 Welcome everyone to our next panel on our third and final day for our 39th annual conference here at the anthropology of consciousness sea change life worlds and ecological upheaval. I'm the president of the organization. Andy Gervitch and I am extremely happy that all of you are joining us for this panel. This is one of the ones I keep saying this but this is absolutely true that I've been most looking forward to in this whole in this whole arrangement. I want to start as I've started all the sessions with a quick land acknowledgement I'm speaking to you today from a place now called Portland, Oregon. It rests on the traditional village sites of tribes such as the Multnomah, the Catholic myth, the Clackamas, the Chinook, the Tualatin Kalapua, the Malala and many other tribes and bands as the original caretakers of this land. We want to begin our session by acknowledging their presence, their dignity and a continued struggle for respect, restoration and reparations. I am here because they were here first. We are here speaking to you in the capacity that we are because they were displaced from this land and it is our hope as an organization to do our part to speak to that and to be a part of changing that narrative. We're in a webinar format today and so you will notice that our panelists have video and audio capabilities but if you're an attendee, you do not. And so just a couple of quick announcements about that please turn your chat box on as soon as possible. We're going to be populating the chat with all kinds of stuff throughout the conversation. It's a great place for you to post comments as things come up. And one of the speakers says something that triggers an idea or something you want to share with the group or an article or something you've written or something you know about. Great place is to drop those kinds of things in the chat. We're going to be populating that space with things about how to get in contact with us with questions, information about upcoming sessions, so on and so forth. So have that chat box on it's going to be very active, starting immediately. If you have a question for the panelists we're going to handle the questions I believe towards the end and so we have time for all of the panelists to get their presentation in. Please, if you roll your cursor over the bottom of the screen you'll see a Q&A button over your zoom screen towards the far right. If you click that you can begin to populate questions there as soon as you have them and they'll show up into a queue and we'll be able to ask them to the panelists when the Q&A session comes. If you want to drop a question into the chat by all means do that but we'd really rather have it in the Q&A so we can keep them separate from all of the other activity going on in the chat room. You also have a live transcript if audio captioning is helpful to you. You can click that button and turn on show captioning show subtitles. It's an AI generated captioning service from Zoom. It does pretty well it gets at about 90% and if you have that as an accessibility need or just see it as a benefit to engage that captioning please do turn it on. It isn't perfect and so some folks find it disturbing and confusing and so if it's bothering you you absolutely can turn it off and not engage it. Okay, now on to our panel. The panel is entitled embody ecologies engaging the world through self and our first presenter is Margaret Brady. You come to us from, oh my God, I'm going to butcher the French. All right, the Ecole de Hout etude. Yeah, yes. That's close boy. Hopefully you can save me from my butchered French there. And you're going to speak to us on being an observer while being a participant when one's analysis includes the thinking feeling embodied experience of the researcher reflections from a study on a center of the new Japanese region of 10 Rikio located in a Parisian suburb. So thank you Margaret and welcome. Yes. Thank you very much. I'm very excited to be participating in this panel. And today I will be discussing aspects of an insights acquired through my dissertation research that I recently defended in December 2020. Titled Constructing a transnational community via a new Japanese religion the case of a 10 Rikio Center in a Parisian suburb. The topic of my dissertation only came to me. Following the conclusion of my two year period of what I refer to as concentrated fieldwork. After having unintentionally stumbled into this research context, when conducting my doctoral research on other evolving topics concerning Japanese people living in the Paris region. Throughout my fieldwork, although I was highly involved in the religiously focused social world on which my research was centered. I maintained that I was a researcher and not a follower of the 10 Rikio religion myself. And yet the topic of my thesis only came to me organically through organically developed experiential knowledge by being an insider in my own way, which was partially facilitated through there being multiple types of insiders and a lack of an actual divide between insiders and outsiders in this group. This is something I came to understand over time through participating in overlapping spheres of it. My perspective of what was happening in the larger interconnected social whole came about in a manner that was strongly outs inside out, rather than outside in. Before continuing on to discuss the particular context of my research in relation to today's panel topic. I would like to briefly outline the new Japanese religion of 10 Rikio, which even in Japan is not unanimously a known, particularly apart from some general information about it, such as that it is based in a pilgrimage town named me city located in the not a prefecture of Japan. 10 Rikio is said to have been founded in 1838 by an agrarian Japanese woman, after the divine figure of God the parent took her as its shrine, and conveyed its divine teachings through her. According to 10 Rikio doctrine, God the parent decided to create humans as its children so that we could live joyously and help one another as brothers and sisters with God the parent motivated by a desire to share in our joy, just as human parents share in the joy of their children. It's fine though, humans have accumulated harmful tendencies referred to in 10 Rikio as dust on their hearts and minds, which hinder our physical emotional and social well being. The path of 10 Rikio is aimed at clearing away these dust, thereby bringing about humanities ultimate salvivic destiny of the joyous life, explained to be one of gratitude and working toward the well being of others. The ritual help and human harmony positioned as pro social dynamics promoted as the ultimate ontological trajectory of our existence. 10 Rikio's main religious ritual of the service is composed of a series of scripted songs with accompanying dances and as a primary conveyor of 10 Rikio theology, which reflected central teachings and is also chiefly important to understanding the broader 10 Rikio mode of sociality, which is key to the functioning of the broader group on which my research was focused. 10 Rikio continues to be majoritarily based in Japan, but there is also a 10 Rikio presence in other countries. This presence initially came about in now former Japanese colonies, and among Japanese immigrant communities. Then, after the end of World War two 10 Rikio purposefully underwent significant changes, including efforts directed toward expanding its overseas presence. 10 Rikio Europe Center, ie tech at which my research was centered in 1970 in a Parisian suburb was part of these post war expansion efforts. Tech is simultaneously a 10 Rikio site for people living in the Paris area. The central point of unification and organization for followers in Europe, and for people who do not consider themselves followers of the religion but were nonetheless associated with it somehow. And relatedly the central point from which the spread of this faith to the European continent is organized and supported. Moreover, tech is closely affiliated with a Japanese cultural center and language school in central Paris at which the religion is generally mentioned, not mentioned due to its categorically non religious, like status in a country where there is ideally a strict separation between the secular and the religious. A topic for which much more could be said, where there no time limit for this presentation. In my dissertation, I assert that there are multiple overlapping spheres that together constitute a larger social group, which I refer to you collectively as the tech community. Although I was adamant throughout my field work that I was first and foremost a researcher, whose participation was motivated by an academic rather than spiritual pursuit. The larger vision of the multi layered and interconnected social world of the tech community and the complexities involved in its ongoing construction came directly from my prolonged and sincerely personal participation in it. Otherwise said, I came to have the insights over time that I did, because I too was involved and became a member in my own way of the group on which my research was focused. Although my own story of inclusion in an experience with the social world was not identical to anyone else's. This did not render me an outsider because in reality. I collected composition of people and experiences included in it, through which aspects of my experience and my own story could help shed light on various aspects of other peoples. In my work, I consistently made efforts to be mindful of my own experiences, while also being attuned to that of others, and reflective of what the combination of these two levels of focus could help illuminate concerning the greater whole on which my research was focused. I am now going to discuss the ritual and the monthly service that occurred at tech, and was linked to other monthly service rituals elsewhere. But this was that was a centrally important source of community construction. Before just beginning my discussion on this ritual, I would like to briefly share with you if I am able to share my screen. So briefly what the service is. This is not from the specific site where I did my study but it's not actually. It's not actually important because everywhere in the world the service is exactly the same. So this is a brief snippet of the ritual that I am discussing. Hopefully everyone can see my screen. So the second part of what I just showed is not that important. It's the first part that I was wanting to show where everyone's in ceremonial. Okay, so that is just a brief snippet. Both what I watched by myself in private and also what I just shared. That's a brief snippet of the ritual that I'm discussing. And it is this ritual that is at the center of the Ten Mikio faith. And which functions as a binding thread of social unison both for Ten Mikio followers throughout the world. And on the broader tech community that the multi layered community of various people associated with this Paris Center, including members of it, who do not view their religious identity as being Ten Mikio, nor do they participate in this ritual. I assert that nonetheless, that this ritual is emanating out to influence the greater social hole. And this perspective is one that I came to have through regular attendance of it coupled with significant participation in multiple other contexts that involve the greater whole of the tech community. Being mindful of my own experience in concert with those as displayed by others helped me and better understand my research context in an intimately felt way in which I was looking at it simultaneously from an inside out and outside in perspective. For these monthly gatherings at tech, there were approximately 30 to 40 people in attendance, about two thirds were female 60 to 65% were Japanese, or in the case of several young adults, the children of Japanese missionary parents born in Europe, about 10% were French with remaining 25 to 30% composed of numerous other nationalities. The ritual of the monthly service is divided into three components, which each have a different composition of ritual actors which with each segment requiring 15 people, thereby holding the potential for a multitude of people to actively take part in its performance. Despite this, it was core members of the tech community, who are most often Japanese and born into and raised in the faith, who served as performers while others in attendance, many of whom were positioned in more of the peripheral role of the tech community, watched and listened to this ritual performance from the audience section of tech sanctuary, which was my own vantage point for these ritual gatherings. One was whether one was a ritual actor, or in the more passive role as exclusively an attendee in the audience section. Through attending the monthly service, one was sensorially taking part in a rich immersive experience that is enacted in like manner at other Tenmikyo sites, regardless of location, thereby experientially linking the tech monthly service with the broader sphere of Tenmikyo. Each month, the monthly service began with soul provoking sounds of traditional Japanese ceremonial music, thereby serving as an auditory opener to the experience of the monthly service. In this ritual commencement, a combination of long, almost haunting notes mixed with short staccato sounds signaled to us that we were beginning this monthly ritual. Over the course of my fieldwork, its distinct sounds became familiar to me and signaled in a different way than concrete intellectualization that the Tenmikyo monthly service was beginning. In my own experience, which my observations suggested to be similar to that of at least some other attendees, these sounds served as an opening to entering into a state that was slightly altered from that of my common day to day experience. This slightly other state that I encountered in myself, largely through subtle emotional embodied and cognitive differences, was the interwoven component of my attending the entirety of the ritual. The slightly different experiential state that I encountered during this ritual encouraged a partially conditioned response in me that provoked such a state to come about when again exposed to this multi-sensorial stimuli of the service that encouraged the inhabitants of an alternative state. This was evidenced, for example, through that at any given time after the first few minutes of the service, while most in attendance remained in a visually normal state, some closed their eyes and appeared to partially drift off, subtly rocking back and forth in rhythm with the percussion instruments emitting their repetitive cadence of the service songs, visual cues which suggested a slightly altered state into which some people drifted in and out. The switching of psychological states from that of the everyday to that associated with the sacrality of the service, which then encouraged interactions reflective of Taniqo's ideal social modality outside the specific context of this ritual and in the broader groups of both specifically in attendance, and that of the broader tech community, occurred not only through the sounds and vibrations of the music, but via a variety of other stimulator beings. Through these experiential transformers, the way in which this ritual was encountered and embodied previously and the associations with it that were created over time, promoted a re-entering of such a state as a developed response to its recurrently present multi-sensorial stimuli. Another important of the ritual was the ritualized addressal to the three entities of the ancestors, God the parent and the founders, represented by altues via kinesthetic and sonorally based act of clapping four times and bowing to each of them in reverence at transitional points of the service. Through enacting the expression of reverence together, we were enacting embodied unison via bodily movement and sound. The concept of operating in unity with others is expressly conveyed through the prominent Taniqo term of ite hitotsu, which was explained to translate into English as unity of mind and refers to working together toward a common goal, as reverential act. Clearly explained by the head of tech during an instructional moment is that whether what is more important than whether or not a person performs skillfully in a particular role is that the ritual actors are paying attention to each other and aligning their individual performative roles with the performance of others. In this interactive patterns were clearly put in the forefront. In relation to this point, I sometimes heard it specifically mentioned that this collaborative harmonizing aspect of the ritual is excellent training to take to develop in oneself through the synergetic nature of its performance and take thereafter with oneself into the world. This developmental capacity was largely attributed to the rituals ability to encourage a close attention to others and a disposition directed toward making efforts to harmonize oneself with others. This highly important monthly ritual event attack encouraged this mode of collaborative relational concordance with one another to transcend beyond the ritual to also be present in the dominant mode of sociality of scenes that took place at the center and in context connected to the center that took place elsewhere. The basic point that I wish to touch on today is that my understanding of how this ritual event emanated out to influence the social modality of the broader tech community was one that was acquired partially through my own experiences of being a thinking feeling participant, while simultaneously making efforts to be highly attuned to displayed indicators of the experience of others immediately involved and connectedly to the broader social whole of this multi layered group on which my research was focused. Although there is much more to say on being an observer while being a participant specifically in relation to the context I briefly discussed for now I would like to simply thank you for your attention. And for taking part in this panel. And that is it. Margaret thank you so much for kicking off this panel with a fabulous presentation and very thought provoking I'm sure there's going to be some questions coming in. For the second time we want to move right to our next presenter Cassandra white teaches at Georgia State University she'll be speaking with us about decolonization and personalization and contemporary teaching about religious practice and experience and I just want to say, Cassandra has been a great presence throughout this conference and has a great influence on this organization was one of the mentors and teachers of the program coordinator, Mark Flanagan and so Cassandra welcome. Thank you for releasing Mark into the world. And thank you for being here over to you. Thank you so much. Okay I'm going to start sharing my screen. Yeah, and I also want to say a brief thank you to the organizers. This has been a great really well organized virtual conference I've been enjoying all the panels and everything I've been able to attend. So this paper today is more or less me thinking out loud about some of the things that have come up since I started teaching anthropology courses that were more wholly focused on religion spirituality and phenomenology. I guess is sort of a rambling auto ethnography about my own teaching, but also a description of a plan for future research on a project to understand what other anthropologists are thinking about and doing today and teaching about religion and what has changed since they were students. So that's still an IRB actually so I don't have results about that part yet. Okay, my first course on the anthropology religion was at the University of Florida, a long time ago, early 1990s. I felt kind of constrained by the parameters of the course, the readings and the choices for research projects. We were supposed to choose an organized religion to study, but I was more interested in people's personal beliefs rituals for personal protection and phenomenological experiences that did not fit neatly into organized religion. So I did a project on that topic and conducting a ton of surveys and interviews, and I thought the professor would be so impressed that he would overlook the fact that I didn't follow the rubric or the guidelines of the class but that's never the case. He was not impressed. Okay, so it kind of started me on studying the anthropology religion at all as it seemed to be very focused on structure and function, and less on lived experience. But it bothered me because it seemed to sort of Dean these beliefs as less important than organized religious systems and I found through that small research project that personal beliefs are very meaningful and structuring people's lives. I kept focusing on medical anthropology at the PhD level and courses on medical anthropology with Dr. Adeline Mascalier Tulane really sparked my interest in religion again. But it was through research on the lived experience of leprosy or Hansen's disease treatment in Brazil that I started asking people about the role of religion in their healing. I used to term from Sydney Greenfield. Brazil is kind of a religious marketplace there are so many different choices for religious beliefs and a lot of people switch back and forth between different religions or, you know, maybe you belong to multiple religions at once. So although the multi drug therapy treatment for Hansen's disease or leprosy is essential to cure the disease, the role of religion and the case of people I interviewed in Rio de Janeiro. I was especially involved in spiritualism and evangelical church participation. This was important for their overall wellness, sometimes in the more practical sense of just churches organizing housing and financial support for people affected by Hansen's disease but also spiritual support that helped with depression and social isolation. So, I had come to think of religion especially organized religion is something sort of limiting and restricting but in Brazil, even if the structures for example of the Protestant evangelical churches there, or sort of problematic and even corrupt. The personal participation in these churches could actually be liberating. I had a chance to attend a talk by one of virtual talk by one of my Brazilian friends and colleagues Dr. Moises Lena Silva, and he says something that articulated this point well. Related to his work with people who identify as Travis cheese in the favela community where he worked in Rio de Janeiro and Travis she is a gender identity that is not quite the same as trans identity or trans women. The literal literal translation is something someone who processes but that identity is more complicated I won't get into it here but anyway that's the top of his book. It's still a stigmatized identity in Brazil. And Dr. Silva talked about how people who identify as Travis cheese find freedom or liberty adji in Portuguese and belonging in the dual experience of spirit possession in the Afro Brazilian churches and subsequent exorcism in evangelical churches and and going sort of back and forth so where the or shaz or the gods that they have been possessed by through participation and kind of play or bond of the Afro Brazilian religions are seen to be issues or demons or evil spirits and the Protestant church. And yes, they would just kind of like be part of both churches and it gave them a sense of belonging so this is another example of, I think personalized experience of organized religion, serving in unexpected ways. And this is one of the chapters of his book. That's coming out it's not out yet but he was talking about at this Harvard event. His book is my northerian liberalism a Travis G life and a Brazilian favela. Okay. So to get back up teaching about religion. I piloted a class a few years ago that was inspired by a few things. I saw that a colleague of mine, Ron Barrett was co teaching a course called defense against the dark arts, which of course was a Hogwarts course and they if you really with a Harry Potter series so I stole that title from him, and I guess JK Rowling. I taught this course as a special or selected topics class at Georgia State where I teach I taught it a few times before deciding to switch the title. When I formalize the course, and I'll be teaching it this summer. But there's some one because of some problematic aspects of JK Rowling's work in terms of cultural appropriation as well as her recent queries into basically transphobia and Twitter and elsewhere might be familiar with that. So I think the arts itself is kind of problematic. But anyway, so I have switched the course to focus on non empirical what I call saying non empirical beings, and how they are experienced cross culturally, which seem to cover a lot of the things that we were talking about in the class already from spirit in Brazil and Sudan topics like sleep paralysis, monsters and how they're constructed and understood cross culturally. It includes all so that the course will include discussions of spirit beings gods entities, non empirical creatures monsters etc. Last summer in particular, when I taught this course one of the first I was beans that regain significance with the pandemic. I had people seeking them out for protection, my personal favorite being the Mabye, a murdered, you'll find Japan, you'll kind of like spirit being that in initially warned of a pandemic in the 1800s but who has been revived and offered us a memory or amulet sort of a shrines and was incorporated into coven prevention this year. So, also just granted to briefly highlight these two really amazing edited volumes about monsters and Monster Anthropology. One is Monster Anthropology Australia, Australasia and beyond, which includes Fiji Iceland, the country of Georgia, a second edited volume that same authors put out. So students really connected to these chapters because they link monsters in different parts of the world to historical and political contexts in each place and show how much these different monsters and different cultures like shape people's lives and in the everyday, not just, you know, kind of stories they tell once in a while. So course titles aside. It's always to be intentional about seeking the work of ethnographers of different racial ethnic and gender identities, while still referencing classic concepts from 19th and 20th century anthropologists and ethnographers. Some of the ethnographers whose works I'm using are pictured here, a Shelley Adler, Graham Jones, Janice Body, Sydney Greenfield, Ali Raysadoustar, Edith Turner, Tanya Lerman, Yasmin Musharvash, I think. So for example, if you're talking about Edith Turner's fascinating work within UPAC and the hands feel it and other essays she's written about experiencing the spirit world and writing about it. I also discussed Victor Turner's work as well as how the spouses and wives of many male anthropologists played a significant role in in their research in the 20th century and how in her case it led her to develop a separate research agenda and become a respected anthropologist from, right. So this project of reworking anthropology in general is not a new one but it's been that's ongoing. And as Fay Harrison suggested in an interview, the 2016 interview about the decolonization of anthropology she said is important to quote, recognize people's full humanity that of course means we recognize their wisdom, their intelligence, their capacity to produce forms of knowledge that include potentially powerful interpretations and explanatory accounts of the world, which give us clues to then create strategies to change the world. This reminds me of your familiar with Paulo Freire, his philosophy is a pedagogy, because this extends not only to the research we do as anthropologists, but to our approaches to teaching and what perspectives we choose to include or exclude. I tried to make my teaching less didactic and more cooperative, a more cooperative experience and find ways in which students perspectives can inform my teaching and can contribute to what others are learning. So what I'm seeing myself as more of a facilitator, providing them with the readings but we're all participants. So I teach at Georgia State University, which has a very diverse student body. You can see these graphs. In terms of both, yeah, ethnic or racial identity, even age, we have a policy in Georgia like people who are over 62 can attend University for free so we've had many students are in classes of different ages and who have a variety of different experiences and experiences they can kind of contribute to the class. So I feel they have so much to teach me about their experiences with religion and spirituality and the non empirical. And this is from the first time I taught this class when it was defense against the dark arts. When we had classes in person which was so nice. And of course the virtual and often asynchronous setting can make that a little more different, sorry a little more difficult. So there are kind of we do online discussions and I fell in some ways students who are more timid about speaking in class have an easier time sharing in online discussions. So that that's been a positive aspect of moving classes to virtual settings, giving assignments that are prompts to approach non empirical experiences in a sort of matter of fact way with prompting examples from my own experiences, and those of others. So I have experienced this, some experience with this working in conducting research I did a project on viewers of the reality TV show Long Island medium with spirit medium Teresa computer show that has been on from 14 seasons now. I found that when I approached people with acceptance of the validity of their experiences they were eager to share openly, knowing they would not be shamed or ridiculed or even feared for their stories. So this is one of the kind of reflexive essays that I, they use and I use kind of prompting and give them examples of like what they might write about for this. So this kind of prompting is also something that Tanya Lerman has talked about as being useful in data collection. So that prompting people with an example that suggests an open minded or non skeptical approach can be useful. I also found this to happen spontaneously whenever I would talk about this Long Island medium research. The people who are not a part of my project will start telling me stories of their non empirical experiences and we can talk about that term non empirical if people want to in the chat but I don't want to spend too much time on it but I keep using it instead of using a non empirical term. So I wasn't necessarily trying to prompt these stories from people but just telling them about my research and I think in a culture where people have been maybe shamed or embarrassed for their stories. The idea that others have had similar experiences can help them to open up. So it's been really amazing to read about students experiences and have them share with others. I got permission from these students just this morning actually all of them responded right away that they were happy to have me put the stories up there. I mean it just what just this sort of examples, but I know there also be. This will be on YouTube so I want to let them know that I might be using their stories that these are from discussion posts in the time I taught the class virtually last summer. And some of them talk about study abroad experiences and other things about growing up. The one on the right this, the student is an undergraduate program whose mom is from Peru and his father from the US and so he talks about kind of this dual experience and it's, and also about a kind of a ghost that lives in the house where he's currently living it's really interesting. So, I think it's also impactful for other students to read these stories and then turn help me build and inspire future courses, especially like promising people to talk about sleep paralysis is interesting usually when I talk about this experience about a third of the classes had this experience but some of them don't know that others have actually had that. So these are just a few. So with this future research which is almost I will be approved I'll be sending surveys to people were teaching courses related to religion spirituality and phenomenology things like that instructors professors teaching high school community college University of workshops. So I'll be hitting up some of y'all in the future probably to participate. I'm not sure at first is it's even research so much as trying to figure out what other people are doing so I can build on my own teaching but that feels a little bit like appropriation. So maybe, you know, I want to formalize it so that I can also share the results with others. So thank you. And I'll end with one of the Mabye again I mentioned before that has kind of gotten me through the pandemic. Yeah, so thank you all so much. Thank you for your phone there was a lot of things that you mentioned there in the chat, you know, ED Turner has such a profound influence in the world in a such an important figure in this organization. Former President Brian rail has presented before on the okay so there's so much great convergence in what you just shared with us and other things that have happened in the arm just absolutely awesome. Thank you so much. Next presenter, Dr Mark Shagoyan is a longtime member of Society of Anthropology of consciousness. He'll tell you about himself and the work that he does he's also one of our current board members and has helped to put together so much of our programming including our website and other other things. His topic is entitled every star in its orbit, ecological selfhood and practice and philemic magic miss and mysticism. Mark welcome to the panel. Thank you. Let me go ahead and share my screen here. Great, well thanks everyone I'm Mark Shagoyan, a design anthropologist and user experience professional working in the software industry, where I apply social science methods and design techniques in service of product design innovation. The title of my talk is every star in its orbit, ecological selfhood and practice and philemic magic and mysticism, and this talk is based in part on my own auto ethnographic experiences in philemic communities over the past two years, which are on the West Coast, combined with my passion for environmental sustainability. So anthropologists often explore non Western traditions as an ontological foil in contrast to modern Western practices that continue to lead to ecological catastrophe. In this paper I intend to shed light on an extant Western spiritual tradition known as Thelma, which itself provides an important inspiration for what Norwegian philosopher Arnes called the ecological self. I'll define what is the ecological self, then I'll define Thelma. I'll follow by a discussion of ecological self it in Thelma, reference a ritual example and close with the discussion of symbiosis with Anna Mamundi during the Anthropocene. So what is the ecological self. The concept of the ecological self is rooted in the thinking of Norwegian philosopher Arnes that gave us the basic foundation of what has come to be known as deep ecology. Ecology is a philosophical and practical tradition that starts with the critique that much of our efforts at ecological restoration are fundamentally superficial. Nase critiques the technocratic scientific orientation of much ecological activism as reactionary. For him toxic waste reduction industrial mitigation and wildlife preservation though valuable do not get at the root cause of the problem. This problem is the fundamental alienation of the modern Western self rooted in Abrahamic notions of domination of nature, followed by the modernist perspective of technocratic dualism and production. In contrast this know ontology Nase emphasized the importance of the return to pre monitor traditions such as Buddhism Hinduism and Taoism that have relational notions of the self in symbiotic interdependence with a larger whole of life. I would argue that many anthropologists in their exploration of non Western traditions myself included are often seeking such deeper ecological orientations in their work. But there are examples in the West for this exact same thing. So what does that mean to us I would turn to the work of Stephen Brunner who in his book plant intelligence the magical realm provides an account of what neo animism might look like. Focusing on plant life, which is the basic substrate of our guy in home, he explains that the nature plant intelligence is dream like. Furthermore, he explains overcoming the sense regating channels of our technocratic alienation through psychedelics and ritual can help us come into communion with a dream like planetary mind of Gaia. Visionary psycho not turns McKenna had a very similar idea tuning into this plant consciousness can help us grasp the related relational nature of all life rooted in symbiosis and reflecting on symbiosis. The key question is how can we both balance the need for an organism to assert its own agency and the will to survive and thrive with a larger whole. So there are different types of symbiosis. Parasympia parasitic symbiosis is pervasive and in nature and on a small scale isn't problematic. Think of the tick on the butt of the dog, the tick feeds on the dog's blood, the dog loses a bit of blood, or the dog might get sick but no major damages incurred. On a larger scale, parasitic symbiosis is the is the way, excuse me, is the way larger civilizations think the minds and our own collapse. Parasympiosis symbiosis is the win-win goal of mutual benefit. In mutual symbiosis, clownfish for example are immune to see an enemy venom and the see an enemy shelters the clownfish who brings food debris. The enemy gets fed while the clownfish is protected. Protection and nourishment. It's a win-win and both can assert their agency to survive and thrive in the ecosystem. So what does the equivalent of this mutual symbiosis look like? Parasympia is the ancient Greek ideal of the daemon writing, the part of them that calls them and says that they must is what the Greek called the daemon is an outside force placed in living beings that continually urges them towards their life purpose. Continuing he writes, from another perspective it could be perceived as a thing that directs human beings to fulfill their ecological purpose. Socrates didn't say he spoke. He said his daemon spoke. The reason why he spoke guide or genius, Brunner believes is the key for human beings coming into a relationship with nature and fulfilling their ecological purpose in the form of mutual symbiosis. So this gives us to what is thelema. In the Western Hermetic tradition, there is an example of this form of ecological selfhood rooted in the beliefs and practices of thelema. Thelema from the Greek word of will or purpose has its roots in the writings and practices of noticed noted English occultist mountain climber, yogi and writer Alastair Crowley. After following a series of ceremonial magical rituals with his wife Rose while in honeymoon in Cairo, Egypt, he channeled the book Lever al-Valegus or the book the law. Complex in language and meaning the essence of this book contains the core teachings of thelema, which can be summarized in three pre key phrases. Do it that well shall be the whole of the law loves the law lovin' her will and every man and every woman is a star. The essence of thelema is that every person has a quote true will which must be discovered through spiritual practices and self discipline, including yoga, meditation, ceremonial magic and the sacred usage of entheogens. This great work leads a person to know and do their true will which is the same notion as the daemon, which Brunner mentioned is the key to ecological selfhood. Crowley writes the most common cause of failure in life is ignorance of one's true will or how to fulfill that will a man who is conscious whose conscious will is at odds with his true will is wasting his strength. He cannot hope to influence his environment efficiently efficiently. Furthermore, a man who's doing his true will and I say a woman doesn't matter has the inertia of the universe to a system. In many ways, similar to the notion of Dharma in the Vedic tradition or Ritta, the notion of divine right order, the true will is essentially one's right purpose and duty that fits into harmony with a larger whole. Crowley acknowledges that the notion that one can have that one can have a false or superficial will which one must overcome through practice. In looking more closely and deeply at some of his writings this ecological selfhood at the heart of flame it becomes explicitly more apparent. For example, he writes, Do what thou wilt is to bid stars to shine, vines to bear grapes, water to seek its level. Man is the only being in nature that is driven to set himself at odds with himself. Again, taking this carefully it seems to apply a theory that if every man and every woman did his or her will, the true will, there would be no clashing. Every man and every woman is a star and each star moves in an appointed path without interference. There is plenty of room for all. It is only disorder that creates confusion. And lastly, I believe in one earth, the mother of us all, and in one womb where an all men are begotten and wherein they shall rest, mystery of mystery, in her name Babylon. In these quotes Crowley is explicitly aligning the true will and his larger religious framework with nature. This is in essence the ecological selfhood Nes was speaking of as the heart of deep ecology. This image to the right expresses the heart of this talk which is focused on the ecological selfhood inherent in the practice of the Linux magic. The image depicts the orbit of stars that encircle the super mess of black hole at the center of our galaxy, each having its own particular orbit. The stellar metaphor is at the heart of Crowley's notion of the true will, which each person seen is seen to have a star like inner essence that expresses their uniqueness. He goes on to write each of us stars is to move on our true orbit as marked out by the nature of our position, the law of our growth, the impulse of our past experience. Therefore duty consists in determining to experience the right event from one moment of consciousness to other. The true will is seen is seen to have its orbit unique to signature and vector just like individual stars showing orbiting the black hole at the center of the galaxy in this image. Each have its each has its own relational place in the cosmos and they don't clash if they adhere to the respective orbits. This is Crowley's flavor of the daemon which Bruner sees as key to finding our ecological purpose and fulfilling our form of mutual symbiosis with a larger field of life we interact with. So as I mentioned before in the lemma the true will is not obvious to people it requires the work of attainment and spiritual self discipline called the great work. The great work is uniting all of your faculties in harmony equilibrating them and then working to align with one's daemon or higher genius which provides the path forward for one's unique orbit or true will. Lever-Samek is a key ritual for taining knowledge and conversation with one's daemon. The ritual itself is based on invoking and equilibrating the elements, forces of air, fire, earth and water associated with the four cardinal directions along with the above and the below within oneself. Working with this ritual is an intensive year long process where one starts doing a ritual once a day for one month and works up to doing it constantly in one's mind's eye towards the end of the year. One inflames oneself with prayer in a zealous fervor so that communion with the higher presence of the daemon descend similar to one crying for vision in shamanic initiation. Having done this work the daemon or holy guardian angel descends into person giving them a clear voice of their true will and it bonds with them in such a way that every choice is pinion to the daemonic presence. Having myself done this ritual cycle over two years living on a boat in San Francisco, I had the experience of meeting my daemon or higher angel which gave me its name and a phrase that is the essence of my true will which I haven't continued to express in the world. Thus to the best of my ability fulfilling my part in mutual symbiosis with the larger whole of life. I came to know my daemon and the substance of good purpose it is calling me to fulfill. The ritual thus expresses the idea that finding one's place in the natural order through alignment with a higher trans personal guide is the key to living from a place of ecological selfhood and mutual symbiosis with the larger whole of life. It's said that people pairs without a vision in our current covert interregnum as the global neoliberal empire gives way to a new technonio feudalism. It's clear people need higher reference points for hope and the creation of meaningful life ways in the Anthropocene in the shamanic world the alignment with four carnal directions and the above and below is the most common motif. Here one is called to find one's place in relationship to access Moondi or the naval of the world. This is essentially what the purpose of initiation was meant to serve. And it's become evident that without a clear vision sense of one's purpose and direction and place in a larger pattern that connects people flail and fail in the process of their own in a larger world self destruction. Libra psalmic offers a model of a higher reference point and fits into larger archetypal patterns of the right alignment with the natural order at the heart of deeper colleagues emphasis on ecological selfhood. The modern relativism by itself doesn't cut it in the Anthropocene. We need to look to such higher models and examples of higher reference points to negotiate the times at hand. As I come to close, I want to reference an old idea that is central to the notion of ecological selfhood. As Plato references the idea of the world soul or animal Moondi writing, therefore, we may consequently state that this world is indeed a living being endowed the soul and intelligence a single visible living entity containing all other living entities which by their nature are all related. In the Anthropocene mankind is in an alienated relationship with animal Moondi. The true will is potential medicine for this illness, a way for us to find a relationship with soul of the world and come into mutual symbiosis with a larger whole. In ceremonial magic, this path is known as the path of tiferate or beauty, a way of being that reconciles all forces and equilibrium and harmony and aligns them with the natural order. The beauty way is alive and well in the Western Hermetic tradition. Unlike most organisms, mankind must consciously choose to work symbiotically with a larger whole. True will is a way to move towards mutual symbiosis and consciously co-create with what Bateson called the pattern that connects. Co-creation with animal Moondi or the soul of the world is possibly the most important higher higher reference point from humanity's orientation in the Anthropocene. The tools and ways of the great work found in Thelema and elsewhere are there for those who are interested in finding their true will and working towards mutual symbiosis for all of life. After all, the all of life was once known and still is known as pan, the essence of all wild nature. Thank you. Mark, a whirlwind spectacular as always, and thank you for bringing so much to the table. We already have some questions pouring in for you and I'm grabbing them and queuing those because we want to get Susan up next and then we'll go into the Q&A session. So I want to remind people, please start populating the Q&A with your questions. Chad is sort of last option, but we can gather them there as well. And then thirdly, if you would like to speak to the panelists directly, just go ahead and hit your raise hand function and we'll be able to turn your audio on at the end, but I want to get to our last presenter. Susan Grimaldi is another person that we absolutely love and are so thankful for your continued interaction with this organization. Susan is going to be speaking on ethnographic research and pastel paintings. Susan's interest in ethnographic research stems from her personal commitment to preserving and protecting cultural heritage, a particular area of focus has been on the shamanistic traditions. So this quest has led her to record ethnic groups in northeast China, Mongolia, Tuva, the Amazon basin of Brazil and native peoples in North America. In her presentation, you're going to see examples of her passion for pastel painting as she combines art with her field of research and shamanism and I will also add that Susan has graced us with adding these images to our asynchronous media gallery. And so after the panel and any other time and we're going to keep this gallery open in this space for several weeks after the conference ends, you'll be able to go click into the file section on that community's conference page and have a look at Susan's images and interact with them in the asynchronous media gallery there. So Susan, welcome. Thank you so much for being here and over to you. Thanks Andrew. Wonderful introduction. I'm very grateful to be here and share my convergence of three major areas of my life's work having to do with shamanism and field research and pastel painting. I just want to make sure that everything's working. Can you hear me and see me? We can hear you just fine and we can see you and when it's time to screen share, we'll tell you that we're seeing it as well. Okay, thank you. I'd like to begin by sharing with you and telling you the story of my heritage and how that has brought me to the place I am in my life now. I grew up in the aftermath of a cultural genocide and this shaped my dedication to cultural preservation. I was born into the Choctaw Nation and the Indian territory of Oklahoma in 1951 and I grew up immense repression and prejudice and there had been four generations before my grandmother that had become dispirited and tried to adapt after being removed from their homelands to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears and my grandmother had been taken from her home when she was eight years old and placed in the Wheelock School for Indian Girls and she remained very proud of her heritage and she vowed as a child to hold on to this knowledge and to pass it on to her children and her grandchildren. And for that I'm very grateful. When I was seven years old, I had dramatic fever and while I was sick, I flew out of this world on the wing of an airplane and I met with my ancestors and was healed and given a gift and I began healing others at this age of seven years old. And I was identified as a visionary by my grandmother and over the years she taught me what she knew about medicine and how to be a human being. One of the first lessons that she taught me was how to heal with water and if there's time I can add that in a toward the end. She taught me how to be grateful and how to be a good person, what were the virtues and what was important. The problem came that when I grew older, the full understanding of the traditional sacred knowledge was limited and so much had been eradicated by the induction of the Christian beliefs into the tribal spiritual traditions. And as I grew into young adulthood, I began learning directly from spirit as there was no longer anyone with the capacity to teach me and I was continuing to work doing healing with friends and family. And I was known as a visionary healer and the term in my tribe is called an alehi. And I'd like to say that the pain that I knew from this loss of the sacred traditions still pains me and it's resulted in my passionate dedication to protect other indigenous people who are in danger of vanishing or abandoning their ancient knowledge. And so I've been working throughout my life to help them to value and preserve their native ways and wisdom. And I've worked with various tribes and healers along the banks of the Rio Negro in the Amazon basin of Brazil. I work to help them have an income so they would not be tempted to leave their basic sustainable lifestyles to to go into the local outpost to try to adapt into a life of a city setting which was very detrimental and often resulted in their deaths. I lived for a winter in the north on the north end of the Grenada Island, where I was invited to record ceremonies of the African trance dancing. And I spent 17 years on a project that started in 1995 to evaluate the state of the shamanic traditions in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia at the time where there was still extreme repression going on. And so I eventually became a consultant to the Chinese government to help restore shamanism back into contemporary Chinese society. Another primary focus of my ethnographic field research has focused on the shamans of the Duke of reindeer herders of the far northern tigers of Mongolia. I studied and learned also from the tube and shamans and the old she shamans of Siberia. And to a lesser degree I worked along the coast of the of Turkey researching circumcision ceremonies of male children. And I've also worked with healers and believes a Sami shaman a pomo Yamantha Hawaiian kahuna and other North American indigenous people. Documentaries and contributed my footage photos and journals to archives for preservation. And in the case of China this footage was used to receive shamanism back into China, as we had the only contemporary footage in existence that was taken in 1995 and that became very valuable for their needs. And then later when they wanted to regain their ethnic traditions. And I want to say that I paint for my own pleasure. It's an extension of the love respect and appreciation I feel for those individuals who generously shared their wisdom with me. I mean the shamans, the landscapes, the cultural at artifacts, the ceremonies, the people, the animals. I can express with full passion my gratitude and love for the meaningful gifts we have shared together. And I'm pleased to present some of these paintings to you and hope that you will be touched by the love and beauty I feel for these traditional ways of life and healing. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Susan was at the end of your presentation as you have more. No, that's it. I think that our time is up. Thank you. That was absolutely amazing. I invite the panelists back now for a period of Q&A. I think many of us are shaken to our core from that experience. And so I want to start by reading a few comments in the Q&A that just came up during that slideshow and audio video of your wonderful work. Susan and your work are so inspiring. Thank you. Hillary Webb says, wow, this is absolutely glorious. Margaret wrote in, thank you so much for sharing this with us. Tina Fields wrote, so beautiful, Susan. I love it when folks embrace both the scholar and the artist in themselves. Leslie Compton wrote, Susan, your paintings are so evocative and gorgeous. Music and beauty make me cry. Thank you so much for your contribution to cultural preservation. Nicole Torres wrote, Susan, thank you so much for sharing your art and experiences. Leslie again wrote, your paintings capture so expressively the energy and spirit of your experience so much more than simply photographs or paintings. Love the shaman allies, writes Daniel Mormon. All of these are amazing. Cassandra said, thank you for sharing. It's amazing and brutal work and Jordan says, thank you Susan. So you can tell that that was very moving for people and what an experience to share that and to bring your full self to this experience your life work to it and we see that infused in the art, the care, the concern you have for those cultures and for those people that the evident love and respect is all it all manifests right right out of the image right out of the color. It's simply stunning. So, to the q&a we have a question that came in from from Tina Fields. And this is from Mark and I'll drop it and he dressed it slightly a little bit in the q&a but I'll drop it in the q&a for everyone to see, or excuse me in the chat room for everyone to see and then read it. Tina for Mark. Mark, can you please explain how do it that will show me the whole of the law necessarily becomes truly beneficial holding responsibility to the whole and therefore benefiting life or deep ecology rather than just being about what I want right now. The problem of adolescent society front with ontological crippling as Paul Shepard observed, we can add, and it harm none for that reason. Thanks for explaining we've been wondering she's been wondering for a long time so the question is, we reconcile this notion of do what that will be the whole of the law with this long term thinking of long range communal and ecological thinking. And that's a question that comes up a lot and thank you Tina for the question so you know like other dharma traditions and I would consider Thelma a dharma tradition, it's built on them. There's a notion that there's work that to be done to polish the self to refine one's alignment, you know, there's a notion of a video and ignorance the notion that we're kind of not really getting it in terms of how we fit into the larger framework and it really uses the notion of the false will, and that there's work one does to attain what's called the true will, which once attained fits into harmony with everything else so if you think about the average person in a state of a vigic uninitiated consciousness that doesn't really know who they are that has shadow complexes various some scars and yoga which are mental obscurations and patterns work, yoga work meditation works are mono magic work I referenced Libra Samic. There's a whole sort of graded scales of initiation one has to go through as you find in many other traditions to bring one's forces into equilibrium and balance it's really human consciousness out of balance with itself out of balance with a larger environment and acting from a place of lack of awareness that is the root of a lot of the traumas that people bring upon themselves and other people and so that there's work that one does in this practice to manage all of that. And as far as the unknown harm no one clause. I mean the basic idea in Thelma is it the true will is no difference than the rays of the sun, the sun does what it does. You trust that the sun has its own unique way of expressing the self just like a river flows, just like that quote I referenced in the video about beating the stars to shine and the rivers to flow so there's not really a belief you need to put a sort of a safety clause on top of the true will, because you believe that the true will itself is flowing just like the Dow or everything else so putting that safety clause on top of it isn't really part of the tradition, but doing the work to go from an uninitiated uninitiated state of consciousness as ignorant and out of alignment towards an uninitiated state of consciousness that's attuned to the daemon or one's higher guide, that is part of it. So, you know, oftentimes people like, Oh, do with the will means do what they what you want. Absolutely not. It's called out in the writings, and it's very much brought to the surface so I hope that answers your question. Susan, please come with a follow up or clarification and Mark this reminds me of how people as a as a mythologist and just Campbell scholar people often misunderstand Campbell's notion to follow your bliss and misinterpret that and misapplied as well and so I think you've given a wonderful explanation of that. In the Q&A another comment for Susan from Akia DeVaros-Gomes who's on our board and who chaired a wonderful panel for us last November that you can see on the internet and title the anthropologist as other wonderful panel examining the role of anthropology in actually displacing indigenous voices and bifan voices rather than helping to clarify and amplify them so please do check that out and Akia says, Susan, I did not know the words but I felt the music in the arts so deeply. Thank you for that experiential I think so many folks can echo what Akia says there. And then we have a question for Cassandra for from David Miller David asked Cassandra can you please expand on your term of non empiricism what do you include or exclude second order empiricism radical empiricism from William James for instance. I'm excited to kind of talk about that and maybe see what other people think too about use of that term so I started, I kind of was made familiar with that term non empirical beings from an article by Ernest Birch that was about the Ubiat and then so it was about an Ubiat memories of non empirical beings but that's the term that he used at that time. And I just found it so interesting because like it wasn't really about stories that people tell but about their, you know, their interactions with like beings that they have remembered seeing, you know, not just these are stories that are passed down like they have these like concrete memories of seeing these particular non empirical beings so I kind of like, you know, used his term from that. But there are some problems to it because when you think about empiricism you think about maybe science scientific method, and what we can observe with the senses and the thing about saying it's not empirical implies that you're using a different sense to be able to see things but people see them with to see things with their eyes and they hear them with their ears you know those are part of the five senses so there are some problems with it I think I use it because I wanted to move away from any term like supernatural which has some negative connotations so I find it kind of useful but we do kind of deconstruct it in the class like when I want to teach about it, but if people have other suggestions like for terms like I would be open to that. That was a question originally for Cassandra but it looks like Margaret wants to weigh in here. You need to unmute yourself. Thank you. Absolutely wonderful. This is actually just a follow up question to Cassandra. Hey, I have thought about, and I've had, you know, interesting conversations a lot of times with lots of jokes with other people about what supernatural is actually referring to you and and what does it mean that we have the natural. And then we have the super which implies that it's somehow over the natural, whenever the supernatural in my understanding is actually part of the natural. And so in a little bit of a different way but I'm curious. What are the connotations with the term supernatural that you're trying to avoid, because for me personally, it seems like just as good of a term as any, but it's possible that I'm just missing something. Right, like I agree like I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with it when you think about the definition of supernatural, except that maybe it is the sort of Western separation of natural versus supernatural as if they are inherently separated. But I think that for a long time when when you say the term say something that supernatural people assume that it means something that is imagined or fake or something like that and so there has I think in English there's been that connotation for a long time. Yeah, I'm open to like look in the chat and see what other people think about that. And anybody else wants to say something about that. Thank you. Susan or Mark do you want to weigh in on this notion of the supernatural or empiricism this problem we have with language and things I think it applies to both of your presentations as well. Peripheral models of observation versus the non empirical. And this is that you know our categories are so slippery, you know, and we're, we're just dealing with these boxes that came out of the enlightenment like this is real this is not real this is, this is nature, this is culture. I mean I think that, and this is what you know quantum theorists they're dealing with this sort of fuzzy soup right now like where are the boundaries. I personally am a panpsychicist you know it's like it's all interrelated it's all has consciousness to various you know sort of emergent models from complexity to less complexity so that's my worldview. So for me I don't really believe that there's a natural versus non natural, you know there's a supernatural there's just layers of emergent complexity at various level, you know, the platonic model which sometimes you can, you know, use those old models they had a emergent notion of creation from the subtle to the more, and this isn't the yoga tradition to so I don't just looking some of those older models of like how how energy and vibration down steps itself into density. It's not really about there being natural versus unnatural it just levels of density of vibration and energy from like primal light to sound to form to like matter. And then the laws and patterns that manage that. So that's how that's how I see things. Um, that's how I see things. Susan what about you in the work that you've done with these folks that you studied with all over the world. How do these categories of empirical versus non empirical play in I'm interested in your take on that and even in this very presentation. All of us said through what can be called an empirical observation of your art and music and had and many of us had a non ordinary experience in that observation and so even even in the way we've encountered your art. These categories start to break down and I think that's what people were reacting to in the chat and in the comments and so what is what are these terms mean in the world that you would have any of the folks that you spend time with. I think of them as extraordinary. I think of them as not yet understood or explained that there's still the mystery that is inherent that calls for a quest for further discovery. I think that's one word and maybe extraordinary might be the closest I could get. I think that's a fabulous word. Mark we have a follow up question to you from Tina and Ed. Thank you mark follow up this makes sense. What you said before regarding this notion of true will but how can we get people to know when they've gotten past ego. I think that's one sense of will to true will especially considering how most of us are still what Tina says the some some car some car excuse me, which would lead us to inflate our degree of actual awareness humility, being like the sun etc how do we by example how would we put this, this algorithmic understanding to say someone like Trump, Tina's asking. This is a really layered question and it's the age old problem of you can lead a horse to water and you can't make them drink right and also the most egoic or a vigic states of ignorance are the least interested in spiritual discipline because they think they've got it all figured out so I honestly and there's a lot there's models of this that we're in the college yoga, which is like a heavy dense age and so by and large, you can't fix the mass of humanity. What they can do is provide these tools to the ones that want to to unfold in this way. They then can create, you know, morphogenetic fields of the 3% that then connect to others, and then maybe over time, there will be an emergent unfolding from the bottom up but the idea that you're going to go and people that are multi billionaires that have the worldly power in the college yoga that you're going to convince them that they need to become more conscious. I don't think they need any of this so you simultaneously have to know, in my opinion you're not going to solve it all for the whole thing, but you still need to do the work on the ground level with those few that will get it and that maybe those will build networks so it's kind of like, you know, I'm more fahti, you know embrace your fate and the call you guys a spiritual warrior because those are the times we're in we're not going to see some mass, you know, utopian awakening in our lifetime. And I don't think so but we still need to seed these ideas. So that's how I, that's my how I relate to it. Great response. A question for all panelists I'm stopping myself from asking a follow up in speaking to them because I want to we have a lot of questions coming in. What teachings or messages have emerged from your work that can be applied to the current challenges we face today. Disconnection, climate of evil reductionism addiction, among many others what what teachings have emerged from your work that you think can particularly both individually and in these pockets of awakening and awareness and connectivity that can help us face the challenges that are present in the day. Susan. I think what it comes down to really is seen past the pain beyond to finding the, the beauty that is at the core of all people and and feed into that understanding. And that's what I've seen in the simple lifestyles of the people I visited that that they're relieved from the distractions of greed and and cruelty in a lot of ways and they, they understand the precious nature of life in a way that really celebrates the love between people. And I think somehow that wherever there are these divisions that if we can get beyond our own fears and connect with others as a way to establish potential for change. I think that is the strongest possibility for healing the planet. Great answer I always come back to the realization made by the spiritual specialist and the upon a shot stop vama see thou art that is a very compelling and simple algorithm to help understand our deep connectivity to to one another and in fact the more we explore the more we find out there is no other other panelists do you want to maybe respond to that what what teachings have come through your work and your study that you think when applied. Because so much about this work has to be applied and practiced what I love about marks discussion as well this is these are practices these are things we cultivate in the cell. What's come from your work that maybe you think others can learn from to help equip us for this coming time of ecological transition Cassandra. So I could think of as just listening to people stories and and collecting narratives that something I've been doing before I kind of focus on religion but just kind of illness narratives, people who are affected by leprosy or cancer disease in Brazil and the United States and kind of encouraging that with others encouraged students to also listen to other people stories and finding those connections in that way. And I live in a community of a large refugee population to and so like understanding their stories and their narratives come here and a lot of our master students are doing work in those communities as well so focusing on that is sort of like a method within anthropology. As being really meaningful. Wonderful john john parker adds a comment saying this is an amazing discussion and offering so far and john will be leading our next session so he wants to ease that he's saying this will dovetail nicely into his session and participation in its contemplative community organizing it's going to be an interactive session. We're going to bring our journal in the sketch pad and get ready to interact on that level, which is again another step into how we apply these things into as Nicole Torres has taught me storming forming and norming. And so I think it's going to be a great opportunity with john to check that out. More information on that in the chat. Daniel Mormon asked a quick question I think to mark he asked is that a detail. Is that a picture of much repeat you on the wall behind you mark. Yeah it is and just to follow up on the two other questions around, you know, the ego aggregates in the mental complexes I mean it's acknowledged in this discipline like you do find any tundra tradition and I would consider dilemma a tundra tradition that there's a progressive scale of discovery awakening that you know you start as this lump of clay, or an alchemy, and there's work that's done to refine it on the process of gold and there's always challenges that can blow up. That's true for any alchemical process. And also there are challenging ideas and practices in Thelma because it is tantric and tantric practices are challenging and frightening there's images there's ideals, there's transgression. So if you grow up in a normative American middle class culture, those things are going to be frightening so there's definitely stuff in there and it's not for everybody. Sharon Maharas says that again fascinating answer Sharon Maharas says it in the thread I believe what we call the supernatural infuses all of life they're not really separate except in our ignorance of these inter penetrating fields interesting word or this inter penetration. And Gertrion dealt with this in his presentation this morning and I hear Susan, Cassandra, Margaret really all of you speaking to the same thing. Hillary has asked a question about where to find Susan's work in the media gallery and so what I'm actually going to do is share my screen for a second and show you all where that is and then we're going to finish with Susan, speaking to what she brought up earlier about the original teaching of the grandmother about the healing power of water is the most important medicine so you just bear with me while I do a quick screen share. So when we are on the conference communities page and I know this looks like your your live journal blog from you know 1998 or something right but this is the tech we have for the conference and it's actually enabled us to roll all of this out for such a, you know, basically inexpensive, relatively in a community way and we have our discussion posts here that basically have the sessions for the day and the links to them in the announcements as well. And if you scroll down all the way to the bottom to this shared files. Right. And here it is right here. But if you just click more. It was added late and so it's not. And this is kind of clunky but we have to just kind of work with what we have. It's right here. If you click the asynchronous media gallery. It's right here. You can also get to it just by not clicking more. Let me back out that go backwards and actually just clicking into this one. And there it is right there for you to participate in again and check it out. And so please do get back to that and as Hilary mentioned, check out desert foreigners and some of the other things in that asynchronous media guy because some of that stuff is really quite profound. And I think you will find it really interesting mark planning and as yes illness narratives are a powerful tool for connection and healing very profound teaching from the medical anthropology course thank you Cassie. So I think I want to move over to actually Susan again, because Susan was going to return to that conversation about this original teaching of the healing power of water. So Susan, take it away tell us a bit about that. Another talk told me that the most important medicine in existence is water, and she went through all the ways water can be used for healing, starting with soaking a wound that it draws out the infection, and that it also can clean a wound, and then internally it is to drink the water to flush out illness and to purify the body. And there was also how it could lower temperature if used as a way to cool a person. Certainly, it can be used to be made into medicine with intentionality to call in the, the forces of healing power into the water to use topically or internally. It can be mixed with herbs to be taken as tinctures and as teas, and also to be wetting for compresses, but it's the water itself that is the healing component in that so like if you have nothing else as a medicine, look to water, because that can help. What a what a way to tie this panel into every absolutely everything else we've been doing in this conference. We have a comment and I wanted to shout out to our twitch viewers and those folks joining us in that space. A question slash comment from twitch and we'll end with this. We're going to get a big piece of the mysteries here, the assumptions of single cells within individuals and assumptions of a single unified self in the soul the odd month, when part of the reality might be competing clusters of consciousness sometimes even within the individual. Anyone want to speak to that before we end here it's a fabulous comment and thank you twitch viewers for participating and bringing such great questions to the table. I might maybe just address that in part and I'm sure everybody has their own take on it, but that's actually the work that one is trying to do is bring those different fragmented pieces that are in a toxic relationship I uncoordinated fragmentation into coherent element with a common vector so like, if the great work is anything it's taking like you know, the monkey mind one part of you is going this way and other parts going that got shadow complexes and you've got projections you got all these fears you got some scars and clashes, cleansing all that stuff, integrating all that stuff bring it all into one, and then getting it going in one direction and thus, one of the metaphors for the great work is a pyramid. The corner of the pyramid is the four elements, the pyramid gets more and more aligned and integrated as it moves towards that point at the point it's a single point and that point then opens up and surrendered to the whole. So it's like this balance of the integration of opposites that then also opens to receptivity. So that might be abstract, but that's kind of the metaphor for for the great work is that it is about trying to bring these two elements to integrate of alignment and balance with a unity behind them. So. Susan, yes. I can add one more thing, a story about water being the most important. When I was in the tiger with Dr john Lawrence. There was a man of the duke who had had a very serious accident and he crushed a soft tissue in his leg, and he was an absolute agony, and we, we were called upon to see if we could help him. And so, we suggested that he put his leg into really cold water that was running right through the right by his or it's his tp. He kept it in there we just had him stay keep his leg in the water until it became numb. And, and it gave him such relief that he was able to sleep and from that point, he got better and in the other tiger. The man came to into the tiger, a father of the shaman for and he left all his heart medicine on purpose at home and was expecting to his son to have a ceremony for him and, and he his lungs were filling up with fluid and, and he couldn't breathe and he couldn't sleep. And so we were called to see if we could help him. And so we looked to see what we might have. And we had water, and we had black tea, and we made him really strong black tea which I knew would be a diuretic. And he peed copiously, he had relieved he was able to breathe and he survived. And Dan, Dan Mormon says in the chat even our standard contemporary bio medicine will often say take this with a large glass of water I think that's a fabulous anecdote. And to end here with a thank you and just a quick comment, something Mark said in response to the twitch comment about the fragment aspects of the self. This is such a fundamental teaching of so many of the world's wisdom traditions. The top one to see out of the punishments Allah says in the Quran I made you into different nations so that you may know one another. This idea of this fragmentation of the various aspects of self for the purposes of the journey back to integration I think you're dead on with that mark and I absolutely appreciate everyone on this panel for your contributions today. So if you if you can join us in 15 minutes, one o'clock Pacific four o'clock Eastern for our next experiential contemplative community organizing with john Parker because as john said in the comment that I think it's a great follow up to this session and a great way to pursue further that great question that that somebody asked earlier, what are the things we're learning that we can equip ourselves with and it's something that I've heard market others talk about a lot how do we become equipped how do we become tooled and build the tools we need the tool sets the kit we need to be effective and to survive and maybe even thrive in a world that's changing rapidly and in ways that we can't even totally understand and prepare for so please do join us there's been a fascinating panel, and I think it's very much going to continue into the next session in 15 minutes. So very much for being here this was a wonderful panel any any final closing thoughts from any of the panelists. Thanks a lot Andrew and thanks Mark for your wonderful organization ability and all the dedication that you put into making this possible. I'm very grateful. You are loved to john to Susan, he's just a back door you both and thank you for being here and sharing your work. Thank you all so much I really enjoyed this panel. Alright, we will start the next session hopefully, wonderful.