 Welcome to a new and ancient story, a show dedicated to the transformation of self and society. We're moving from the story of separation to a new story of interbeing. We explore it all – technology, spirituality, agriculture, healing, economics, politics, ecology, relationships, education – because the changes that are gathering today will leave no aspect of our world untouched. For deeper engagement with these ideas, join our community at newandancientstory.net Hello everybody, Charles Eisenstein here for another episode of a new and ancient story. This time I've got Pamela M. Brown of the Avatar Center and we're going to kind of interview each other, start by asking some questions and just see where it goes from there. So welcome guys. Thank you. Thanks so much for having us here and thank you for showing up yourself. Yeah, my pleasure. So what's the Avatar Center? That's a good question. The Avatar Center is really an international community in the Peruvian Amazon that we're working on creating. It's a place that has been born really out of a vision to help bring people back to harmony with the land, back to harmony with nature and out of that relationship we believe a lot of healing and a lot of creative ideas can come out to how we can live in more harmony with each other. As we move forward into creating a new world together. Awesome. I'm going to ask a pointed question about that in a second. Maybe I'll just do myself a broad topic. But anyway, my name is Charles Eisenstein. As a lot of you know already, and basically I, when people ask me, well, what do you do? One thing I say is, I'm serving a new story which is also an ancient story and I'm a storyteller in a way. And I think that like everything else in this universe, stories have their own consciousness, their own subjectivity, their being. So I see myself not as the inventor of a story, but as the servant of a story, the story that wants to be born on Earth right now to replace the story of separation, the story of domination, the story of control, the story of human separate from nature, the separate individual, so on and so forth. Anyway, that's like a very short version. And yeah, so that's what I speak and write about. And we're kind of doing this joint podcast here. I had a question for you. That just kind of when I was listening to you talking about harmony with the land, like everybody says that. And I think you're talking about something way, way more than going out into nature, which is certainly a good thing, but I mean, what do you really do? I think we can both talk about that differently. And I think there's, you know, when you talk about, anybody talks about getting back to the land and what that really means. That looks like something a little bit different for everybody because it's a very personal relationship. And I think that's for me, you know, I grew up having, I grew up in a suburb, but very close to the forest. And so as a very, as a young child, basically the place that I went to kind of touch that great expanse where there were no rules where I was complete, I felt completely safe. I felt like I could dream without limits. I felt well received. All of these amazing ideas always came out when I was in nature. And sometimes it was just listening to the wind blowing through the leaves, watching the sunset and rise, listening to the sounds of the animals. And, you know, these things shaped me. And going into the Amazon is another experience, you know, if somebody already has a close relationship with nature, close relationship with the elements. For me, I find that nature is an amazing mirror reflection. It helps us to lose this sense of urgent timing of, you know, schedule. So we can have space to then be able to see ourselves the way we behave, the way our patterns and relationships are, and all of these different things. It allows the space between those constant interactions or, you know, with whether we're talking about cell phone waves, electromagnetic, all of these different influences of a city. I feel that it so quickly can be apparent to anybody. You step from a city or if you're in a place like in Pittsburgh, there is a 500 plus acre forested park. And so what I really noticed there is you can be in the city in the hustle and bustle and you literally cross the tree line and I noticed the stress just melts away. You know, the air quality is different. I can just feel it. I close my eyes. It's like it's stepping into a portal, a different world where we can then be like, ah, this is, you know, a sense of inner peace. And a lot of things arise out of that. And then we go back to the city, you know, step out into the, onto the sidewalk. And it's very different all of a sudden we can carry with us, you know, some of the jewels that we, you know, are able to bring through and be able to channel into our experience from the forest and bring them in. But what I always find is that it's so important to create a lifestyle, create new communities that are so intertwined with nature so that we always have that influence present. We don't have to remember it. We don't have to go into a deep meditation just to experience that. That in our waking life and working in community with other people. So, you know, the things are, are present. So, for me, getting back to the land, you know, is very, very important. And that relationship for us to move forward as a people. I'm just going to say, like, that's, I fully agree with, you know, not even agree with the story, it's like, it's a story. I feel like that what I've seen in the last, I guess, 20 years that I've been, like, I moved at West. I'm Canadian. And I, and I, and I moved to the West Coast because of the natural environment that I just love being in the mountains and being in a small community living there that really helped express a part of myself that I didn't have as a child living in a suburb on the East Coast. And, and, you know, three or four years ago when we got to the Amazon, but I decided to study more deeply the Amazonian medicine, plant medicines. And, you know, that's the reason why also like nature is everywhere so you can pick any part of the planet to really get back to the land. And my family and I, we went there because of its just its potent, potent ability to heal. And to bring us into that consciousness of the earth, of the land. So healing our separation from the earth. And without that, I don't believe personally we can do it ourselves as a community. Giving our programming and our way we've been in this culture for so long that we don't, we don't have a history that a conscious history that's been taught to us to be able to relate in a community that's not divided by city planning and an artificial system. So, you know, by bringing us into a natural environment that that also has the influences of plant medicines and other forms of teachings that are more current in the ancestry of say some of the Indigenous people in the area that we can learn from and help us also regain, you know, that understanding of how what it is it means to relate to the earth every day as a, as just as part of like you relate to your family. You know, it's like nature's coming for dinner tonight. The bugs are there. There's bugs always around and it's not something to shun. You know, it's you have to adapt to be able to really integrate into your everyday life, this natural environment. So it teaches in a way its own way of not being separate and also regaining that truth of our species of what we really are. And I don't think in our current, you know, way of life those teachings aren't really available. Like when I spent over a year there, there's just, there's just ideas that come up when you're no longer influenced by or when you're, it's not even like that you're not influenced by, but you're, it's, it's the lack of influence. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's stripping away all of the influence. So when you spend time, especially in isolation in nature. And that's it. It's like going back and forth. And, and for me, the primary reason why I want to create, you know, communal setting there in the natural environment because there's a lot of people who go to study Amazonian medicines. And they do a lot of isolation diets. But the true, I think the true medicine for this earth at this time is integrating that wisdom, not in isolation, but bringing it back and how we relate to each other every day. So, so you're really talking about, you're not talking about necessarily people like staying there for the rest of their lives. Not that sense of community. It's more of a place where people can do the kind of, of healing that takes months or that maybe has its own, its own pace and rhythm and where they're really unplugged from calendars and clocks and And for some, and some like, some might be called to live there. There's not that many I've talked to who really feel like they could live there. On jungle specific. You know, to do the healing work and then also what, you know, what I hope for this earth and other people is that doesn't, they don't have to live with us, but maybe live with someone else in another community and another. Yeah, well, one thing that's coming to mind. So first, so I like to voice sometimes the critic in the cynic. Because they usually have. And so I'm going to ask a question and then answer it. Yeah. The cynics question is, well, why do you have to go to Amazon for this isn't this more just kind of more colonialism, more spiritual tourism where you're going somewhere you're having an experience, but you're probably eating, you know, food. You're going to have this jungle food, but mostly you're probably eating food that's been imported, you know, you're going to set up this outpost of a Western lifestyle that's surrounded by the jungle, not really in the jungle. And you have this experience and put it in your spiritual backpack and have your healing and then you're going to go back home and rejoin society and and the life that you knew before and telling yourself that you've accomplished something. And not that they're, you know, but why do you have to go to the Amazon and burn jet fuel and live in this outpost and how and what are the local people think are local people coming to do this, you know, or is it more just white people taking whatever the Amazon has to offer. And my answer to that. Yeah, or part of an answer is that every place on this earth has a special medicine to offer the people on this earth. And it's not that there's no medicine embedded in the land in North Carolina or Pennsylvania or anywhere on earth any piece of land has that power but each place also has a special medicine. And there is a time and place in the evolution of mass consciousness where particular places on earth carry the medicine of the time. There are certain subset of people that the certain places carry the medicine of the time the medicine of the age. And so there needs to be ways for people to take in that medicine to receive that medicine. To me, like that's kind of what I'm tapping into what what you're doing, you're being called by the land to make this medicine available to to the many, many people from all over the planet who will especially benefit from it at this time. I want to see. I got into that too. We both get into it. I will, you know, that's it. There's there's a lot of different, and I'll just come and say the plant medicine that's most popular right now is ayahuasca. And when I felt and called to go up there and buy land and say, okay, this is like, you know, my dad, because my parents are involved in this, and I got them all many years ago. And, and he's just like, there's so many, like, let's do something different. And it wasn't actually me that is deciding and, you know, for me, it partially is like, because I've been a yoga teacher and training yoga for many years before this. And I never really had that concept of what, like, I saw people with a guru, okay, like, and, you know, there was a lot of devotees that I would train with it, especially on the West Coast, right. Right. Yeah, yeah. And, and so like, and I was like, just know I like I love the teacher like I love different teachers and I really gained their, you know, connection with them, but I don't. I can't really fully understand what it means to feel like a devotee era. And, you know, in some ways, you know, like I lost it, it become like my guru. The messages, the information, you know, we planted the first within the first three weeks that I wasn't, I was no longer traveling, spending more jet fuel, you know, I stopped my travels to plant an orchard. You know, she was like, no, you, you know, you got to plant this orchard. So it was mango trees, avocado. So three years ago, that's what I first did was started planting an orchard. And, you know, now we have a, and her, you know, message to me was the planting that a large herbal garden, medicine garden for that in the rainforest. And so that was something that was told for me. And that's my message. I'm not saying that everybody has to do this. Right, right. Yeah, everyone has their way what what their gift and that's part of the reason what we also want to help other people do is find out what their gift is what what is their skill what is their range of skills. I'm not saying like, because I don't believe in the specialization aspect of humans. But what do they want to bring to help humanity and or themselves in their own lives. Can I just want to comment on something like earlier you said that we, we don't know how to do this or something like that. You said, we can heal by ourselves or something like that. And also now you're saying, you know, you were told that just didn't make sense to you. And this is something I think about a lot, because anybody who really has studied the way that our system works. And the crisis on this planet falls into despair. If they're from this culture, especially they fall into despair because according to what we know how to make happen through everything we've learned about how change happens in the world. Our capacities are insufficient to bring us into to transition into a more beautiful world. We don't know how to do it. But that doesn't. But that is only that only makes it impossible. If we accept the, I call it the theory of change that our culture, the dominant culture has instilled in us. If we, if we think that it's all up to us, if we think that everything outside human beings is just this kind of random melee of forces and masses, and that any order any purpose any direction must be imposed by us if we accept that, then it is indeed hopeless. But if we understand if we as every human culture has except for ours really, if we understand that there is intelligence outside of ourselves, that could be, for example, in the mountains or in in the trees or in the land in the soil and the water in all beings that have intelligence outside of ourselves that that can tell us what to do, even when it seems or especially when it seems insane to us, especially when it seems that isn't going to make a difference on the planet. What's what good is planting a mango tree going to do. I don't understand how the world actually works. You know, we don't. My one friend who I write about some times, you know, who's gone around the earth planting earth treasure vases these clay vessels filled with prayers that a Tibetan monk instructed her this like Tibetan, you know, Guru who lives in a cave, 106 year old Lama told her how to make these you know like, what great is that going to do when she was given those instructions she was like, how is that going to help. You know the world doesn't work as we thought it was and one of the things I like to emphasize is that we need to reverse the ontological colonialism that we still operate in even when people let go of economic colonialism and say we should no longer impose our ways on other people often they still hold on to ontological colonialism which basically says we understand the nature of reality better than you know rainforest Indians who have all these quaint superstitious thoughts and yeah they do live in harmony with the land but we know better than them the way that the world works. Start listening you know learning how like how do they make decisions you know how do they operate. Well, yeah, this is one of those things that you know in my my first time in the Amazon I was so struck as a child growing up at this fascination with the jungles of the world and with the indigenous people and and for me when I was younger I thought I was going to end up in Africa and you know in in like a zombie or or in the Congo or something but when synchronicity brought me to the Amazon and up there and even before I went into the experienced any of the medicines I had this you know profound kind of homecoming experience you know that was like wow like I'm I'm here and I found just by being in its vibration it you know a message came to me and it was something that was undeniable going out into the forest and and observing I was out there for four weeks with somebody that I met just the night before I got there and so I met him. He introduced me to a friend and his friend was leaving following morning at six in the morning to go into the bush and he had lived in the in the forest for 50 years of his life and then was living in a in a city at that time. And when I observed him as we moved through the jungle and tracked and went from village to village we you know slept in hammocks out in the forest. I noticed that he was tuning into other senses that I wasn't that I wasn't using at the time. He knew where the monkeys were he knew where the water was he knew different where certain trees were even just by by listening but not even and he knew that certain bird. We're going to be closer to the water so he would listen and you know to me it was just this menagerie of this beautiful soundscape nature escape and but he knew. OK over there is that and here is that and he just had this spatial awareness that was completely using these different senses. Then I was really attuned to and then after that was back in 2001 and then so I went back to the Amazon in 2013 after kind of a calling to go back and then I met Pamela. And over the course of the year that I lived there there when we were in the beginning stages of starting the Avatar Center. I started to notice certain things coming out in me I started to notice that well I was there I would have a vision of a snake and I would just be cooking dinner or something like that. And I would and I got a sense like with this almost telepathic message and an image to a certain part of the land and the image was of a type of snake that I had never seen there before. And I normally don't go to this area of the land but I was like I'm going to go there for you know I just got this this signal. I went there and what do I see for the first time but a but a six foot rainbow boa constrictor. Well the same one I had in my mind so these things started to happen and I started to get messages of there is this animal over here and when I came back. I started to notice that it translated when I came back to the United States. And I was in the forest and I growing up at a very close connection with the deer and I started noticing I could sense the deer before I saw it. And it wasn't something that I would hear. It wasn't something I smelled or saw but it was this other sense that was beginning to arise just by what my experiences or what my feeling is is when we remove ourselves from kind of the chaos. Of certain aspects of society and such a rigid schedule and these different things and we actually are able to open up to the expanse the nature allows us to step into just by being around it long enough. It cleanses us and then it starts to open us up to potentially these other parts of our brain that we're just not activating this these other strands of DNA we're just not using you know all these things. I'm not sure exactly what it is but I know it's something other than what I did experience and do experience when I'm in the city on a regular basis. Yeah, one thing I think about a lot is is how could we like how more effective could we be as change agents even in like political spaces. If we tapped into those sensory capabilities, those ways of knowing that might, you know, you got a vision and you were able to go see a rainbow boa constrictor. Someone might say, what's the what's the purpose of that? What does that mean? No, but what I'm thinking is, is, you know, if you're in that state of receptivity and perception, then maybe you would also know, you know, just to like say you were, you know, trying to stop a fracking project or something like that. You would know maybe just where to be at exactly the right place what to say where where where to go you know where the key information was that could stop the project I mean who to hook up with you know where to find allies like all of these. The, I just, you know, like to, to kind of, um, I don't think that you can necessarily take it out of the jungle necessarily I think that it has to be rooted in a connection to land. It can be applied everywhere. Right. And it reminds me of something I heard that about the King of Bhutan. This was Bhutanese man told me that the king is always sure he says to spend at least two thirds of his time outside the capital in the countryside and the villages, because he says he's unable to make wise decisions. In the capital too much if he's in the city. I'm just thinking of my own process. I can become sometimes almost like a mental slave to my environment. And I'm immersed in, you know, square buildings and hearing mostly mechanical sounds. Thinking, you know, logistical thoughts about what I need to be to, you know, when I'm in that kind of modernized state. I find that my realm, my ability, my capacity to create is very narrowly circumscribed. But I don't necessarily have to like you're saying I don't necessarily have to travel somewhere far away to access nature because nature is actually everywhere. What I need to do is to retreat in some way from that kind of conditioning environment. So one aspect of nature for me that's very valuable is the silence that's underneath all the noises, no matter where I am that's always available or my own body, like that's that's nature. So if I have a problem, I can't handle I go for a walk and just get really physical and and look at the sky, maybe like that's always nature the sky, although it is marred these days by a lot of jet trails. Sometimes it's hard to find actually something that is in a unconditioned unconditioned by modern straight lines, power lines, for example, but it is always there and I mean I know like people who've told stories about being in prison, where they had like one tiny little corner of sky that they could see from a certain part of their cell. And that's what kept them alive the whole time, like just any little thread of connection is is a pipeline to the infinite. So I find it, but maybe like deep experiences of going into the into the rainforest and and just immersing immersing immersing in that that realm that's prior to modern conditioning like that. Experiences in nature I can better recognize and access the nature that's actually all around us in the interstices of of the modern world. For us what I've noticed also being like immersing myself in an environment without the sensitizations that the the amount of influences that that we have in this culture, the thought forms the become very very sensitive when you don't have them for long periods of time. And from that space, you can see what arises, what motivates us what what motivates us to take action, how we end up taking action. That's where, and that's what that's what we've noticed, like from in so far as in my life. How do we take action every single day there's like talked about like different nutrition diets that I've studied as well as practice in the Amazon there's a very much taking out going down to very basic very simple foods. You know, one one you can do like a, you know, in nutrition you can do detox diets, or you can do maintenance diets. And I find, you know, living for years in the city I've done very meditation and yoga and there's a lot of people practicing I think it's very essential to actually even keep a like, you know, basically be in balance in every day through relationships with everybody, you need something like that to maintain but when do you detox, you know, when do you fully get to that place where you strip away stuff that you've been maintaining, you know, when you when you actually disembark from a pattern that might actually be serving a lot of people. That's the thing is that I realized that a lot of people who do some of these detox diets in the Amazon or wherever they go, you can do detox diet in North American in nature, you know, there's lots of cleansing meditation retreats. It's just be giving yourself that time. And from from meets the faculty were bringing together indigenous knowledge that's also been passed down from from lines that haven't been interrupted. So bring them and what we also want to do at the amateur Center is bringing in, you know, people like, or just the researchers, authors like trial size and stuff who will have a different take in perspective on the world that has to do with our culture and more modern perspective and how to integrate that right, you know, young people right now we want to start a youth program because there's a lot of people point for healing. In the Amazon book, the people like, you know, who like youth who are spending a lot of time on technology these days and not connected to nature. When you take them out into like a whole different area, it becomes like this fascinating world. We're going to the Amazon. And, you know, like planet Earth is kind of it's a big place, but in a way it's small in the universe. And if we take people youth and say, Oh, you're going to the end. This is like so far away and you get to learn about all these species and that don't exist in your environment and and really create this. Well, this way of experiencing nature without having access to technology, then, you know, it does provide a little bit more of a chance to say, Hey, what can we do with just nature? And like, let's, let's, because they can't just run back home and go, Oh, you know, you're in the Amazon. You've gone that far, right? So it's a little bit like pushing people to the edge as well, that location, the edge of comfort and I've seen it with many people it does push people's comfort edge. And I think that that's what we are culture needs is to get strip away some of our comfort zone so that once those layers are taken off. Okay, now what do you do? Now what do you want to create? Let's build up from there, you know, and I'm not saying like we're going to like, you know, I went hot water eventually to like everybody else, but I'm not going to do it in a way that like, you know, you know, sacrifices, some of the animals down the street, right? After, you know, once you live without something for a while, it doesn't become such a like. Not so important. People come, you know, down to the jungle and they're like, you know, and everybody will detox from sugar, a little, you know, a little bit of some of the comfort foods and even when you're painting that picture of having all of the same amenities, you know, that we have in North America or in the Western world down there were really, for me, I'm really passionate and part of it is because I look at, we tried to plant some vegetables and things that we have up north and I was accustomed to planting in New England and it just didn't work. And so I was forced to really over time try things. Okay, that doesn't work. That didn't work. And then I really started to gain an appreciation for the local, the foods and the medicines and the herbs that were in that area. And for me, I feel like people can come there and they can really feel that they can deep program. They can tune into, you know, I mean, there's such an incredible variety of local food there. There's over 178 varieties of fruit bearing trees in that region alone, which is incredible, right? So anyway, but then take the knowledge of being able to tune into the land, the experience of receiving intelligence from the plants and the medicines and the environment. Take that back home with them. And that's an aspect of the Avatar centers. We all have this inner being inside of us that is our enlightened state, right? It is the part of us that is expansive and it constant communication with everything that ever was and ever will be, right? And opening up that box so that people can feel that and then activating it wherever they go in the world. It's not just about come here and then activate it here and then go back to your, your life, but it will change a person. It will transform us and that transformation plays out for eternity, you know, in all of the ways that we affect our relationships and everything we ever do. And so it's, it's about activation of purpose, activation of our soul and connection so that we can create something absolutely amazing that that is absolutely possible and absolutely beautiful. I think that, yeah, I mean, you can, you know, do meditation in the boardroom and on, and, you know, in the corporate office and things like that. But we are not separate minds. Our being our thinking our perceiving all of that is inextricably woven into the environment. And I think that, I mean, maybe there's exceptions, you know, but I think most people, if you're in a cubicle and in a schedule and in a money economy and and having the relationships that come along with that. I'm going to start, you're going to be thinking cubicle thoughts, seeing cubicle things, exercising linear logic. This other larger realm of perception that you're talking about doesn't come naturally in that environment. And it's not that I'm not saying that we're slaves to our environment either. But for me, at least the, I need to be deprogrammed and reconditioned by other environments that aren't what I grew up in. You know, it's not it's not even so much. I mean, yeah, like the physical environment is part of it, but the social environment is important to like, what do people talk about all day? What am I hearing? What are the conversations that I'm having? What is considered normal? All of those things are actually like, it's hard to see past them, like the fish that doesn't know it's wet, you know, it's hard to see that reality isn't just those things. Yeah, I just tend to be a little skeptical of, of the power of yoga and meditation and things like that, when inserted into the matrix of our society to really change very much. I think that they can bring people to a point where they are ready for a bigger change. I don't think that they're useless. But I don't think that that they can. I think, yeah, I think that within that container, they're, they're, they're limited and, and, but, and their power maybe comes in bringing us to a point where we no longer can tolerate that container. Right, right. Absolutely. At least it's more sensitive to the container. It's like, I find that essence of competition in the society where, you know, you know, you have a deal that being turned into a sport, you know? Yeah, like it kind of creates a different way of looking at it, right? Like with every perception, with every, with all the education information from all of the spiritual figures we had in our society, someone reads it differently than someone else. And so if we're not actually experiencing it and experiencing them, then just even passing on that information to someone else is like, well, this is what I got from it, you know, and this is how I received that. So, you know, even when other people experience, you know, a very euphoric state in various programs they've gone to, and then they try to pass it on and do shops and do teachings, you know, and I don't really appreciate that, but I find, I find the West has a lot of processing. We process, we, we process a lot. We have a, I call it like a lot of talk and a lot of processing and integration. You know, if we learn something like that new yoga pose or meditation, we'll integrate it and process it, but the depth of it sometimes, I find, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't cut in deep enough into the fabric of our programming and the way we do things to actually shift it in and up. So we integrate a small amount of, you know, maybe a more soul of like, you know, euphoria or enlightenment and say, yeah, this is, and then we try to hold on to it and try to disseminate and take it apart with our, you know, a part of the brain that maybe has a little bit too logical. And I find that, you know, going into the Amazon and working with the Indigenous people, they really are like, there's not much processing or integration. They're just like, it's there and it happened and they're like, okay, let's go, let's go get breakfast. Let's go get, like, go fishing or whatever they do in a day that they normally have to. So, you know, in a way that's what I also noticed that where it's needed that crossover is that we have been maybe catered to that in the West. We need a little bit more processing. We need a little bit more integrating time than the cultures that have gone very little. Like, they don't need as much or they just haven't had as much. They don't need as much in those ways. So, that's why those deep medicine that work sometimes that they do and people get really turned upside down sometimes not knowing what to do with themselves afterwards. And there's not a lot of support for that in our culture because of course it's been, some of these herbs have been made illegal. And so that's another reason why we need to go other places in the world for other sorts of healing that offer things that we haven't deemed as inappropriate. Well, I think one reason why people from the West need more integration is that the experiences that they are having with ayahuasca or some of other sacred plant medicines are so violently contradictory to the story of the world that they've been given. That it's disorienting. You know, they have to make sense of it somehow. Somebody who's been born and raised in the Amazon, the experiences that they have taking ayahuasca aren't necessarily so out of place. It's not hard to fit those into the rest of their lives. But for people from here, often those experiences are like they see things that they thought were impossible. They have thoughts that didn't exist in their universe of thought, you know. And so then you're like, well, what do I do with this help? What do I do with this? So I do think that some processing is could be important. Yeah. And then of course, there's also like the shadow side of that where the processing is an attempt to hold the experience in to make it your possession and to fit it into the existing conceptual framework that has the ego at the center. And so I think that I guess a skillful facilitator would be aware of that and not allow people or not encourage that attempt to own or that attempt to make it into a possession of the ego. And then there's also the thing about escapism, you know, just escaping into the intellect, which isn't actually a way to integrate and digest the experience. It's a way to push the experience outside by retreating to a comfort zone of words. What's it in a comfort zone? Right. There's also other cultural belief systems that create the superstitious and, you know, and that's it. That's my, that's my perception, right? It could be, I could believe it as a superstition. They're like, no, that happened in the jungle. This is what we saw. And, you know, they don't really want to go towards that. And so these plant medicines in both their culture, our culture, everyone's culture, there's a, you know, it's not for everybody, you know, and, you know, and I, you know, I'm not saying that this is also the only way I just found a way. And I think I listened to one of your talks and it talks about like, you know, you believe in miracles and say something about like, you know, just to create our own, you know, our beautiful, sorry, the title of your book always. That happens to a lot of people. The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. Yes. Yes. And that, and that, I love, I love the title when you said that the miracle that, you know, I found through, because my mom studied holistic healing, I was brought up in a very new age type of environment. You know, not very like, like the community I was in. So it's a very hush hush, like not to talk about things to look like we ostracized. And, you know, the miracle for me is that this medicine for me has really brought me out into more of a way of, you know, because we all like just, just like you know, know what we need to say, you know what we need to do. There's fear, there's all these other emotions and belief systems that prevent us sometimes from actually getting out of our comfort zone. And for me, some of these client medicines that we've been working with help me do that. And it also gave not only proof within myself that I needed to, like, and how I brought in, you know, a partnership that I love into my life, a baby, like, health, like, there's so many things that it's brought into my life that it's like, okay, okay, where's the, you know, if you need proof, you know, and, you know, along the way, you know, I can say it now and say, well, you know, there's, there's, it's not just a, oh, like, I feel good energy, you know, I really feel good energy. I want to spread that. And it's an intangible thing to people when you say that because they don't relate. But when you say like, oh, I've, you know, met my, my life partners through this, I've been able to conceive, I'm an amazing health. It's just like, okay, you know what else? You're living a happy life now. Yes. And, and that's, that's the thing is that, yeah, that's where I see is the miracle is that if you can bring you into balance with the people in your life and my family have never been closest like closer to a bridge to heal the It's it healed so much of my connection with my dad. I hardly talked to him for 15 years before for this medicine came into our lives, but it brings us back and it constantly brings us back to that understanding and that That energy that yes, this is possible. We saw it happen in, you know, and then let's And then, and so then you want to transmit that and you discover very quickly that talking about it doesn't transmit it because people don't have the conceptual frame to even take it in. How do you transmit it? Well, one way is to In an environment where other people can have that experience and receive the medicine and also it can be transmitted through your story. And through your presence through the change, the subtle change in the timber of your voice that happens when you've been through a certain kind of experience through Yeah, you You change you become a carrier of the medicine in in some way because you are no longer who you were before you have become you plus the medicine that is in your field. Yeah, so the ordinary way that we think that that in the West that we've learned that knowledge You know, less than 1% of the way that knowledge like the spreads and we spend so much time and energy trying to convince other people using, you know, evidence and That we're right that here's what's right and that's what's wrong. And then when they have an experience though that whole conversation becomes irrelevant. And that's what I think we need to At least for me, you know, I really, I mean, because my programming from school that that the solution to a problem is to come up with the right answer and present that right answer. That's really been strong programming for me. And I'm learning to to trust other ways of transmitting like even when in my writing. What's more important to me than Argumentation Is the tone, the voice, you know, the voice under the words. How do I transmit a certain voice. Oh, yeah, that's so I love that I love that topic because I listen to tone and that's that's very like for sound healing. I did it years ago. Down healing program and my voice I just I never saying it was, you know, had criticism, you know, somewhat of and and I find the tone that we bring in and just trusting that trusting our our own, you know, it transmits a vibration and and you can tell with other people. You know, you know, it's it's it's it's so apparent when you when you see someone's really happy or really saying what they're really meaning when, you know, it is and well, and that's, you know, I have to say, you know, in the in the plant medicine world, the singing like what comes through it's it's It's other worldly. And it's amazing to like I sing now and, you know, and I'm like, I'm always shocked. I like I love my voice like it's not even my voice. I don't know like I don't know whose voice this is, but it's amazing. It's. And, you know, just with the what it what it how it changes actually the vocal chords that it somehow resonates you so to a different frequency like I'm not exactly sure I'm still learning. These are what I call technologies of reunion, you know, that, again, like the kind of Western modern conception of what technology is is is such a tiny, tiny band of the spectrum of of all technology of all craft, you know, of all human capacities of all of the ways that there are to interact with nature and the world. And then so you're talking about this completely alternate thread of technology that is, you know, it has its own lineage it has its own logic it has its own practices it has its own. It's it's it's this whole other universe. And, and, you know, what is possible on this earth when we really inhabit technology. Well, and this is this is getting a good conversation where what I want to invite because I've had a lot of ideas that I want to because there's a palm oil project that's going on a few miles down the road and it started within the first year and I think partially like, you know, our inner avatar coming out but that that energy of the avatar of coming to, you know, the country scene really what's going on that they decimated 20,000 hectares. You know, clear cut and planted palm oil, palm, sorry, palms or palm oil that'll take five years. And, you know, the town is split over it. Some people want the work some people think it's destroying nature in an animal habitat. And, you know, like, it's a very contentious issue. And so now I, you know, everywhere I go I tell people don't eat palm oil because it's in everything. Not everything I shouldn't say that but it's in most products they're sold in in in local or, you know, regular grocery even organic products have palm oil in it. And, you know, it's not it's not necessary either. You don't need to have. This is one reason why I write and speak about economics to because like why is the community divided why do they need the work. If you trace back that question why they need the work, ultimately it comes to because they and the whole nation are in debt. So, you know, you produce the palm oil which is exported it generates foreign exchange hard currency which can be used to service the debt. And if you took away that pressure if you took away the debt pressure, then there wouldn't be this, you know, enormous push to find something to monetize to find something to to to generate. You know, maybe people would still want to participate. I mean, I'm not saying that that that, you know, no one should be part of a global economy, but people shouldn't be compelled. Yeah, to, you know, monetize their labor and monetize their land and convert everything possible into salable products. They shouldn't be compelled to do that by a imperialistic system of debt slavery. And like so ultimately all these level all these all these issues are connected, you know, yeah well especially when like this town that we're connected to be totally self sustainable it has everything to do. So it's like if they wanted to really put the energy into creating like a paradise, it'd be a paradise, you know, and you would really need external sources because maybe they would still want some external things you know, but that's okay they would they would be able to maybe have some sustainable palm oil or some some some products to generate the small amount. Exactly. A small amount of foreign exchange that's necessary for for what they really need, you know, they didn't have to meet that payments. Well, and that's what we want to help because a lot of we buy some of the herbs locally when we when we, you know, when we produce things on the land and the farmers like a lot of them are trying to sell their land they we get like probably like an average once or one a week or every second week somebody trying to sell us land down the street from us for a very cheap price. Wow. You know, they're not holding on to the land because everyone's going to the city that the user going to the city so they don't see like a viable culture. And so we try to also encourage sustainability practices where we're like if we buy some some plants or say vines. I lost the vines off of them except plant, you know, you have to plant and plant by plant 10 for every one you plant so that will be some of your and so that's we're trying to like also encourage the local economy ways to just a new way of of of interdependence between each other. And I think a lot of, you know, really, I think it all for me personally I see it's just a lot dependent on relationships and trust because, you know, the mayor, you know, there's greed involved and so he makes a deal that he gets some money and you know, and you know, I don't exactly know how we will become involved directly in terms of supporting I think the local farmers and the people that are wanting to live like, you know, just a better life and and are already doing it and they just they don't need very much. And that's, you know, it's easier to for me and I think that's our contribution to that area. It's easier to see. So yeah, I think this is I think this is really important because when you first mentioned, oh, there's people who, you know, come with offers to sell the land really cheap and stuff. Part of me was thinking, Oh, well, you know, maybe if we could find wealthy donors and people like that, you know, they could buy that land and protect it from palm oil and but that actually is not very secure. Because the land isn't just, you know, unoccupied space, the land has to have a thriving culture that is land based on it. Everybody goes to the city and takes the traditional knowledge and skills and relationships with the land with them, and it disappears and you have a bunch of, you know, wealthy philanthropists buying land thinking that they're protecting the land and land is actually very vulnerable because the people in the land are intertwined, the people are flesh and blood of the land and vice versa. So if you take away the people and take away the local cultures, then then there's nobody with like the people in part are the protectors of the land. Well, the Amazon itself, right, there used to be 95 million approximately people in the long basin, which, you know, and they say that this, this area is the lungs of the planet. And now they went down to 10%. So there's been 98 million or something people. I'm not going to call me in Sony out there, right? What did she do? But it's a very significant number. This is, this is like, this is really important because right now, you know, there are many places on earth where in order to protect wilderness, indigenous people are actually being removed, expelled from their traditional lands, where their life ways are interfered with are not allowed to hunt anymore because it's now called poaching all of a sudden, even though they've been doing it sustainably for thousands of years. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I just want to say that I think that you're really on the right track to, you know, support, support the local, the relationship with the land and not, you know, Well, I think that you have to live there. Like that's why a lot of people think that I'm not saying that, you know, we plan to live there. Well, we did it like over a year now we're going back for since our son was born here for another another year or two years. I'm not exactly sure how long we'll be there until we like we want to make that our permanent. We don't want to make that our permanent base because that's that's the only real way that you can affect changes if you make something your home and it's not necessarily just something you visit. And, you know, what we also want to bring in is is is a type of like I think I heard one time that how they affected changes they created a festival or something on that. You know, and I was like, Oh, that that's similar to what we want to do is but a ceremonial festival like bringing in the local healers and in a non competitive way because I feel like there's that capitalism culture is everywhere and it's really created a competition for money and tourists and people and that's why are we. We just want to like lower the price and be like, Hey, like, come in and let's work together and send that is all the work that these powerful really like powerful people who've done such disciplined ways of living. You know, with the plants and the earth, we bring them together. And we say, let's focus our energy on actually like, you know, helping this area. You know, whether it be through, you know, you know, in ceremony, that's what that's where I've I've seen like really big changes happen, because there's a lot of ancestral healing that needs to take place on all levels. What I've noticed in ceremonies is that there's a lot of platforms that get passed down there like generation after generation to the point where it compounds and then sickness starts to form the body and it's it's very repressed. And it's it's not quite it's in a subconscious and all those subconscious thoughts are actually it's from generation to generation that's in there. And so, you know, in working with each other and saying, OK, like, about ideas of work and poverty and scarcity, whether it be what, you know, you said once artificial scarcity. Yes, actually, like, oh, no, I have proof I I have only a pair of shorts to my name scarcity, you know, it's still the same inner it's the same feeling that exists. So, you know, bridging those with it, you know, from from from not just our generation, but from many generations. And I think that's what it takes to do this type of healing work is immersing yourself and, you know, you only do it people who come down and say, OK, I'm going to commit myself for, you know, a period of time aren't only doing it for themselves or doing it for their families and their communities. And so it just. Yeah, I want to I think I want to keep it keep it to about an hour or so. Before we go, I think we got some really interesting ideas here in the mix and if people want to find out about the Avatar Center if they want to go to Brazil. Peru is it okay yeah we didn't even tell you didn't say where you are. If you if they want to go go I mean like. Yeah, it's. We have we have a website it's in the process of being developed but people can go to the site right now it's avatar center.com that's 808 are and it's center spelled with an R e so c n r e dot com. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com forward slides the avatar center. We have an Indiegogo campaign coming up so you can look the avatar center off on Facebook or on the Indiegogo to support us in our endeavors. All right. Well this is lovely. Yeah, that was beautiful. Well, thank you for for spending this time. Yeah. Is this guy. Yeah. His name is Xander Xander. Hi. Hello. Hi. Hi there you are. The baby is what you are. His middle name is bear. Bear spirit. All right well. Yeah. Thank you so much. I think I think your your final statement was a perfect way to end it. I really beautiful and good good luck on your project really keep in touch and tell us tell us how it progresses. Yeah we will when we when we get to the jungle doesn't have that great of an internet service so when we do get out. I like to show it in your work and I hope that your podcast. Look, I'm sure they're broadcasting. I know it's just it's a new thing but if you don't do want to find out more about me it's my website's Charles Eisenstein net. Okay, okay. Where to go. Awesome. Yeah, I will let our community that's forming and. And yeah in future definitely our programs in 2017 we wish to continue that. Development in the next couple years to bring in more people as the place grows. But in a good conscious way not like this. Yeah, yeah. Extension is not always needed. It's not necessarily better. Okay. Bye. You've been listening to a new and ancient story with me your host Charles Eisenstein to engage more deeply you can join our community on new and ancient story.net where we have live chats forums meetups and all kinds of other tools for collaboration. If you want to find out more about my work and visit my website Charles Eisenstein net.