In today’s Solidarity Friday’s episode with Kyle and Joe, they cover current events on COVID-19, social media narratives, a new world, psycho-pharma, psychedelic VICE articles, movies about acid and more.

Show Notes

Coronavirus

• Joe and his girlfriend are recovering from being sick, potentially coronavirus (they weren’t allowed to be tested without being hospitalized)
  • Joe said he was really sick in a new and novel way
• Kyle is located in New Jersey (currently around 19,000 cases, close to 250 deaths)
  • He has a weak immune system, so he is trying to be super careful by staying isolated (he hasn’t left the house in weeks besides to go on a walk outside)
• Joe says this whole thing is really going to impact humanity and life on earth
  • The ecosystem of commerce is fragile and this is a strong way of showing it
• Kyle says that Drumpf estimated 250,000 deaths in the US
• Joe says we are going to get through this, and life will go on, but what will that look like?
• How can the conscious show up as leaders?
• When we are in a fear state, we don’t make rational decisions

Narratives

• Kyle says all of the psychedelic people that he is connected to on social media are posting so much on 5G right now
• There are dual narratives, like people dying, but also a lot of info on conspiracies
  • What do we pay attention to, and what is really happening?
  • Joe said that he played in the conspiracy, occult area for a while, and he couldn’t find any solid ground
  • In times like this, the conspiracy media ramps up, because people are afraid, and that impairs cognition
• There is a lot of media saying that COVID-19 is a biological weapon
• There is a lot of unknowns, and how do we not panic?

Processing All of This

• We were not evolved for this moment
  • Now, how do we evolve to handle this stuff?
  • How do we build resilience?
• As ecosystems collapse, some organisms start to mingle with other organisms and then viruses like this can come up, and will pop up more in the future
• We are in a spiritual emergence-y right now, we need to bring up our shadow and do the work
• What can I actually do in my life right now? Instead of worrying about everything

A New World

• 90% of products in the consumer economy right now are completely non-essential
  • We are on a finite planet with finite resources don’t mesh with infinite growth
• Hopefully this is the emergency that we need to re-imagine the future
• There is a role that the psychedelic community plays in this
  • The psychedelic culture is familiar with sitting with shadow, doing the inner work, and taking a creative approach at alternative systems and reimagining the future
• Kyle says this feels psychedelic, having new ideas about what the future could look like, what we can offer the future
• A lot of the things that we wish for are starting to unfold, in some sense, the collective has been wishing for the things that are happening
• When we take substances, we are upgrading our operating system

Psycho-Pharma

• MindMed (Mind Medicine) call themselves a leading neuro-pharma company for psychedelic inspired medicines
• Right now they are working on a compound, essentially an iboga-like drug
• There is a lot of suffering happening in the world, and whatever tools that can help with the suffering will do
• There is a roller coaster of the psychedelic experience
  • If every experience was just rainbows and happiness, it would just devalue the human experience

Vice

• Researchers got people to hallucinate from fake psychedelics
• Kyle says think about it, that sitting in a chair for a few hours with music can easily induce a psychedelic experience
• Joe says “the experience is within you, the drug is a key to help unlock that”

Shadow Panel

• Kyle is co-hosting a Shadow Panel with Ido Cohen and takes on a Jung approach to process the shadow
  • They host interviews with doctors and other speakers on the topic
  • They explore a lot of somatics in the shadow
• It is a donation based course right now, potentially paid in the future

Final Thoughts

• Joe says we are heavily impacted by COVID-19, a ton of breathwork events all had to be cancelled
  • But we have a ton of online courses and resources available, from integration books, to online guided therapist and clinician courses, to psychedelic online courses, coaching, and more
• Joe said he had a fun conversation with a film producer (Malibu Road) on the acid scene in the 70’s
  • • The film cant be streamed yet, but the trailer is out

  About Kyle

  Kyle’s interest in exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness began when he was 16-years-old when he suffered a traumatic snowboarding accident. Waking up after having a near-death experience changed Kyle’s life. Since then, Kyle has earned his B.A. in Transpersonal Psychology, where he studied the healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness by exploring shamanism, plant medicine, Holotropic Breathwork, and the roots/benefits of psychedelic psychotherapy. Kyle has co-taught two college-level courses. One of the courses Kyle created as a capstone project, “Stanislav Grof’s Psychology of Extraordinary Experiences,” and the other one which he co-created, “The History of Psychedelics.”

  Kyle completed his M.S. in clinical mental health counseling with an emphasis in somatic psychology. Kyle’s clinical background in mental health consists of working with at-risk teenagers in crisis and with individuals experiencing an early-episode of psychosis. Kyle also facilitates Transpersonal Breathwork workshops.

  About Joe

  Joe studied philosophy in New Hampshire, where he earned his B.A.. After stumbling upon the work of Stanislav Grof during his undergraduate years, Joe began participating in Holotropic Breathwork workshops in Vermont in 2003. Joe helped facilitate Holotropic and Transpersonal Breathwork workshops while he spent his time in New England. He is now working in the software industry as well as hosting a few podcasts. Joe now coordinates Dreamshadow Transpersonal Breathwork workshops, in Breckenridge, Colorado.

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