world we know the least, the Oceans. We are exploring space but most of the oceans remain a mystery. It’s also an illustration of how we can change our reality using different means. I have never tried free diving and there is someone in our community that does it so the next community call on the 3rd of January (every Tuesdays at 18h CET) will be about freediving (calendar invite here).

Xmas in silence last year, with the family this year

Last year, I went through Xmas and NYE in a 10 day silent meditation retreat at Pachamama in Costa Rica. I highly recommend it if you do not have young children. It was a very deep experience not to participate in the gigantic “buying stuff” for Xmas but also hard as I did not see my older children or friends for NYE.

I love Xmas as a family reunion tradition, of course. I also love NYE as a “hang-out with your friends” tradition too, no question.

This year I spent quality time enjoying the presence of my beloved older children Arthur, Gauthier, Gregoire and his girlfriend Sarah as well as a fantastic meal (still recovering from it)…

I followed “religiously” my dieta staying away from red meat, any sugar and of course alcohol. It’s been 9 months now so I got used to it and it’s become quite easy. I am doing my best not to be that guy who tells everyone they should not drink as I already said it. It’s challenging when other people bring the topic or ask why I stopped etc then I end up being that guy again! Fortunately we did not talk about it over dinner.

My fourth son Falco was born on November 29th and I have been spending time with him and Magdalena, as I should. No silent meditation this year.

I will write more about my impressions about the first weeks. It has been life changing of course.

Where is the Christmas we celebrate actually coming from?

I liked reading this Twitter thread on the history of Santa Claus unrolled here as well as the 10 biggest Xmas myths debunked. Learned a lot there. The “tradition” has definitely evolved a lot.

On that note, I wish you the best holiday season.

I missed writing often so I am going to write more again here and on my other newsletter. I will write more paid subscribers posts too. The voice in my dreams is what I sent only to them recently, more to come!

Have a great time with your family and close ones, wherever you are, I wish you the very best. Thank you for reading.

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Here is a quick story.

I got in a plane (it wasn’t going to Ibiza, Bali or Tulum!).

I asked the flight attendant for a coffee. She was very nice and I appreciated the tone of her voice immediately.

Her name is Christine (hi again Christine if you read this!).

I asked for a second coffee and for some reason she told me “coffee is bad for you” or something like that.

I thanked and quiet down the part of my mind that immediately kicked in “she’s judging me, why is she telling me that, not her problem, etc etc” to receive the message. Meditation.

Let’s pay attention instead. Sometimes a few words from someone can just be a very important message that is disguised in something casual.

I know she is right, of course.

Coffee brings a temporary boost making me feel more energy but if I take a bit too much I will feel “stressed” or “oppressed” for hours. The effects of coffee also last about 9-10 hours so if I drink one at 15h I won’t sleep well, or won’t sleep as good as I could. Coffee is also addictive. I know all of that. I did not finish it.

I got curious why she felt that she should tell me this. I forgot how we got there but Christine told me she is a yoga teacher. I listened.

Very quickly she told me she also is a reiki “master” and does healings on people (and her fellow co-workers at the airline) all the time.

Why did she tell me this? I did not recall having talked about healings or anything about this.

This is new for me. I would have never had anyone tell me that “randomly” in the past.

Nobody would have told me that, knowing I would have probably laughed or not received it in a good way. I was quite closed.

In a matter of minutes we ended up talking about the Amazon forest, ceremonies, indigenous, etc etc. I shared a bit about what I learned there.

I asked smiling - do you do any “healings on board” while you serve as a flight attendant?

Often! -she says.

“People just tell me during the flight that they have a headache for example. I tell them I do energy work and might do a little something and I sometimes do. I also do lots of healings at home.”

I asked “Do you charge for it?” - she said “at home yes, otherwise people don’t take it seriously”.

There are shamans in the forest, sorcerers and witches, but the flight attendant in a random plane?

We are so closed that we don’t feel much anymore. I called it “the invisible evil” in a note I wrote during the same flight.

I wonder if people believing in healings or performing them is a growing trend or if it was always there and I was just not aware. Is it just the tail of the dying new age era?

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I took a short break from writing…

I have been a dad for 27 years, a dad of three beautiful sons I love and I can never be more grateful to have them. I am now a dad of four sons.

Falco K’in Le Meur Sartori was born at 1h58 AM on November 29th 2022.

Home birth

Magdalena is very brave, a modern “warrior woman” as my indigenous friends say. She chose since the beginning to have a home birth with the help of midwives who have quit the traditional hospital system. Some of them are doctors, gynecologists, who spent years training for it, did a career in hospital and decided to now only help women give birth this way, at home.

No medication was given and no medical intervention was performed. They regularly checked the baby’s heart rate through Magdalena’s body and supported her in the process.

The doctors and nurses who now work at home told me they quit because they are convinced it was better this way for the baby and the mother.

“Imagine the shock of a baby coming to life exposed to a bright surgery room type light with both the baby and mother on drugs and pain killers.”

Maybe I will ask one of them to record a video, their words would be better than mine as it sounds so controversial, I know. The world is used to giving birth in hospitals without even thinking about the other way I witnessed, natural.

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Hospital birth is also very new, before the early 1900s all births were done by midwives.

By 1935, only 15% of babies were delivered by midwives.

“Over time, there developed a rivalry between doctors and midwives, ” she added. “Doctors would say ‘we know more about anatomy, we are better suited to do this.’ Midwives said ‘we are women, we have experience, we know how we do this.'”

For many decades, the tug of war over approaches broke down along the gender lines; all of the doctors were male, and all of the midwives were female.

The shift to hospital births started in the 20th century. “What happened in the beginning of the 20th century was anesthesia for delivering children, and they wanted to have pain-free childbirth.”

With some rational mind left I obviously asked about statistics before agreeing to the process. They said the number of women who actually end-up going to the emergency room after having chosen a home birth is extremely small (it was so small that I forgot the number and decided to trust). The car was there ready for me to drive us to the hospital in case but I never felt it was going to happen nor did I get scared to even think about that.

A birth ceremony

As you know I love writing but I find it incredibly hard to write or even talk about the experience. It was a very moving and incredible “ceremony”. It’s almost impossible to describe what happened. Magdalena was definitely “somewhere else” and me too, needless to say with nothing else than what our bodies generated in this magical moment.

One of the best part is when we started dancing in the bedroom to help the baby come down while she was in active labor. I will remember that dance all my life.

We setup a little “pool” in the bedroom and I slowly saw Falco’s head come out, in the “amniotic sac” which they told me was rare, the bag opened only when Falco’s whole body came out. I caught him in my two hands as he came out et voila.

After a short moment on my hands still in water (babies can stay under water as long as they are still connected to the placenta still they were already in water…) he was in Magdalena’s arms. Falco was very quiet and barely cried, more like a few sounds showing his surprise to discover (or rediscover?) this world.

Once the midwives said Falco had everything he needed from the placenta (and not immediately as they do in hospital) I cut the umbilical cord with some prayers for Falco.

Falco is still incredibly quiet today.

Where is Falco coming from? Why did he choose us?

Have we really made it happen or did it happen outside of the simulation of life?

Life and how a new soul, a new consciousness gets in a baby body is a mystery science cannot even start trying to understand. Once the pregnancy starts it really feels like the universe is “using” Magdalena as a vessel for this new being to come to life. Life creation just “happens” and we let Falco decide when he would come out. When he felt ready he signaled it to Magdalena and the process started.

Women are so beautiful and magical this way, they can create life. Men can just initiate the process and support.

The only two things we can be completely sure of are life and… death. Everything stops when they happen. Nothing else seems to matter anymore.

Story of the name “Falco K’in”

Falco reminds us of “Falcon”. Falcons can see 2.6 times further than the human eye and fly at 320 km/h making them the fastest moving creatures on Earth.

In ancient Egypt Horus was a Falcon with the right eye as the Sun and the left eye as the Moon.

Falco was conceived a few days after Magdalena completed her fourth Moondance and I completed my second Sundance. Our Moondance and Sundance happen at the same location. I do not know any other of these rituals with the same feminine/masculine in the same place even though there are many of these special “dances” around the world.

The name Falco came to Magdalena in a dream about our future son. Falco’s second name is “K’in”. Kinich “K’in” Auhau is “Sun” in Maya. There are many jaguars still living around our Moondance and Sundance circles. A few of them came at night while we were preparing the space or doing the Sundance.

K’in infix is the “Jaguar of the Underworld or the Night Sun”. K’in is a nocturnal sun associated with terrestrial fire.The name K’in was received by my Sundance Chief who also created both Moondance and Sundance spaces. Miguel Flores has always impressed me with his connection with the fire. The fires run night and day during both Moondance and Sundance.

My Yawanawà indigenous friends in the Amazon forest also constantly have fires running to protect the space during ceremonies. I am learning to work with the fire and “read” it. It often takes animal forms as you can see in the below photo.

I took care of a fire all night during the birth ceremony, it is a powerful protector.

Coming to the world as slowly as possible

Falco had no surgery light on his head or hospital environment to welcome him, just the comfort of our home and candle lights. The curtains have been mostly closed since he was born to get him very slowly used to the outside light. Very few people entered the room so far to protect him from outside energy and strengthen our connection with him.

I can relate to the soft coming out “back” to the world remembering how the indigenous taught me how to come back from my 3 months isolation in the forest. Anyone who has done a 10 day vipassana type meditation retreat knows how it feels to go from total silence back to the stimulation and agressive sounds of society. I was asked not to touch anyone or not to look at anyone’s eyes for a while as I left the jungle. Everything felt like a shock and weird. The food was carefully chosen and kept small and simple, cooked by only two women also in special dieta. Falco only eats for now from Magdalena’s perfect food.Why would we be the only being on the planet to feed our babies milk from another animal… and not very a very smart one… cows? Who says it’s better for our babies? I understand the convenience aspect of course or the difficulty to breast feed for women who must separate from their babies to go to work. If breast feeding became a luxury (!) then I am so grateful Magdalena is able to give that to Falco.

More soon. I could write so much about this incredible experience. I am very fortunate that I could live birth from beginning to the end.

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A vision quest is very much like a more intense meditation retreat. It’s about going back to the most absolute simplicity. It’s about reconnecting to nature and yourself, resetting your own system and getting stronger.

Vision quest is 4 days and 4 nights in silence in nature, alone, no contact and in the same little space with the absolute minimum with you and no food, no water. Absolutely no substance of any kind.

It is the beginning of what the native Americans call the “red road”. I did my first two vision quests with Lakotas in South Dakota.

It has been life-changing for me so I now help organize a vision quest where everyone, men and women, are welcome.

You can do it only for one day the first year, or two days, or 3, in other words you can aim at 4 days but only do what you can do. You’re alone, but there is support a few minutes walk away from you. You can stop it when you want.

Why would you bother spending 4 days and 4 nights alone in nature?

Getting to know yourself. Being completely alone is a strong “reset”. No food and no water is tough but not as much as you think. Going beyond your own limits (or what you think they are) will make you stronger when life throws hard things at you.

Some of the “medicines” of the vision quest

Loneliness

You won’t see anyone or talk to anyone.

No activity

Doing absolutely nothing. Meditating. No distractions, no to-do list, no phone, no contact with the outside world, no books, nothing to write on. Nothing comes in, nothing comes out of your brain in a traditional way. Learn to watch the sky, the stars, the trees and animals around. Fasting

Absolutely nothing gets in your mouth for up to 4 days and 4 nights. No substances, no alcohol, no tobacco, no food, not even water. Is it dangerous? It has been done for centuries. I have done it 5 times including my Sundances (we fast and dance on no food or water) and always got stronger, my health has never been as good as now.

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Silence No sound apart from the animals around (or rarely some other vision questers not far who might sing a song!). You will hear many birds, other animals and the wind…

The medicine of a gift

This is not a paid retreat or even a retreat at allWe are not asking for a registration fee. Nobody is paid to organize it. We are only asking for a $100 cost participation necessary to help setup the space, the wood, food for before and after, setting up the camp and the strict minimum to run it safely. Some vision quests are commercial in a way and therefore organized as a small business or paying the organizers, this isn’t the case here. If you cannot pay the $100 contribution to help for the space, let us know and we will find a solution. Every one working to facilitate it is a volunteer. Please be mindful of this when asking for things.

Trust the mystery

Traditionally there is very little information given to the participants. This is how it is and it is meant to be this way. When I did my first vision quest I was offered to show up without much information. I am writing some info here as most people interested aren’t familiar with it and the way it works. I just would love to see more and more people experiment the vision quest and its benefits.

One of the exercices is TRUST. Trust the process, trust the mystery, trust that you don’t have much information, there is no website, no person you can email about everything, nobody to organize your trip (we just give a meeting point)… Most important, trust yourself!

Another exercice is self organization. Plan your trip to arrive, Get the minimum you need and that’s it. The most important is to show-up.

In this “path” I learned to ask less and less questions.

The “Chief”, Miguel Flores

Miguel Flores is Mexican of Maya origin working leading spiritual work, Vision Quest and Sundance for decades. He worked with both Mexican and Lakota masters.He is a Temazcal and Sundance Chief (meaning he can lead them). Miguel supervises all with love and care, there are no tricks, that’s not the way this experience is (some are lead by “tricksters” as part of the training, this isn’t the case here). Everything is organized to help you succeed.

Zoom call this upcoming Tuesday Nov 29th at 18h CET for questions and information, zoom link. You can also join our Vision Quest What’s app group here.

Schedule

Vision Quest Feb 20-25 2023

We recommend everyone arrives on site by February 20th in Bacalar, Mexico (exact location provided to participants).

The vision quest starts early morning of February 21st, 2023 and lasts until the 25th (4 days and 4 nights). Everyone is asked to stay on the 25th even if they stop before as it is a very intense process.

Sundance Feb 26 - March 3 2023

Those who complete the Vision Quest can stay to participate or attend the Sundance (otherwise closed to any spectator).

Those who complete the vision quest and decide to Sundance must commit for 4 years in a row doing the Sundance every year. Vision quest has no other commitment than showing up and starting it with the intention of finishing 4 days and 4 nights once.

What to bring (to be detailed to those who confirm)

For before and after the vision quest

Come camp the day before and after, bring basic camping gear and change of clothes necessary, water bottle, etc. Only the following items are allowed to bring to the vision quest site

• one set of clothes, the clothes you will be wearing that day

• a hat to protect from the sun

• a blanket for the night or a warm jacket

• a pillow or rollable yoga type mat

• mosquito repellent and mosquito protection clothes or the smallest individual tent with a mosquito net to protect from the mosquitoes that can be quite intense there (otherwise no tent would be allowed).

Stay outside of the tent as much as possible, this is meant to be a refuge anti mosquitoes… Lack of sleep is part of the vision quest.

Here is the individual tent I used, less the “luxury” bed sheets that was for another trip.

You will have to be able to carry everything you have yourself to walk to your vision quest site, so you won’t be able to take much anyway.

Not allowed

• substances of any kind

• water or food

• books, phone, electronics, notebooks

The Temazcal

A Temazcal (or Inipi in Lakota tradition) is a sweat lodge where stones are brought inside to heat it. If you do not understand it you can think of it as a hamman but if you do, it is a very intense spiritual experience. There are two Temazcal at the Vision Quest, one before and one after. The Sundancers do two temazcals each day.

Last year we were a group of about 10 friends (they aren’t all on the below photo) and everyone completed the vision quest.

Let’s meet next week on zoom or whatsapp if you are interested. Aho!

I also posted a video on my Instagram with the invite.

Zoom call this upcoming Tuesday Nov 29th at 18h CET for questions and information, zoom link. You can also join our Vision Quest What’s app group here.

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"Let's Dream it Together"

This is an expression I heard from Putanny Yawanawà many times. I love it.

Every night, I go to bed looking forward to it not because I am tired but because I am curious to see what I am going to live in my dreams. We share dreams in our community (ask me for an invite if you want to join) and had fascinating experiences of dreaming similar things, or seeing in dreams facts about someone else that are sometimes true.

The basics I know about remembering your dreams (experts can skip to next point!)

-Stopping alcohol entirely (if you can’t reduce it, this is the most dramatic change for me since I stopped two years ago - more dreams and more and more lucid). -Focus on “I am going to remember my dreams” before going to bed

-Prepare your sleep with the same intention in mind, even 5 or 10 minutes only before going to bed

-Try to empty your mind from the day, tasks, stress, preoccupations

-Keep a notebook and a pen next to your bed and focus on it so you remember to write when you wake up

-Another good technique if you prefer is to leave your phone with voice recorder one tap away, like adding it on the locked screen. You will be surprised of the things you can record just saying what you were just dreaming about.

-Convince yourself there is something in your dreams. It’s just your mind convinced there isn’t so you don’t see them. Generally you think there was nothing but there was, you are just not used to it. At one point I went through a stage where my mind was telling me while I was dreaming “you are aware you are dreaming this, but it is not important, do NOT remember it”. It took me weeks to go beyond that mind block and train it to tell my mind I wanted to remember everything, even what that part of me said wasn’t important.

Remembering and lucid dreaming is just like training a muscle, the more you do it the more it comes. Do it as you brush your teeth.

-When you wake-up, stay in bed and do not open your eyes. I often stay in that space for 30 mins. Just be aware that you just became “lucid” rather than awake. For me it just feels like a different brain frequency. I sometimes go right back to sleeping and continue the dream, even after writing what it was about (I needed to open my eyes for that, I can’t manage to write well eyes closed, maybe one day). Stay still, do not move. If you feel like you need to go to the bathroom, hold it a bit if you can as you might lose the dream just by going there…

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-Write anything, even just one word. Write three words. Draw something. Anything. The more you do this and if you try every day the more it will come. I now write two to five full size A4 pages every morning but it took a while to get there.

-Naps too. I noticed that I do not need a full night sleep to start dreaming or having a dream life, just a nap is enough, I sometimes go there in a matter of minutes and live a full story in a 30 mins nap, again it took me a while.

-Meditate daily. It will get you used to being aware of your thoughts and visuals you might see while you’re awake. My experience shows that the more I meditate the more I become lucid in my dreams. It feels like the “door” between awake and sleeping is thinner and thinner even though of course I do not remember or dream all the time when I sleep (as shown in sleep phase analysis)

-When you write the dreams, use “free writing”, just write anything that comes out of your mind. I try to write every single idea and it slows my mind. If something from the “real” world shows up on your mind (like a todo list item today or noticing a dog barking) it’s okay I write it too then quickly go back writing the next idea. Sometimes I have a flow of five todo list items but then my brain throws again some dream bits and pieces. I then re-read what I wrote and isolate the dream.

-Reconstruct “stories” from my dreams, I very often can write 3-5 stories that happened. It doesn’t matter if they don’t make sense or feel crazy, I accept anything, even if I turned into a dragon in my dream. I just write it. Remember how Tom Cruise learns to fly a helicopter in a few minutes in the Matrix? Everything is possible in dreams. Instead of telling myself “it’s b**t it’s a dream” I enjoy the “fantasy movie” that I live and just embody that new character. It’s fascinating as it changes every night.

Here is a dream I wrote in a secret base under water as an example. It doesn’t make any sense in real life (or doesn’t seem like) and it’s okay!-Plants, rapé etc. I tried Mugwort and a mix in Dreamleaf years ago (all legal and easy to find), I did not like it much and stopped fast, now I don’t need that. You were probably expecting it, the consciousness tools I have used (also see the plants section in my about page) in the Amazon, vision quests and Sundance dry fasting for 4 days created a huge growth in my dream life too.What to do with the dreams & interpretation

What do dreams mean? read-on on loic.substack.com

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Human nature is capable of an infinite amount of evil. ... Today as never before it is important that human beings should not overlook the danger of the evil lurking within them. It is unfortunately all too real, which is why psychology must insist on the reality of evil and must reject any definition that regards it as insignificant or actually nonexistent. C. G. Jung

This Jung quote came at perfect timing as the FTX debacle keeps unfolding… I found it reading Fear No Evil: The Pathwork Method of Transforming the Lower Self by Eva Broch Pierrakos.

It is a good book (even though it talks too much about “God” for me, I filtered that from the below notes and comments…)

We’re all evil

“You are not an evil person. I am not an evil person. Yet evil exists in the world. Where does it come from? Who is evil, and how did they get that way. The evil things that are done on earth are done by human beings. We can’t blame the existence of evil on the plants or animals.”

When I started meditating I encountered some of my dark side. I also did my first deep “shadow work” when I did the Hoffman Institute about 6 years ago. The rule of Hoffman is to not disclose the process so I won’t, but it involves spending days revealing our own darkness. Working with plants in the forest is really good for removing the masks at least temporarily and seeing ourselves in a totally different way.

What is “doing evil”?

“The word “evil” can describe a continuum of behavior that goes all the way from simple “bad” things (getting upset at your neighbor) and egocentricity on one end to the genocidal sadism of Nazism on the other.”

In other words, we all have a dark side and all do “some evil” to ourselves or others, it is in all of us.

Don’t do to others…

We can all agree in principle on the religion moral of “not doing to others what you would not want them to do to you”.

Yet, we’re no Jesus or Buddha and we regularly find ourselves hopefully in small “sins” as it was still called 30-40 years ago. We also hurt ourselves by drinking or eating unhealthy stuff either by lack of knowledge or ignoring the very fact that we hurt ourselves. By simply getting angry we hurt ourselves.

Religions teaches idealistic beliefs or conduct that people know in their hearts they can never live up to… So what’s the solution?

What happens is mostly subconscious.

It’s coming from traumas and childhood, some say even from life in our mothers womb (was she drinking or smoking, getting upset all the time etc?).

It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course—for consciously he is engaged in bewailing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. C. G. Jung

“The first key to happiness is self-knowledge. “

“Why is it so difficult to attain? Perhaps because no one likes to hear unpleasant or unflattering truths about oneself, and yet these are the most important ones to know.”

Happiness isn’t about outside fulfillment, but inside. We are the only ones responsible of our happiness or unhappiness.

“This path demands from an individual that which most people are least willing to give: truthfulness with the self, exposure of what exists now, elimination of masks and pretenses, and the experience of one’s naked vulnerability. It is a tall order, and yet it is the only way that leads to genuine peace and wholeness.”

Understanding our shadow would be the ONLY WAY to happiness.

If we look inside, we find our “shadow”, all the things that we hope would not exist and we push them in the darkness hoping to forget them.

Meet your lower self

The lower self consists not only of the common faults and the individual weaknesses that var y with each person, but also of ignorance and laziness. It hates to change and conquer itself; it has a very strong will that may not always manifest itself outside, and wants its way without paying the price. It is very proud and selfish, and always has a great deal of personal vanity. All these characteristics are generally part of the lower self, regardless of other individual faults. We can determine very well which thought-forms come from the higher self and which come from the lower self.

In order to “Conquer yourself” you have to “face the lower self” and “tear down the mask self”.

How do you conquer yourself?

“Daily self-observation and self-testing, observing again how far your inner currents still deviate from what you wish them to be".

Fear no evil recommends journaling every day what went wrong, accepting the fact of many negative trends existing in ourselves and recognizing and accepting -no matter how unpleasant it is- our imperfections.

It’s also hard because “the lower self is lazy and never wants to work”.

It’s easier to see imperfections in others and blame them instead.

You can reach perfection only by going through your imperfections, not by going around them.

Got it. Step one, pay constantly attention to your shadow, imperfections and lower-self and then write the shadows in myself daily. Easy to say, let’s see where this goes… I will report back.

Notes

• PAWA changed name and became PAUA today, we’re explaining it on PAUA’s new newsletter.

• I started three new work-in progress notes I added to the top of this NL: Books, Movies, Seeking Consciousness and Tech tools as I’m getting often questions on those.

• Never stop learning… Enjoyed watching Build a simple no code product yourself in no time by Presh Dkumar - other episodes can be found at Founder University

• The Mask of Reason by Charles Eisenstein a good read on covid dissidents

• Eric Agulhon shared in our discord community a video of the Yanomami people reacting to the election of Lula. “The Yanomami land is the most threatened land of Brazil and many Yanomamis were killed/kidnapped in the past years as they just want to defend their territory against the illegal deforestation, mining or narco trafficking. The Yanomami didn't receive any help or protection from the actual far right government. Today they are full of hope.”

• The Information says quitting drinking is a trend and quoted me following my note on Why I quit drinking in “Tech Goes Cold Turkey: Inside Silicon Valley’s New Temperance Society” sadly the angle is “replacing alcohol with substances” which seems untrue to me. The plants helped me see it was poison and did not replace the poison… I left a comment there (subscription required)

• A reader, Herbert, emailed me saying he doesn’t stop drinking because he likes the state of being a bit drunk once in a while. My answer is the benefits of sleeping great with lucid dreaming every night is a much bigger benefit than any state of feeling great a bit drunk sometimes, among so many other benefits…

• Our next community call is next Tuesday at 18h CET, it happens every Tuesday, you’re welcome to join if you want to get a taste of the community. We’re exploring this week the Huni Kuin people with a member of the community, Celine Godeux who spent some time studying in the Amazon jungle too. We will also have a representative of the Jiboiana association helping the indigenous, Leo. Zoom link.

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Let’s start with a good laugh? Humor is always good.

I noticed a growing number of parodies of shamans or plant medicine, energy work or new-age ways of speaking on social media

Most of you might not get it because you might not be in touch with that “new-age” crowd, here is another, broader one.

“Making plans with a spiritual person”

Even our friend and long time expert in consciousness exploration Dennis McKenna noticed the halloween memes, they were so all over the place they were difficult to miss…

It’s not only about plant medicine work, it’s about anything “new-age” and there is a lot of that around us today. I am exposed to it.

I really love humor and not taking things too seriously.

Let’s be honest, anyone in or close to the modern new-age community recognized themselves in one or more of the jokes in the parodies.

I have recognized myself in it for sure and that’s why I find it funny. I deleted many photos and videos I posted a few years ago when I fell myself into the trap of trying to look like an indigenous and over-sharing online when I could not make sense of what I received in the forest. I’m more balanced and discrete now… fortunately!

Changing my mind was really good, but to the point of losing my mind, not so much.

The brother of Dennis, Terence McKenna expressed concerns about the so called “new-age” community about 20 or 30 years ago, here is a video really worth watching.

“There is no distinction between st and Shinola.**

One person is a Chaos Theorist, another is a follower of the revelations of this or that New Age guru, someone else is channeling information from the Pleiades, and we have been taught that political correctness demands that we treat all these things with equal weight. Because we have no mathematical ability, no logical ability, we don't know how to ask the questions that expose some positions as preposterous, trivial, insulting to the intelligence, and unworthy of repetition.”

“The enemy that will really subvert the enterprise of building a world based on clarity is the belief that we cannot point out the pernicious forms of idiocy that flourish in our own community.”

“It’s a test of our own intelligence.

We have perfected our own foolishness. Now I think it's time to refine our mathematical skills, learn to think straight, and not be afraid to denounce the pernicious forms of foolishness, which are vitiating the energies of our community and making us appear marginal and absurd in the discourse about truly transforming society.”

It’s time to learn to think straight, Terence said more than twenty years ago. It seems we did not always “get the memo” yet.

Is the “New Age” culture dead? Has it lost its mind?

We all have different views and I respect each and everyone’s views.

Relativism is the belief that there's no absolute truth, only the truths that a particular individual or culture happen to believe. If you believe in relativism, then you think different people can have different views about what's moral and immoral.

Now I am going to write my opinion, feel free to post yours in comments.

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I spent some time learning more about Web3, DAOs and how we could use these tools for our growing community.

Most people see crypto as new way of trading and financial tools, that’s how I have been learning too and the recent debacle on the crypto prices have calmed all of that.

There was a major Internet bubble early 2000 too followed by 2-3 years of “winter”. While the valuation of the Internet companies plummeted, a new generation was quietly born and Google, Twitter, Facebook and all the giants we know well today appeared. Many people did not believe in social networking for example at the time but it became huge in this second phase (phase 1 was the browsers and early websites until 2000 which I am so glad I could see and build small startups in, then go through the crisis myself).

I feel the 2022 “crypto winter” has a lot in common with the beginning of the years 2000… Valuations are reset, those who took part only for short term profits left but there are many believers still here and now quietly building.

I haven’t spent much time myself on Web3 and its tools as a completely new way of running a business and I am willing to learn more now. The Web3 experts who might read this will find it very basic and that’s fine, that’s where I am now. Anyone who feels like correcting me or helping me understand better please by all means feel free to.

Web3 is decentralization

As a contributor to the Pawa community wrote it very well, using blockchain technologies is about decentralization. It is a completely new way of thinking and running businesses.

Antonin wrote on discord:

“Most (if not all) web applications or communities using apps in Web 2.0 are architectured around a central pillar of authority (an administration, a central server infrastructure, central point of governance). With Blockchain technologies, you can decentralize those aspects getting rid of this central authority, as all exchanges, their validation (approval), votes of projects or decisions are held by the members of the communities themselves.”

The second advantage is transparency and ownership as Yat Siu explained very well in this conversation.

Yat talks how he lived “extreme communism and extreme capitalism” and saw how they aren’t optimal.

Teenagers who spent time growing up in gaming want to own data as the most valuable resource on the planet today (after giving it all for some to Blizzard with WOW in the past).

According to Yat we are going to stop giving the data to the Internet giants and keep the value each contributes, this is how Animoca is building its games, the users own their data and what they earn in the game.

For the first time with Web3 now all the things we do and own belong to the users themselves.

-Yat Siu

A mycelium network in high-resolution, photo Loreto Oyarte Galvez

I spent so much time in the Amazon forest that I now like to always wonder “How does nature do it?”

Nature is decentralized, should it be the model for the future of our democracies and organizations?

Daniel Pinchbeck just wrote about “Mycelial Anarchy”. Mycelium networks are the “Woodwide web”, the Internet of nature. Trees communicate through them (read the amazing book “The Hidden Life of the Trees” if you haven’t.

Daniel wrote a fantastic quote from Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life:

Mycelial coordination is difficult to understand because there is no center of control. If we cut off our head or stop our heart, we’re finished. A mycelial network has no head and no brain. Fungi, like plants, are decentralized organisms. There are no operational centers, no capital cities, no seats of government. Control is dispersed: Mycelial coordination takes place both everywhere at once and nowhere in particular. A fragment of mycelium can regenerate an entire network, meaning that a single mycelial individual—if you’re brave enough to use that word—is potentially immortal.

I find this comparison between nature and what might be the future of democracy fascinating.

DAOs can become the basis of a new form of democracy

Yat says:

“We don’t think of blockchain as a technology, it is a political and social decision framework. You’re almost free to do your own things, for example on Ethereum anyone can almost build anything on top of it.

DAOs are a democracy but can innovate at the pace of technology.”

DAOs all start with a community

We have a thriving community on discord with Pawa, focusing on consciousness and technology. We created an event in Paris where the community was very much involved.

What we think we could do with a DAO to begin with?

• Build reputation for the members of the community who help/contribute the most

• Create a decentralized governance for the community to decide as a group what to focus on

• For example we have many zoom calls, some with guests, speakers could be chosen following a vote

• Many members of the community are providing services that have value (teaching meditation for example) - having a token as a reward they can then exchange for other members services

• Eventually after a long period of testing and the DAO being successful the token can be traded against fiat and members can make it a revenue source

I am researching into DAOs and Web3 to see how we can decentralize the community and use the basic Web3 tools forming the basis of a small democracy around it.

It’s still early as Michael O’Rourke wrote in 2021 in cointelegraph: DAOs will be the future of online communities in five years. Here is another post by Rhian Lewis: How DAOs can work for communities.

I had a great conversation a few days ago with my friend Joi Ito who showed me how he is building a community in Japan using these tools.

Community basics

• The token is not traded against Fiat as a first step, which avoids speculation and interest from those only looking after short term gains. Long-term involvement and participation is on the contrary at the core.

• The community is small and private by design.

• Each member of the community can invite a new one only after having given ten hours of work helping the community.

• Members build “reputation” by contributing to the community, it’s like experience points in a game.

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Here are some of the Web3 tools Joi uses.

• An ethereum wallet and basic training

Everyone needs to own an Ethereum wallet no store what they own. It is a must to access the community. Some people are dedicated training new members who need it. They use the most popular Ethereum metamask wallet.

• A central place to share tasks and for everyone to decide where they contribute.

Joi’s community chose dework for project management. Tasks are listed, people can apply, a team attributes the work.

A team of members reviews the work and rewards bounties or tokens.

Those who work build reputation in the community and dework makes it transparent.

1. Governance with a voting system

Active members can decide the future of the community what it does through a decentralized voting system. Joi chose snapshot as a governance tool.

• Share important documents with the community members

Charmverse is recommended by Joi for document sharing. This tool is trying to do it all though.

• Create a coin

Members can first get bounties, exchange work for access to governance and other community generated services, or build up a stake in the enterprise by contributing their time. Joi told me to look at Coinvise.

In Joi’s community to inviting someone costs 1,000 token (=10 hours of work).

“To get in, someone has to be willing to spend 10 hours to invite you”

I love it. You cannot buy your way in other than someone working to get you in.

So what does the token get you if it’s not traded against Fiat?Joi gives away books, access to events, some of the things can have Fiat value. Joi is starting a co-working space and a bar that where people will be able to spend tokens.

Joi also recommends setting up a peer-to-peer exchange so that people in the community can get tokens for helping others in the community.

It won’t be easy initially obviously as people need to find value in the token while it doesn’t really have one at the beginning. When I started the discord community there was also very few reasons to stick around and the benefits for members took a long time to grow, we launched it 1.5 years ago… It’s like very slow cooking top Chef food, not fast-food…

• Prepare one day to turn it into a business benefiting all members

As Jesse Walden wrote for Andreessen horowitz full decentralization must be progressive and the steps are well described there. Here is another great post from Jesse, Progressive Decentralization A playbook for Building Crypto Applications.

Initially I am planning to look at a token that isn’t traded for Fiat and keep the community quite closed to limit the risks. The only risk is that the community doesn’t like the experiment and doesn’t adopt it or does not support the shift. I believe that everyone can benefit financially in the end and it will also become obvious, but that might take years. The first members “who get it” won’t be so many and that is okay, this is with them that I would like to build it.

Helping people monetize their knowledge and work, find work in a new way and a new type of organisation

Many people in the community have skills that they are or are not yet monetizing though so I am really interested in testing a new model for work where making one day the token traded for Fiat gives everyone value for what they worked on and make it eventually a revenue source for them.

As Joi does, establishing a token that isn’t traded against Fiat seems to me the best start so everyone trusts it.

The benefit for the organisation is a unique solution to find talent, a complete new way to do project management.

The benefit to the members is a unique solution to find and apply for work and benefit from it.

See “The future of Decentralized Work” by Jack McCarthy about Dework.

I don’t want to do anything illegal however, even though the token won’t be traded for Fiat initially. Someone (please comment if you read it) recommended I look at Wyoming as they legalized DAOs.

Combining Web3 with a conscious community isn’t obvious…

We have been very focused on combining ancient and new technologies and our event PAWA was the first public form. It wasn’t obvious to combine two crowds and speakers from indigenous worlds with technology entrepreneurs, but it worked.

I took this photo from the stage where you can see indigenous leaders, consciousness experts and participants and technology entrepreneurs all in the same room, from 35 countries.

In “The spiritual Layer of Web3” I was glad to read “Web3 is a movement disguised as technology” and agree with the “Paradox of Spirituality and Web3”

-Spirituality: disconnecting, community, self-practice, getting in tune with self in a disconnect manner-Web3: plugging into a computer to do work-There's the paradox, a dichotomy of the two, — having a sense of community but also maintaining balance in own spiritual practice. Making sure to not get too lost in all the information in the online world and be in consumption mode.

Bringing tools to connect to conscious people who are making it a practice to disconnect is the core of the PAWA community.

I will write more on what I find on Web3 and conscious communities and how we progress or not on implementing it from our discord.

Welcoming any help from anyone who resonates with this, please drop a comment or an email, thanks.

Zoom call Tuesday November 8th 18h CET to discuss how to build a DAO.

These calls are generally for the community only but since we will need help to build it I am inviting here anyone that would like to help. That way you can also get a feel for the community, the call will last one hour. Zoom link.

Thanks again, Joi Ito and Yat Siu for inspiring me and guiding me as you have already done so many times in the past. There are few friends I can say changed my life, you two have and always do.

Oh if you want to subscribe to my podcast, it is now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and Amazon podcasts. I also recorded a video on YouTube with the same if you prefer, you can see it here.

You can also follow me on Instagram and Twitter.

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I would like to share today some thoughts from another fantastic call I had with Greg, the guide who doesn’t exist online or anywhere else in books etc. He is completely hidden and I am fortunate enough to participate in a group call every week with him.

Greg described the steps of self-transformation, or creation. I adapted some of it to my own experience. This is a longer post than usual.

Step 1. Interest in changing yourself

No self-transformation process starts, at least for me, without first an “interest to change”. Some people just don’t want to change and aren’t interested in changing or seeking “awakening”.

My deeper transformation started when I divorced 10 years ago, I just did not like myself but I won’t go to the details on this post, focusing on the process.

Step 2: Trigger

What gets you finally decided to start a transformation process.

For example, getting in a bad argument with a friend while having a glass of alcohol too much gets you decided: “Enough, I will just stop entirely”

Curiosity could also be the trigger, I got curious about meditation or what connecting to plants means as I had friends talking to me about it.

Step 3: Determination

This is when you decide to really do it and start changing yourself.

Examples: “That’s it I stop drinking today” or for meditation “I want to live with less stress, I am going to meditate every day”

This is the easiest - it is the beginning, we decided. We are excited and feel confident. Novelty of trying something new is exciting.

Step 4: Gestation

It gets tough after a few days or weeks. You might forget the initial trigger or determination…

Most people fail here.

Examples: “I can have just a glass of wine it’s okay it won’t do anything” (of course it’s okay… right?), or “Meditation doesn’t do anything, it’s a waste of time”The old patterns come back. There is no excitement anymore. Social pressure makes it obvious that after all, I should have a beer as all my friends do or not meditate.

Cultural conditioning and our ego bring us back to our old self, the process stops.

Step 5. Growth stage

We start to see some results, we feel better, we are proud of ourselves for crossing the Gestation stage and holding our initial intention.

New thoughts, information, opportunities or resources show-up. New dreams (for me stopping alcohol has unlocked a very powerful and pleasant lucid dream life most days). Things can happen in business life or a better relationship with family and friends.

What you are working on begins to now be obviously the right thing to do.

Continuing the process becomes obvious and easier. No alcohol became really easy for me (see why I stopped drinking) now that I have associated alcohol in my mind with poison.

A very important point is to realize that the good things are coming because “I” decided it, not from the outside.

I am causing those good changes myself.

Step 6. Outcome

Good events happen now regularly, synchronicities. No efforts or very few efforts necessary now. It became part of our “normal” habits as we don’t think about how to drive the car when we drive, we just drive. It became part of our default mode network.

Things that come daily are so good and natural that we can move to working on something else, inspire others to do the same as they also see the results in you or teach it depending on where we are and if we are interested in that.

Tip: doing the transformation work in a community versus alone

I found it invaluable when I did my first 10 day vipassana meditation retreat and other retreats. Everyone suddenly wakes-up at 5am and meditates so it makes it easy to do it.

We started the 90-day meditation challenge in our community online on discord, I think it helps everyone cross the Gestation stage where most people fail. It is group motivation.

We don’t wake up at 5am on discord but everyone in the community can see how others are meditating every day, this creates a confidence as others are in the same process, want to achieve a change and find it valuable.

This is one way to cross the gestation stage, doing it surrounded by others doing the same or talking about the same “challenge” and new habit. The other is to keep the warrior strength and determination.

This process is also the creation process of anything, a new startup, a new product…

I will now go deeper with my own experience, what I learned as well as some more thoughts, teachings and tips with my paid subscribers. The smaller group that is formed by those subscribers makes it easier for me to share more intimate stories.

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Someone contacted me today writing a piece about entrepreneurs who stop drinking so I thought I would also share here some thoughts. It seems there is a bigger trend post covid…

First I want to say this isn’t an advice to anybody, this is just my humble experience, do as you wish and I am not saying you should.

Alcohol consumption was for me culture conditioning from very early on

I grew up in France, I am French, and I love many things about French culture. I started drinking when I was 15 or something. My father (who died at 53 from lung cancer, also a smoker) was drinking about a bottle of wine and some aperitifs daily. I got into it because my father was drinking wine so I started, because everyone was drinking wine around me and because when I was young everyone was drinking at any party I would go to. In fact, nobody was not drinking. It kept going in my business life where at the time it was normal in Paris to drink two or three glasses of wine during a business lunch and more at dinner.

I had my free will of course, but did not have any consciousness practice at the time or examples that I should not. I was just doing like everybody else was, this is what I call conditioning from culture or from society.

I did not see any problem with it apart from the rare reminders of an health questionnaire or a visit to a doctor asking me how much I was drinking. I even convinced myself that “wine was good for me”, like many people still say, especially in France.

The idea that alcohol could be a problem came only when I turned 40 and started meditating, 10 years ago.

I did my first meditation retreat, vipassana. There were talks recorded on tapes every night by S.N. Goenka and I remember he had one of the night talks about stopping drinking. We were allowed to ask one question to the monk present and I remember asking “Why should I stop drinking and just not reduce it?”. He said the obvious, it’s much easier to stop entirely than slowing down.

I did not stop then but the idea on my mind.

I then started going to the Amazon forest, worked with plants and did many “dietas” there, periods of 1-3 months isolated in the jungle. Alcohol is strictly forbidden in the village I went, the sacred village of the Yawanawà.

I started seeing more and more that it was just bad for me and stopped two years ago. At the beginning I still had about a glass or two of wine per month then entirely stopped.

About 3 years ago I also lost a friend by saying stupid things that cost me the friendship so I knew I had to stop entirely that day.

Why I stopped drinking entirely and the benefits I see

It’s easier for me to stop entirely than to have a few glasses now and then. I lost probably 10kgs (20 lbs) just by stopping alcohol.

At the beginning when I was with friends that drink I was still questioning myself but a conversation with another friend who told me it was poison, including wine, finished convincing me. Now I just see a glass of alcohol as a glass of poison that makes it very easy for me to not even think about wanting it. It’s pretty well documented that “drinking small amounts of alcohol will do no harm is a myth”.

I am now working daily at being more conscious, alcohol just does the opposite. I pay attention to what I say, what I feel and what I do and want to be in control of myself at all times, so alcohol has no place in that.

Many friends have also stopped entirely, like Martin Varsavsky who just tweeted about it…

What is your experience with alcohol? Have you stopped? Are you considering it? Are you drinking just a bit of wine from now and then?

P.S.-Dom Varley of Green Token spoke at Pawa Paris and is offering early supporters who truly want to support a community of global sustainability an airdrop of Green Tokens. The tokens are on-chain rewards for taking meaningful climate action. Once the project is live, $GREEN will allow you to vote on community proposals, redeem for sustainably produced goods, attend events, and support great startups that will change the world and help fight climate change. Here is the airdrop page dedicated to PAWA participants. I am writing it here which makes it broader than PAWA only but I am sure if you are interested and did not make it to PAWA it can only be good for them.

-I’m more and more interested in Substack, if you are interested in the rebirth of newsletters, do not miss this interesting podcast and video from Lenny’s Newsletter featuring Sachin Monga product manager of Substack

-Photo: I stopped “Paté”too, featured in this very french “casse croute” I used to have sometimes working on my computer… I am on a no meat for one year diet, among other food restrictions…

Loic’s Newsletter & Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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It’s quite amazing how I tend to look for the most complicated books or retreats to work on improving myself but the most important is already here, right now. I guess I had to do all that consciousness work to find the obvious I always had, we always had. I “just” see it differently now.

THIS is very important: Imagination

If you believe your life is horrible it will be. If you see yourself suffering all the time, then you are just going to suffer more and more. If you complain about everything and how the world sucks your life will be more and more miserable.

When Elon Musk started to go into the space business he said “building rockets can’t be THAT difficult” then it wasn’t. Just find a good team of physicists and scientists, right? Eckart Tolle calls it “manifestation” but frankly you don’t have to read all his books to find-out it’s just imagination.

Entrepreneurship is imagination made reality

Raising money for a businesses is just about “making it real” and then sharing these “dreams” with investors who believe in those dreams. Entrepreneurs make it real and just communicate their imagination through a business plan. Then it becomes a success or a failure, but at that moment, it is real. The imagination became the present.

I watched the two first episodes of “We Crashed” on Netflix, the actor who embodies the creator of WeWork shows very well how he closes deals based on his imagination. Even if the company “crashed” it is still an incredible achievement where a founder had a clear huge vision of what he was going to do and was incredible at sharing his vision with investors or his team. I recommend watching it, it’s quite entertaining.

You will never hire talented people or raise any money by communicating poorly a “boring” dream.

We did our conference in Paris in a few weeks considering it was done. Fear of failure or worrying about anything bad that could happen are just bad distractions. Focusing on the end result we imagine just made it happen: 35 countries showed-up in Paris in 8 weeks (replay of the event here for free).

Using imagination for self-transformation

Avoiding the negative, again. In the jungle the Chief Nixiwakà Yawanawà was always repeating to me

“never talk badly about yourself”

In other words “imagine you are that highest version of yourself you can imagine”.

It’s very simple, instead of imagining the business I could build I apply this to myself instead and I can just imagine the person I think I should be and “I am that”.

The most important is how you imagine and visualize yourself.

Imagine yourself always having problems and you will always have problems. Think you’re always stressed and you will always be stressed and get sick from it. Think that you are addicted to something, say coffee, and you are addicted to coffee. The truth is that you aren’t strong enough at that moment to not take another coffee because you think you are not.

All it takes is deciding you are strong enough. Of course then there is what the substance does, coffee or alcohol are addictive and modify our bodies which makes it harder and we need even more strength and imagination.

This is very different to me than what motivational speakers such as Tony Robbins repeat in all their talks (I have randomly seen Tony speak in person twice, he was always very entertaining). They basically say “think positive”.

Here I am saying imagine the best version of yourself you can be and just decide you are it, right now. It’s quite different.

Push back any bad thoughts about yourself “this is too difficult”, “I can’t do that”, “I am not good enough”, “I suck at that”, “I am always sick”, “I have an addictive personality” etc etc.

If you imagine and say that about yourself, then you are that, the guy that can’t do it.

No need for anything you do not already have.

My “Oracle” Greg I wrote about recently just reminded me of that, I have always used it in business but in my personal life, it’s new, I had to go to the Amazon forest to find it and you don’t have to. Remember the kid we all were, we had plenty of imagination and dreams. They are still there.

P.S.

-What is the first book you should read if you want to be more conscious?

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment Paperback – Eckhart Tolle I wrote about in 2018.

-First talk from PAWA Paris posted.the “Religion of No Religion” from Zach Bell

-What’s changed with the paid substack thing you’re trying?

Instead of posting 1X a week on loiclemeur.substack.com and daily on yawa.news now I will post 2X a week on loiclemeur.substack free, 4-5X posts a week for paid subscribers only and 0 on yawa.news (discontinued). I imagine see my paid subscribers as a small very important group of friends that I will near daily give something I think has value for them.

Paying $10 a month is just some “energy” exchange for my work for them. Hopefully I give way more than $10 a month worth for those who see it 👁 and find it useful. The money goes to support the community and future events, I don’t need a 🏎 Ferrari.

If I pay for something I pay more attention to it and recognize value in it.

-posted my first podcast, video and sharing something I learned to my paid subscribers How a Simple Teaching changed my life - our 4 bodies-Meditation

We did a meditation and talked about meditation with Soren Gordhamer in Community call every Tuesday 18h, we don’t always record it, but this one we recorded, check it out it’s really good (Soren always is). -the pleiades always make me dream. When I see them I always stare at them for a loong time this is why I chose this photo today - photo credit - Soumyadeep Mukherjee

-someone tweeted a slidedeck I posted in 2017 How to think like a startup fun to look at it 5 years later. Makes me think I will do a new “deck” on consciousness.

Thank you 🙏🏻

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There is this movement called “The Religion of no Religion” that has existed for a hundred years. It doesn’t mean religions should not continue and we should not respect them, but there are many people who don’t want to call themselves “religious”.

It’s for people who say “I am spiritual but not religious”

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Only 8 weeks ago Magdalena and myself announced our event PAWA Paris (checkout our updated speakers!) and I am pleased to announce we are near sold-out with 300+ participants from 32 countries as of today!

If you have not yet, get your ticket at 444 EUR (special price for readers) instead of 666 EUR while they last. The discount will be removed in 24 hours. We expect to completely sell-out tomorrow.

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Today in Paris there was a woman on a scooter insulting a guy in a car who was insulting her back and they kept escalating and escalating. As I was continuing my path these two were about to beat each other up. See all the links on yawa.news

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I quit drinking entirely almost two years ago and lost about 10kgs (20 lbs) just from that. This is before I quit, obviously, I look much healthier now and not intoxicated as I am on this photo.

In the village I was in the Amazon forest, alcohol consumption and even possession is strictly forbidden. Why? They know alcohol is poison.

Ethanol is poison.
Here is how the body metabolizes it and how it damages your liver, attacks the cells of the body, creates high blood pressure, strokes…

This is one of the largest lie of the simulation we live in. The big alcohol business did well lying. People are encouraged to drink to remain stupid, full of negativity, pain, suffering, darkness, it lowers the intellect, diminishes spiritual work, and all things a human must have to "wake up in the dream.

Here is what a friend wrote to me -

“all alcohol, cheap or expensive, delicious or bad-tasting, is flavored ethanol. No exception! When the person drinks it the body goes through so much to break it down, and it creates a lot of sugar from it, cortisol, and it creates inflammation in the body and the body puffs up (even the face). Most importantly, it lowers the person’s vibrational state and it opens him/her to lower vibration archetypes. The word alcohol comes from Arabic and it is originally alkohool (the h here is a guttural sound) “al-ghoul” which means a “flesh-eating monster.” It also f*s up the liver (where it is processed and broken down) and the liver is the organ associated with anger! This means no peace or inner peace.”

Yes. Wine too.
I was seated in a plane to Paris yesterday with someone literally reading a story why wine was so good for the health. It’s a story told by those who have an interest in selling wine (random link Google gave me) that most people started believing and spreading.

Many of my friends have health issues because of alcohol.
This is why I write this, I love my friends.

I am no doctor but it’s pretty obvious that it is the first thing to stop. It becomes more obvious as you get older.

Alcohol is one of the most evil and most poisonous drug, yet widely accepted.
People are addicted to it because it is widely accepted, even fancy, and they can self-medicate well on it but only addressing symptoms—not causes.

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Getting angry and throwing that energy on anyone is hurting us first so it is just not worth it no matter what.

When we attack someone (verbally or more…) because we are angry we escalate and trigger a similar response unless that person is conscious and able to control his or her feelings.

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PAWA is not your usual tech event. PAWA is not your usual spiritual or consciousness festival or retreat (far from it). PAWA is not a conference but it is too. PAWA is not a business event but it is mostly for business people who want to be more conscious or progress on their consciousness work.

People ask me “What is PAWA?”. Sometimes when words don’t seem to describe what’s coming it’s the best. I cannot put words behind most of my experiences in the forest.

Check-out our schedule and if your own antennas receive our minds curation, go buy a ticket (last 2 days at this price)

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Stop desiring material things
“Desire is misery.

If you desire it means you have moved away from reality.

Desire is isolation.

What you desire is irrelevant.

If you desire, you fall into the trap of a dream.”

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“I missed you. I love you. I will take care of you”

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Building a conference from scratch is fun but also demanding especially as it is activating full speed right now. I am getting more emails that I can respond to and I have tasks in Asana for a full week non-stop if I did only those. Everything is going fantastic though, much better than I expected. Tickets are selling fast (get yours here still at discount), I got a new partner for the event today, another one organized for tomorrow, Jason Silva just announced as speaker, everything is in the green.

I have had trouble meditating these days more than micro meditations of 5 to 10 minutes about ten times a day. In the forest I was meditating two hours a day. I remember the saying “meditate as if your life depended on it” or “if you’re busy, you need it even more”. Yet, I can’t do my long meditations, always focusing on the next zoom call.

continued on my post on http://yawa.news

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When I was deep in Silicon Valley building a startup I was doing the NFX startup program and received this “teaching”

***Speed is the ultimate competitive advantage.

-rapid product beats competition

-rapid results builds team morale which leads to more success

-rapid results generate more interest

-rapid results increases valuation***

Startups win when they don’t get lost in politics, focus groups, usability studies, QA, endless debates, boards of directors, business development deals, budgeting processes, marketing plans, [add your own reason here].

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Zach is a speaker at PAWA and gives a preview of his talk "The Religion of No Religion"

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We had a ton of fun bumping into each other in perfect synchronicity with Mamadou and an instant friendship was born. What is a conscious entrepreneur? Somebody who starts an initiative which doesn’t have to be a business but integrates the essence of what I call “Ubuntu” = I am because we are. Financial return isn’t enough or personal wins aren’t enough The project has to integrate social return and how it impacts communities, in a nutshell, how does it do good for the world too? Then only can you operate at a conscious level behind this principle “all is one and one is all”. Do nothing that is not for others, it’s like what people “Karma”. I am you, you are me. All of us as human beings need to understand and integrate everything around us. Anything you do affects everyone, especially a business. We can make profits, but we are at risk of losing our home, planet Earth. We need to put it at the top of our attention as I wrote yesterday with Fred Wilson doing just that. Mamadou “clicked” instantly when I shared our goals with PAWA to gather conscious people and business people together to build conscious businesses, he cancelled his schedule to come and share his wisdom with us as an entrepreneur. “PAWA is exactly what I have been looking for because I feel so lonely telling people why it’s so important to infuse consciousness in business” When you separate things then one suffers versus the offer but when you integrate one with others, winning is a win when everyone wins, not just an entrepreneur. Why not just being a social entrepreneur? I had to divide myself in to, a social entrepreneur at night and a banker during the day. I had to integrate all the people that I was into one person to get peace of mind. Steve Jobs was very spiritually inclined, so is Jack Dorsey. Steve integrated both and Jack integrates conscious thoughts and goals into his business constantly thinking about how it can improve the world.

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Fred just posted about Regenerative Finance (ReFi) and he brings very important points:

• The web3 sector has directed tens of billions of $ if not more in the previous decade

• Most of the funding has come from individuals, not institutions

• We turn our attention currently toward climate and the existential threat of a warming planet

• “these ideas are top of my attention” says Fred

• ReFi is an idea, like Defi, based on a set of web3 technologies and economics that suggests that efforts to combat climate change can and will be funded by the crowd

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Addiction holes are traps.
We can fall in them and keep trying to fill them in with coffee, tobacco, alcohol, dangerous or extreme sports, combat martial arts, too much work etc.

Problem is they do not fill-in, they keep getting bigger.

Some addiction holes simply cannot be filled-in. We just need to become aware of them and live with them all our lives. We also need to become aware that there is no practice that will fill them in. We can give them as much as we want of anything, they will not disappear.

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There are no mistakes, only opportunities to learn.
The present is perfect. Whatever happened occurred for a reason.

As I am learning to be more conscious, I try to feel what others think so that I can act better. I try to be always perceiving more myself, my behavior and others around me.

Trying to perceive too much what people think without asking them if needed has been often misleading though.

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Thoughts about the use of powerful new and ancient technologies. Two worlds are mixing and Burning Man is a good example. 

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We hope you can join us at the first ever PAWA Paris Oct 14-15 2022, the intersection between future technologies and ancient technologies!

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The New Moon is when the sun and the moon are aligned, with the Moon and Sun are on opposite sides of the Moon.

Being together with a “Moondancer” -Magdalena Sartori- I have been “apoyo” at two Moondances and could learn more about feeling the presence of the Moon. It is a great privilege as I got to see 300 women fast and do rituals, dances and songs for 4 nights in a row at Full Moon which they do in secret. They are the modern good witches.

During my Muka dieta in the jungle I also learned to feel the Moon and its cycles. The one year Muka dieta itself can only be started on a new moon, I started mine on April 2, 2022 saying my intentions aloud to the Yawanawà leaders who were witnessing my “initiation”.

Here are a few notes from a quick research today. more on https://yawa.news

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A few days ago we hosted a zoom call with my partner Magdalena Sartori about “The Feminine”. Magdalena is an architect, real estate developer, and entrepreneur behind The Assemblage NYC, co-working and hotel spaces created for a community of those activating their life purpose post-awakening to the reality that we are both material and spiritual beings.

Magdalena’s spiritual path started by the awakening of the Feminine following an entheogenic experience. She has since studied with the Aztec “abuelas” of Yucatan and is part of a Moon Dance Circle for 4 years. She also studied the ancient lineages of priestesses of Isis.

She has been hosting women circles for over 5 years and most recently leading initiations to reconnect women with their womb and moon cycles through her Yin Institute.

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For the last 3 years, I have been 300% learning spirituality deeply immersed in indigenous or ancient worlds.

I almost stayed in the jungle. I love it there.

I am not sure what to call what I learned, some would call it “shamanism” but that’s a russian word that has nothing to do with the tribes I learned from. They don’t like it and I don’t really like it either.

Staying in the jungle or coming back and spending all my time doing ceremonies and spiritual work would be negating my past.

I built many businesses and invested in hundreds of entrepreneurs, built a conference that I ran for 12 years. I started “blogging” in 2003 (my dear Japanese friend Joi Ito taught me at the WEF) and ever since loved sharing on the Internet...

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I love singing now and sing every day

It took me quite a bit of time to understand what those ancient songs do and I am still learning. They can increase or bring visions, calm people down or get them a little crazy if you sing wrong… Some go all the way to saying they are “healings” others say it’s b**t. I don’t care what people say, I like them and learned to sing many of them.

If I don’t practice I lose them so today I recalled “ba-i-te” and shared it in my podcast if you are curious to hear an indigenous woman friend “tchutchu” sing teach me to sing it.

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I started it to write about my “spiritual” path and share what I learned in my different experiences and will continue to do so. Little did I know when I set-it up that so many of you would be also entrepreneurs, investors or just interested in a personal business. As we talked about during our latest zoom call, there are many business opportunities or people who are making a living in the consciousness space. I started my own new business today. 

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A modern warrior must -control his thoughts, take decisions instantly (without making plans) like quit drinking -control his emotions (don't get angry which is a total waste of energy) -control his word (always be positive and speak good about yourself and others, avoid negative things -learn from his mistakes, it's a learning process -control his actions and do good things for yourself, for others and for mother Earth -doesn't say something is hard, just say it is easy and it will be easy  The warrior always sees the positive and always thinks positive.

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Many people want to make their job or build a business in this consciousness space. Here are some ideas about the space. 

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We're talking about the 400 billion opportunity in the space with key investor David Langer

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Here is the recording of our zoom call yesterday where we explain what is the Vision Quest and Sundance, why you should consider doing it and some practical information. 

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Vision Quest is up to 4 days in the jungle of Mexico with no food and no water. I am explaining a bit more in this episode and inviting you all to a Zoom Call tomorrow aug 11. 

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A very simple reminder with my guest Kuauthli about the power of the positive. 

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There are many reasons why millions of people meditate and why they find it helpful.

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Suffering is part of life, so is death, and I am learning to appreciate every minute of it by staying always positive. I still fail a lot but less and focusing on the progress is what feels right.

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Tobacco has been used for centuries by indigenous for spiritual purposes. They use it in a very different way than our industrial cigarettes. Same plant, totally different habits and results.

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I realized what I learned the most from spiritual leaders is discipline.

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You have not chosen your name or your sex, neither your education. All these were chosen for you by your parents and society. We need to free ourselves from that to find out who we really are.

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Mathematics and physics agree. Whatever reality is - is not what you see. 

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Receiving much more information constantly is a gift and also a challenge my brain and body have now to deal with...

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I got in trouble many times and even almost lost friends over saying the opposite. I offended many people. I finally became aware of it by training with a Lakota teacher, a "Heyoka" that does this on purpose. 

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You know when someone tells your their truth in a few words and it hurts so much or can change your life? I am grateful I have a few people who talk to me like this in my life. 

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Challenges getting back to the world and finding the balance in sharing and using my voice properly. It would have definitely been easier to stay in the forest but this isn't my path. 

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Addictions are just in our minds. We give it power by saying it’s strong. All it takes is focusing on something else or convincing yourself you’re not addicted.

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I would love to hear about more people doing interesting things in the “consciousness” space, not only in France! Thanks

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A special indigenous dieta…

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Continuing the experiment of what I lived with indigenous in Brazil.

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I just had the most incredible experiences in my life so I am restarting my podcast sharing about what I learned there, starting with the basics, meditation practice and what I got from it.

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The Amazon is disappearing we lost 50% of the coral reef and we discover more and more abuse to the planet daily. Hoping to start a conversation.

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We have just had a wonderful sharing experience with friends open to spirituality but living in the business world. Follow http://yawa.news for the next one. It was very special.

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Let’s meet and share! Join me on a Zoom call this Friday 18h Paris/GMT+2 - 9AM SF - noon NY https://www.yawa.news/p/join-me-on-a-zoom-call-this-friday

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How to access magic

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The Temazcal or Inipi is a great place to connect with the spiritual world

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I got that question quite often so here is an answer

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I have been obsessed on how to make reality look more like a dream and found this scene in my life. I will never forget about it.

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I just spent two days with Michael Katz, Buddhist teacher and editor of “Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light” learning about lucid dreaming

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There is a place that we all go to every single night of our lives. The dreams. The practice is to find that same place at any moment.

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Many friends ask me this question. For me it was meditation and a few other practices like Kundalini yoga... until I went to the forest!

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I watched the movie the Twelve, you should watch it at lecielfoundation.com

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A vision quest is up to 4 days with no food no water no sleep and just meditating in a small space

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It took me 45 years to discover spirituality. How would you educate a kid now or get started as an adult to embrace this new spiritual awakening happening now?

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Welcome to my new experimental podcast. I am sharing here about discovering the power of prayers and how I am learning them in an ancient language very few people talk, using a “memory palace”