 Hello everybody and welcome. It just gets better and better every year. In a seemingly darkening time, we willingly enter the darkness and thereby we witness and experience the inner light of illumination. And that makes all the difference. In a time too often voiced in anger, fear, and pessimism, all you have to do is enter the tank or be here, listen, see, and feel to know that all is not unwell. We come together to learn and to celebrate the float experience. Through this experience, we learn to play in the deep, to descend and ascend simultaneously. There is nothing deprived in this state. On the contrary, we become enhanced and interconnected. We begin to understand that our self or essence or soul and the soul of the other and the world are not separate. They are intertwined. They are commingled. We begin to undertake the art and the work of the witness. And maybe we sense the Buddhist principles of codependent arising, impermanence, and non-self. And thus increase our compassion. We learn that the self isn't an entity. It is a process. We begin to understand the insistence of opening. In this state, theta, fluid, flux state, there is a oneness in which we know we are part of an interconnected whole within the whole of each moment. It has been my goal for years and more insistently now and in the future to create a spiritology of the float experience, which will walk hand in hand with the neurology, the psychology, the technology, the mythology, and the scholarship of this field. For is it not through our spirit that we develop a discernment for wonder, which can then become the impetus to demystify mystery, which leads, of course, to another mystery and hence to science. And here, we have been hearing science with the heart. Through my past talks and my study, I have related the float experience to numerous different concepts and theories, and I would like to revisit a couple, three of those that I think are interesting in relation to the float experience. In the tank, we are suspended, which brings us to suspension dynamics. As a structural integrator and fossil anatomist, we know that through skillful therapeutic intervention with the fossil system, there is the creation of a suspension dynamic, the result of which increases ease, effectiveness, and levity of the organism in the gravitational field. It appears that the float experience structurally produces a similar effect. And in the development of a single session format designed for post-float, it's amazing to see the increased ease and access of accessing deep, intrinsic core structures with an increased awareness and applicability of the client. Another concept is panpsychism. The belief that mind or consciousness is ubiquitous, that it inhabits everything in the universe, and that our consciousness is a folding or a complexification of this greater, which allows us self-reflection. To quote Christoph Koch, neuroscientist, we are suffused with sentience. We are surrounded and immersed in consciousness. There is the poised state of Stuart Kaufman, which is the state between quantum coherence and the decoherent state of classical reality. There is the Buddhist plenum void, which is the no-thingness, the utter presence. There is the dial, or the way, which is the ultimate presence, that which passes through us, the underlying natural order. In continuing in the exploration of the float experience, the term I'm now using is the protean potential state. The term protean, meaning ever-changing and fluid nature, and potential, of course, pre-state impossibility. The protean potential state, entered through the doorway of theta, is a de-differentiated de-defined state in which all is in a fluid potential. To be immersed in this state, to float in the formless, allows one to possibly recreate or reform oneself and one's life. This state leads to a heightening of sensory and experiential awareness, and thus creativity and, ultimately, to opening. Is this not the work of the tank? To enter the uncreated so as to create. A form of contemplation which can lead to a contemplative ecology. The poet Gary Snyder says, we are it, it sings through us. It is here where you can develop a fierce goodness and kindness in the face of the world. It is here where you can deconstruct neuro-dogmatism, the overlie of ideas and demands creating preferred pathways of control and acquiescence. It is here where a more open, receptive consciousness becomes the fluid ground which enables us to formulate an alternative vision of life that can serve as a source of spiritual, political, and ecological renewal. It is here where we slow, and when we slow, we open. And when we open, we connect. And when we connect, we enhance. And in enhancement, we can't help but love. I would like to close with three brief fragments from an upcoming work that is subtitled Explorations in Archetypal Evolution. The first ones came from the forest. Bird-boned and busy, they touched everything and thus were touched. They were diaphanous beings of experience. They burned bright and burned out. But what lingers is that sensation found manifestation. The second ones came down from the mountains, rough-hewn and robust. They defined ground. They were the first to look deeply. They taught us that we are mineral become grace. They solidified, became stone and bone. But what lingers is the evolution from paying attention to being attention, a bone-deep sensibility, silence. And the final wave came in with the tide. But their voice was first heard in the river in the rain. They came in the time of the troubles. They were fluid, become form. They spoke of the all and its manifestations. Maybe they were nature's attempt to realize essence. They taught us that we were beings of becoming, that we are for the sake of the world. What lingers is us, immersed, enhanced, connected. And in this new old water faith to float is to pray. Thank you.