Podcast appearances and mentions of gary weber

If you want to know how to think on your feet, you need to understand something most advice on this topic gets wrong: Thinking on your feet is not a talent. It's a trained response. And the training required goes far deeper than memorizing a few “power phrases” or practicing small talk at networking events. Real mental agility, by which I mean the kind that serves you in a boardroom, on a stage, in a heated conversation, and even in physical danger, is something you earn. And to earn it requires systematic preparation across multiple domains. I know this because I've spent decades training for exactly these moments. As a university professor, I've lectured in multiple languages to rooms of students who didn't always want to be there. And to get my PhD, I had to sit for a dissertation defense in a room where some of the examiners delighted in throwing hardball questions. As a performing musician, I've improvised solos on stages where the set list changed mid-show. While performing card magic, I've recovered from botched tricks in front of audiences who were actively trying to catch me out. And as a martial arts practitioner, I've used my training to escape three real-world physical confrontations without throwing a single punch. Then there was my TEDx Talk where I had to make real time adjustments when the audience failed to even smile at my scripted laugh lines, but chuckled substantially during parts I had not planned to be funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtDy68-gkY How to Think on Your Feet: The Complete Training System for Mental Agility Under Pressure What I've learned across all of these experiences is that every domain of “thinking on your feet” shares one foundational requirement. It's not intelligence. It's not quick wit. It's often not even confidence. Rather, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that thinking quickly and responding in the best possible way comes down to the systematic reduction of ego. That might sound philosophical, but it's intensely practical. And it will become the thread that connects everything in this guide. From how to recall information instantly in a conversation to how to physically escape a threatening situation without freezing. Here's what we'll cover today: Part 1: Why “Thinking on Your Feet” Is a Trained Skill, Not a Personality Trait Part 2: The Ego Problem (Why Your Self-Image Is Your Biggest Obstacle) Part 3: Mental Recall Under Pressure (How to Access What You Know When It Matters) Part 4: Verbal Agility (How to Sound Smart, Pivot, and Recover in Conversation) Part 5: Performance Under Pressure (Lessons from Music, Magic, and the Stage) Part 6: Physical Composure (How to React When Your Safety Is at Stake) Part 7: Daily Training Exercises for Mental Agility Part 8: Loading Your Mind (Why What You Memorize Determines How Well You Think) Part 9: The Paradox of Mental Silence Let’s dive in with why most people struggle with the skill of spontaneously responding in optimal ways in the first place. Why “Thinking On Your Feet” Is a Trained Skill, Not a Personality Trait As Freud pointed out, civilization is not our natural state. In Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, which is usually translated as Civilization and Its Discontents, he argues that much of our inner tension comes from how our social training represses our instincts. “Discontents” is not really a great translation for the title of this book. “Unbehagen” means something more like “unease” or “discomfort.” And since languages and skills are something we learn, we literally have to undergo a process of discomfort to learn most things. That's not a political statement. It's a neurological one. Your brain's implicit memory system, the part that handles automatic behaviors, gut reactions, and how you repeat social patterns on autopilot, was shaped by millennia of environments that looked nothing like a conference room or a dinner party. It was shaped by physical survival, tribal dynamics, and the need to read danger before it arrives. This means that when you're put on the spot in a modern context, your brain defaults to patterns it learned through observation, not through deliberate training. And those patterns were modelled on the people around you growing up. Especially in contexts like: Being asked a question you weren't expecting Getting challenged during a meeting Having someone force you to improvise a presentation at school or work In such situations, you might find yourself freezing under pressure and not realizing that you’re actually repeating how you saw a parent go cold when you were young. Or you might find yourself getting defensive in arguments the way a sibling did, or going blank during presentations based on someone else’s blip you observed. When you repeat this behavior yourself, it’s not a character flaw. That's implicit memory doing exactly what it was designed to do: replicate observed behavior. And if you’re reading this and don’t have problems thinking on your feet, chances are that you were a lucky observer of someone who could when you were young. Combatting Implicit Memory’s Hold with Reconsolidation The problem is that your default patterns are not optimized for the situations modern life throws at you. They're survival patterns, not performance patterns. Since you’ve learned to react like those you’ve observed instead of how you’d prefer to act as a fully realized being in this world, what can you do? Fortunately, quite a bit. Neuroscientists call the mechanism behind how you can shift the hold of implicit memory on your behavior memory reconsolidation. Here’s how memory reconsolidation works in brief: Every time you recall a memory, it temporarily destabilizes. Researchers call this destabilization a “labile state.” And while the memory is transitioning, the memory can be modified before your brain stores it again. This includes modifying behavioral patterns, not just facts. So when you clam up after being put on the spot and then reflect on what happened, that freezing response is briefly open to revision. This process was first demonstrated in landmark research by Karim Nader and Joseph LeDoux at NYU, which you can read about in Memory Reconsolidation. As part of their investigation, Nader and LeDoux demonstrated that even deeply encoded fear memories could be altered during reconsolidation. Unlocking Transformation Bruce Ecker and colleagues later applied this principle therapeutically. I recommend their discussion in Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Memory Reconsolidation and the Psychotherapy of Transformational Change. As you’ll read, they discovered how long-held emotional patterns can be rewritten. Not through willpower, but through a specific process of activating the old pattern, introducing a contradictory experience, and allowing the brain to re-encode. Monica Khosla explores a parallel idea in The First and Last Belief. This fascinating book is written by someone who experiences non-dual states similar to those I shared in The Victorious Mind: How to Master Memory, Meditation and Mental Well-Being. Khosla discusses how our earliest family-formed beliefs become the templates for how we respond under pressure as adults. Her work in family therapy suggests that these templates aren’t permanent fixtures. Rather, they’re “reconsolidatable,” provided you understand how they were formed and deliberately create new experiences that contradict them. This is precisely what the training in the guide you’re reading now is designed to do. Every exercise, every practice, every discipline I’ll share works by activating your default pattern (the freeze, the defensive reaction, the blank stare) and replacing it with a trained alternative in the moment it’s most labile. The Catch But there’s a catch. There’s always a catch, isn’t there? The pattern that most resists reconsolidation is your self-image. It’s also your self-image that most aggressively defends itself against change. People literally argue for hours with therapists that they cannot change. I know because I made this argument myself for years in front of my own therapists. This is precisely why thinking on your feet requires training. You cannot simply decide to be quicker, calmer, or more articulate under pressure. You have to deliberately replace your default patterns with trained responses. And use deliberate practice to ensure those responses become the new default. The training looks different depending on the context: In conversation and debate, it means learning frameworks for organizing thoughts rapidly and practicing with real people. In professional settings, it means memorizing key information so thoroughly that recall becomes effortless, freeing your mind to think rather than search. On stage or in front of an audience, it means thousands of hours of performance practice that builds a reservoir of recoveries and pivots you can draw on automatically. In physical danger, it means martial arts or self-defense training that bypasses conscious thought entirely and produces trained physical reactions. Each of these contexts has its own training methods. But they all share the same underlying principle: the trained response must be so deeply encoded that it fires before your conscious mind has time to interfere. The single biggest source of that interference? Your ego. But never fear. As big of a problem as the ego can be, you’re going to learn how to solve and resolve it. Part 2: The Ego Problem (Why Your Self-Image Is Your Biggest Obstacle) Here's the uncomfortable truth that almost no “how to think on your feet” article will tell you: The reason most people freeze, fumble, or fail under pressure is not that they lack information or intelligence. It's that they're managing their self-image at the same time as they're trying to perform. They experience serious cognitive drain as a result. Why? Well, when you're in a meeting and someone asks you a question you don't know the answer to, your mind doesn't just process the question. If your ego is not well-managed, your mind simultaneously processes: “What will they think of me if I don't know? Will I look incompetent? How do I maintain my status?” That parallel processing consumes the very cognitive resources you need for actual thinking. The Additional Cognitive Drain of Fantasizing Your Own Wit The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan made an observation that I've found profoundly useful in this context. He once pointed out that our fantasies are almost always better than the reality. For example, when we fantasize about being the quick-witted person everyone admires, we're constructing an idealized self-image that the real moment can never live up to. At least not all the time. You’ve probably heard the phrase “the gods have clay feet.” Well, spend enough time with accomplished performers, and you’ll start to see why. No one always has: the perfect response the devastating comeback the elegant pivot But we fantasize that some people do. And then when we don't perform like our fantasy, we experience not just the failure of the moment, but also a painful collapse of our self-image. That's why a stumble in a presentation can feel catastrophic even when the audience barely notices. The ego is experiencing a much larger injury than the situation warrants. How to Reduce Ego Before It Costs You There’s no quick fix for the ego. And ego reduction exercises so you can respond with greater self-satisfaction in the moment require: Practice in advance Consistent application in a variety of situations And in a variety of ways until responding off the top of your head from a clear mind becomes your default orientation. Then you maintain the practices that get you the spontaneous mastery you want over time. Here is a powerful place to start. Practice Stoic Premeditation The Stoics called it premeditatio malorum or negative visualization. Basically, you deliberately imagine everything that could go wrong related to the situations that regularly require your response. If you regularly visualize yourself going blank in a meeting, stumbling through a presentation, or being publicly corrected, the actual event loses its power to destabilize you. You've already experienced the worst in your imagination. The real version is almost always milder. It’s the flipside of the point from Lacan we discussed above. You’ve now made the reality much better than the fantasy. Modify the Classic Stoic Exercise You can modify premeditatio malorum in two key ways. I suggest you experiment with both techniques I’m about to describe. One: Transform Old Memories of a Disastrous Performance First, you can excavate through your memory to find situations you recall where things have already been bad for you. Then, you can “cleanse” those memories by placing them in a “Happy Memory Palace.” The scientific basis for this process comes from research showing promise in therapy for trauma, such as this study of memory reconsolidation specific to declarative memory. And there is the now classic Tim Dalgleish-headed research on using Memory Palaces or the method of loci for successfully reducing depression. For more on this kind of research, the following livestream replay gives you an exact exercise and more about the memory science behind the positive outcomes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs9UHz4pVuM In terms of how I’ve used this approach personally, I sometimes wince at one particular memory from when I sang a song during show-and-tell one morning when I was in grade two. I don’t know why I used to feel embarrassed when the memory would arise as an adult, but I could feel the sting in my cheeks. And later when I first started sharing the Sanskrit phrases I’ve memorized, that little flush of shame would arise again. So to forgive that kid whatever my memory was holding against him for his squeaky little voice, I turned the classroom into a Memory Palace and used it to memorize a delightful poem. From the point that I finished learning the poem (you can learn the process from this poetry memorization guide), I can think of that episode without that old embarrassment reviving any of its sting. And I’ve used this approach to transform other lingering memories I don’t like as well, something I’ll share more in-depth in a forthcoming book. Releasing old negative memories that involve shame makes me feel more spontaneous. And I’m confident you’ll enjoy a similar benefit too. Two: Memorize Stoic Quotes Memorizing poetry is one thing, but it takes time. You can commit quotes to memory a lot faster. I share one of my favorite quotes from Seneca in this YouTube short, one that took only a few minutes to memorize, even though it’s in Latin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISvX0-CfRkk I found this quote in Kevin Vost’s Memorize the Stoics! Although it’s not on my list of best Memory Palace Books, it provides a great look at memory training through a Stoic lens. And Vost is right: The value of having ancient wisdom on tap cannot be exaggerated. Not just for correcting your ego. You’ll also find that you have more things to say when pressed to speak on the spot. Things that have stood the test of time. Meditate Specifically for Ego Reduction Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, often says in his talks that if you are empty of thought, you don’t have to worry about what to say next during a conversation. You’ll spontaneously produce the best possible reply. I often wondered how it was possible to empty my mind of thoughts until I encountered Gary Weber’s Happiness Beyond Thought and Evolving Beyond Thought amongst other works. Although Weber’s full program requires a fair amount of time, it’s worth it for the mental space and spontaneity you’ll enjoy. Two Other Tactics for Detaching From Your Ego for Greater Spontaneity While you’re experimenting with Stoicism, here are two other tactics to explore. They’re both counterintuitive, but powerful. Embrace ignorance as a position of strength Saying “I don't know, but I'll find out” is not a failure. It's a demonstration of intellectual honesty that most people find more impressive than an imaginary answer. If your ego tells you that not knowing something is a form of weakness, push back. Admitting when you don’t know something and then doing some research and following up, builds trust at the same time as it builds your knowledge base. Detach from Needing Any Particular Outcome Your job in any high-pressure moment is not to be brilliant. It's to be present and responsive. Almost as if there is no “you” longing to be perceived in any particular way. Or desiring things to play out for or against you. When you stop trying to produce the perfect response and instead focus on actually hearing the question, understanding the situation, and responding honestly, the quality of your thinking improves dramatically. And it happens largely because you've freed up the cognitive resources consumed by your egotistical needs. You’ll also enjoy your perception of the present moment much more. Part 3: Mental Recall Under Pressure (How to Access What You Know When It Matters) One of the most common experiences of “not thinking on your feet” is this: You know the information, but you can't access it in the moment. You know your mind possesses the answer. But the pressure of the situation has locked the door. There's a neurological explanation for this. Researcher Amy Arnsten has documented how stress signalling pathways in the prefrontal cortex effectively shut down under acute stress. As we know from studies in anxiety-induced memory loss, during stress, the amygdala takes prominence over the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for working memory, reasoning, and flexible thinking. As a result, your brain redirects resources toward fight-or-flight responses that are useful for physical survival but terrible for articulate speech. This is a major reason why you can know something perfectly in a calm environment and go completely blank when asked about it in front of an audience or in a heated discussion. The information hasn't disappeared. Your brain has simply redirected resources away from the systems that retrieve it. The Alphabet Retrieval Technique When I suddenly can't recall something (a name, a fact, a point I wanted to make), I have a technique that works more often than I'd expect: I mentally run through the alphabet from A to Z. It doesn’t always bring back the information. But the technique works often enough to make it a reliable first move, hitting the correct first letter while scanning through the alphabet triggers the retrieval. When it works, it’s because the first letter acts as a cue that unlocks the rest of the word or thought. It’s also the basis of how associative memory operates. As Dr. Gary Small has explained, your brain stores information in networks that somewhat resemble neighborhoods. And the first letter of a word is often enough of a “key” to unlock the door on a full node of information. It's the same principle behind why a song's opening notes can bring back the entire melody. Or how just a word or two of a lyric can bring back an entire verse. The “Let It Go” Retrieval Technique If scanning the alphabet doesn't work, the next best strategy is counterintuitive: Stop trying. In other words, deliberately release any attempt to search your mind for the content. Instead, move on to the next point, the next topic, the next question. Often, within 5–10 minutes, the information you were grasping for will come racing back to mind. This form of recall happens because your subconscious continues processing the retrieval request even after your conscious mind has moved on. Releasing the conscious effort actually accelerates the process, because you've removed the stress that was blocking retrieval in the first place. The Anti-Digital Amnesia Discipline You Need In order to ensure your memory gets stronger over time, you need to break the habit of immediately reaching for your phone or a search engine when you fail to recall something. Every time you outsource mental retrieval to a computer, you weaken the neural pathways that perform recall. You're training your brain that it doesn't need to do the work — and over time, it stops trying. This is the phenomenon I've written about as digital amnesia, and it's one of the most insidious threats to mental agility in the modern world. Preloading: The Real Solution to In-the-Moment Recall Both alphabetical retrieval and simply letting go are recovery strategies. They're useful when recall fails. But the real solution to thinking on your feet is to ensure that recall rarely fails in the first place. This is where a variety of memory training techniques enter the picture. Not as gimmicks, but as the foundational infrastructure for mental agility. The Memory Palace Technique Using Memory Palaces provides a core means of preloading information into your mind. Because this technique allows you to encode very large amounts of information, retrieval under pressure becomes qualitatively different from trying to recall something you passively read or heard. You literally own that information, forwards and backwards. It works because the spatial structure of the Memory Palace gives your brain a retrieval path that works even when the prefrontal cortex is under stress, because spatial memory is processed partly by the hippocampus. This is a different system than the one stress shuts down. In practical terms: If you've memorized the key points of a presentation using a Memory Palace, you don't need to “remember” them under pressure. You just mentally walk to the next room. The information is there, waiting. But it’s not merely attached to a place you know as well as your own home. It has also entered long-term memory. To learn this approach, check out The Memory Palace Technique: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide. Memory Wheels and the Art of Combination Retrieving facts, quotes, even entire passages under pressure is one thing. But what about those moments when you need to synthesize information on the spot? Such as when someone poses a complex question and the right answer isn’t a single piece of information but a combination of ideas you need to assemble in real time? This is where most people’s recall fails them entirely. They might remember one relevant point, but they can’t pull together the three or four ideas needed to construct a substantive response on the spot. I use a technique for this that dates back to the 13th-century philosopher Ramon Llull, later refined by the Renaissance memory master Giordano Bruno. It’s called ars combinatoria or the art of combination. It works by pre-organizing your knowledge onto mental structures called memory wheels so that you can rotate through ideas rapidly and recombine them in novel ways during live situations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opmb-mU-KPI Here’s the simplest version of how it works in practice: Imagine a circle in your mind with the letters A through Z arranged around it. For each letter, you’ve pre-assigned a thinker, a framework, or a principle you know well. A might be Aristotle. B might be a breathing technique. C might be a core value you hold. M might be Marcus Aurelius. S might be the Stoic concept of premeditatio malorum. When a difficult question hits you in conversation, instead of grasping for one perfect answer, you mentally spin the wheel. Instead of searching randomly for something to say, you approach the task of coming up with something to say by scanning an organized inventory of your best thinking. Because you’ve pre-loaded and spatially arranged all of it, your mind can traverse what you’ve already learned quickly. Memory Wheel Example One of my favorite Memory Wheels is populated with philosophers (one for each letter of the alphabet). When I’m confronted with a complex topic, I rotate through and consider what Aristotle would say and then move on through as many philosophers as I like, all the way to Zizek for Z. I know this technique sounds elaborate and it requires having read the best philosophy books, but once you have a Memory Wheel built and practiced, the rotation takes seconds. Here’s a rapid fire discussion with a few more examples from one of my YouTube shorts from the road in Brisbane: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/29nOib2ZS_4 Please don’t overlook this technique. It produces responses that are genuinely multi-perspectival, not just whatever my default opinion happens to be. The deeper history of this technique and detailed instructions for building your own memory wheels are covered in my full guide to Ramon Llull’s memory wheel method. But the principle you can apply immediately upon developing your own memory wheels is this: If you pre-organize your knowledge into a spatial structure rather than leaving it scattered across your memory, you gain the ability to not just recall individual facts under pressure but to combine and recombine ideas on the fly. That is the difference between someone who can answer a question and someone who can think through a problem in real time. It’s not speed without purpose. It’s architecture with a sense of direction based on the shoulders of giants. Part 4: Verbal Agility (How to Sound Smart, Pivot, and Recover in Conversation) Verbal agility isn't about having a quick tongue. It's about having a calm mind with a deep well of material to draw from. The people who seem effortlessly articulate in conversation are rarely making it up on the spot. They're drawing on vast reserves of pre-loaded knowledge, practiced frameworks, and rehearsed transitions. What looks like spontaneous brilliance is actually the visible tip of an enormous iceberg of preparation. Frameworks for Organizing Your Thoughts Rapidly When someone throws a topic at you and you need to respond coherently, having a mental framework prevents the rambling that makes people sound unprepared. Here are several that work, provided you practice using them before they’re required in real-life situations: The PREP Framework PREP stands for: Point Reason Example Point It’s a very powerful formula to practice during debates as well as in conversation. When using PREP, you state your position, give one reason, illustrate with one example, then restate your position. This takes 30–60 seconds and helps keep your replies structured without sounding rehearsed. The WRAP Technique I learned this one from Chip and Dan Heath's Decisive. WRAP stands for: Widen your options Reality-test your assumptions Attain distance before deciding Prepare to fail I placed WRAP on a memory wheel and demonstrate how to run through it mentally in this ars combinatoria video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cYDmaBXvJg What to Do When You're Stumped Even with the frameworks we just discussed or tactics like running through the alphabet, you will experience situations where you simply don't have a response. Here are more strategies you can try. Pause Peacefully Although falling silent can feel painful when you first start practicing it, rest assured that it barely registers to the person listening. And in many cases, a two or three-second pause before responding signals thoughtfulness, not ignorance. Most people rush to fill silence because their ego can't tolerate appearing slow. But a measured pause followed by a substantive response is always more impressive than a rushed response followed by backtracking. Seek Clarification There’s nothing wrong with asking people: “Can you say more about what you mean by that?” or “Are you asking about X or Y specifically?” Such questions will not stall the conversation. It's genuine intellectual engagement, and it often reveals avenues for further conversation that would not be revealed any other way. Use the Truth You might not know this, but many people find it refreshing when someone admits that something is outside of their area. Nir Eyal did that on my podcast a few years ago and I’ve never forgotten his willingness to “stay in his lane,” as he put it. The best part? Nobody penalizes honest uncertainty and a request to move on if you really don’t have a settled opinion on some matter or any expertise. Practice Physical Awareness Sometimes when we’re stumped, our body tenses up. Shoulders rise, the jaw clenches and breathing shallows. This physical tension feeds back into your mental state and makes mental freezing worse. But deliberately dropping your shoulders and taking one slow breath can help break the cycle. More on this kind of physical solution is coming up in Part 6. Practice Steelmanning One of the most powerful exercises for verbal agility is practicing steelmanning. Related to the principle of charity in rhetoric, steelmanning is the practice of arguing for positions with which you disagree. But not half-heartedly. No, you make the argument in the strongest possible terms. One simple way to practice steelmanning involves getting a friend to throw topics at you randomly. Your job is not to argue your own position, but to construct the best possible argument for the opposite side. This practice accomplishes three things simultaneously: It forces you to think through ideas from perspectives you wouldn't naturally adopt, which builds cognitive flexibility. It trains you to separate your ego from your position, because you're explicitly not defending your own views. It prepares you for actual debates, because you've already rehearsed the strongest version of your opponent's argument. For more tips that will help you in this department, check out my guide to preparing for debates. The Improv Principle If you take one thing from this section and act on it, let it be this: Take an improvisation class. Why? Improv comedy training provides you with the single most transferable skill for verbal agility in any context. The core principle of improv is quite easy. You simply answer everything with either “yes, and…” or “no, but…” This simple structure teaches you to accept whatever is thrown at you and build on it rather than blocking or deflecting. This is the exact skill you need in meetings, conversations, presentations, and debates. Improv also provides the one thing you can't get from reading articles: Real-time practice under social pressure while receiving immediate feedback. No amount of theory replaces the experience of standing in front of a group with nothing planned and having to produce something. It’s been a long time since I took an improv class, or any class. But you really only need one round to create a permanent transformation. Part 5: Performance Under Pressure (Lessons from Music, Magic, and the Stage) If you've never performed music, theatre, magic, public speaking, or any other form of real-time presentation, you may not realize how much of “thinking on your feet” is simply having enough trained material that you can recover from anything. The principle applies far beyond the stage. But the stage is where the principle is most visible, so let me share what I've learned from three performance disciplines. Music: Improvisation Is Built on Structure & Self-Awareness When I studied music, I learned something that most non-musicians find surprising: improvisational soloing requires more preparation than playing a written piece. A written piece has every note specified. You practice it, you perform it, you're done. An improvised solo, on the other hand, requires you to internalize the underlying structure so thoroughly that you can navigate it in real time without conscious planning. You need to know the modes, the chord changes, the rhythmic patterns, the phrasing conventions. And you need to know them so well that they're available to your fingers before your conscious mind has time to think about which note comes next. I know this from decades of musical experience. But my life in music almost never happened at all. In grade five, I failed a recorder test. It was given as a prerequisite for joining band class in grade six. The reason, though I didn’t have the language for it at the time, was a condition then called image-deficit disorder, now known as aphantasia. I couldn’t visualize what my teachers were asking me to see on the recorder or the sheet music. And the boring mnemonic sentences they gave us for remembering the notes made no sense to me. The school’s verdict in the face of my supposed failure? No band class. My dad changed that. He rolled up to the school on his Harley Davidson and had a conversation with the administration that I wasn’t privy to. Whatever he said, it worked. I was in. So long as I played the trombone instead of my dream bass guitar. They thought trombone would be easiest for me with its one simple slide. The Art of Coping By Copying But getting into band class didn’t mean I could play. In fact, for the entire first year, I sat beside another trombonist who picked up every note like it was nothing. I survived by watching his slide positions and copying them. I wasn’t reading music. I was reading him. The next year, in grade seven, the teacher gave us separate parts, and my copying lifeline was over. I remember sitting alone in a room with that trombone, sweat rolling down my face, sheet music on the stand turning my brain into wet sawdust. It felt like staring at an explosive I didn’t know how to defuse. But something shifted as my juvenile brain worked to solve the problem. Once I was forced to actually engage with the notation instead of mimicking someone else, I started seeing patterns. The theory behind the notes began to click. My teacher noticed the transformation quickly, both in performance and on my written tests. Later that year, she encouraged me to enter a sight-reading competition. Even though I didn’t win, I remember the thrill of performing music I’d never seen before. And because my teacher saw how deeply I’d started engaging with music, she helped me secure a spot at the local summer school of music before high school. That summer changed my trajectory. I studied with a celebrated trombonist from Canadian Brass. My skills went up substantially, and after a solo I played during the final concert, I was asked to audition for the Kamloops Rube Band. I turned that invitation down and finally retired the trombone for a bass and joined a heavy metal band instead. Over the years that followed, I played in multiple bands, learned increasingly complex music, and eventually realized a lifelong dream: going on tour with an established band. Memory expert Anthony Metivier performing at a concert in Germany. The Lesson That Changed How I Perform And it was during that tour, playing with a sophisticated band called The Outside, that I received perhaps the most important lesson about thinking on your feet that music ever gave me. After a show, our drummer Tito told me I’d missed a few notes. I braced for a critical lecture, but he said something I’ve never forgotten. It was an important tip that has everything to do with the practice of thinking on your feet: “The real problem isn’t missing the notes. It’s looking like you made a mistake. If you look like you made a mistake, it is a mistake.” From that moment on, I trained myself to improvise how I looked just as much as how I sounded. A missed note played with confidence reads as a creative choice. A perfect note played with visible anxiety reads as a near-miss. The audience often doesn’t hear your mistakes, but they do see your reaction to them. This principle extends far beyond music. It shows up in meetings, presentations and conversations. Your stumbles themselves are almost never what people remember. They remember whether or not you flinched. And to tie this all back to the beginning, flinching is an ego response. It’s the visible evidence of caring more about how you appear than about what you’re communicating. Tito didn’t know he was teaching me about ego reduction back during that tour in 2013. But that’s exactly what his lesson was. Card Magic: Multiple Outs and Recovery In card magic, which is especially useful in memorized deck magic, there's a concept called “multiple outs.” I think about it constantly in non-magic contexts. A multiple out is a tactic you might never use, but always have something prepared so that no matter what the spectator does, you conclude the trick successfully. In other words, no matter which card they choose, which pile they point to, which decision they make, you have a prepared path to a successful conclusion. The spectator thinks they're making free choices. In reality, every choice leads to the same place, or to one of several equally impressive endings. This is exactly how preparation works for thinking on your feet. If you've prepared thoroughly for a meeting, you don't just have one argument. You have multiple arguments, multiple examples, multiple pivot points. If someone challenges your position, you have an “out.” If someone asks an unexpected question, you have another “out.” The more preparation you've done, the more outs you have. Magician in Trouble There's also a sub-genre in magic called “magician in trouble” where the performer intentionally appears to make a mistake, building tension before a surprising recovery. What the audience doesn't realize is that the “mistake” was planned and the recovery was rehearsed. But it only works because the performer has done thousands of hours of practice behind the scenes. If you’re having trouble acting spontaneously, learning a few magic tricks is one of the best things you can do. The more tricks you know, the more you can make mistakes and recover. If one trick goes wrong, you transition to another. If a spectator does something unexpected, you have a different trick that accommodates their choice. The depth of your repertoire is directly proportional to your ability to handle anything. Translate this to your professional life: The more tools, frameworks, examples, and stories you have memorized, the more “tricks” you can draw from when a conversation or presentation goes sideways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtYjdriSpM Two Levels of TEDx Improvisation Where Preparation Met Reality Minutes before I was due on stage for my TEDx Talk, a long-time fan showed up without a ticket. From what I gathered, he’d traveled to attend the event in Melbourne. And I could tell he was genuinely excited. But he didn’t have a ticket. And when the venue staff told him he couldn’t come in, due to fire capacity rules, we were both frustrated. Anyone with two eyes could see that the room wasn’t actually full. But there was no time to argue the bureaucracy. I was about to deliver the most important presentation of my career, after all. This is exactly the kind of moment that derails people. Not the talk itself, but the things that happen right before you hit the stage. I’m talking about the unexpected disruptions that flood your system with cortisol at the worst possible time. My ego wanted to fight for this person’s entry. It wanted to make a scene about the absurdity of empty seats and fire codes. It wanted to be the hero who fixes things. Instead, thinking on my feet, I suggested we meet for dinner after the talk. He understood. We shook hands. And then I had approximately four minutes to completely reset my mental state before walking on stage. Here’s what I did, standing backstage where nobody could see: I placed my hands behind my back and began Kirtan Kriya. This is a four-syllable meditation (Sa, Ta, Na, Ma) combined with a sequential mudra where your fingers tap. Gary Weber teaches it in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehvokeZnXMM By using the technique with both hands behind my back so no one would see, I simultaneously slowed my breathing and brought myself back to center. Between breath cycles, I also ran a quick body scan from my feet to my scalp, deliberately releasing tension wherever I found it. Jaw, shoulders, hands, the major muscle groups. By the time they called my name, I was calm. Not confident in the way people usually mean. I wasn’t puffed up or “psyched” to give my speech. Just calm in the way that comes from having emptied the bowl. The fan situation was gone from my mind. The ego’s need to intervene was gone. What remained was a mind with nothing in it except a memorized talk and the willingness to deliver it to whoever was in that room. What To Do When the Room Doesn’t Follow Your Script Shortly after my talk began, the room did something I hadn’t planned for. A scripted joke that had worked perfectly to create laughter during the dress rehearsal the day before landed in silence. Not awkward silence. Just… nothing. The audience looked at me with interest but no laughter. A few minutes later, during a section I hadn’t intended to be funny at all, they laughed. Genuinely. A speaker working from notes would have been buried in their script at that moment, unable to read the room because their eyes were on the page. But my entire talk was encoded in Memory Palaces using the technique I teach in my guide, How to Memorize a Speech. I didn’t need to look at any notes. I could look at everyone and connect with them directly. So I did and leaned into their laughter. I let it breathe. I adjusted my pacing to ride the energy they were giving me rather than forcing the energy I’d planned. Going with the flow, I made an unscripted joke and it landed. And when the moment passed, I stepped to the next station in my Memory Palace and continued on with the talk. What the Audience Saw vs. What Actually Happened The audience experienced this as spontaneity. They saw a speaker who was loose, present, reading the room. What actually happened was decades of training expressing itself through a four-second decision. The musical performance training that taught me to keep playing through mistakes without flinching. The card magic training that taught me to have multiple outs when a planned effect doesn’t land. The teaching experience that taught me to read a room full of people who may not be responding the way I expected. And underneath all of it, my ego-reduction efforts shone through, including the willingness to let go of the talk I’d planned and deliver the talk the audience needed. After the event, several people told me how natural and relaxed I seemed. One person said it felt like I was just talking to them, not giving a speech. That’s the highest compliment a speaker can receive. And it was entirely the product of preparation. But nothing about that talk was spontaneous other than the joke I made up on the fly. Otherwise, every word of that talk was memorized verbatim. The audience saw someone thinking on their feet. What they were actually seeing was someone falling back on their training. That, and they witnessed someone with enough training to fall back on. That is the difference. And it’s available to anyone willing to put in the work before the moment arrives. Part 6: Physical Composure (How to React When Your Safety Is at Stake) There are situations where “thinking on your feet” has nothing to do with being articulate or quick-witted. Quite the opposite. There are many moments in life when thinking itself is the problem, especially during situations where what you need is a trained physical response that fires before your conscious mind has time to interfere. I've been in three of these situations. Each time, it was my years-long Systema training that kept me safe. In case you don’t know it, Systema is a martial art focused on breathing, relaxation, and fluid movement under stress. To be clear, it didn’t help me fight. It helped me because it stopped fights from erupting in the first place. Let me explain. Incident One: The Attempted Mugging While writing my dissertation, I was living in Washington Heights, a district north of Harlem in New York City. I was walking south, down to the 170s from the corner of 187th and Cabrini, where I’d stopped to use a bank machine. On my way out, a man stood in front of me with something resembling a gun in his pocket. Exactly as it happens in the movies, he gestured in quick spurts of energy so that my eyes dropped and looked at his pocket. “Give me your wallet and all your money,” he demanded. My Systema training kicked in. Instead of having my shoulders shoot up with anxious tension — the default I’d seen in almost every new student Emmanuel Manolakakis worked with, including me during my first lessons — my mind automatically followed the training I’d received. Without willing it, my shoulders dropped and my mind and body synced with my breath. In a way that still completely bewilders me, a smile came across my face. I don’t know what I looked like, but my expression unnerved the mugger. It created the stress in him that should have been in my body. After what seemed like an eternity, the mugger said, “Wipe that smile off your face or I’ll shoot you.” At this point, my smile grew wider and I started to laugh. An instant later, it felt right to move. I took one step forward into his space and angled to the left with the second and third steps. I didn’t break his gaze and watched as his eyes and entire head tracked me as I moved past him. Then, still operating completely on autopilot, I started to run and found myself in a cleaning supplies store filled with mops and buckets. No confrontation. No escalation. No ego. Just a trained body responding faster than a thinking mind would have. My Systema training, from breath coordination to deep muscle relaxation and long hours of practice with dropping into calm during situations of simulated threat, delivered exactly what it was designed for: bypassing the conscious mind that would have frozen me and let the body handle the situation. Incident Two: The Dark Path in Toronto Some time later, walking in Toronto, I approached a path at the end of a high school field. It was too late to be taking this popular shortcut, but there I was during a night that was far darker than I would have liked. There was just one street lamp hanging over that path, and its bulb was barely working. Before I stepped onto the path, I put a dime on my thumb. I didn’t think about why. There was no conscious strategy at work. My body simply did what training had taught it to do: prepare for the possibility of contact without committing to a plan. Sure enough, someone stepped into my path. I flicked the dime. The coin caught his gaze and seized his attention, producing a few seconds of involuntary visual tracking. This is the same reflex that makes every human eye follow sudden movement. Thanks to the distraction created by the spinning dime, I moved past him easily and paced off into the distance before his focus returned. The entire encounter lasted maybe three seconds. There was no conversation, no confrontation, no mental calculation. Just a trained response that created a tiny window of distraction and an immediate exit through it. I still think about the fact that I put the dime on my thumb before anything happened. It wasn’t a decision so much as it was a product of procedural memory — the same memory system that helps a musician’s fingers find the right fret before their conscious mind has named the note. Systema trains you to read environments the way musicians read chord changes. Not by analyzing, but by responding to patterns your body has trained to respond to inside the dojo. Incident Three: Outside the Post Office The third incident was the strangest. Outside a post office, someone with a grievance I didn’t fully understand began yelling at me aggressively. His body language was escalating and the situation felt like it could turn physical. My response was immediate: I raised my hands into a prayer gesture. With my palms together and fingers standing straight up, I found myself saying “thank you” over and over. I wasn’t being clever. I wasn’t trying to defuse the situation with wit. The gesture came from training, and it served two purposes simultaneously that I was only partially aware of in the moment. First, it put my hands in a position to quickly block any incoming strike. The prayer position is a natural guard because your hands are high, elbows close and forearms ready to redirect. I mean, it’s not going to make you bulletproof, but it’s just as disarming as the smile I delivered back during the mugging I survived in New York. Second, my response psychologically short-circuited the man’s aggression. Being thanked while you’re on the offensive is so dissonant that the brain doesn’t know how to process it. This person’s rhythm broke. His volume dropped. The escalation stalled because the script he was running had been interrupted by a response that didn’t fit. He didn’t thank me back. But at least he stopped. And I walked away unscathed. The Common Thread: No Ego, No Thinking, Just the Fruits of Training In all three incidents, the pattern is identical: Because the ego was out of the way, I wasn't trying to prove anything or “win” the encounters. There was also no conscious thinking. The responses were physical, automatic, and executed faster than mental deliberation would have allowed. Plus, there was relaxation under threat. The counterintuitive act of relaxing when threatened, which Systema specifically trains, prevented the freeze response that ego and fear typically produce. Finally, the strategy in each case was oriented toward getting away, not engaging. For anyone who wants to develop this dimension of thinking on their feet, I strongly recommend studying a martial art that emphasizes relaxation, awareness, and movement rather than aggression and force. Finding Your Own Physical Practice If personal experiences make you want to sign up for Systema, I’d encourage it. But I’d also encourage any martial art that emphasizes awareness, breathing, and relaxation over aggression and force. The point is not to become a fighter. The point is to develop a body that responds to threat with trained composure rather than untrained panic. Beyond martial arts, I practice Qigong daily and have for years. It’s not a combat discipline, but it trains the same foundational skills experienced in a gentler format: Breath coordination Bodily awareness Relaxation under tension For someone who has no interest in martial training, Qigong offers many of the same benefits for composure and physical presence without ever throwing or receiving a strike. Whatever physical practice you choose, I’d offer one caution: Don’t romanticize these practices or turn them into a glamorous fantasy. Remember the lesson from Lacan and the Stoic lessons that make sure reality is better than fantasy if and when real situations of trouble land. The three incidents I described above weren’t action sequences. They were awkward, brief, and slightly absurd. I didn’t defeat anyone. I smiled, flicked a coin, and said thank you. The training didn’t make me dangerous. It made me calm enough to exit each situation without a scratch. And that brings me to what I consider the most important physical skill of all, one that doesn’t require any formal training: situational awareness. Train for Situational Awareness In each of the three incidents, there was a moment before contact where my body registered something my conscious mind hadn’t articulated yet. In Washington Heights, I noticed the man’s posture before he spoke. In Toronto, something made me put a dime on my thumb before I entered the dark path. Outside the post office, I registered the escalation in body language before any words were exchanged. To train for greater situational awareness, walk with your phone in your pocket instead of your hand. Move around the world with your ears empty instead of listening to music or podcasts. When you enter a room, notice the exits. When you’re in an unfamiliar environment, pay attention to who is around you and how they’re moving. These aren’t paranoid habits. They’re the same environmental reading skills your ancestors used every day. Modern life has simply given us the luxury of ignoring them. There is almost no better way to think on your feet than the thinking that steers you clear of sticky situations in the first place. When it comes to physical confrontation, the best-trained response is the one you never have to use. Part 7: Daily Training Exercises for Mental Agility Everything discussed so far requires ongoing practice. Here are the specific daily exercises I use and recommend, organized from quick (2 minutes) to involved (30+ minutes). Breathing Techniques (2–5 minutes) Before any high-pressure situation, be it a presentation, a meeting or a difficult conversation, controlled breathing is the fastest way to shift your nervous system from sympathetic (fight-or-flight) to parasympathetic (calm and focused). The simplest technique: Breathe in for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, breathe out for 6 counts. The extended exhale activates the vagus nerve and physically slows your heart rate. Do this for 2 minutes and you'll enter any situation calmer and more mentally available. For more advanced breathing techniques, check out this video tutorial I made for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeO06_uZZcg   Progressive Muscle Relaxation (5–10 minutes) Systematically tensing and releasing muscle groups, from your feet to your face, trains your body to release the physical tension that accumulates under stress. Over time, you develop the ability to detect and release tension in real time — during a conversation, during a presentation, during a confrontation. This is the body scan component that I used before my TEDx Talk, and it's a core element of Systema training as well. The ability to scan your body for tension and deliberately release it is a physical skill that directly supports mental agility. Steelmanning Practice (15–20 minutes) Get a partner. Have them throw random topics at you. Your job: argue the strongest possible case for the position you naturally oppose. Switch roles. Do this twice a week and within a month you'll notice a dramatic improvement in your ability to think through problems from multiple angles under time pressure. Now, you might think about going to Chat-GPT or some other LLM. You can certainly give this a try. However, beware of context-dependent memory and state-dependence issues. If you only train in digital environments with a bot, you will likely find that you perform fine when sparring with a computer, but flounder with a human. As this study found, training in certain environments creates less cognitive fatigue than others. So if you come to develop certain beliefs about the difficulty of discussing things based on experiences with chatbots, you will probably not like the energy-drain you encounter when dealing with humans. Remember: we tend to fight the way we train, so practice all rhetorical argumentation in a variety of environments, never just one. Random Topic Riffing (10–15 minutes) Have someone give you a topic and speak about it for 2 minutes without stopping. What you say doesn't need to be brilliant, but work at speaking continuously. The exercise trains your brain to keep producing output even when it doesn't feel ready, which is exactly the skill you need when put on the spot. Increase difficulty by having the topic-giver interrupt you with new topics mid-stream. This trains your ability to pivot and shift directions without losing composure. Memory Palace Practice (15–30 minutes) Every time you encode information using a Memory Palace, you're doing more than memorizing. You're building the retrieval infrastructure that makes recall under pressure possible. Regular Memory Palace practice is the single most important investment you can make in your ability to access information when you need it. The more you memorize, the more you should seek to incorporate memorized material into your steelmanning and random riffing practice routines. Alphabet Drills and Multiple Mentality (5–15 minutes) One of the most unusual training systems I’ve encountered comes from Harry Kahne, a performer from the 1920s who could write with both hands simultaneously while reciting poetry from memory. He called his approach “Multiple Mentality” because it’s the deliberate practice of running several mental operations at once. His exercises sound deceptively simple. The foundational one: write out the alphabet backwards from memory. Not from Z-A printed on a card. From memory, cold. Most people find reciting the alphabet backwards surprisingly difficult the first time. But once you can do it? That’s when the real training begins. Kahne then asks you to pair the alphabet’s extreme ends mentally: A-Z, B-Y, C-X, working inward. Then start from the center and pair outward in reverse. These are pure concentration drills because they force your brain to hold a structure in working memory while performing various forms of recall. I go deeper into the full Multiple Mentality system and all of Kahne’s exercises in my detailed review of his course, including the parts I think are brilliant and the parts where I respectfully disagree with him. Part 8: Prepping Your Mind (Why What You Memorize Determines How Well You Think) Most of us know that the quality of your thinking is directly proportional to the quality of what you've committed to memory. A mind loaded with poetry, philosophy, scientific principles, historical examples, memorable quotes, and well-understood frameworks will produce richer, more nuanced, more creative responses under pressure than a mind that relies on whatever it happens to recall from last week's reading. This is not about showing off. It's about having raw material that makes you mentally dexterous. And gives you information you can use in an instant. What to Memorize for Maximum Mental Agility As you’ve seen, I strongly recommend memorizing quotes and poems. Because memorized poetry gives you access to compressed wisdom, beautiful language, and emotional resonance that you can draw on in conversation, writing, and thinking. Likewise, you can learn how to remember a story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM4TxD6ez1Y When you've memorized a poem or story, you own the content in a way that reading on its own never provides. The lines and structures become part of your mental vocabulary. I've memorized dozens of poems and passages of verse, and they surface constantly in conversation, in my writing, in my thinking about problems that have nothing to do with literature. Memorize Speeches for Mental Dexterity Likewise, you can seek out speeches from people like Churchill, Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and Marcus Aurelius. The words of leaders who were themselves masters of thinking on their feet make for excellent training material. When you've memorized their words, you internalize their patterns of thought. You don't just quote them. You begin to think in the structures they used. Learn to Tell Jokes Like improv, humor provides you with one of the ultimate forms of thinking on your feet. And telling jokes is far more learnable than people assume. To get started, commit a few jokes to memory and study their structure. You’ll soon notice that a good joke is a tiny argument: The setup establishes expectations The twist violates the expectations The punchline resolves the violation in a surprising or ironic way This simple structure is not so different from the PREP framework we discussed above. Practice Parroting and Accent Imitation Imitating a famous actor might sound like a party trick, but it's actually a profound exercise in sharing another person’s perspective and behavioral patterns. To imitate someone convincingly, you have to at least try and understand how they think, how they move and how they use language. As a result, the understanding you develop translates directly to the ability to read and respond to different people in different contexts. I’m not particularly good with foreign accents or imitating people. But merely by putting time into practicing a few people, I’ve learned a lot and become more spontaneous on my feet. Reflective Thinking Practice Memorization alone isn't enough. The material you memorize needs to be processed through reflective thinking. This is the practice of deliberately considering what you've learned, connecting it to other things you know, and forming your own positions. I do a lot of my reflective thinking through journaling, through conversation with carefully chosen friends, and through a practice I've maintained for years: regularly re-reading books I've already read, looking for things I missed the first time. All of these practices transform static knowledge into dynamic intellectual resources you’ll draw upon with great ease when you find yourself put on the spot. Part 9: The Paradox of Mental Silence We've covered a great deal of ground today: ego reduction, memory techniques, verbal frameworks, performance training, martial arts, daily exercises, and the art of loading your mind with quality material. And now I want to end with something that sounds like a contradiction but is, in fact, the deepest truth about thinking on your feet: The goal is not to think faster. Rather, it’s to create the conditions where you don't need to think at all. I know this sounds paradoxical. How can “thinking on your feet” require not thinking? It’s because the highest level of performance in any domain doesn’t just look like effortlessness. It actually is, if only in the present moment. I’m talking about the musician who plays a transcendent solo. That performer isn't thinking about which notes to play. Nor does the martial artist who evades a strike sit there thinking about which direction to move. And the speaker who delivers a perfect response to an unexpected question isn't thinking about what to say. They’re drawing upon deep preparation. In each case, the performer has trained so deeply that the right response emerges from a place beneath conscious thought. The preparation started long ago. Practice has quieted your fantasies, both positive and negative. And what remains is a mind so well-prepared that it can be still during the demands and in that stillness, the right response simply appears. This outcome is common in the world of mindfulness and meditation, where practitioners describe the experience of being “full by being empty.” In order to receive the moment as it actually is (not as your ego wants it to be, nor as your anxiety fears things might go wrong), you just have to empty your mind of the noise that normally fills it. Your Next Step If this article has shown you anything, I hope it's this: thinking on your feet is not a gift. It's the product of deliberate, ongoing training across multiple domains — mental, verbal, physical, and philosophical. The foundation of all of it is memory. Not “good memory” as a vague trait, but trained memory — the ability to encode, store, and retrieve information on demand, under pressure, in any context. If you want to start building that foundation, I've created a free course that teaches you the core Memory Palace technique in four video lessons. It's the same starting point my Masterclass students use, and it will give you your first experience of what trained recall feels like. For even deeper training that includes the Memory Wheel technique, ars combinatoria, advanced Memory Palace strategies, and the Recall Rehearsal patterns that make long-term retention predictable, my Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass takes you through the complete learning system. And if you want to explore the meditation, breathing, and muscle relaxation routines I've combined with memory training for maximum mental composure, I go into all of that in The Victorious Mind. So what do you say? Are you ready to stop worrying about what you’ll say next and start training so deeply that the right response arrives on its own? Remember: the secret every performer, martial artist, and memory expert discovers is ultimately the same. You don’t rise to the level of the mome

Christina Guimond has always been oriented toward the mysterious, even from early childhood. She grew up in a Catholic family in Nova Scotia, Canada, and later settled in Montreal, where she married and raised four children. When her youngest was ten, a long-dormant curiosity about the nature of existence began to take centre stage. On the 8th day of a Vipassana retreat in 2001, Christina had an awakening that deeply shifted her understanding of self and reality. What followed was fourteen years of dedicated daily meditation and numerous silent retreats within the S.N. Goenka Vipassana tradition. In 2015, a 2nd awakening unfolded—this time bringing a deeper dissolution of personal identity. Around this period, she began studying with Gary Weber, with whom she worked closely until he retired from teaching in 2019. Those years were marked by intense transformation, awakening the body, healing the nervous system, working with attachments, belief, and shadow. In 2017, two further openings occurred. The first was a non-medical NDE - a profound experience of God—an overwhelming sense of divine presence and infinite love. A month later came an even more radical realization: the complete disappearance of self and world into a primal void. It was an encounter with absolute emptiness—an unconditioned reality beneath all phenomena. In that vast nothingness, only an indescribably sublime, subtle awareness was present. Nothing was manifest, yet it was clear this “nothing” held the potential for everything—a living, dynamic void, like a field of infinite possibilities before form appears. In 2022, Christina began working with Angelo Dilullo, M.D., whose guidance led to the final falling away of the remaining identity structure. What remains is a natural, effortless functioning—life living itself. The integration of that realization continues to unfold. Following the invitation and suggestion of Angelo Dilullo, she has been teaching and guiding others through the awakening. Website: christinaguimond.com Mentioned during the interview: Interview with Angelo Dilullo PAPAJI - Consciousness Alone Is Kevin Shanilec's method for working with reactivity. A Heart Blown Open: The Life & Practice of Zen Master Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi by Keith Martin-Smith Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group Interview recorded December 6, 2025

How can we build a new Moon program while slashing science funding? Bill Nye takes the host's chair alongside Chuck Nice to tackle one of the most urgent issues facing our future in space with Casey Dreier, Chief of Space Policy at The Planetary Society, who's been tracking and analyzing NASA's funding for years. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/bill-nye-takeover/Thanks to our Patrons anthonee rolfson, David Moncsko, 7Linden7, Kyle Meserve, Nancy Kimmel, Marc Gardiner, Carl Cheshire, El Mero Chingón Daniel Shin, Daniel Fisher, Christopher Crider, pintos dabeans, Alfric, Ry Guy, Juan Roa, Ph1lycheez, John4Disney, Esther Klein, Mako, Matthew Schuller, Alison L Bentley, Spencer Dohm, Brandon, David Yamanoha, Yash Goyal, Emily Hendrix, Mick W, Darin Wagner, Grant Cameron, Cheryl Courtright from Spring TX, Yonatan Gher, Edward Martin, erin grant, Emilio Martinez-Cordero, Nathan Trent, Pat D, Daniel Nicgorski, Alvan Mbongo, Colin Zwicker, Grand One, Adam, ubanamie320., Eric Mill, Aikya, Sean Dalglish, brian rowley, Philip, Quentin Walker, david smith, John Dusenberry, Karina Szalaiova, Ycros, Karel Netusil, Joe M, Rossell E Cameron, Gary Weber, Major King, david powell, Six String Sam, milky, Alyssa Solis, Wrama, Deanna Szwarc, Anthony Wiseman, Veronica Tash, Carrie Wilson-Bridges, Sebastian Cruz, Rhyskel, Kendra Meinert Hodson, princess, Jessy Kaiser, Anand Raman, Lance Davis, Yvonne S McCool, cameron campbell, Gene Davis, Greg, Micheal Jarka, Jenn [Z3120], Mark Lineberger, Jimmy Walker, Noëllie Newcastle, Andrew Nolen, Andrwnick, David Harrold, Vicki, Kaelyn P, and Kevin Staley for supporting us this week. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of StarTalk Radio ad-free and a whole week early.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Unannounced Live Gospel Tangents recently surprised viewers with an unannounced live stream including a JFS book giveaway. This is a "late night edition" that offers a whirlwind update on my extensive travels, upcoming interviews, and even some "breaking news" from the Temple Lot Church. Despite a busy travel schedule and a significant backlog of videos to edit, I managed to connect, give away a JFS book, and share exciting previews of what's to come! https://youtu.be/Jw_a2PA5jAU Recent Travels and Adventures I've been to several significant sites related to the Latter Day Saint movement: Community of Christ Conference in Independence, Missouri: This "super fun trip" included reactions to Stassi Cramm being ordained the new prophet in the Community of Christ. While there, I also visited the Temple Lot Church, meeting a "Kiwi" (New Zealander) who hinted at a possible interview. I also updated my tour with video, experimenting with cell phone cameras, promising many unpublished videos from Independence. Mormon History Association: Following Independence, he attended the Mormon History Association, where I toured several LDS churches, including a "really old" one in Ogden and Joseph Soderberg's church, known for President Hinckley's testimony story. Strangites in Wisconsin: Instead of Houston, I visited the Strangites in Wisconsin, staying with former guest Bill Shepard. He also hung out with David Boice and Gary Weber, who gave me a tour of the Hill of Promise, which the Strangites consider akin to the Hill Cumorah. ◦ The Voree Plates and the Hill of Promise: Gary Weber explained that the Hill of Promise is where James Strang found the Voree record. An angel reportedly told Strang where the record was buried beneath a tree, and respected townsmen witnessed its excavation. The record, encased in stone, crumbled upon exposure to air but was translated by Strang, telling the story of the "people of Raja Ramor". It described a great war, similar to the Hill Cumorah narrative, and a pictorial representation of priesthood structure mirroring that under Joseph Smith and James Strang. ◦ Prophetic Significance: The Hill of Promise is also sacred because Strang's revelations state that Daniel from the Bible will appear there someday to teach the saints and announce Christ's soon approaching second coming. ◦ Beaver Island Plans: David Boice & I visited Burlington (originally called Voree by Strang), where we saw several Strangite sites, including a plaque for a never-built temple. I'm planning a trip to Beaver Island, which was James Strang's later settlement where he was crowned king and assassinated. Gary Weber noted that there's "not a lot to see" on Beaver Island, mostly dirt roads, but a ferry or plane can take visitors there. Calgary/Cardston, Alberta, Canada: I flew to Calgary for my son's wedding and visited Cardston, Alberta, home to the first international temple for the LDS church. I received a book on Raymond, Alberta, a town settled by Raymond Knight (son of Newell Knight) and noted for being "practically Utah up in Canada" due to its 80% Mormon population. Cardston is compared to Manti due to its remote location and pioneer feel, with concerns about preserving its murals during an upcoming refurbishment when a new temple in Lethbridge opens. Beyond church history, I also enjoyed a Brewers-Cardinals baseball game with my friend Walter Reade. Upcoming Interviews and Content Viewers have much to look forward to from Gospel Tangents: John Turner Interview and Book Giveaway: John Turner's book, "Joseph Smith The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet," was released on Amazon. I've already conducted an interview with Turner, and part one was released. An autographed copy of this book was given away in a contest. Strangite Interviews: Interviews with Gary Weber and potentially other Strangite figures, including a man named Trevor, are in the pipeline.

Recently, I had the fascinating opportunity to delve into the beliefs practices, and Strangite priesthood views with Gary Weber of the Strangite Church, a lesser-known branch of Mormonism. This discussion sheds light on many intriguing aspects of their faith, highlighting both commonalities and distinct differences from the more widely known LDS (Latter-day Saint) Church. https://youtu.be/GvLjkF8kqms Understanding Strangite Priesthood: A Core Difference One of the most significant distinctions discussed was the Strangite understanding of the priesthood and its associated "keys." While the Melchizedek priesthood holds specific keys related to office, it does not encompass all keys. According to Gary Weber, the Melchizedek priesthood cannot evolve to ordain a prophet. Instead, they believe a prophet can only be ordained by an angel, as was the case for Moses, Joseph Smith, and James J. Strang. The fundamental principle here is that "the lesser cannot ordain the greater". This leads to a critical differentiation of priesthood keys: Keys of Mysteries and Revelations: These keys are associated only with the prophet-lawgiver and can only be held by one person at a time. Gary Weber states that James J. Strang could not have been ordained by angels while Joseph Smith was alive but was ordained the moment Joseph Smith died. Keys of the Kingdom: These keys can be possessed by many people, as seen with the twelve apostles who were given these keys to spread the gospel to nations. They can also confer these keys to others, with hundreds potentially holding them. Gary noted that many members of the LDS Church often don't understand this distinction between the two types of keys. Sacrament Practices: Purity and Purpose The Strangite Church observes the sacrament once a month, rather than weekly like the LDS Church. Their reasoning is that frequent observance could make it "mundane" and cause it to "lose its specialness and sacredness". The elements used for the sacrament also have specific requirements: Juice: Any edible fresh fruit juice is acceptable, as stated in their book of law under the Eucharist. Examples include orange juice, which was used when Gary grew up in Artesia, or fresh processed grape juice from their vineyard. If no juice is available, water can be used, emphasizing the focus on one's "eye singleness to God" and the purpose of remembering Christ's blood. Typically Strangites use some sort of fresh juice (not store-bought) for the sacrament. This assures the juice has not been adulterated. Bread: Must be made of any grain, prepared by the members themselves, not store-bought. This is to ensure its purity and prevent it from being "adulterated". Other Doctrines and Practices: Baptism: They baptize at age eight, aligning with the LDS Church, based on the Doctrine and Covenants and a belief that children at this age have scientifically reached a maturity level to understand right from wrong. Baptism can occur in a church font or natural bodies of water like the White River, depending on personal preference. Priesthood Recognition: The Strangite Church does not recognize the priesthood of other churches, including the LDS priesthood, as they trace their priesthood lineage back through Joseph Smith and James J. Strang. Communion: They practice a closed communion, meaning it is only served to those who have been baptized, taken upon Christ's name, and are deemed worthy, as stated in the Book of Mormon by Jesus to the Nephites. Missionary Work: Unlike the door-to-door approach of many LDS missionaries, Strangites engage in a more limited form of proselytization. They will travel to baptize individuals with whom they've corresponded and who show genuine interest, sometimes over many months. Interestingly, Gary expressed that the wider recognition of the "Mormon" name, largely due to the LDS Church's efforts, has made it easier for Strangites to teach Mormonism,

Welcome to an exploration of one of the most distinctive branches of Mormonism: the Strangite Church. We will discuss Strangite women's role in priesthood. While many are familiar with the larger Latter-day Saint movements, the Strangites offer a fascinating glimpse into different interpretations and practices rooted in early Restorationism. Based primarily in Burlington, Wisconsin, the Strangite Church has a rich history, unique theological perspectives, and surprising elements that set it apart. https://youtu.be/61quRH-_glI Resilient Community/Promised Refuge According to the revelations of James J. Strang, Voree was prophesied to be a refuge for the people, where "the Gentiles would treat you with kindness". Remarkably, the Strangites in Voree have never experienced the persecution that other Mormon settlements faced in places like Palmyra, Kirtland, Independence, or Nauvoo. This consistent respect and kind treatment from the wider community is seen by Strangites as a powerful sign that James A. Strang's revelations were true. Furthermore, families living there have prospered, owning homes and achieving financial stability, which they believe is a testament to the blessings promised for obedience to God. The congregation has seen periods of challenge and renewal. A spiritual movement led others to move to Voree, and gradually the church began to build up again. While the primary congregation is in Burlington, members also reside in various states, including Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Florida, Michigan, and Minnesota, often attending services via Zoom. Women in the Aaronic Priesthood Perhaps one of the most surprising and progressive aspects of the Strangite Church is its stance on women and the priesthood. Unlike many other Restorationist faiths, the Strangite Church ordains women to the Aaronic priesthood, specifically to the office of teacher. They believe that Emma Smith herself was the first teacher. These women teachers play an active and vital role in church services. They are permitted to lead meetings, often doing so in pairs, each taking half of the Sabbath service. While women hold the office of teacher, they are not ordained as deaconesses; deacons are exclusively boys. Priesthood ordination in the Strangite Church is not tied to age or seen as a "rite of passage.” Instead, individuals are called when a priesthood member receives inspiration that a particular person is ready and begins to excel. The Strangite priesthood structure includes: Melchizedek Priesthood: Elders and High Priests. Aaronic Priesthood: Priests, Teachers (including women), and Deacons. There are no Seventies currently, and they believe a prophet is needed to structure other offices. The leadership of the church has continued through a series of appointments. Lorenzo Hickey ordained Wingfield Watson as the head of the church and a high priest, who then served until his passing around 1920. Following Watson, subsequent presiding high priests have been appointed by their predecessors. Currently, David Flanders serves as the presiding high priest, a role of duty and responsibility to manage affairs, but not one that grants him higher authority than other high priests. Saturday Worship and the Nature of Christ A distinct practice of the Strangite Church is their worship on Saturday, the Sabbath day. This is based on their belief that God sanctified the seventh day during creation. They contend that the Catholic Church changed the Sabbath to Sunday to honor the sun god and appease pagans, aiming to unite Christians and pagans into a single universal church. Their theological views also extend to the nature of Christ. The Strangite Church believes that Jesus was 100% mortal, and that Joseph was his biological father. This belief is critical to their understanding of Christ's lineage, as Joseph was of the tribe of Judah, which connects Jesus directly to the covenant line of Abraham and King David through the ma...

Gary Weber, a member of the Strangite Church, shared unique insights into their doctrines, including polygamy, baptism for the dead, and their distinctive interpretation of the "stick of Judah" prophecy. https://youtu.be/_e1Zm605gtE   0:00 Distinctive Stance on Polygamy  The Strangite Church believes that polygamy is an eternal principle and can be acceptable to God if commanded by Him, primarily "to build up seed unto [His] name," not for lustful purposes. This aligns with the Book of Jacob in the Book of Mormon, which states one should have only one wife "unless I command you otherwise.” Historical figures like Abraham are cited as examples of righteous men who practiced it when commanded.  Regarding their founder, James Strang, initially, he was against polygamy. However, he later embraced it, reportedly through inspiration from God on Beaver Island, allowing it as part of the "Book of the Law of the Lord.” It's notable that its practice was limited, with perhaps only five families out of thousands practicing it due to financial constraints and the crucial requirement that the wife must not object.  Currently, the Strangite Church does not practice polygamy. This is primarily because they believe in keeping the laws of the land, and polygamy is against the law. They hold that God would not put people in a position to break the law and go to jail. Gary Weber noted that Joseph Smith also said, "We believe in keeping the laws of the land.” Furthermore, they believe that only a prophet can "usher in a dispensation for polygamy.” Interestingly, Gary mentioned that Joseph Smith allegedly cut off a Mr. Brown from the church for practicing and teaching polygamy three months before his death, suggesting an inconsistency in Joseph Smith's own stated position if he himself practiced it.  5:17 Baptism for the Dead  Another unique doctrine discussed is baptism for the dead, which the Strangites believe requires a prophet to "usher in a dispensation" and obtain "the keys from Elijah.” They assert that both Joseph Smith and James A. Strang received these keys and therefore practiced it. The "Book of the Law of the Lord" includes a section on the doctrine of baptism for the dead, which is described as identical to the information Joseph Smith put out in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.  A significant difference between the Strangite practice and that of the Utah Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) is that the Strangites believe that the sex of the person does not matter; a woman could be baptized for her deceased father if he hadn't been baptized. In contrast, the Utah church generally practices that women baptize for women and men for men.  However, the Strangite Church does not currently practice baptism for the dead. The reason, similar to polygamy, is the absence of a living prophet on the earth.  8:39 Waiting for the Prophet of the "Stick of Judah"  The Strangite Church has a distinct eschatological belief tied to a prophecy in Genesis 49, where Jacob blesses his 12 sons. When speaking of Judah, it states, "the lawgiver shall not depart between the feet of Judah.” They interpret this to mean that after Joseph Smith, who they consider the prophet of the "stick of Ephraim," there was to be a prophet from the tribe of Judah who would "bring forth the book of the law.”  This next prophet is expected to remain in the house of Judah, from the tribe of King David, and will take the gospel to the house of Israel. The Strangite Church is currently waiting for this prophet to come forth, as they believe there was meant to be an "indirect period of time" after James Strang, before the "house of Israel's dispensation to the Jews" began.  13:29 James Strang's Life & Beaver Island Community  James Strang lived in the Voree/Burlington area, Wisconsin, from about 1842 until approximately 1849 or 1850. He then moved his community to Beaver Island around 1850,

It's always fun to talk to someone from the Strangite Church, officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite) Based in Burlington, Wisconsin, this branch of the Latter-day Saint movement offers a distinctive perspective on the succession of Joseph Smith and the ongoing divine restoration. https://youtu.be/RUL8rF0hb4U Strangite Genesis in Voree The current headquarters of the Strangite Church is Burlington, Wisconsin. Interestingly, the area holds historical significance with multiple names. It was originally called Foxville. While today it's known as Burlington, a specific area on the west side of town where the Mormon settlement was located was called Voree by the early Strangites, a name associated with the significant "Voree record". James J. Strang led his followers to this location, believing God had instructed them to move from Nauvoo. James Strang was dispatched to the Burlington area by Joseph Smith, having been baptized and made an elder by Smith himself. Strang wrote back to Joseph Smith, suggesting Voree would be a "wonderful place for a gathering" due to its rich resources like fish, fresh water, great farmland, and good soil near the Great Lakes. Initially, Joseph Smith was hesitant, but after discussion with Hyrum Smith and a subsequent spiritual revelation, he concluded that Voree was indeed a good place for the Saints. James J. Strang: Joseph Smith's Chosen Successor? The Strangite Church believes that James J. Strang was divinely appointed as Joseph Smith's successor. This belief is rooted in two pivotal events: The Letter of Appointment: Joseph Smith penned a letter to James A. Strang, officially appointing him as his successor. This original letter is now preserved at Yale University in the Beineke Library, with copies available for members. The Angelic Ordination: On the very day Joseph Smith was assassinated, June 27, 1844, angels appeared to James J. Strang and ordained him a prophet. These were believed to be the same angels who ordained Joseph Smith – Peter, James, and John. Strang was aware of Joseph's death through this angelic visitation even before news arrived from Nauvoo. Furthermore, it's believed that Jesus also anointed Strang as the King of Israel for the gentile dispensation, an ordination attributed to his lineage from the royal line of King David. Sacred Texts and Prophetic Interpretations The Strangite Church embraces a unique canon of scripture beyond what is common in other Latter-day Saint traditions: The Voree Plates: These ancient plates were revealed to James Strang through a vision from the angel Moroni, known as the Hill of Promise. Strang gathered leading citizens to witness their excavation from beneath a tree, about four feet down, where roots had grown around them. The plates, housed in an earthen case, crumbled upon exposure to air due to their age. Witnesses, including a newspaper reporter from Kenosha, confirmed the ancient nature of the record and that the site had been undisturbed. Strang translated them using the Urim and Thummim given to him by the angel Moroni, much like Joseph Smith used the Urim and Thummim to translate the Book of Mormon. The Voree Plates provide a brief history of a people who were "no more" and, most notably, contained a pictorial drawing depicting the true structure of the priesthood, including the prophet lawgiver, two viceroys, twelve apostles, high priests, and seventies. These plates were translated around 1844. The Book of the Law: This significant text is believed to be the "stick of Judah" spoken of in Ezekiel 37. According to Strangite belief, Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon (the stick of Ephraim), but was instructed not to touch the sealed record, which was the Book of the Law, meant for a future prophet. James J. Strang, being of the tribe of Judah with Jewish ancestry, translated the Book of the Law after receiving the plates of Laban from the angel Moroni.

Join us on a fascinating journey to Voree/Burlington, Wisconsin, to explore the unique history and beliefs of a Latter-day Saint group often referred to as the Strangites. This isn't the commonly known LDS Church; rather, it's a distinct branch founded by James Strang. He started a rival Mormon Church in Voree/Burlington, Wisconsin back in 1844 and the church still exists! We'll tour around the Trust Farm and see historic sites, including the Hill of Promise & the home where James Strang died. Gary Weber is a Strangite. He's our tour guide and we'll discuss their church and theology. You don't want to miss this conversation... https://youtu.be/vlL_OQ69CEo Copyright © 2025 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission. Genesis of Strangism The Strangite Church, formally known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Strangite), was founded in 1844. James Strang, who had been sent on a mission to Wisconsin by Joseph Smith, claimed that an angel ordained him on June 27, 1844, the very day Joseph Smith died. This divine ordination, he asserted, made him the rightful successor to the church's leadership. Trip to Voree/Burlington The journey to this lesser-known Latter-day Saint community in Wisconsin involved a mix of trains, planes, and automobiles. Landing in Milwaukee, the trip continued towards Burlington, Wisconsin, where the Church is located. The group believes they are the original Mormon Church and refer to themselves as Mormons. The area around Burlington, known as Voree is the setting for much of Strangite history, especially concerning the "Voree record". The weather in Burlington on June 12th was surprisingly mild for summer, with a high of just 63 and low around 56 degrees Fahrenheit, a notable difference from Utah's typical June temperatures. Current Church Building and Surroundings The current Strangite church building, located on Spring Valley Road near what's called "Mormon Road," is smaller than I expected. According to Bill Shepard, a long-time resident & member, this building was constructed around 1965-1967 and marks the first time the Strangites have had a dedicated church building, as they were previously scattered. The lawn around the chapel is nicely manicured, and visitors are always welcome. Inside, or in their collections, the Strangites possess a wealth of historical documents, including 26 volumes of the Journal of Discourses, Times and Seasons, and Millennial Star. They also have Strang Manuscripts, which are copies of letters, and a publication called The Northern Islander, which was published at Beaver Island. Notably, the Strangites do use the Doctrine and Covenants. Sacred Hill of Promise One of the most significant sites for Strangites is the Hill of Promise. This is where James Strang is believed to have found his "Voree plates. The discovery was found under a small tree on the hill, under which Strang claimed a buried record lay. He gathered respected men from the town to witness the excavation, ensuring no prior disturbance of the soil. An angel reportedly appeared to Strang, revealing the record's location. Upon opening the stone casing, the ancient record crumbled due to exposure to air, a common occurrence with ancient artifacts according to Weber. Strang translated this record using the Urim and Thummim, which he said he received from the angel Moroni. The "Voree record" was a short account of a people named "Raja Ramor" who lived in the area and, similar to the Nephites on the Hill Cumorah, were largely destroyed in a great war. The record also depicted the priesthood structure, aligning precisely with the priesthood under Joseph Smith and James Strang, including prophet, viceroy, twelve apostles, and seventies. Beyond its historical significance, the Hill of Promise holds prophetic importance: James Strang's revelations indicate that Daniel from the Bible will someday app...

I've visited some temples recently! "Gospel Tangents" recently hosted a surprise live session, a "late night unannounced edition," much to the delight of its "night owl" viewers. I shared a whirlwind of Temples, Travels, updates, upcoming content, and even some breaking news from various Restorationist traditions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw_a2PA5jAU Temples, Travels, & Timely Insights! I've been traveling extensively, leading to a "boatload of pictures" and a significant backlog of videos waiting to be edited. Despite the busy schedule, i'm eager to share my experiences: Community of Christ World Conference in Independence: Rick attended and captured his reactions to Stassi Cramm being ordained the new prophet. While there, he met a man from New Zealand (a "Kiwi") and expressed hope for interviews with people from the Temple Lot Church, including Tom from a fundamentalist group and potentially Stassi Cramm herself. Mormon History Association (MHA): This event also proved fruitful, including tours of LDS churches, such as an old one in Ogden and Joseph Soderberg's church where President Hinckley reportedly gained his testimony. Exploring the Strangites in Wisconsin: This trip was a major highlight. I stayed with Bill Shepard, a former guest, and toured various Strangite sites with Gary Weber and David Boice. ◦ A key stop was the Hill of Promise, which the Strangites consider akin to the Hill Cumorah. It's believed to be where James J. Strang found the Voree record, a "short record of the people of Raja Ramor." This record described a people similar to those in the Book of Mormon, with a priesthood structure mirroring Joseph and James's. The Hill of Promise also holds future significance, as Strangite revelations state that Daniel from the Bible will appear there to announce Christ's approaching second coming. ◦ I also visited the site of the unbuilt Strangite temple in Burlington, which was planned to be "quite significant" in size. ◦ Rick also drove by James Strang's house in Burlington, where Strang died three weeks after his assassination on the dock of Lake Michiga. ◦ A fascinating piece of news is that David Boice is moving to Utah at the end of July. Rick plans to visit Beaver Island (Strangite Island) in July or August, noting that while Gary Weber says there's "not a lot to see," one can rent a golf cart for getting around. He also mentioned Vicki Speek is working on a census of the island. ◦ For those unfamiliar, James J. Strang claimed an angelic ordination on the day Joseph Smith died (June 27, 1844). He translated the Voree plates and later the "plates of Laban" (published as the Book of the Law of the Lord). He settled in Burlington, then moved to Beaver Island, where he was crowned king and even served in the Michigan legislature. His efforts to stop Gentiles from selling liquor to Native Americans reportedly led to his assassination with the help of the U.S. Navy. Upcoming Trip to Calgary and Cardston, Alberta: Rick is flying to Calgary for his son's wedding. He plans to make a video about the Cardston Alberta Temple, which was the first international temple for the LDS Church. Some compare it to the Mesa Temple and notes its "pioneer feel" like the Manti Temple. The Cardston Temple's murals are darker, possibly due to varnish, and hopes for a refurbishment once a new temple opens in Lethbridge. Book Giveaways and Exciting New Releases The live session included a book giveaway for "Joseph Fielding Smith a Mormon Theologian," won by Mark Francis. Looking ahead, the channel is celebrating the release of John Turner's new book, "Joseph Smith The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet," which launched in June on Amazon. (The contest is over now.) Rick gave away an autographed copy of this book. Potentially "Breaking News" from the Temple Lot Church I discovered some surprising news regarding the Temple Lot Church: they are "going to quit selling the Book of Commandme...

Subscribe, Rate, & Review on YouTube • Spotify • Apple PodcastsThis Week's GuestWhen, suddenly, the barrier between “imagination” and “reality” evaporates as our familiar notions of here/there, now/then, in/out, and other/self twist up into a ball of non-Euclidean spaghetti, whom better to help steer the course through these “turbulent philosophical waters” than Richard Doyle, aka “M0b1ius”, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor at Penn State Center for Humanities and Information in the College of Liberal Arts? After his postdoctoral research at MIT in History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, Doyle wrote The Wetwares Trilogy, a sequence of books on the history of information biology that reached its climax with one of my favorite reads of all time, Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and The Evolution of the Noosphere. He is also the author of The Genesis of Now: Self Experiments with the Bible & the End of Religion and Into The Stillness: Dialogues on Awakening Beyond Thought (with Gary Weber), and has taught courses on “aliens, Philip K. Dick, nanotechnology, rebellion itself, ecstasy, Sanskrit rhetorical traditions, Burroughs, basic argumentation, The Non Dual Bible, and everything in between.” I discovered Doyle through his appearances on my first favorite podcast, Erik Davis' Expanding Mind, and in the thirteen years since he has shown up for me time and time again as mentor, friend, and inspiration. And since this project is, ostensibly, a way of training my own language model to reflect the wisdom of my friends and colleagues, I can think of no one else I'd rather prime the batch. It is my great privilege and honor to be able to have him as the first guest in this series, as a way of of helping set the tone for everything that is to come…LinksRichard Doyle's faculty web page and publicationsLearn more about this project and read the essays so far (1, 2, 3, 4).Make tax-deductible donations to Humans On The LoopBrowse my reading list and support local booksellersJoin the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation Discord serverJoin the private Future Fossils Facebook groupHire me for consulting or advisory workChapters0:00:00 – Teaser0:03:36 – Episode Intro0:12:44 – Introducing Richard Doyle0:29:33 – The Ego as Inflammation0:33:58 – Practicing Care in The Planet-Wide Makerspace0:48:30 – Digital Connection vs. Embodied Connection0:55:46 – Psychedelics as Training Wheels for Transhumanism1:02:43 – “Storytelling” Isn't A Professional Service (??)1:05:25 – Techniques for Reclaiming Attention & Finding Peace1:15:22 – Meditation as “The Halting Problem”1:17:30 – Beyond The Limits of Science1:22:17 – AI-Enabled Extraction vs. AI-Enabled Abundance1:38:40 – Closing RemarksReflectionsMuch of tech ethics discourse concerns itself with whether humans are “in the loop” or “out of the loop” — whether people get to call the shots. But there is always more than one loop. Most of the things our fleshy bodies do are local decisions made before we ever become conscious of them, if we ever do…and yet evolution clearly found some value in reflection, self-awareness, reflex inhibition, and the will that quiets maladaptive impulse. Widening our frame to see the way that humans are always-already intertwingled with our ecosystems, we can see ourselves as made of interference patterns between nested feedback loops — as focal points of conscious agency dependent on and acting in a massive, endlessly surprising web of automatic processes. For as long as we've been people we have never really “called the shots” but rather cultivated our response-ability within a cosmos made of entities whose otherness and mystery remained persistently opaque…and ritualized ways to live amidst this mystery in full recognition of the unity from which we cannot isolate ourselves.And this is only one of indefinitely many valid ways to understand the human. Like the telescope and microscope before them, language models reveal fresh perspectives on familiar landscapes. We do not need to leave our solar system to find “strange new worlds” awaiting us in places as familiar as our own minds and bodies. While most of the conversation lately seems to be about the power these new maps confer and whether it can be distributed more evenly, AI provides a new set of affordances for mystics for the transformation of our consciousness that can dissolve our wicked problems in a higher logical order. “What can I do?” becomes “Who am I?” and yields endlessly evolving and kaleidoscopic answers that provoke ongoing inquiry. To see the ways in which we are, as individuals, not just “connected” but precipitate as aggregates, in fields of constellated data, prompts a figure-ground reversal in which selves no longer hold their primacy as ground truth of our being, but show up last as we make inferences and draw stories from unbroken and inseparable experience.Something fundamental changes when we shift to seeing “human” and “non-human” as two stable patterns of recursive self-perception emerging from a single fabric of unfolding possibility: we find the opportunity to question what we're trying to achieve, to notice the ungrounded and conditional reality of narrative, to operate on our own “source code” and adjust our goals accordingly.If we can find the curiosity to ask ourselves if our fears and inadequacies really help us live the lives we want, we can follow it upstream to where each moment offers fresh, distinctive landscapes in which to explore and play and learn. In doing so, we rediscover vast and potent creativity. Instead of asking whether we can do more, we can ask “What do we want to do, and why is that desire substantiated?”This kind of meaning-making isn't just a luxury but an essential aspect of all efforts to survive and to succeed. The best way to get unstuck is to orient ourselves and take a different tack. We all know something isn't working. It's time to ask if, maybe, this is due to “user error” and the answer doesn't lie in new technologies, but in the simplest and most ancient truths available. We cannot control the world because we are the world — and, this entails a sense of radical responsibility to play our way into more well-adapted stories, models of the world we hold with humor and humility as they carve channels in the space of shared attention that coordinate us into futures good and true and beautiful.In other words, the magical technologies inspiring so much religious fear and fervor are both Towers of Babel and fingers pointing to the Moon. They are weird, unprecedented, and sublime — and they are business as usual on Planet Earth, where we have always come awake in medias res amidst unfathomable changes and unknowable intelligence. Recognizing this, we gain access to deep continuity and the place from which we can, at last, engage the question of “What Now?” with discipline and limber rigor suitable to the profound complexity we face.Digital technologies are psychedelic. We've been on a bad trip. It's time for us wiggle out, dream better, and allow a more capacious, plural, and harmonious humanity to take the oars together in whatever novel wonders may arise — to neither “give way to astonishment” nor let our fears steer us into the rocks. Humans On The Loop is an investigation of how awesome it could be, right now, to fully give in to the paradox, and notice how its knots untie in hyperspace, and revisit all our looming crises with more presence, grace, and understanding — and more lucid (dare I say, productive?) questions.One of those questions is how to apply the lessons of the living generations of psychonauts and psychedelic therapists to the vertiginous information and attention vortices in which we now found ourselves swirling. Maps of the World Wide Web look very much like brain scans of the amped-up functional connectivity between ordinarily inhibited brain regions in a psilocybin tripper. When the walls come down — when every node has edges with each other node, and average path length drops to one — how do we prioritize? What paths do we decide to cut through the emergent “intertwingularity”? Which apparitions do we honor, and which do we ignore? (And how?) Some familiar tropes that we might use to guide us: “test your drugs”, “get grounded”, “set and setting”, “integration counseling”…MentionsGenerated by NotebookLM. Please let me know if you notice any errors or omissions!* Richard Doyle* Michael Garfield * Gary Weber* Shankara* Trey Conner* Nora Pandoro* Erik Davis* Joshua DiCaglio* John Perry Barlow* Naomi Most* Nate Hagens* Daniel Schmachtenberger* Tyson Yunkaporta* Martin Luther King Jr.* Mahatma Gandhi* John Von Neumann* Subhash Kak* Iain McGilchrist* Timothy Morton* Stuart Kauffman* Dean Radin* Brian Josephson* Monica Gagliano* Christoph Koch* Gregory Bateson* Elon Musk* Robert Rosen* H.P. Lovecraft* Philip K. Dick* Herbert Simon* Douglas Rushkoff* Sri Aurobindo This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Send me your thoughts in a Text MessageThe journey to Spiritual Awakening beyond thinking may take years and many realisations. Step by step illusions are seen, and the whole picture comes to full view. Listen to the awakening story of Christina Guimond. She is an awakening to non-duality guide, and TRE (trauma releasing exercises) facilitator and perhaps her story will inspire you to greater dedication and focus on yourself. From seeing that thoughts are empty to finding Anatta, no self, Christina's journey is a story of dedication. Christina shares her experiences about silent retreats, working with Gary Weber and Angelo Dilullo, yoga and finding TRE to work on trauma stored in the body. To find out more about Christina and her services go to her websitehttps://christinaguimond.com/If you need assistance with your inquiry come to Liberation Unleashed where you can register for a free account and get a volunteer guide free of charge. Or if you need my support, send me an email through my website which is http://www.IlonaCiunaite.com I'll be happy to help. Liberation UnleashedHttp://www.liberationunleashed.comIlona's Facebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/markedeternalLiberation Unleashed book is available on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Liberation-Unleashed-Breaking-Illusion-Separate/#awakeningnow #ilonaciunaite #howtodoselfinquiry #selfinquiryquestions #liberationunleashed #seeingthroughselfillusionInfo about free monthly meetings on Zoom http://ilonaciunaite.com/events/Podcast https://awakeningnow.buzzsprout.comMusic by Valdi Sabev, Visit his channel for more calm and relaxed music https://www.youtube.com/c/ValdiSabev/featuredWebsiteshttp://ilonaciunaite.comhttp://liberationunleashed.com

'You have to ask yourself the question 'Who am I?'. This investigation will lead in the end to the discovery of something within you which is behind the mind. Solve that great problem and you will solve all other problems' - Ramana Maharshi. Self-Inquiry is a process through which you investigate and discover what you fundamentally are - and what you are not. It is a 'technique' popularised by the Indian Sage Ramana Maharshi, in which you question your sense of 'I', and which can lead to a profound sense of peace and wellbeing. I came across Rich's work via Gary Weber - author of the outstanding book 'Happiness Beyond thought'. In it Gary details how he 'woke up' and literally stopped the endless chatter in his head that is so familiar to the vast majority of the human species. Gary then taught Rich how to do self-inquiry, and Rich 'woke up' too - leading them to record dialogues together which you can find on YouTube. In this conversation we discuss how to do self-inquiry, the importance of practice, the best questions to use to help you, as well as the potential healing power of psychedelics and in particular ayahuasca. ** Website: simonmundie.com YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/YouTubeSimonMundie Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simonmundie/ Substack Newsletter: https://simonmundie.substack.com/ My book Champion Thinking: How To Find Success Without Losing Yourself draws on some of my favourite interviews over the last six years. In it, I seek to challenge our ideas about 'success', and where peace, joy and fulfilment are truly to be found. 'This book captures the magic of being in flow . . . Highly recommend' RONNIE O'SULLIVAN 'Entertaining and enlightening' MATTHEW SYED 'This book will challenge your thinking on what success truly is and will give you tools to "succeed" in life in the truest sense of the world.' GOLDIE SAYERS 'The intention behind this book is beautiful, and I highly recommend it' RUPERT SPIRA Order here: https://www.simonmundie.com/book Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Champion-Thinking-Success-Without-Yourself/dp/1526626497/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this interview I am once again joined by Anthony Metivier, author and internationally renowned memory expert who's meditation practice is reciting sacred Sanskrit texts from memory. Anthony shares his most recent findings from his personal meditation practice of reciting sacred Sanskrit texts, including using memorisation and recitation to pacify obsessive thinking, the pros and cons of guru and deity devotion, and his experiment with deliberately reducing his practice volume and observing the mindlessness and habitual tendencies that arose as a consequence. Anthony discusses how to enter altered states of consciousness through recitation of memorised texts, why he is now memorising Shakespeare instead of more Sanskrit, and why it is essential to include the body in meditation and other mental feats. Anthony also discusses what can be learned from the examples of figures such as Sherlock Holmes, Giordano Bruno, Arnold Schwarzenegger, as well as discussing his latest book, Flyboy, a crime novel in which the detective protagonist uses specialist memory techniques to track down a serial killer. … Video version: https://www.guruviking.com/podcast/ep203-unlock-the-enlightened-mind-anthony-metivier Also available on Youtube, iTunes, & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast'. … 00:00 - Intro 01:13 - Flyboy 02:17 - Effects of taking a break from meditation and memorisation 04:45 - Memorising Shakespeare and Atmabodha 06:02 - Memorising Sanskrit as a meditation to pacify obsessive thinking 09:27 - Ideas vs execution 09:56 - Mindlessness after taking a break from meditation 11:20 - Engine and algorithm of the Ruba Gita 12:28 - The genius of Sanskrit's construction 16:29 - How to induce altered states through recitation 19:37 - From mystical states to positive behaviour change 22:32 - Gary Weber's enlightenment and idolising the teacher 25:07 - Pros and cons of deity and guru devotion 27:31 - Why memorise Shakespeare? 30:49 - Vaudeville feats of memory and multi-tasking 33:32 - Essential to include the body in meditation 38:33 - The theory of craft and failed creative writing professors 43:39 - Sherlock Holmes and Gary Gygax 46:49 - Writing Flyboy 50:37 - Memory techniques and PTSD 51:58 - Building puzzles into Flyboy for the readers to solve 57:11 - Memory techniques hidden in Giordano Bruno's plays 58:13 - Popularising memory techniques for non specialists 59:47 - Recording the audiobook version 01:03:24 - The future of Anthony's publishing efforts 01:07:45 - Have fun and experiment! … Previous episode with Anthony Metivier: - https://www.guruviking.com/ep123-master-of-memory-anthony-metivier/ To purchase Flyboy, visit: - https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/fb-sq/ To find out more about Anthony Metivier, visit: - https://www.youtube.com/c/AnthonyMetivierMMM - https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/ 
 
For more interviews, videos, and more visit: - www.guruviking.com … Music ‘Deva Dasi' by Steve James

Andlighet kan definieras som djup meningsfullhet. Djup meningsfullhet i sin tur säger sig människor uppleva när de exempelvis får barn eller gifter sig, men även vid psykedeliska upplevelser, meditativa upplevelser, och vad som brukar kallas för ett andligt uppvaknande. Gary Weber om bl.a. Hood mysticism scale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK8pcUt4gio Andlighet på Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@andlighet Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/se/podcast/andlighet/id1603002647?l=en

In this interview I am joined by Anthony Metivier, author and memory expert who's life was unexpectedly transformed by the meditation practice of memorising long form Sanskrit texts. Anthony recounts his childhood of familial chaos and extreme religion, and how a psychotic break at university saw him wrestle with his mental health for years while self-medicating with anti-psychotic drugs and alcohol. A lifelong meditator, Anthony shares how applying his world-class memory skills to the practice of memorising and reciting long-form Sanskrit texts caused a series of profound spiritual experiences that revolutionised his perception of reality. Now a world-renowned memory educator, Anthony also reveals his daily routine for optimal mental performance, and shares insights into the role of memory in identity formation and in spiritual awakening. … Video version: https://www.guruviking.com/ep123-master-of-memory-anthony-metivier/ Also available on Youtube, iTunes, & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast'. … Topics include: 00:00 - Intro 00:58 - Childhood of chaos and extreme religion 02:46 - Exposure to meditation and memorising sanskrit texts 07:05 - Charismatic religious experiences 12:18 - Psychosis and self medication 21:07 - Psychedelics and Carlos Castaneda 25:48 - Past life regression 27:16 - Spiritual entities and rational skepticism 30:59 - Gary Weber and the effect of memorising long-form Sanskrit 35:15 - The essence of spiritual insight 39:25 - Plato and being vs non-being 41:45 - Sanskrit memorisation as a spiritual practice 49:18 - A profound spiritual experience 52:51 - Loss of the fear of death and the psychopathic danger 56:51 - Storytelling and identity 01:01:52 - Narrative drift and how memory works 01:07:34 - Anthony's daily routine for optimal memory and productivity … To find out more about Anthony, visit: - https://www.youtube.com/c/AnthonyMetivierMMM - https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/ 
 
For more interviews, videos, and more visit: - www.guruviking.com … Music ‘Deva Dasi' by Steve James

Now with full video on YouTube! OK, so we cover a lot in this one. Spud tells everyone the word he received from his HGA "Omnisyn" and what it means. Tommie talks about his new album "Ritualis". We discuss Neoplatonism and Theurgy. We then spend the second half of the podcast talking about the great documentary Chasing The Present! Find Spud here: https://www.spudmurphy.net/ https://twitter.com/OmniSyn_ Spud's encounter with Sophia: https://www.spudmurphy.net/2021/06/24/meeting-sophia/ Non-Dual Retreat Lecture Series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDZ9NAmYL-5ybKHxJ8j1T5KUgUvhhSKN4 Documentaries: Ólafur Arnalds - When We Are Born - https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Ólafur_Arnalds_When_We_Are_Born Chasing The Present - https://chasingthepresent.com/ PODCAST: Rupert Spira on Non-Dualism, Consciousness, God, and Death https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWLd9y1MG4c BOOKS: - Living Theurgy: A Course in Iamblichus' Philosophy, Theology and Theurgy by Jeffrey S. Kupperman - https://amzn.to/3hDNaW6 - Happiness Beyond Thought: A Practical Guide to Awakening by Gary Weber - https://amzn.to/3AAOW2L If I missed anything let me know. _ _ _ _ _ Join the PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/tommiekelly Join the DISCORD https://discord.gg/qA2Tpvr Send a donation via PAYPAL http://www.paypal.me/tommiekelly Buy Me a Book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/33TYYN3KT7ZAJ/ Buy me something off my AMAZON WISH LIST https://www.amazon.de/registry/wishlist/302ZDU38CDO3R _ _ _ _ _ Executive Producers: Christopher Moore, Dylan Sticker, Lindsey Renee Piker, Marcio Mendonca, Rodrigo Franco, Natasha Von Stiers, Sepherion, William Opdyke, and Michael Metelits. _ _ _ _ _ Buy The Forty Servants: DECK https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/the-forty-servants DELUXE DECK https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/forty-servants-deluxe-box-set-includes-the-four-devils- GRIMOIRE https://amzn.to/2MIta4T Buy Me a Book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/33TYYN3KT7ZAJ/ Buy me something off my AMAZON WISH LIST https://www.amazon.de/registry/wishlist/302ZDU38CDO3R Please Share the videos, website, blog posts etc on your social media! Obviously, there is no obligation or pressure to do so, but if you do I thank you from the bottom of my heart! _ _ _ _ _ As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, so if you see an Amazon link it's more than likely an affiliate link. The price will be the exact same for you, but I get a commission. ***SITES AND SOCIAL MEDIA*** Web: http://www.adventuresinwoowoo.com Discord: https://discord.gg/qA2Tpvr Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tommiekelly Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adventuresinwoowoo Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tommiekelly/ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PEvElCUoa6Eyz2d129UjE?si=MGgNKT-pQ52tOZ_Xv4cJOQ

In episode 42 I speak with James Sebastiano; a multi-faceted marketing expert, conscious entrepreneur and protagonist of the documentary, Chasing the Present. After watching the film, I was inspired to reach out to James to speak as it was a beautiful, deeply insightful and potent story featuring Gary Weber, Russell Brand, Graham Hancock, Sri Prem Baba, Alex Grey and several more. Our conversation dives into suffering, attachment to false identity, working with plant medicines, the process of making Chasing the Present and the mirror of our families. James is really open and shares a beautiful story both in the episode, but also in the the film itself. At the core, part of the process is beginning to truly ask ourselves, "Who am I?" and feeling what comes up from this, can lead to liberation and connection. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/into-the-well/support

In this episode of "Love Talk Live," I interview the creators of the documentary film, "Chasing the Present." This film, directed by Mark Waters is all about learning how to end your personal suffering and cultivate inner peace. The story follows James Sebastiano Jr. as he goes on his personal journey to end his anxiety and suffering. He travels around the world engaging in various healing modalities that leave the audience in awe and inspired! In this interview James and producer, Anna Kobler talk about the journey to making this film and how it affected their lives, and what they learned from this experience. Many celebrities and well-known people in the healing arena are interviewed in "Chasing the Present," like Russel Brand, Sharon Salzberg, Josh Korda, Alex Grey, Joseph Goldstein, Gary Weber, Zelda Hall, Prem Baba, and Graham Hancock.

CHASING THE PRESENT is a timely documentary following one man’s world wide journey of self inquiry as he explores the root cause of his lifelong battle with mental health issues. A materially successful young man, James Sebastiano Jr., riddled with anxiety, embarks on a world-wide journey of self-inquiry. From the streets of NY, to the stillness of the Ganges, and deep into the jungles of Peru, he immerses himself in meditation, self-inquiry, and plant medicine to find the root cause of the problem and learn how to finally find freedom from his crippling anxiety.  Along the way, he finds answers to why a person who seemingly has it all can continue to suffer from debilitating panic attacks, recognizing the beauty and power that lies within each of us, if we are willing to go there. CHASING THE PRESENT features Featuring James Sebastiano Jr., Russell Brand, Alex Grey, Graham Hancock, Gary Weber, Rupert Spira, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, Matthew Watherston, Jose Sanchez, James Sebastiano Sr., Jordan Sebastiano, Zelda Hall, Josh Korda, Vijeth Kumar. CHASING THE PRESENT subject James Sebastiano joins us to talk about the physical, psychological and spiritual journey he and director Mark Waters shared over the three plus years that this passion project took them on and why their experiences and the lessons learned from people they met will resonate with all that choose to join them. For news, screenings and updates go to: chasingthepresent.com

Multi-instrumentalist musician Anthony Thogmartin of Papadosio [band], EarthCry [solo project], and Seed to Stage [music production tutorials] joins us for the first time since Episode 10 to talk about navigating the exponentially expanding body of human knowledge, how interfacing with different media technologies yields new minds and selves at the intersection, and the profound creative evolution he and his band have undergone by embracing tools like Ableton Live. For the ten-plus years I’ve known him, Anthony’s optimism and enthusiasm have inspired me to seize the day and strive for new horizons, and whether or not you make music I have no doubt this conversation will inspire you as well.Future Fossils Podcast is entirely listener-supported. Support the show on Patreon for more inspiring extras than you probably have time for.Buy any of the books we mention in this episode through my Amazon Shop and I’ll receive a tiny kickback at no extra cost to you.Mentioned:Ishi Crew, Complexity Explorers Facebook Group, Scott E. Page, Mirta Galesic, SpaceWeather.com, Neal.Fun/deep-sea, Caitlin McShea, InterPlanetaryFest.org, Sam Brouse, Korg Minilogue, Ableton Push, Meow Wolf, Jessica Flack, The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin, Darwin’s Pharmacy by Richard Doyle, Gary Weber, Erik Davis, A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, Plato, Thoth, Technopoly by Neil Postman, America Before by Graham Hancock, Wile E. Coyote, Star Trek, Google Translate, Ableton Live, Bitwig, Microdose VR, Android Jones, Anson Phong, Sennheiser, Magic Leap, David Block, Phaedroid, Glitch Mob, Mi.Mu gloves, Oculus Quest, Google Duo, Burning Man, Sweet Melis, The Glass Cage by Nicholas CarrDiscussed:The value of long-form media and the conversation as ways of deepening our engagement with an accelerating world.Neurodiversity and the “social molecule,” and how being different together is good for all of us.“The only reason we [human beings] made it is because we’re good at talking to each other.”Our understanding of the planet is not just expanding outward, but also inward…not just into the vastness of space but deeper into the oceans and crust and into inner space.The more attention you pour into things, the more finely differentiated they become, and things get bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. Earthcry’s concept album Identity Mitosis and its multimedia storytelling about a conversation between AI and Gaia long after the extinction of humankind.What does the future look like without us?Living at the bottleneck between the complexity of the micro and the macro.The self as a plural ecosystem and the conscience as the voice of various unconscious neural motifs erupting into consciousness.Awakening as the abandoning of episodic autobiographic memory and the vice grip of the default mode network.The egoic self as a kind of electrical phenomenon, and possibly a kind of auxiliary or emergency preservation mode (not our natural state of balanced health).Metabolic ontology and the possibility of reality itself changing with the states of the extended body-mind in psychogenic networks.The cybernetic self and how performing music is also being a part of the music technology ecosystem.The dependency of thought on the mediation of technology…handwriting vs. typing, etc., and how different selves emerge in different contexts.Polarization and our refusal to understand one another.Generation gaps in technological fluency.Is the Universal Translator not RUNNING Starfleet?Letting Ableton Live take over Papadosio.YouTube vs. Instagram.Moore's Law and miniaturization in music performance, and moving with the current of technological evolution rather than against it.Michael’s open call to developers to help us create software for controlling music and visuals simultaneously with a gestural interface in virtual reality……and Anthony’s disclaimers about why this hasn’t happened yet.Augmented reality versus virtual reality and how evolution is co-evolving with the human body and mind (not just people adapting to technology).What matters depends on the scale at which you’re paying attention.Future Fossils Theme Music:“God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Show Notes: https://wetflyswing.com/weber I had a good chat with Gary Weber who is the author of the Fly Fishers Guide to Oregon from Wilderness Adventures Press.  This is a guide that will give you the basics on where to go, where to stay and some bonus tips for each location. Find out why Gary hates instagram and how the digital revolution changed his life.  We also here about my first river fight and the changing landscape and river etiquette.  We here some crazy fishing stories, fly stories and the life from a photographers point of view. Hosted Fly Fishing Trips with Dave: https://wetflyswing.com/AK Show Notes with Gary Weber Gary Weber's second book is on high mountain lakes. John Shewey was on the podcast here and Mark Bachman was on the podcast here.  Two people that influenced Gary on his journey. We noted Fishing in Oregon book which is a great resource for Oregon.  Gary's book, The Fly Fishers Guide to Oregon, is more focused on fly fishing and has more detail for each spot. The Northwest Fly Fishing Magazine with John Shewey and Chuck Johnson with Wilderness Adventures Press are Gary's two big publishers right now. The blog post of my dad getting into a fist fight on the Deschutes River.  Here's a link to that blog post that tells the story. We talk about the Donner and Blitzen River and why the grasshopper is a killer pattern.  Just stay clear until August. Gary gives us a great tip on using krystal flash under the wing.  The blitzen hopper is his goto patter.  He also loves a zug bug. We talked about Euro Nymphing and Tenkara, both topics we've covered in the podcast in past episodes. News Photography Exposed is Gary's website.  We talk about this amazing plane crash photo pic. The 350,000 Nissan Frontier is Gary's goto vehicle. The space shuttle explosion was a story that Gary covered back in the mid 1980's. Gary also covered the world series when the earthquake hit. I noted the Wilderness Float Tubes interview where we discussed ultra-light fishing. Martin Joergensen is the Global Fly Fisher and noted that you should not wait for that next big trip. You can find Gary at News Photography Exposed. "A phone is not a camera.  I'll go to my grave believing that a phone is not a camera." -Gary Weber Fly Fishers Guide to Oregon Conclusion Gary Weber shares is fly fishing guide book and his life as a photographer.  This one goes all over the place including the jail blazers, why Gary does not fly and his favorite river.  We don't hold out on this one so I hope you enjoy. Show Notes: https://wetflyswing.com/weber

Dr. Anthony Metivier is the founder of the Magnetic Memory Method, an effective, fun way to memorize foreign language, vocabulary, dreams, names, music, poetry and much more. Dr. Metivier writes books and creates training for anyone who needs to improve their memory. What separates him from other authors on memory skills and development is that he doesn’t focus on long strings of digits or training for memory championships. He offers simple techniques for memorizing the information that will change your daily life: foreign language vocabulary, names and faces, material for tests and exams. There’s no hype in his training, just techniques that work. From hobbyists looking to memorize facts, poems or more to anyone wanting to master another language, Anthony loves to see memory techniques take root and flourish. Contact Info Website: www.magneticmemorymethod.com Gift for Mindful Tribe: www.magneticmemorymethod.com/mindfulness Most Influential Person Gary Weber Effect on Emotions It has really evened them out. I have had clinical depression and bipolar disorder so my moods in the past have been all over the place. Now I have a real strong through line and have exactly that gap where I am able to sort of live in the future. I mean, I live in the future already because I'm in Australia but now I kind of live in the future of my physical and mental responses and am able to just sort of see it before it happens. Not every single time but more and more consistently and not get tied up in creating a big story about it or even being in it. And I have now been able to function without medication for a year and a half now. So that's been great. Thoughts on Breathing They say always return to the breath. If you get lost that's the place to go. I've just been so blessed that I encountered things in the early 2000's like Russian Martial Arts which are so breathing focused that I've just spent a lot of time with breath and just noticing that so much tension is held by just not breathing. And then starting to create greater circulatory has helped so much from treating tension and preventing it from developing in the first place. Suggested Resources Book: Happiness Beyond Thought by Gary Weber, Waking Up by Sam Harris App: An unconventional app would be your brain Bullying Story I was around a lot of bullies. I sort of had the where with all to stand up to them and part of that may have been just my own recklessness. I had a good batting average of just putting them in their place and I was able to surf the danger zone between the jocks and non jocks but I kind of had alliances with everybody but it did have a little bit to do with being a little bit off kilter and crazy and not really caring because my home background was so bad that what could Troy the Jock possibly threaten me with. I saw bullying a lot and I did respond to it. I did have one fist fight that I was in and lost as a result of standing up to bullying but we ultimately became friends and had some interesting discussions after that and I wonder if a lot of this is out of our control. We're biological units with raging hormones and things happen, so mindfulness would start for me there with just helping humans get a better sense that what's happening to them in these situations is largely out of our control. and we don't really have as much free will in it as we think because of the units we are in. If you can get a gap between your physical response to things and the actions you take then a lot of that can stop. The bully can catch himself in a moment of bullying that he maybe wasn't aware of and the bullied can respond differently because they're aware of how their bodies are responding before their mind directs action.  

This week I sit down with Rak Razam and Niles Heckman – psychonauts, journalists, provocateurs, and the film-makers responsible for Shamans of the Global Village.http://www.shamansoftheglobalvillage.com/In a conversation too full of awesome neologisms, delightful turns of phrase, one-liners, and weird genius for me to convey it all, we talk about the role of creative media in helping usher in new modes of human consciousness – and what we’re learning those new modes might be. We finally get into WHAT those unborn archeologists listening to Future Fossils might be like…and our conjecture’s going to surprise you.Books we Reference: (Links are through my Amazon Affiliate account – if you buy any of these books, I get a small percentage of the sale at no cost to you. Or you can bookmark this link to the Amazon Homepage and they'll send me a tiny cut of anything you purchase.) Octavio Rettig – The Toad of DawnGabor Maté – In the Realm of Hungry GhostsSteve Kotler & Jamie Wheal – Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and WorkRichard Doyle – Darwin’s Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, & The Evolution of the NoosphereAlva Noe – Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons From The Biology of ConsciousnessEckhart Tolle – The Power of Now: A Guide To Spiritual EnlightenmentMichael Murphy – The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human NatureRudolf Steiner – How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of InitiationRamez Naam – NexusTerence McKenna & Dennis McKenna – The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, & The I Ching Among the topics we fly by:• 5-Meo DMT and psychedelic neurochemistry;• Nondual philosophy and the methodologies by which the dissolution of the self-other boundary can be achieved;• The correlation between flow states and gamma brainwaves;• “God’s Factory Reset” and the relationship between 5-Meo DMT and endocrinological healing;• The bizarre mystery that snails apparently operate on gamma brainwave states (“SNAILS MAKE GAMMA”);• New forms of social media (and new ways of engaging social media) that emphasize community, fellowship, equity, listening, and other real human values;• The possibility that it is actually the cardiac and enteric nervous systems experiencing and reporting from deep psychedelic states, while the frontal lobe is down-regulated;• The curious phenomenon of spontaneous gesturing (automatic “mudras”) during tryptamine experiences, and what might be the cause and purpose of them;• Intelligence in nature, distributed through countless species and systems but potentially orchestrated at an incomprehensible level of unity;• The importance of direct experience in understanding the strange realms divulged by psychedelics, and beginning to investigate them scientifically;• The coming wave of “technodelics” that can link human minds together into new meta-organisms and launch us into novel states of consciousness and modes of interacting with reality;• Experimental designs for exploring the content and revelations of threshold tryptamine doses in “group mind” protocols;• …We actually talk A LOT about snails. • Gary Weber - http://happiness-beyond-thought.blogspot.com Quotes:“I’m on the outer edge, the lip, the cauldron of Deep Source itself. And there’s an event horizon within which, just before I can lose full egoic consciousness and the drop has become the ocean, that drop can see the entire ocean like a tsunami wave cresting on the horizon. And on that lip, on that event horizon, EVERYTHING is there. I get this incredibly tangible, intuitive sense of the ancestors – and I don’t mean just my chronological, biological ancestors, I mean all those who have gone before in the species and are still perhaps alive as discarnate intelligences on the akashic frequency level on this bandwidth just before the edge of Deep Source, or perhaps intelligences that live within the lights and within the outer edge of Deep Source.” - Rak Razam“Within the last ten, fifteen years, we’ve learned an incredible amount about the brain and about psychedelics and about the physical correlates of human consciousness. And we’ve found – without any shadow of any kind of a doubt – with the most rigorous neurological methods available to us – that these spaces that shamans and zen masters and other enlightened or awakened people have been getting into for thousands of years – we’ve found that these things are real.” - Michael Garfield“Most social media is not social media, it’s anti-social media.” - Niles Heckman“It’s not that the ego needs to be killed - it needs to be brought back into right relationship. And psychedelics have proven throughout the 20th Century - and no entheogens and shamanic sacraments again in the 21st - when we reduce the default mode network and lower the egoic self, we rejoin a larger sense of being, and a planetary being, and a divine being, and it seems to be the antidote to history.” - Rak Razam“Is it safe for us to say, then, that ‘Dream Juice Is The Antidote To History?” - Michael Garfield“I’ve seen enough around the corner to know what I need to do next. And it’s a deep transformation of my habits, my rituals, my relationship with life, with myself, my family, my loved ones, my community…and I think it’s the deepening of the spiritual path. And it makes it very tangible, whether I like it or not. I can hide from it, it doesn’t go away. The awareness of awareness of that thing is with me every day. That’s what it [5 MeO-DMT] has done for me.” - Rak Razam See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

ControlTalk NOW — Smart Buildings VideoCast and Podcast for week ending March 13, 2016 does a hasty review of Week Ending March 6th and features special guest Ken Sinclair, owner and editor of Automated Buildings, who talks about this month’s theme — Project-Haystack Open for Mashing, and Johnson Controls’ Whitepaper: Changing Demographics in the HVACR Industry. Six ControlTrends Award Winner videos; Lynxspring and Belimo webinars; and the March TridiumTalk. EasyIO FG-32+ BACnet Listing Update and EasyStack Training — March 2016 in Melbourne and Sydney. MC Cheah, Senior Development Engineer at EasyIO was delighted to announce that EasyIO received official confirmation from BTL that the FG-32+ passed the BTL test with 100% results and the FG-32+ and the FG-20+ will be listed on the BTL website in the very near future. KMC Controls — The Next Generation of Building Automation — Training Opportunities. March 1, 2016: Take Advantage of the Latest Training Availability from KMC Controls! Visit the KMC Controls Partner Portal to sign up for KMC training in New Paris, IN. Current course offerings include: TotalControl with KMC Connect: Course Description: The objective of this 5-day course is to provide instruction on the installation, integration, and operation of KMC Conquest hardware using KMC Connect Lite, KMC Connect, and TotalControl software. 2015 ControlTrends Award Highlight: Patrick Dumas of Viconics Wins Best Technical Support Person Small Manufacturer. Patrick is a Senior Technical Support Representative at Viconics (Schneider Electric) Canada. Viconics Technologies Inc. headquartered in Montreal, Canada was founded 30 years ago in the field of industrial process controls. Viconics quickly became a leader in embedded micro controller-based technology and developed factory programmed, field-configurable stand-alone PI wall mounted temperature controllers. Congratulations once again, Patrick! 2015 ControlTrends Awards Highlight: John Hutchey, Honeywell Wins Best Technical Support Person Large Manufacturer. As a Product Support Specialist at Honeywell John’s role involves supporting channel partners in sales, design, and commissioning of open-system projects, and his primary focus is supporting contractors to insure successful integrations on the Niagara platforms. Congratulations John! ControlTalk NOW featured guest Ken Sinclair, who discusses his March, 2016 Release: “Project-Haystack Open for Mashing.” March, 2016’s edition gives recognition and congratulates Project-Haystack and the Sedona Community by featuring the E-zine launch of Project-Haystack Connections, a seminal work by Therese Sullivan, and Ken’s Open Sedona Evolution editorial. In Ken’s own words: “We are extremely pleased to deliver to you Project-Haystack’s new e-zine “Connections” as a supplement/insert to our March issue. Ken Sinclair’s Automated Buildings March, 2016 Release: “Project-Haystack Open for Mashing.” In his March 2016 edition, Ken Sinclair, owner and editor of Automated Buildings, gives recognition and congratulates Project-Haystack and the Sedona Community in meaningful ways featuring the E-zine launch of Project-Haystack Connections, a seminal work by Therese Sullivan, and Ken’s Open Sedona Evolution editorial. In the words of Ken Sinclair: “We are extremely pleased to deliver to you Project-Haystack’s new e-zine “Connections” as a supplement/insert to our March issue. We have been involved with the project from its inception and are proud and pleased to have the honor of helping present this first issue. This issue provides an amazing overview of the achievement and resource collection in place today.” ControlTrends India Interview with Pankaj Dharkar at ACREX 2016 Mumbai. Direct from ACREX 2016, Sameer Pradhan, Director ControlTrends India, interviews the venerated Pankaj Dharkar, founder of Pankaj Dharkar & Associates, and ex-President of Indian Society Of Heating, Refrigerating & Air-conditioning Engineers (ISHRAE). Pankaj Dharkar, a legend in HVAC and Building engineering, a smart city visionary and front leader for Fire & Security Association of India (FSAI), in an exclusive interview with Sameer Pradhan, talked about his active role in forming and nurturing several societies aimed towards Safety, Security and Building services. DG Logik’s DGLux5 Takes Data Center Infrastructure Management to a New Level. DGLogik’s Modern Toolsets: One Workspace. Data-Driven. All Yours. Create a first-class application that will take your Data Center Infrastructure Management solution to a whole new level. With DGLux5, users can quickly identify problems, find out where to investigate and make faster, well-informed decisions to cut costs, save time and manage large amounts of data more efficiently. 2015 ControlTrends Awards Highlight: The PID Award. Watch as the electrifying Roger Rebennack, winner of the first ever ControlTrends PID Award, presents the 2015 ControlTrends PID Award to Mike Marston from EASY IO, and Honeywell’s Larry Andriunas. Larry and Mike were recognized by the Global ControlTrends community for their Passion, Integrity and Dedication. Congratulations, and thanks for making our Smart Buildings and Building Automation Controls Industry better. 2015 ControlTrends Award Highlight: Ed Merwin Receives The Coveted Petock Award. Congratulations to Ed Merwin, from Tridium, who received the 2015 Petock Award. The Petock Award is named for smart buildings industry pioneer and veteran Marc Petock. In addition to his business success, Marc is known for giving to and helping others make themselves and our Industry better. It is in this spirit that the Petock Award was created. Great job Ed! You are very deserving of this honor! 2015 ControlTrends Award Highlight: The System Integrator of the Year. Congratulations to Hepta Control Systems and Automation Integrated, co-winners of the 2015 ControlTrends System Integrator of the Year Award. Hepta Control Systems and Automation Integrated were voted by the global ControlTrends Community for their outstanding work in the HVAC and Smart Building and Building Automation Controls Industry. March’s TridiumTalk: What Can Intelligent Alarming Do for You? Find out through a live demo in this month’s TridiumTalk. You won’t want to miss our next TridiumTalk, “Intelligent Alarming with the Niagara Analytics Framework.” Join Sales Engineer Ross Schwalm for a live demo to learn how to capture real-time data, and build and manage intelligent alarms. The Niagara Analytics Framework is purposefully designed for the Internet of Things (IoT) — turning data into actionable information and enabling faster, smarter business decisions. Register today! 2015 ControlTrends Award Highlight: ACI Wins Vendor of the Year — Small Manufacturer. Since its founding in 1991, ACI has been dedicated to excellence and has grown from seven employees to over 170 quality individuals, and has facilities that total over 78,000 square feet, with global offices in Hong Kong, and China. ACI’s products include temperature, relative humidity, current, pressure, gas and wireless related sensors. ACI has maintained its deep commitment to its core values: service, integrity, pride, and loyalty — and it has paid off handsomely, well done ACI! 30 Minutes with Lynxspring – The New BACnet to Haystack Data Pump. The next “30 Minutes with Lynxspring”, our monthly webinar series featuring Lynxspring subject-matter experts and special guests, is scheduled for Wednesday, March 16th at 12:00 PM CDT. March’s “30 Minutes with Lynxspring” will look at our new BACnet to Haystack Data Pump. With the number of and variety of equipment, sensors, devices and building automation systems that are available to connect to, the amount of building data available has increased considerably. 2015 ControlTrends Awards Highlight: Belimo Wins Vendor of the Year Large Manufacturer. Belimo is a listed technology company with a staff of close to 1400 worldwide. Belimo has developed, manufactured, and distributed electric actuators for air dampers and valve technology for heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems since 1975. With thier comprehensive range of products, Belimo has become world leaders in this specific market. Congratulations once again to Belimo, winner of the 2015 ControlTrends Vendor of the Year Large Manufacturer! . Belimo Fire & Smoke Product Release and Essential Retrofit Applications Webinar. Fire & Smoke Product Release and Essential Retrofit Applications. In this webinar, you will learn why the new Belimo FSAF A Series of Fire & Smoke actuators are the perfect retrofit solution. The discussion will provide information on key applications and about the optimized functionality that provides maximum safety. Join Us on Wednesday, March 23 at 1:00 EST. Click here to register. 2015 ControlTrends Award Highlight: Jason Briggs Wins Executive of the Year Small Manufacturer. Congratulations to Jason Briggs from J2 Innovations. Jason was awarded the 2015 Executive of the Year Award by the global ControlTrends Community. J2 Innovations is an emerging software and technology company specializing in the human experience as it relates to smart devices. FIN (Fluid Integration) framework is the core enabling technology for creating software solutions ranging from device programming to enterprise visualization. 2015 ControlTrends Awards Highlight: Lars van der Haegen Wins Executive of the Year Large Manufacturer. Congratulations to Lars van der Haegen from Belimo. Lars van der Haegen has been the President of Belimo Americas and Member of the Executive Committee since November, 2010. Prior to that, he was employed by Belimo in various positions since 2000. Lars van der Haegen has a strong HVAC application and industry knowledge paired with master degrees in business from Columbia Business School in New York and the London Business School. Accepting the Award, on Lars’ behalf, is Gary Weber, an Industry great in his own right. Johnson Controls’ White Paper: Changing Demographics in the HVACR Industry. ControlTrends is delighted to present this Johnson Controls’ white paper written by Renee Joseph entitled “Elevating the HVACR industry: Promoting exciting careers to diverse prospects can help address staffing shortages.” This seminal piece is a profoundly informative and factual accounting that serves us all well — as the current State of the Union Address for our HVAC industry. The Changing Demographics in the HVACR and Facility Management Workforce. The Changing Demographics in the HVACR and Facility Management Workforce. In this session, hear from seasoned industry experts, their perspectives on how the demographics have changed over the last ten years in the facility management and the HVACR industries. For example, there are now more women in the facility management and HVACR industry than there ever was before. The presentation will be on these stats and will describe the reasons for this demographic shift. The post ControlTalk NOW — Smart Buildings VideoCast and Podcast for Week Ending March 13, 2016 appeared first on ControlTrends.

Welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast Gary Weber called, "Really excellent...insightful, personal, experiential, direct..." (Gary Weber - “Happiness Beyond Thought”). We have saved you a seat at a Shakespeare and Company tea party to hear your host, Panmelys, read her luminous "Honest Song's Measure" and be followed by René Agostini's reading of his extraordinary poem,"Walking Along The Rhone". An audio series of extras and deleted scenes from the documentary feature film, The Poetry Of Illusion tinyurl.com/pqh6xr4 Featuring the visionary artist and poet, Panmelys, the poet, writer, philosopher and Professor of Literature at Avignon University, René Agostini, the musician, writer and filmmaker, Glenn Thomson, the writer and Professor of Rhetoric and Political Thought at Sciences Po Paris, Lex Paulson, the artist and filmmaker, Véronique Aubouy and Shakespeare and Company Bookshop owner and inspiration, Sylvia Whitman.

Welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast Gary Weber called, "Really excellent...insightful, personal, experiential, direct..." (Gary Weber - “Happiness Beyond Thought”). Episode three of Sing The Body Electric is a magical transmission of poetic wisdom and restorative wonders. From René's opening words, summoning the very heart essence of Rūmī, to Panmelys' deep invocation of Blake. The discussion turns to art's capacity to remake and transport and the creative act of a listener and viewer, before concluding with a response to the tradition of Western European rationalism. Drink deeply from this magical elixir for the spirit. Sing The Body Electric is an audio series of extras and deleted scenes from the documentary feature film, The Poetry Of Illusion , featuring the visionary artist and poet Panmelys, the philosopher, poet and professor of literature at Avignon University, René Agostini and musician, writer and filmmaker, Glenn Thomson. http://tinyurl.com/pqh6xr4

Gary Weber has been a scientist, military officer, senior executive in industry and academia, and is the author of the book Happiness Beyond Thought: A Practical Guide to Awakening. He has practiced Zen meditation, yoga, and philosophy for more than thirty-five years. In 1998, after over 20 thousand hours of various contemplative practices, his thoughts stopped (or very nearly so). We speak with him about what it has been like since then, experiencing nearly no self-referential thoughts or emotions. We also speak with Weber about how he is working with scientists to bring enlightenment to the Facebook Generation. Episode Links: Happiness Beyond Thought: A Practical Guide to Awakening ( http://www.happiness-beyond-thought.com/thebook/thebook.html ) Happiness Beyond Thought Blog ( http://happinessbeyondthought.blogspot.com ) Mapping the Mindful Brain ( http://bit.ly/1gc7Weo )

Welcome to ControlTalk NOW: The Smart Building Podcast/Videocast for the week ending March 29, 2015. Our HVAC news of the week features a JCI highlight reel; Rob Allen’s coverage of Johnson Controls’2015 ABCS & Distributor Conference with four insightful video interviews; Gary Weber’s receipt of the 2014 ControlTrends Awards Energy Product of the Year; Bill Jones’ Liquid Level Tech Tip; 2015 Project Haystack’s announcement of the Conference Key Note Speakers; and Andy McMillan’s sagacious advice given at the AHR 2015 Connection Community Collaboratory — still echoes. Johnson Controls Business Conference Update: New Airflow Products. Rob Allen and Nancy Yannuzzi discuss the requirements for monitoring the air flow into and within a building, which have increased over the years with the IAQ requirements for minimum ventilation of occupied spaces. There are two methods by which air flow is measured within a duct: Differential Pressure, which has been available since the days of pneumatic control, and Thermal Dispersion, which has been available about 10 years. Watch Rob’s video to learn more. Johnson Controls Business Conference Update: The New Digital Thermostats. Rob Allen’s next update comes from the Johnson Controls Product show. Terry Pierson gives Rob the 411 on Johnson Controls’ New Digital Touch Screen Light Commercial and Residential thermostats, the new TEC 3000, the new features on the EM 4000 Energy meters, and the WT-4000 wireless pneumatic thermostats. Rob Allen catches up with Heather Ausmus at the 2015 Johnson Control Business Conference and gets the latest on the Johnson Controls Connected Community website. As you will see, this is quite a tool and a wealth of information, and a place to connect, collaborate, and share with building efficiency professionals from around the world. Project Haystack Announces Keynote Speakers for Haystack Connect 2015 Conference. Dennis Lottero of Vodafone, Jack McGowan of The McGowan Group, and Peter Kelly Detwiler of NorthBridge Energy Partners, have been announced as the Keynote Speakers for the second bi-annual Haystack Connect Conference 2015, to be held May 18-20, 2015, at the Cheyenne Mountain Resort in Colorado Springs. Project Haystack is a collaborative community of leading technology suppliers and systems integrators developing common standards to streamline the interchange of data. Johnson Controls Business Conference Update: Meet the ABCS Channel Managers. Rob Allen, our man in the field, meets the new Johnson Controls ABCS Channel Managers. Rob introduces us to Robert Harland, Dan Preston (ABCS Channel Sales Manager) and King Thomas (ABCS Channel Director, NA). Together, they discuss the recent reorganization of the ABCS channel and how they plan to apply “Privilege of Focus” to their customers in the different regions. Rob and JCI’s leadership team also discuss some of the other ideas from the business track presented at the Conference. Bill Jones Tech Tips: Making Liquid Level Gauges Work. Everything you need to know about liquid level gauges but were afraid to ask. Liquid level gauges, like the ones made by Conbraco, are in every equipment room. As simple as they might seem, if you have ever had to replace one, they can be tricky. Not to worry, Stromquist & Company’s, Bill Jones, an expert on Conbraco products, takes the mystery out of liquid level gauges in this informative tech tip. Thank You Mr. Jones! Belimo Energy Valve Wins Energy Saving Product of the Year. Congratulations to Belimo! The Belimo Energy Valve was chosen by the world-wide ControlTrends Community as the winner of the coveted Energy Savings Product of the Year. Belimo’s Gary Weber accepted the award at the 2014 ControlTrends Awards event in Chicago. Johnson Controls Highlight Reel. In honor of the Johnson Controls 2015 ABCS Business Conference held earlier this week in Orlando, FL, ControlTrends put together a highlight reel of a few of Johnson Controls’ industry and ControlTrends Awards and accomplishments. Johnson Controls Highlight Reel from Eric Stromquist on Vimeo. How to Navigate Change in the Building Automation Controls Industry. Special thanks to Ken Sinclair, from Automated Buildings, for having the vision to put together the Connection Community Collaboratory. We had the privilege of filming the last two collaboratories. This video epitomizes the intent of the collaboratory as Andy McMillan, the president of BACnet International, gives some priceless advice to one of the attendees. The post ControlTalk NOW: The Smart Building Podcast/Videocast Week Ending March 29, 2015 appeared first on ControlTrends.

ControlTrends thanks this week’s ControlTalk NOW Platinum sponsor, Honeywell! Honeywell invents and manufactures technologies to address some of the world’s toughest challenges initiated by revolutionary macrotrends in science, technology and society. A Fortune 100 company, Honeywell creates solutions to improve the quality of life of people around the globe: generating clean, healthy energy – and using it more efficiently. Ken Sinclair’s November Edition of Automated Buildings: The “I of Me” of IoT. Excerpt from Automated Building’s Ken Sinclair’s comments on IoT: “Your present IoT understanding, which I choose to whimsically call “The I of Me” greatly controls your comprehension and expectations of what those three letters might mean to you and those around you. The art, science, and social interaction of our time “The Internet of Things” (IoT), reflects life and is affecting all of our lives daily so get over it.” Another flurry of great articles in automatedbuildings.com’s November issue. ACI’s TSENSE — Combination CO2 Sensor with Temperature, RH, & Display. TSENSE is an advanced and versatile 3 in 1 transmitter. Designed for installation in the air conditioned zone, it measures CO2 concentration, temperature, and humidity in the ambient air. The data is transmitted to a BMS system or a stand-alone controller using industry-standard output signals and communication protocols, including BACnet. Visit ACI! Eric’s Teacher on Ted Talk. Marshall Thurber is a teacher that has had a profound impact on my life and business philosophy. I had the good fortune to study and work with Marshall for many years.I quote him often on ControlTalk Now. To get a feel for Marshall, check out this video Marshall doing a Ted Talk in Melbourne. Marshall Thurber has been named the godfather of business and has been responsible for teaching some of the world’s greatest business minds including Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki and Jack Canfield to name a few. ControlTalk NOW’s first guest: Gary Weber, Distribution Sales Manager, North America, Belimo Air Controls, USA. Gary discusses the Belimo Platinum Distributor meeting in St. Kitts, The Energy Valve, the Belimo BAcnet communication feature, the business philosophies that have made Belimo so successful for so many years, and many more topics. Why the World Loves The Belimo Energy Valve. See why the Belimo Energy Valve is a finalist for the 2014 ControlTrends Energy Savings Solution/Product of the Year and the 2014 ControlTrends Awards Innovative Product of the Year. The Belimo Energy Valve was recognized and nominated by the world-wide ControlTrends Community. Good luck to Belimo and all the finalist for the 2104 ControlTrends Awards to be held January 26, 2015 in Chicago. Delta Controls – A Cradle of Innovation. At Delta Controls, Innovation is at the core of what we do. We take BACnet to heart, and have been committed to contributing to BACnet for the last 20 years. We invest in product development and R&D. With over 200 years of industry experience in our R&D department alone, we know that innovation requires having teams in the field and involving our customers in the development process. Innovation, quality, and customer satisfaction. SGIP’s Smart Grid Cybersecurity — Importance & Resource Guide. The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) mission is to accelerate the implementation of interoperable Smart Grid devices and systems. SGIP is a valuable source of information and guidance on all matters concerning the Smart Grid. One particularly resourceful tool is their SGIP’s Cybersecurity infographic an easy-to-use User’s Guide for NISTIR 7628 and Understanding How to Manage Smart Grid Cybersecurity Risk. ControlTrends People: Chris Eichmann from Johnson Controls. I had a chance to sit down and talk with the ever impressive Chris Eichmann from Johnson Controls. Find out what Chris had to say about how Johnson Controls is adding even more to their value proposition, a special Johnson Controls Event for 2015, and what makes the Johnson people and products such compelling choices for the 2014 ControlTrends Awards. Chris Eichmann, VP & General Manager, Controls & BAS Distribution, is a former recipient of the ControlTrends HVAC Controls Executive of The Year, and because of his outstanding leadership and commitment to excellence, is in the hunt for another trophy at this year’s awards. The post ControlTalk NOW for the Week Ending November 9, 2014 appeared first on ControlTrends.

Biographies seem to be of intense interest to many folks. It is not clear what purpose they serve, positive or negative, but as others include them, here is one. It is important to remember that a biography is only one version of the story, always remembered incorrectly, even if the intent is “total” honesty. Recent brain studies have shown that the brain modifies long-term memories and that they are not what was actually recorded by the mind, which was already highly subjective and selective. It is in the third person as it really didn’t happen to “me”. The author was raised in a devout Methodist home and through early adolescence was involved in religious affairs, giving annual religious talks. From early adolescence until his late twenties, he went through a secular life with marriage, two children, undergraduate school, military service, and then graduate school. Following a near-death experience in the military, he became intent on deeply exploring what was possible to bring understanding to life, to personally experience “enlightenment”, and to end the mental turmoil and suffering he experienced and saw in those around him. One day, reading what turned out to be a famous Zen poem that he had happened upon “by accident”, the normal world fell away and he was in a state never before experienced and beyond any context, he knew. After some time the state passed, but he was left with a burning desire to return to whatever it was that he had experienced. He went deeply into Zen meditation, and then various yogas, first so that he could sit for longer periods and then to work with the body to further inquiry. When he finished graduate school and became a scientist at a national research center, he continued to take teachers’ training courses and studied with different yoga and Zen teachers and philosophers. Arising daily, hours before work, he would meditate and do yoga asanas, and at night would meditate, do yoga and read philosophy. Several times, he taught yoga and meditation wherever he was, but, despite the interest of the students, he would ultimately stop as he knew that he had not achieved full understanding. This process continued for over 25 years through a series of jobs in different industrial companies eventually reaching the senior executive level of a major company with 1000 folk, 4 research laboratories and a budget of $260M; children were raised, went off to college, etc. During this time, there were many experiences and “enlightenments”, but nothing that was lasting, that really touched the core of reality or that ended the suffering brought about by thought. One day, after having consciously surrendered every attachment, and given up completely on being able to reach the final understanding “by his efforts”, doing an asana done thousands of times before, a complete shift in consciousness occurred in which self-referential thought fell away and all that happened, happened in stillness and presence. He realized that he was not this body, nor these thoughts, but the undying consciousness behind them. He saw that everything was perfect as it was and that all was somehow within him, and that simultaneously everything was God. This shift was so complete and radical that he soon left his executive position, did many silent retreats and visits to Zen masters, and yoga teachers in the U.S. and India to confirm and deepen his understanding. To further test his understanding, and to see if it was possible to function successfully from an awakened state, he took other complex, high responsibility, upper-level management positions in fields in which he had no previous experience, and was successful. During this last period, at the urging of students, other yoga teachers, and a Zen master, he began teaching again. Since then, he has taught, authored two books, a blog, several articles, numerous videos, interviews, and presentations on nonduality and neuroscience at various conferences and univ...