 Boom, what's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sokian. Super excited to be talking about spiritual awakening through art. We have Samantha Stein joining us on the show. Hello. Hi, thank you for having me and hi to all of you. Thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. Very excited for the show. We, was it the first time that we met at Lisa's birthday? May have been. Okay, I think that might have been the first time. And then again, at Lisa's Foundation, the 12 screening, which was great. And also, Samantha Stein is a spiritual artist for her bio. That's it. Nothing else. Super short. It's the same thing. You can find the links in the bio below to the Instagram, the Twitter, as well as the website. Alright, let's, as we will be talking about all these beautiful pieces of art throughout the show, let's start things off with what are your thoughts on the direction of our world? We live in very interesting times and we have more agency than ever to, to push the world in a positive or a negative direction or to choose how we feel that direction feels to us. So it's really interesting today, as our environments become increasingly immersive, that at the same exact time we're seeing, you know, billion dollar valuations for mindfulness apps. And so I think that begs the question, why is that happening? And why now? And I think the reason is, as Darwin says, the thing that makes us most fit for survival is adaptivity. And in these highly immersive environments, we're so much of what our environment exists to do is manipulate us, our biofeedback, our responses to things. What creates the greatest adaptive traits, perhaps is the ability to control our minds and our biofeedback to these responses of environmental influence. So it's crazy times. I think the direction can be good when we really use mindfulness practices to feel like we're interconnected with all living beings and with one another. So we feel that resonance and we can be more collaborative than ever, which is when historically we see renaissance. I think it can also create sort of this idea that, oh, if the world doesn't feel good to you, that's your fault. Like, you should be meditating more than all of a sudden, everything will feel fine and dandy, which isn't the case. And I think there's there's also a side of it that's quite problematic to create this narrative that if it starts with controlling your inner world to influence your outer world, that all of the responsibility is on you. When really that's only part of the picture. And it's a collective effort to create the world we want to see. And I think, as always, we have all of the tools available to create a beautiful future and a beautiful here and now. Where do you think things went wrong along the journey? Where has this gone wrong? Civilization experiments that have occurred? So there's different ways to examine cultures and to examine societies. I think one paradigm that I've been thinking about a lot lately, and I think many of us have, as we're hearing all these headlines, capitalism is dead, capitalism is over, like, millennials take capitalism, whatever it is, we've seen like hundreds of iterations now. I think what these are really saying is that there's there's two cultural paradigms that maybe we're most familiar with, which are a dominator paradigm where there's always hierarchical power and it's fairly zero sum. I mean, I think we had like client-patron relationships more in the past, and now it's shifted more to completely a zero sum model in dominator cultures, which is why we're seeing the environment just totally depleted with disregard. And then you also have collaborative environments where you see that people are working together in order to share resources and create a sense of abundance. And I think when we shift to dominator cultures and paradigms, and we take that to its extreme, which another way to think about it is like a hedonistic extreme, the result is that we've taken a wrong term and there's many, many people suffering as a result of that. Not just people, you know, plants, animals, the earth is suffering. Many of the indigenous cultures point at our disconnection from source, from nature being the reason why we have so many of the ailments in our world. Do you align yourself with that feeling? Yeah, I think it's interesting that people can feel disconnected from their environments. I mean, I certainly feel that many times, right, that I'm disconnected from groups of people or cultures or plants or animals. But then when you really sit and think about evolution, we're actually related to all of these things. Like these are these are by extension, on a macro scale, relatives. Yeah, ancestrally. So depends how far back we want to go. And I think when you you really take a moment to think about what that means and think about the interconnectedness, it points out a really good point about where we've also gone wrong is where we've allowed abstractions to mask the interdependency of all things. The interdependence of all things is something that we have the ability to tap into on a moment to moment basis. And we also have went and as far as to say that you can keep one foot in the world of everything's connected and one foot in the world of kind of like what's happening in the 3d physical reality, ego stuff, just so that you can in a way try and co create that future of the triangle moving to the circle, the hierarchy moving to the decentralized infrastructure. You said so many things, we find ourselves at this moment. Now, some people say we went off of the Dow, we went off of the path. Other people say that no, this is the path. It's supposed to be this damn hard. That's the point of the game for it to be this hard. And you said that, you know, you probably one of the most familiar ways of view of viewing what's going on in the world now is this, these $1 billion plus evaluations of mindfulness technology companies. Everything from the neuro technology like the brain sensing headband companies like Muse, we've had area on the show from her all the way to the calm app for for meditation or headspace. So is this is this a first order or first principle solution to what we need? Or is there something that's even deeper in our roots? That is missing from our spiritual connection all that is or is that a stepping stone to get there? I think it's important when we think about consciousness technology, which is going to be a bigger and bigger topic, and it's going to be something we see more and more venture capital flood into that, like all technology, it's a tool and all tools can be used for good or bad. And what I mean by that is that they can all be used to either serve humanity or harm humanity, actually, maybe create more extreme domination. I mean, if you you push sort of that mind experiment to extreme where we could invest in consciousness technology and tools for mind control of populations to subdue people and create really extreme hierarchies. So they can be used to bring people in theory much closer to a sense of of deep compassion and interconnectedness with all things and they can be used to push them apart. I think when we think about the mind and consciousness and meditation and the benefits we get from it, we often think about, there's actually this cartoon that I think sums it up perfectly. We think about how it can be a tool for sometimes creating a calm inner world, or sometimes we think about is like, this makes me the most productive best version of myself. And that latter version, I think we're seeing more and more people tap into. And my concern there is there's this great cartoon I saw where it's a monk sitting and meditating and then a guy in a suit who's like all you know, pumped up and he looks like he's you know, going to do some big important meeting or something. And what his bubble says is I meditate eight minutes a day so I can feel like I'm on top of the world. And the monk who's sitting there on the ground, his legs cross, looks at him and says, if you meditate an hour a day, you wouldn't need to. Yeah, yeah. That's a good one. Yeah. So I think these tools are tools that can be used for good and bad. I don't think that I think the idea of short circuiting feelings of that deepened compassion and interconnectedness could be a positive thing. I think it can all these things can also be used in therapeutic context to heal people, which is really, really interesting. Yeah. And the advances in neuroscience, they're quite promising. There's a lot of people suffering from things like addiction or PTSD. And these tools are not just about, you know, a spiritual awakening, but they're also have incredible applications for well, how could you use them in medical contexts instead of using pharmacological interventions? Yep. So overall a positive thing, but something like any new technology or tool that you have to be mindful of how it's being used and safeguard it so that it's used in a way to support humanity. I like that. Yeah, safeguard the new tool deployments so that they can be used to as benevolent additions to humanity. I like that a lot. Okay, and this will continue coming up throughout our conversation. So let's jump into the art. We have this beautiful piece right here. I want to know, as you explain, you know, this piece is called Heart Resonance. Yeah. As you explain what your art is. How did you get interested in making art? For me, I needed it was actually became something that just felt like I was meditating a lot. And as an extension of that, when I was creating art, I realized that I was getting into the same sort of what people describe as a flow state, which is like I would be working on a piece and hours and hours could pass. And I just felt like a complete flow and a full of just joy and contentment and just deeply present in exactly what I was doing in that moment. And there's not many things in life I'd experienced that had given me that same sort of feeling. And so I mean, my parents actually both met in art school and both started their careers as artists. But as a reaction to that, I think in many ways when I was younger, I wasn't very interested in art. I was interested in photography and even as a child won some awards for photographs I had taken, but painting or oil pastels or drawing or watercolors or painting these other mediums I use today. I hadn't really taken an interest in at that time. So it was more more recently, especially within the last year that I started getting especially interested in painting as a medium. And today, I'll share a bunch of my paintings with you. Wow. And then what's the heart resonance? I loved the will get to another one that I actually ended up just adoring a lot. And this actually has it carries the same style as the other one. What is this? How does this make you feel when you look at it? Ron, how does it make you feel? It reminds me of my ex wife. Colors are what her bridesmaids wore. It's a lovely piece. Alan, how does it make you feel? And thank you for sharing. So funny. This is like a lot of a lot of your art to me is about creation. And I think to me really good art is about like origins or source. And in like immediately, what came to me when I was observing the other piece of art that has this very, very similar style to it was that we are nerve endings of God, you know. And so to me, it's like, these are all of the different expressions, all the different nerve endings of source that are then out experiencing itself. And then that's how we kind of get the interconnectedness. And yeah, and then we become aware that we are that. And then that's when like, mother, like realizing itself, and then we kind of like go back to it, like ourselves. And that's what it that's what it is to me. What else? What about Yeah, what about you? That's beautiful. So I want my art to make people feel connected to their spirituality or make them feel like there's things they want to seek out and question in terms of that, of feeling interconnected to all living beings and feeling a deep and sense of compassion for the world and for everything around them. You know, people keep talking about going to space. I really enjoy terrestrial life. So this is mostly a commentary on terrestrial life. How? And how? Yeah, what? I'm mostly joking about that. This art, this art's meant for you to ask yourself questions about your own spirituality. Also, stay terrestrial, please. Well, I just think about thinking about like, yes, there's there's life beyond Earth, but staying connected to humanity and his extension of that all living beings as well. So this is heart resonance. I've created other pieces which will take a look at or to a similar theme where they're meant to make you have to focus the eye because there's a lot of movement in them through the gradient quality. Yeah. And I'm intentionally doing that because I want you to feel a bit disoriented and feel like well, what feels calming and comfortable? And that's why you have red dots complimented by by blue. And it's heart resonance because whereas my other pieces, the different faces or shape it like slightly different variations and directions, which feels like there's a lot of movement and forces the eye to study more quickly. With this one, it's you can look at it and then slowly study in on different focal points. And it's the feeling I have when and I hope many of you have or are looking for have, you know, found time and time again, when you're surrounded by people who you don't even have to finish sentences for to know that they understand you and your intentions and what what you're trying to create in the world, you feel a deep sense of of peace and comfort with that many people today refer to that as sort of your tribe. And how beautiful would it be if we really had a connection with all people what we felt that sense of we're all part of this really grand tribe. And we we constantly are connected to that. And so that's what the resonance here is meant to represent. Yeah, we can lift it up maybe so they can yeah, let's do it. So you can see. Yeah. So that one's our resonance. The red also reminds me of the heart. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe look at some of the other ones too. Let's do that. To have that warm feeling with everyone that is in the tribe. Yeah, I love that. I mean, Ram Dass had this quote, imagine if everyone was God and drag. And when you're sitting in a lift or doing whatever you're doing, going quickly throughout your day, and it's easy to sort of just like not be paying attention to people. But when you have that moment of presence with everyone you interact with, even if it's brief and just feeling connected, you can create that. And so it was always something he said, I really appreciated everyone as imagine, everyone is God and drag, God and God in drag. Oh, God in drag. Oh, yeah. Okay. Cool. Cool. I didn't know you were deaf. It's also that that quote is also speaks heavily to everyone being in their avatars or in their costumes. And then being able to kind of like switch up your costumes or your like, yeah, avatars but like remembering that it's a divine being. There's a piece later that I'm going to say some words about that we'll get to in a bit. Okay. Next is we have images. We have us we have wish me luck. Wish me luck. This this is a spiritual material. And yeah, yeah, this is go ahead. Take us take us through this journey. Well, what do you what do you see and feel when you look at this one? Ron, that one, I see a flower, I see a bees stinger. I see the earthy colors. I like it. I don't see my ex wife. The colors of the bridesmaid dresses are not in this one. That's awful. Samantha, I love you work and don't you know, my role is devil's advocate. So memory is a tricky thing. Yeah, yeah, we were just talking about that. Can server harm us. Paris on the show. Ron was just mentioning that. All right. You even before you talk to me about it, there was a meet like sitting on now cushions for however many months it's been of my life that I agree that it makes it immediately jump that there was like an essence of like a meditation happening. And then I didn't have enough time I think to look at it before you just were like one of the heads is like super in the head meditation and the other one is melting into all that is and I was like, whoa, that's cool. Yeah, so for this one, in the middle, you have two people meditating and they're sitting with their backs towards one another. And in the final piece, actually, which we'll see in a second, there's a white dot that the larger head is staring at. So the one is really focused in just meditating and becoming one with everything around him or her. And just feeling connected to the to the ether itself. The other one as they're meditating, their head, their ego, their self, it's it's all about a dialectic with how great they are for meditating, like what a good meditator they are, like how much people need to know that they meditate, right? And so that one is is sort of about these two choices you have with spirituality, like for some people can be a very private practice and very respectable for other people, they really want to share that as a gift with others, which is really beautiful, can be really beautiful as well. As long as that that desire to receive that is there is there. But what we see a lot, a lot is that you have so many people who kind of miss the point or investing so much energy in their spiritual quest by saying like, Oh, look how look how great I am at meditating or look how great I am at these different practices, rather than using them to feel connected, they're actually in that and even saying that like I've heard people say things as Oh, I'm so much more non-dualistic than you, which is like, Wow, I'm upset. You know, I've learned a lot just by the phrase. Yeah. And I think we especially see that a lot in in Silicon Valley. And what what that really says to me is that they're they're using it as a it's maybe coming from a place with fear where they're not ready to truly connect to things greater than themselves or they really don't know how and so they're using these practices to once again replicate the version of themselves that already exists. And that's what you see here. Whoa, or even augment it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The yeah, we were just a couple a couple days ago is very was very late. And we were assisting some of the garbage team with the back. And we were just assisting. And afterward, we were just talking about how it's what what matters is what you do when no one's looking. Yeah. So if you're meditating for the purpose of your own divine actualization and transcendence versus to tweet about it afterward, post yeah, etc. Go on a show telling the world so much more non-dualistic fluid. Oh, I get it. Yeah, I get it now. But yeah, those acts of kindness, that type of stuff, yeah, Ron's constantly giving young people or people that are stop, don't talk don't brag about my kindness and generosity. Lie. Tell them I'm the miserable bastard, like I appear to be anyway. I don't want to help anyone. Let them drown. Let's go to the next next image. Okay. So there's a couple in this around this. This is a close up. Yeah, so this is just a close up to give you a better sense of kind of the detailing at the center of this piece. It's quite a large piece. I actually don't remember the dimensions, but it's probably about three times the size of this one wider than this one and taller. It's probably three times the size wide. Wow. Yeah. That's huge. Yeah. Okay. And yeah, and the next one has the dot in it, the final. Yeah. So just to show that like, rather than trying to become one with source, the observation of source and interaction with it becomes that amplification. So that's why on the one side, it's you sort of like dissolve into the connection to source. And on the other side, you're observing it and like your ego grows through that process. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Or like that. I like that. This is just a hat I did from the leftover paint from that piece. So yeah, it's the hat. Yeah, it's not a painting of a woman wearing a hat. No. There is another painting I don't have a larger photo of behind me that I'm covering up. But yeah. Yeah, so I just been making with after every single piece with the leftover gradients, a hat, and then I'll give it to someone who's done something recently that I feel is like just really connected to my heart. Love it. All right. And then let's show what Okay, hold on. This one is this is freedom. Yeah. So through this, you can see by scale, that's me actually sitting behind the piece. And so you can see the size of of the piece itself. So this one's called freedom. And it's, it's sort of a nondescript being in a cloak. And all the woven parts of the being are once again, you have two themes of how they're being amplified. I think we all use our egos in different way to proxy, and maybe even more so now that we live in a world where we have so many channels for communication more than ever, but communication itself is so compressed, that people are quite reserved in, in what they're actually saying, and it's diluted down to a quick text message or a tweet. And in that world, like people showed different parts of themselves in different contexts and environments quite easily. And so there's very what you often see is that the ego is proxied into the professional self, like the mother, the daughter, the brother, the son, whatever it may be, the basketball player, and that these identities for many people have become almost like self contained. I mean, for me, I've never really shared with very many people that I create artwork or much about my work itself. So if it's in many ways a commentary on that as well. And so what you see here is that's all changed. And so what you see is the the shedding of all the different ways the ego has been proxied. And sort of once again, letting the the self in the face that's connecting forward with the world connect to source. And so it's becoming more amorphous and more that that white sort of color that is the the base for every color or the base for no color. And then the the ego proxy, I enjoyed that a lot. So then the little compressions of our ego displayed as like little posts across social platforms right now, we take on the different yeah personas depending on how we feel maybe you yeah. And how does this then relate to the ego proxy again? Yeah, so the faces on the the back that sort of like triangle shape is a bunch of different faces that are extending outward and sort of the shedding of all the different egos that have been proxied before. So this part right here, shedding of it. And then the up is towards so that's the face that's like currently being projected forward to the world. And so in this image, it's it's actually in this final state choosing to become connected to source and more amorphous. So through the connection, the the way the face looks the shape of it matters less as it's as it's sort of being projected into the world. It's amorphous. It turns into that once again, white color, which to me very much symbolizes source. Okay, so it's yeah, shed the ego proxies join source. You could read that. Yeah. Please join the source. Join the source. Yeah. May the source be with you. So happy these are happening. Oh, great. Great. Okay. All right. Excellent. So that's that's freedom. And then next is brain falls. I really enjoyed this one, too. Yeah. So this one is about wait. Oh, yeah, what do you what does this one feel like? Yeah, I want to hear what's it feel like to me. I'm losing one's mind. Okay. Yeah. Losing myself. I'm gonna or getting rid of baggage. Yeah. So it would, it's good. How about the egregious amount of the egregious amount of noise that is now in our civilization and how it is cluttering our essence and how we so desperately need to empty that noise so that we can reconnect more deeply. Yeah. So I mean, waterfalls are a beautiful thing and maybe we can also embrace what here is brain falls, things falling. Waterfalls. Yeah, cool. Waterfalls and brain falls. Yeah, brain falls, being a beautiful thing where it's just sort of like rippling out like a steady stream. You can say here's all like if you're thinking of your mind as something that can only hold on to so many thoughts or if you concentrate on certain thoughts, they become stronger and actually viscerally become stronger. So if you concentrate on things like love, like compassion based meditation, you focus on things like love. And as a result, you feel happier. There's also psychological tests that show that if you don't have if you have a dummy arm next to you, but in your field of sight, it looks like it's your arm, but it's a prosthetic and someone hits it that you feel pain. Right. And so that's, that's the way our mind works. So if we know our mind works this way, how do we wire it for being the best possible mind and for positivity, we have to focus on the positive things and get rid of all the things that no longer serve us and do that cleanse. Like some people do that, they were daily meditative practice. Some people do that, you know, every so often through all sorts of means, there's many wisdom traditions that people use. I mean, Freud, who in many ways, and inadvertently invented modern capitalism, actually helped create also a therapeutic context in which some people choose to do that. This also speaks very deeply to the information technology era that we're in the exponential technology era, because the clutter has increased. The amount of humans propagating noise has increased. Has the amount of humans propagating signal? Why is it so buried right now? Why is the truth being obfuscated? Who is behind the obfuscation of the truth? We'll talk about that later. We're going to actually, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that now. What is behind the obfuscation of the truth? Does it feel like there's something at play on planet Earth beyond the 3D physical reality? So why is it so hard to find what truth means today? And, and is there something beyond the 3D reality that is making it difficult? Are we living in a 3D reality? What do you think? What is the reality? Is it 4D with time or 11D? What is it? I think in actuality, it's very hard. I mean, back to even the simulation theory question, it's very hard to scientifically prove it one way or another. And so perhaps more interesting is how do we as a society decide what what truth means? And I think when people say we're in a post-truth world, I think we're in a disconnected world. I think we connected everyone initially via the internet and not everyone. There's many people who are still not connected technologically, but we we connected a large portion of humanity, promising this sort of, you know, idea that we would have resonance and that greatness would come from that collaboration. When in actuality, the way information was ranked and dispersed, it made people feel like polarizing views had greater weight than they do, much like a coalition government. And the result of this is having people feel like they don't know how to find the truth, they don't know what is, is truth, it's easy to spread misinformation. And when we think of how we construct reality, and how we construct truth, what is considered one person being crazy, or another person being in touch with reality is just the idea of consensus among people that this is truly what happened, and this is truth, and this is reality. And how do we create that consensus in a technical era today? I think there's many people working on that problem through different verification protocols for understanding the weight and the veracity and the source of information. I think we also offline, you know, in our day to day world, are increasingly feel disconnected from even our neighbors. You know, there was a growing up, like we knew who all of our I knew who all my neighbors were. We, I mean, I grew up in Minnesota, but we often left our doors unlocked. And I can't imagine doing that in San Francisco. I don't know who my neighbors are. I know a few of them in my building, but on the block, very few. And I think that's the experience for for many people today, especially living in urban areas. And so when we think about what is truth, what is reality today, I think we're we're collectively deciding that it's okay for our truth to be that we we don't know one another and that we're disconnected and that we're okay feeling like there's not one certain truth or we want to complain about it, but we don't want to to work to create a different reality yet. And when the true appetite is to create a different reality, because it becomes so necessary for survival, we will. What do you think? Yeah, the I feel you. I feel you too. Yeah, it resonates deeply hearing you talk about the amount of people that are that want to see a big code update with the world and putting in the hard work to make that happen. That's part of the grand game that we're in. And the verification protocols, I think is an interesting way, what the decentralization technologies are enabling us to do. I think having neologisms new words that speak to things that are more spiritual, and less material is a good way to get us there as well. Having more variations of the word of love. Yeah, all these types of things. Huh? Okay. And but beyond the planet, are there forces at play on the planet that are from beyond the planet? Do I believe in aliens? Is that where we're going? I think that. So if we look at the, the genetic variation between like the slight, the slight difference in genetic material and the great variance between a human and a banana, or like a human and an ape, and we decide that we're not going to ever shift that upwards and think that there would be great variants of a direction that seems quite statistically improbable. So we go point whatever 5% more than our last iteration. And then we're supposed to have variation that that's the Well, in general, there's with a very small, small difference in the composition of DNA. You have these tremendous differences and things from like between like humans in a banana or humans in an ape. But that's like one that's 50% homology with the banana and like 99.5 or more with Yeah. And so think about So when you when you look at the difference between us and apes, is it not presumptuous to think that there's nothing shifted upwards and variants? So that there's nothing meaning there's nothing that has variants shifted in the other direction like 0.01% difference between humans and something else that is more intelligent or involved or exist in some other way, like, or that different types of the other perception vehicles that exist on the planet that humans are not endowed with. Yeah, I think you can also I mean, there's different ways to look at the question. I think we could also look at what other types of intelligence exists on earth, like octopi. So if there's a book called other minds that talks, okay, so it talks about But yes, teachers about this. Yeah. So other minds is a really interesting read that talks about how different forms of consciousness have evolved. And one of the forms they talk about is octopi and how they're highly intelligent, and that they have a very evolved form of consciousness. And that there's actually a lot about their minds, we really don't understand. But there's reason to believe that they have, in many ways, intelligence that could be far superior to our own. And we've actually recently had I've seen increasing coverage warning people from places like the World Economic Forum not to eat octopi because I quit because it because of how smart they are. And also the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness when we just interviewed Phillip Lowe. Oh, great. Yeah. So it explicitly stated that octopi feel and are conscious. And so therefore we should not eat them. And there's there's consequences to eating them. I mean, I think I've talked with you once about like octopilarity, like, they're just going to get fed up. Yeah, we're so afraid about singularity. But like the octopi are gonna be like, no more. Yeah, the moment has come when they dominate the land. Yeah, they were like, we were peaceful. We were peaceful. We needed it for survival. Yeah. Interesting. Okay, so then out of all of the tiny blip of perception that we have, that there's so much more that even octopi, dolphins, any other sort of mass clumps of fungi or redwood forests, the way that they communicate their perception strategies and communication strategy, they're just in many ways can be superior to ours. Okay. All right. Yeah, cell phones are not that smart. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. There's still more to unpack about what's actually happening on planet Earth with you. But maybe we can maybe we'll end up getting to that. Do you think there's a global ruling elite? That's an interesting one. I think there's definitely concentrations of power among different groups of people. I think it's hard to deny that today. We're gonna get in trouble. They're gonna come after us. Should one endeavor to join these groups of? Depends on what your goals are. I mean, if we're talking about moving to a collaborative context for a better, you know, cultural paradigm that might be best fit for the survival of humanity, then that would fall more into the the dominator paradigm. And so it depends what vision you want to see exist and which one you're trying to be behind. Could it be that one could endeavor in and help transition the triangle to the circle and help update the codes without or in a way that is with the current dominators? You know, I think a friend of mine put it best when he once said there was like a group of people. I was sort of naturally shifting away just like they were in a room and I felt that they represented values and things that I did not. And so I just naturally shifted away and he commented and he's like, you do this without even realizing it. Like when people, you know, you don't even always know beforehand, but when they represent these things that don't feel aligned with you, you naturally seem to like gravitate away from them. Yeah. There's what's wrong with that? Yeah. So what? And he sort of just looked at me for a minute and said, they need us too. They. Who are they? Who are you? And what are you doing here? What did you do with the monkeys? And so on a bell curve of, let's say, spiritual actualization and connectedness, interconnectedness that if you are closer to the end where you are really melted into all that is, maybe your role is to identify people that are almost done with their pull-up into the field and help them. But if you go to people at the other tail of the bell curve or that are still in the middle, it can be really difficult. It'll be like moving a brick wall. So there's there's I think some nuance there, but I like that that point. Also, you can do cool things like make art like this that then catalyzes people in positions of power to feel more spiritually awakened and interconnected. I like that. But who controls the global ruling elite? Is it not you, Alan? Is it not me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the reptilians. Yeah, okay. All right. I know Nanki. You seem to be interviewing all these really smart people and bringing them together from different different backgrounds. I thought you had something to do with it. I don't know. She's blowing our cup around. I told you we were in trouble. Okay, let's go to the self portrait. That's the next one. Yes, there's a lot to say about this one. And I've spoken about this on the show before. Actually, I don't think Ron, what do you think about this one? I have nothing. It reminds me of a mannequin upside down with no head. And it is. It's got no head. That's his bum. And he's on a platform. He's upside down. He can't fool me. Yeah. What about you, Alan? Well, I think that there was something to me that called me towards feeling about it the way that you were describing it to me. Because, you know, I especially have had a pretty good amount of mentors in my life recently that have and just divine connection to source has also catalyzed this in me. But to see humans as other divine beings, period. And there is something that's potentially coming through humans that are acting as channels that are that are acting and maybe partially malevolent or partially benevolent ways. And so this is not necessarily to always go with the source because there could be something that someone is trying to potentially harm you with. Most people are good. I also I I'm just I'm especially for men is to treat women like they are divine beings and to make that something that is more of our essence. I am not perfect. I still have a proclivity to occasionally look in a way that is not heart centric first and not divine being first. And then I catch myself and change myself to feel that way about it. And I immediately feel better. And the same issue happens with with pornography or other behavioral mechanisms that we're not even aware of that then train us to objectify further and to not respect the divinity within women. And I actually the most divine men I know are the ones that know how to co-create with women at the peak of creative potential. So yeah, give us the thoughts on this. Yeah. So this one I just titled Self Portrait. And it's about the feelings of being viewed through your gender and that being something that instead of so many of us instead of feeling something that recognizes your beauty as a human instead objectifies you and sees you just as just as a body to be objectified. And so in this in this sort of extreme interpretation of that feeling, you can see the woman is it's her back to the viewer her hand like her arms across in front of her with her hand over her back shoulder. So it's a very sort of like guarded position. Her head's been cut off so she can't speak. And her legs are you know, caught in this cement block. And so she really has no mobility to and so it's really just that feeling that I think many many people not just women can relate to, which is that that feeling when someone it's the opposite of feeling you know, compassion and connected to people when they look at someone or treat them like you're just an object and you're voiceless and you don't have freedom of movement and you're just this thing that I'm viewing as whatever it means to me to transact across. These are very thought provoking. Yeah. And see, this is completely different than the spiritual material heart resonance, freedom. Actually, maybe there's some synergies of the freedom, but I feel like that these that these teach completely different ways of there's there's a similarity of that spiritual awakening. But yeah. Well, so with this one, I think part of the larger discussion is how do you start? Yeah, let's go to the next. My dad, if we're talking about a dominator versus a collaborative context, if we're still in a paradigm where based on gender, we're objectifying people or there's other reasons that people are objectified. But let's say if we're doing that based on gender and we can't co-create between or across genders, it's also highly, highly problematic. And so this represents a vision of a complimentary piece I'm working out of like what it looks like to when there's just total freedom of expression. Yeah. And you're seeing freedom of expression and you're just seeing completely as whatever the beauty is you're supposed to create in the world and you're seen for that first. Yeah. And so this is a piece I'm actually working on right now that I have not finished. But this one's called womb womb kind. Womb kind. Yeah. Whoa. I love the the colors of what is the one of the most sacred, if not the most sacred space, which is the womb. Yeah. Yeah. To come from that, especially men not having to carry children within them and grow them for nine months. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That for men to connect deeper to that feeling, I think it's very important and coming from that creation, from their mother. Yeah. Yeah. So this one is all about our interconnectedness as humans. We all have come from a womb. And so you're exactly right. It's the colors that represent this. It also shows sort of the way these these women in faces are turned towards each other and they're connecting with one another. But then you also have the layered faces and when you actually turn this piece and rotate in another direction, it's the minds are connected through the thoughts of the other women. So it's sort of the layered. Whoa. Yeah. Nice run. I can't believe I just pulled that off so so quickly. Yeah. Interesting. So this is another way to view it. And in this one, the the minds that gave birth to them are still influencing them. That's their, oh, their mental connection. Whoa. Whoa. Yeah. Cool. Nice. Now. OK, I'm following. I'm following. So there will be a symmetry then of what we see on the right now with what will potentially be on the on the left. Yeah. So it's less about the symmetry itself. It's more that this is a face and this is a face here. Yes. Yes. Yes. I meant with the other pieces that are not yet. Yeah. On the left. Yeah. OK. OK. So as the what comes out of the womb is then also affecting within the birth place of creation that they came from. Yeah. All of our minds are are connected in the same way that our existence is. And so you see that like these other faces are resonating with thoughts that were created by the the women, the minds that gave birth to them. Yeah. OK. And then we have heart arrhythmia is next, which is actually the the one that I was initially commenting on that I said was like nerve endings of God. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what you're OK. So you get quite an interesting view for it. It's it is a cute, cool view. Oh, I see. Yeah. Hold on. It's cool because when you view the art this way, almost something a little bit different comes out. How does this one make you feel there was something a little bit more hierarchical and less hierarchical about it? About this one when it was flipped on its side, OK? Because then it almost looked like there was a dominator in that sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But here it looks much more hierarchical, decentralized, but also, oh, oh, I also see you you start with deeper shades. You start with the deeper colors, darker colors in that in the in the center of the centers on this one on heart arrhythmia. But then on heart resonance on heart resonance is this one's it goes down. It goes darker gradient as it goes down. So these are lighter in the centers. It's all fluid. Interesting. Yeah. OK. It's all fluid. The. Yeah. So this is the one that you described as people are really for you. You describe it as being inspiring because it reminded you that people are almost like the nerve endings of source or God. Yes. Yes. And so all of their emotions and their being is is connected to that and that you can see and feel that here. So these are sister paintings and heart resonance is supposed to be both of them have these dots that are these focal points that draw the eye and when you're viewing the painting to to study your focus because if you stare at this long enough, it looks like it's moving. It's so busy and chaotic and you need your eye to retreat to a certain focal point so you feel steady and it becomes less dizzying. And the degree to which it's dizzying is amplified when everyone's kind of like in a different a different resonance. They're not beating together to the same sort of the same sort of drum. They're not in resonance. They're not in vibration with one another. And all of that movement is quite chaotic and you're like looking for the dot almost as a place of retreat from it. And it's not a bad thing, but it's a rhythmic in terms of the heart's not in sync and beating together. Everyone's doing their own thing. They're not collaborating. This would be more the dominator paradigm. And this other one, heart resonance is that feeling that there are these points of retreat visually for the eye and you can center on them. But your your your focus isn't shifted to do that as sharply or as quickly because of the lack of the lack of movement that is not in residence. So in this, all of the faces are equally distanced apart. They're they're the same outline, whereas these are different faces. Different. Yeah, I noticed that. Yes. Some of the noses are different. The lips are different. Yeah. The head shapes are different. Yeah. Oh, these are this and these are the same. And those are uniform. These are uniform. Interesting. There's some that are making out on here. Don't tell anyone. It's pretty hot. That's when that's lots of love. OK, cool. And then and the next one is this watercolor sketch. You could please explain to us your process of making the art. Yeah. So for the painting we viewed earlier called Freedom, this is the watercolor and sketch I did prior to to map out what I was going to do. And so usually I won't always use watercolors, but usually I'll kind of map out and draw out what what I want to put on the canvas. And so for this one, I started playing with these gradients of blue. And I didn't even know what I was trying to say at first when I was drawing it. And I often feel this way with with art and creating it. It's like I create these these drawings or these images and it's just like flowing out of me of these ways that I feel and I'm thinking about things and don't yet quite know how to digest them with words. And then often I look at it and I'm like to start laughing or or sometimes feel sad. So I'm like, oh, that's what that's what I'm digesting. That's what this feels like and means. And then I'll spend, you know, the the weeks or months that it takes to paint it to digesting and meditating sort of on that subject and how it feels. And it often also curates what I start reading about or diving more deeply into because I realize that my mind feels a need to digest that more and learn more about it. Yeah. Or my heart too. I try to keep them connected. Yes. Yes. And then is this then so once you start this process of kind of of channeling what is what is cooking up within you through you onto onto art? Is this usually sketched and then watercolor? Does that usually the process before you take it to canvas? Usually so a few of them like the self portrait and brain falls. I didn't sketch or anything first. I just went straight to the canvas and started painting them for for these ones. And so for heart resonance and heart arrhythmia and spiritual material and freedom, all of those I sketched first and used watercolors first to get a sense for them. Yeah, womb kind. No, that was another one where I just went straight to the campus to start painting. This also speaks to me the heart resonance and heart arrhythmia speak to me about the about the interconnectedness of all of us independent of the variable of our skin color. Yeah, the one that speaks to me about. And then. OK, what about is let's let's let's jump to is consciousness localized in our nervous system? Does it come from beyond this vehicle that we reside in? What are your thoughts on that? I mean, our mind, I think of more as like a TV, right? So we think of many people think of their minds as consciousness is the same thing mapped on to one another, whereas really our mind is just a TV taking in inputs from all of the the data points and sensory stimulation around us and really the entire world to project images. And the more we put ourselves in proximity to certain images, the more that's what we see and think of as reality in the world. And so there's there's power in viewing reality in such a way because you realize that that nothing is permanent and that you can actually shift the things that you're consuming or thinking about or seeing to play different things. On the TV channel or in your mind. And so, you know, there's people call it like super hippie dippy or who to say things like, oh, such good vibes, good vibrations only. But really, in terms of like resonance theory, like that it actually like it scientifically makes more and more sense. And it is important that things were we're digesting, especially in an age where there seems to be endless access to information with varying qualities of maybe truth to it. But the access point is there and you can digest endlessly. And so how do we make sure we're getting rid of things if we have too much in our mind? Or how do we make sure that we're focusing on things that we want to to comprise our consciousness? People probably do a really good job on the show of taking the questions that I asked them and then answering it in the way that they want to answer it. And I'm just not. That's just media training. So what you want to hear, it's what we want to say. You gave a fantastic answer. So addressing the core part of it is like I'll address another part that I think is very interesting. But that's a that's a really good way to put it. To be vigilant of the inputs we take in and also that we can then potentially even tune into other channels. I can tune into your channel or Ron's channel. I can tune into an animal's channel, the collective consciousness channel. Can you really do a good job at continuing to tap into those that are seemingly different from you? But that can you get there? Can you can you do that to to feel the the different channels of source? Another good way to put it is if you are running a simulation or if you are an another species, can you potentially tune into what the human experiment is doing between the channels of the humans or between the channels of the from behind their eyes? Like that. OK, we already talked about this a little bit earlier. What are we going to do with the future of the way that we treat things with value? It doesn't seem like GDP cares much about human well-being or or creativity. If if like if basically if you took this piece of art around Heart Resonance and you said things and you and nobody in the world cared about it. Yeah. And then we'd be like, oh, there's no value in it. Or infinite value. So in terms of sort of the way we're shifting understandings of value, I think it's important to root them and like, well, what is value? What is reality? We talked about earlier, which is just consensus that something is true and something exists. So by extension, one manifestation of our collective consciousness would be the realities that we agree agree on in terms of governance. And right now we have people who are at the cutting edge. If we talk about governance in terms of monetary policy or in terms of how we transact or store or understand value, we're working on things like distributed ledger technology and blockchain and crypto and especially in Silicon Valley, we hear about these so often and in many ways it's overhyped. And in many ways it's not. We're just at the very beginning of what these technologies can do. I think when you're talking about, you know, Dominator versus collaborator, cultural context or financial context, what's very promising about the innovations for for not all, but many of these new, let's say system designs for for money or for stores of value is that within them, you can create smart contracts where you can create not all of them, but in many of them, like Ethereum, you can create smart contracts, which allow us to you can think of it in one way embed cultural values or social values or even a social welfare system, perhaps, into a monetary system or a governance system of value. We come from source in many ways to not participate in the social, political, economic machinery. We come to connect back to source and to experience life at its fullest. And I don't think the social, political, economic machinery does any of that. I think it's a big machine that sucks the beautiful planet in and churns it out into bullshit that is super unnecessary for people. What are you doing about it, punk? Yeah. So just some thoughts. Yeah, I hear you. But, you know, bitching about it. That's acquiesce. It's not it's not bitching. It's it's conversation about it. And then do something about it then. Well, I think we'll want to. We are slowly. There's many things we can do. I mean, one thing you can do is raise awareness about that. But, you know, this most of the world, most of consciousness, most of reality is just a bunch of stories. It's a bunch of stories that we're telling ourselves and we're telling each other and we're passing on generation to generation. Maybe we're even epigenetically encoding within ourselves to create survival traits and, you know, adaptivity amongst our offspring. But amongst all of these stories, one we can start shifting is that you don't need to dominate to survive. They can collaborate. You don't need to have climb up a corporate ladder necessarily and look for fame or look for self-love or look for happiness or look for tons of money there. Sure, maybe you'll find fame. Maybe you'll find money. But if ultimately you're looking for love and happiness and you get to the top and you look down, you're like, why don't I still feel this? Where are those things if they weren't here? You see this this narrative play out again and again, especially in Silicon Valley, where I think a lot of creation, not all, but a lot is fear based. People feeling like they need to prove themselves. They need to create something for the sake of of proving that they're valuable. When really what they're saying is that they don't love themselves yet. Because if they did, they'd realize they already are valuable. Everyone's valuable or that they think that they need to, you know, people in our current system oftentimes think they need to accumulate capital to prove that there were something. And then you find that a lot of the wealthiest people are some of the most unhappy. And so really where does this feeling of of joy and love come from, if not from that? And I think we can educate people about that. I think we have power to do things and the consumer choices we make. I mean, we can choose to consume a bunch of things because we're buying into this story that if you have been latest iPhone or the nicest car or you live in a flashy apartment that people respect you and want to be your friend and that you'll be valuable. But if we choose to look at those choices and say, oh, well, those actually make me feel or be those things. Does that embody the person I want to be in my values? If we if we become more critical in that sense and encourage others to, then I think we're doing something with every choice we make. Yeah, your point on stories is is massive. I love that. What's the most beautiful thing in the world? Love. A little bit more. Yeah, I mean, Einstein wrote this beautiful letter to his daughter. I don't know if you've ever read it. It was recently given to the the archives at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. And it's a letter in which he describes a sense that the world is not really ready to hear about the most powerful energetic source known to humanity and that it's the only thing that has that man won't be able to control, that has the ability to produce infinite light and energy and that is always replenishable and that this thing is love. And he actually talks in this letter about how love fits into all of his different theories and that it's so important that his his daughter recognizes that this is the most powerful energy source in the entire world. And so I think we have an opportunity at every moment to tap into that, to tap into feeling love for ourselves, to tap into feeling love for others, love for art, love for whatever strikes a creative cord for us, a collaborative cord. Chinese food. Might be. Love for Chinese food. That love is creation and that love can also be seen as hydrogen and oxygen coming together to form water. It's not just love that's creation. Get over that. The universe is very violent. Don't you know anything about tough love? It's not, you know, don't be be careful. You'll get burned. And maybe you get burned in that you have to keep saying like, I'll get burned a little bit here and there to live a life. And then we're mindless zombies. All dancing around the maple in an ignorant bliss. For the working for the alien with big eyes, gray skin and we all look like. It may be or it might be that they can take it. It might be that we feel closer and closer to people around us. If we choose to, even though some people show us they don't have the that maybe they've learned not to trust or maybe they've been shown that they can get burned. But instead of treating everyone in the world like they're going to burn them or that they deserved his trust to give them that chance. Because I mean, do you want to leave a world where you're closed off from people and you can't trust them and you don't know who your neighbors are and you're rooted in fear or do you want to get burned every so often, but always assume the best in and choose to be rooted in love. Let's get there together. Let's build that future. Yeah. Samantha, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's great to be here. Thank you. Thank you. So happy we finally made it. Hopefully, hopefully for more of these epic conversations, as also the art progresses, yeah, it will be very fun to continue coming and talking about it. Wow. So many cool topics covered. Thank you everyone for tuning in. We greatly appreciate it. We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode. Let us know what you're thinking. Also, do check out the links in the bio and go and follow Samantha across Instagram, Twitter, her website. Go and check that out. Have more conversations with your friends, your families, co-workers, people online about spiritual art and about spiritual awakening through art. Have more conversations about it. Also, shout out to Ron Vagus for producing and directing. Thank you very much, Ron. And also support the artists, the entrepreneurs, the organizations, the spiritual leaders around the world that you believe in support them. Support simulation. Help us continue growing the show and prospering. You can find our Patreon, Cryptocurrency, PayPal links in the bio below, Design Cool Merch and Get Paid. That's down there as well. And go and build the future. Manifest your dreams into the world. Thank you very much for tuning in. We'll see you soon. Peace.