Growth brings wisdom. Our intellectual, emotional, moral, and spiritual foundations determine what we can receive. Boom, what's up everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sakin. Super excited to be talking about ancient wisdom in modern times. We have Niles, heck, been joining us on the show. Hello. Pleasure to be with you, sir. Thank you so much for coming on. Yeah. Really excited for this episode. Niles' background, he's a documentarian whose personal work focuses on themes of ancient wisdom. And the links in the bio to nileshechman.com as well as transmutationfilm.com and shamansoftheglobalvillage.com, which we will be unpacking here. That was a short excerpt from transmutationfilm. I'm excited to be talking about that and documentarian work in general. Let's start things off with one of our favorite questions to ask our guests, Niles. What are your thoughts on the direction of our world? I think a lot of the species seems to be de-evolving and a smaller percentage seems to be in a brilliant point of evolution. And that seems like what 2012 is about, right? Like the argument of larger metaphysical things going on from Pisces to Aquarius, of like the species finally waking up to some extent. And you have, you could argue, there's the hundredth monkey scenario which some people talk about where a smaller, more sophisticated and enlightened group of people understand more under-rooted things about what's secretly really going on and a larger mass is asleep still. So I know as you have a show called Simulation, much of that maybe focuses around themes, a theme that's similar to what some of my work focuses on which is a Gnostic mindset of like this reality being illusory and how much people really realize that what's really going on is different than what is proposed by the mainstream reality tunnel. Or what I would say is they mean the Joker spirals of the mainstream unreality signal, right? So that's kind of a dynamic where you see a lot of people that are what's called being on a latent path, you know, just going sideways or on a descendant path if they're in some sort of personal destruction doing, you know, methamphetamine in the civic center over here or like, you know, incarcerated or selling, you know, some sort of narcotic on the street doing a life of crime that's descendant.  They're just kind of going sideways even if they have, you know, a Stanford degree and three PhDs, they might just be doing their job and their routine and doing kids and work, kids and work. And they're just latently doing things. But then a smaller percentage of people are doing more excellent things on an ascendant path where they're trying to be in a constant point of betterment and discovery. So I think as we kind of start in that process or the whole species slowly moves in that process or at least a smaller percentage of people do, we can see that we find the others that are doing excellent things as well. And you know, we all can only do our little part, but as long as you're trying to always be in some level of betterment or discovery, you get my vote for sure. And then what would you say are some of the key things that those that are on this ascendant path of self-work and discovery and transcendence and helping the collective as well, doing focus on that, what can they best do to help awaken others to that realization of just, and you used the word, Gnosticism. Yeah, Gnostic spirituality. Yeah, teach us about that. Yeah, well, I'm a documentary filmmaker, at least I feel like I'm half amateur, half professional at what I do. But you could put this word to the forefront that my work focuses around seems of spirituality. Most people, that's such a loaded term and like Sturgeon's Law says 90% of everything's crap. So just like with spirituality, there's a lot of bad spirituality out there. So I don't necessarily put spirituality to the forefront. I would say that my work combines essentially occult and esoteric content with high production value. Most people don't also know what occult or esoteric mean. So an even more down in the weeds way of saying what I do is my work focuses on themes of mysticism, alchemy, hermetic philosophy, shamanism, or maybe something like Gnosticism, right? These are ancient spiritual, philosophic practices. Most people don't know what those are. So another zoom out from that is I could just say that my work focuses on themes of ancient wisdom or ancient knowledge combined with my background of having high production values. So it's like you create something that looks good, has the professionalism behind it and then you actually have an underlying thing to say. And so when you insert something like Gnosticism into something, even famous works like The Matrix and I worked on The Matrix Sequels as a young sprout. People don't know about that, they don't understand it, but they can still heart string feel into it, feel that there's some sort of underlying things that speaks to there. What you could argue is they're subconscious or they're deeper self. So when you insert wisdom into things or any of these ancient practices that have huge power in them, I think that there's a lot of reward in that for sure. So that's what I kind of always try and do in ever so slight ways with my life and my work and how I intrinsically am and what exteriorly manifests in my works. Like how we internally live our life, our spiritual life, which if you wanna put spiritual to the forefront, a good way that I always try and say it is that spiritual just essentially means truthful.     You're not doing contractive things. You're not watching the sporting event at the pub, even though we all might do that here and there. But there's all the traps of the illusions of the mainstream, unreality, joker spiral signal always wants you to do contractive things. And I try and insert something ever so slightly that provides media that is expansive just like you might be trying to do with the show, right?  That's right, yeah. So your essence with the documentary work is to disseminate high quality productions of ancient wisdom that can awaken and inspire people. Yeah, or like the way to say it is that for those with ears to hear, because you can't wake anybody up that doesn't wanna be woken up. That's a classic Gnostic theme. With those willing to hear. Yeah, it's eyes to see and ears to hear is one way of looking at it. And I'm not any, I don't present myself as a scholar or anything. I'm just a student of life and student of these ancient practices, right? And so it's like the big failure of the guru or the somebody that's allowing themselves to be elevated is to say like, I'm claiming more than I really am. So when you're just saying I'm learning and I'm on a path of betterment, I'm not trying to preach anything, but when you start talking about something like esotericism, which is such a personal path and such a path of inner understanding and your own gnosis and your own wisdom through whatever way that came. It is very contagious because you can present yourself of a way of being and living and acting in the world that reflects onto other people and they just read that. They read your geometry in you as doing something excellent, right? You don't have to stand on some soapbox and preach things that are very dogmatic and old fashioned ways. Yeah, and that's what I'm always doing is as my life has changed and bettered and I've understood deeper things that have brought me gnosis or insight or experience, the works also reflect that. So it's like my life hopefully reflects that ever so slightly in the works too as well. And that's why I see a lot of content online these days. A lot of it's visually beautiful, but it has little to nothing to say. It's all this base chakra stuff. So when you can kind of try and make something that's a higher vibrational energy, which we could sound a little woo-woo, but ultimately everything is energetic. When you start putting out that signal, people respond to it a bit. Even though you're sometimes, it feels like you're speaking to smaller, again groups of more sophisticated and enlightened people. There's channels now that allow us to bypass these gatekeepers and get more authentic stuff to the forefront. So you've created something yourself here with the show that is also, we have a similarity of what we're doing, trying to just do our own thing and be our authentic selves, follow our own ways of being and acting that reflect in our outward manifestations. So, yeah. Yes, yes, thank you. And who were you growing up that got you interested in documentary work? Yeah, you know, it was interesting. I was always a kid that liked cinema and in my more stupid past when I didn't know anything growing up, a lot of everything was a reflection on a movie, like the movies teach us things.  So, 90% of what goes on at Hollywood is very naughty, not in your best interests. Just like anything from standard operating procedure of capitalism or Wall Street, there's deep levels of dark sorcery that are very soul-sucking in these places. And people get into these systems of shadow workings within the music industry and realize that they essentially have to do these dark things to sustain some level of fame and fortune or red carpet champagne dreams. And it's beautiful to have a reach and have people like your material and know your stuff. And I'm certainly, as any artist, I'm no different than the standard artist that wants to have their work be known. So, it's nice to share what you're doing, but you ultimately come to realize that these things aren't in your best interest. And you might be able to somewhat balance working in them, but I came to realize that any client work I ever did was significantly less interesting than the work I would create myself because I was essentially too conscious for that industry. It's like we're having a conversation with Ron about this, about you get to the point where you can't really operate in the old way of being. So, as I was growing up, I got into Hollywood and I saw what it did well and what it did not well and I have a lot of respect for certain people within the industry and I know people within the industry that are trying to do decent things, but then getting content that's anything expansive past these gatekeepers is very difficult, right? So, every once in a while, you will see a gem, right? You will see something like the matrix that has some sort of actual wisdom in it, right? I worked on Avatar in my more stupid past when I didn't know anything and made a lot of money and now as I know things, there's new streams of revenue beginning and creating my own content, but something like Avatar has very shamanic themes and people don't know that, but they resonate with people, right? So, we do see things coming out of large big project projects that at times are pretty good. So, I give credit when I am occasionally watching something that is like, oh, this is great. I'm really happy that this was made and it's not a piece of dark sorcery that's just there to be an op or some sort of something that's giving a misrepresentation of what it is to actually be a real human being and be on a path of betterment and discovery. It's just distraction and illusion and we see that so much with entertainment industries. Yeah. Okay, we're gonna get to the distraction and illusion side of things too. Were you ever, when you were younger, were you ever just the first moments with cameras just got really excited about it or were the first moments with spiritual growth yourself got really excited? No, I became much more, I guess as I referenced 2012, 2012 was a big year where things kind of clicked for me. So, I would say I was well into my 20s in my more again stupid past, not knowing anything where before I really kind of started to understand things and I had had an interest in kind of more off the beaten path things. I liked garbage bell kids more than something more mainstream. So, esotericism is such an inner thing and it's about those that are kind of outsiders and rejects. So, as somebody, the young kid rebells against the mainstream, leave it to beaver, materialist, rubbish culture of white picket fence, suburban, hellish America, you're into punk music or something like that or you're into skater culture. You're into these aspects that are rebellious natures of the joke or spirals of unreality and just delusion and distraction that don't benefit us as conscious excellent beings. So, I think we do have these avenues that we go down that are different and I did find my path and occasionally reading excellent things that had actual wisdom in them or seeing something that was a more off the beaten path piece of graphic novel. I love Alan Moore's graphic novels, that type of thing where there's actually like occult themes in these things. So, there was pieces of art that really did inspire and then as I got into my 20s, I really started to, things clicked and I really started to become on more of a path of excellence through various experiences and spiritual practices, right? Through having a meditative practice, through various experiences that would give us some sort of gnosis or logos. And that's just fractaled out from there and the projects that I've created into my 30s. What would be a recommendation that you would have for those that are developing the eyes and the ears to see that there's more to life than the joker spirals? Where can they find signal? How can they parse for the signal? It's an important question because it's so hard to find real content and a lot of excellent stuff isn't even on the internet. And as we know, big any, I sometimes, and I often in conversations use this phrase where like big anything lowers human consciousness, right?  Obviously, if you're operating within these things in a more like grassroots level, you're probably gonna go after truth. If you're operating in some way where you're like an actual real excellent, you have a little church in a small community and you're actually saying things that are more gnostic themes of actual real esoteric Christianity.  It's nice to support the local community, but as things get so big, there's no wisdom in them. They're just about the dollar signs and maintaining the status quo. So it's hard to go into big tech and find wisdom on areas of Facebook or these distillusions of Twitter and YouTube. But we do find things that are excellent and big tech is very much purging things that aren't necessarily expansive. So one way that I would say is to study the specific life work of people. Seek out people's works who are excellent. And usually you find somebody's works that really fractal you out and make you realize bigger things and then that bounces you off to somebody else, right? So you find Robert Enten Wilson's material. You read a book by Robert Enten Wilson and they are talking about Terrence McKenna and they lead you to somebody like Alan Watts. So you find these specific individuals who actually started to know things and talk about things and they reference other people. And then that's very much how in terms of my studies, I always do it. And I have a list of people that are actually like, I call them the people that knew things list of people. And it's always growing and it's always improving because I'm always myself finding new people that knew things. But most people on a latent path in our society, all they know how to do is essentially be in their little sliver of commerce, which is fine. Commerce restricts. As commerce is another whole thing that we could talk about but human beings are not commercial traders.  And that's all that we do until we hit the golf course at 60. There's much more to life than that. So it's great if you like what you do and it gives you time and space for your own practices but ultimately that's only gonna come from your own direction. And that's certainly what I found is that as I create works that I learn from creating them just like you learn from the conversations you have on this thing, it becomes this spiral that feeds itself. There's a lot of notes from this conversation so far. You're crushing it, yeah. Yeah, and I try not to be too long-winded. I could happily talk for 14 minutes so I'll wrap up. You're crushing it. So I like how you said that one of the ways out of the Joker spirals and distraction to find the signal is to seek out peoples life works and then to kind of do like you're starting to follow a signal trail between people. Why is it that one of the people that I admire is sitting down with this person? Why is it about this person? So then you look into that person? Yes. Okay, and that's how you can maybe start digging out. Also I really appreciate how you said like big anything is actually- Restrictive. And contractive. And contractive. Like a lot of it is that the family values don't scale so like my tendency to self-deal as Google or Facebook is just more likely than my tendency to be like I care about Niles Heckman and Ron Vargas. And so I'm going to do things that show that I specifically am tailoring my algorithms to something that's gonna benefit their health and their wellness and all this type of stuff rather than their time on screen types and styles. So that was also a very good point. Okay, so let's launch into the ancient wisdom within the actual, so let's start with transmutation where we watched the very short clip that we watched at the beginning. So teach us about this film and what you're doing with the ancient wisdom in it. Yeah, I mean, transmutation is a featured doc that we made completely independently. It's very rare to find a truly independent film. And so it's essentially about the beauty and danger of a hidden spiritual path and shows people that have transformed themselves which is really transmute themselves by walking it. So alchemy, a secret to alchemy is the transmutation of oneself. Esoterically, ancient alchemy you could say is a precursor to chemistry. And the stereotype of alchemy is that in ancient days they were just trying to turn lead to gold. They were being very materialistic about it. A deeper way of looking at that, again the inner core of something will be this esoteric core. It will be the wizard behind the curtain and it won't be broadcast in the mainstream. You have to seek it out almost yourself and it's gonna be like secret codes invented in the circuit board, right? So the secret to alchemy is the transmutation of oneself and that's like what we're all essentially trying to do. We're trying to change ourself from an old self that was the version 1.0 of Alan into a version 2.0, 3.0. And that's trying to be always in a process of betterment and discovery. And of course it's not a race. We all have to live in commerce. We all have our jobs. We all have to support ourselves. I understand that and it's not anybody to judge or to race on those types of things, but transmutation just highlights people that are doing their part ever so slightly in walking that walk and talking the talk. And spiritual, our growth in life, obviously that clip mentioned growth is just our life growth or our spiritual growth. And that's what ultimately human beings are designed to do. We're designed, we're here to grow in this, what we could call a simulation of the realm of earth. Like we are, you can have a very high level metaphysical conversation about us being spiritual beings having a human experience, but why are we here in material 3D reality? It's like we're here to have experiences and then at some point be like, what did you learn? So that is obviously a process of change and you can't change without expelling old ways of doing things. And as we expel old ways of doing things, we may lose friendships or have different relationships and things come and go. But like nature does, we looked at nature as a teacher or animistic cultures from the past. They had a connection to great spirit and we could talk more about this with Shaman's The Global Village, but you know, we had these deeper connections to our higher selves, you could say our nature or wisdom or Gaia or cosmos or Pachamama. So, transportation is very much in this flavor of this esoteric practices such as alchemy and mysticism and hermetic philosophy. So these are ancient spiritual, philosophic systems that project wisdom through a path that you take and you can read about it, but ultimately you must experience it through the various things that you do. And as we were making the film, it was a very transformational process in making it. So I always try and if I'm gonna make something that's gonna be a very difficult project that I'm going to get paid much less money for, it might as well be life transformative. Yeah, yes, yes. There's again so much good stuff. I wanna know what are the people doing in transmutation that are helping them grow? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're rejecting old ways of being and knowing and they have built up a discernment to see what is good information versus what is bad information. And as anybody that's on a path of betterment or discovery, you're like, if you spend your time with earbuds and your ears listening to a great audiobook or a yummy podcast and you're just searching out any sort of things that are like, how can I better myself through my own personal time? That's great. And so we highlight people in this film, of course, which is very much, it has a theme of a voiceover of kind of a spiritual philosophic voiceover by my brilliant colleague Neil Kramer, who is essentially a real mystic. A real actual mystic wrote this documentary. And then we show actual people to kind of break that up that are doing things that are transformative in their life through the ways of being and acting within the world that are very unconventional. But still, like all of us, we have a mixture of our standard operating lives in suburbia or in the city that we have to kind of do our daily chores or maybe have our job. But it's all about the balance of these things. And we highlight much in the film, like the wisdom of the sun and moon, for example, these divine opposites that give us an allegory of a masculine and feminine thing. And the balance of these things and how much life is so much about the balance of things for our own personal betterment, right? It's like, do you, that's what, that's my issue I always had. It's not that I don't like tech or like big data or like technology. It's just how stupidly much we work, right? It's like we work these Protestant work ethics that are nuts. And it's great if you're on some leading edge of technology working on blockchain. But if you work in 90 hours a week, you can't work on your spiritual growth. And I know it's even worse in other countries like Japan. So it's just the balance of how much we do things. So there you go. So people that are finding balance and finding wisdom through the way that they're living their lives and some of the experiences that they're having because it's all experiential. There's the, this has to be pulled up right now. This is too good, this is too good from literally today. Oh, do you? Yeah, Ron will bring it up right now. Oh, there you go, yeah. Yeah, congratulations. You're hired. Thank you. I am so grateful for this opportunity to wake up at 6 a.m. and sit in traffic so that I can stare at a computer screen for eight hours every day. Yeah, one thing that we highlight in transmutation is essentially this modern perspective on empire, which has always existed. And empire is there to crush the spiritual growth of every note on the network. So over time, eons of time, empire has come to the forefront through ancient days and you saw it most highlighted in theocratic times of the Dark Ages when everybody, if you said the wrong thing you'd have your head cut off or you stepped on the King's Shadow in ancient Hawaii and they'd stab you. These times where it's like nobody could say anything. And now we do live in crazy times but we can say stuff and if we were having this conversation 500 years ago we'd be like, you know, burned to a crisp. So it's beautiful times to be alive. Which literally, yeah, happened to apparently Bruno saying things like. Yes, Giovanna Bruno, yes. For speaking a little bit too much truth, you know. Nobody still to this day in this society by saying a lot of truthful things gets you anywhere, usually. Standup comedy is a great medium because you can actually inject wisdom into things. Music is another good one. Exactly, and the arts have always tried to, great art will always try and inject something that is a source of betterment through the art. So I do consider myself having come out of it the background being an artist, still very much an artist in the works and I hope that reflects in the production values of the content but actually an artist that hopefully has things to say. So in that rambling, I forgot your initial question. Art's role is to like embed these most sacred aspects of like self-work and spiritual wisdom and all these types of things. Like that's part of art's role because you can embed it with music or poetry or comedy or film. Ah, that's huge. When you become a very seminal artist that's remembered, it's because you had things to say, right? And so with Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel and inserted like symbolism into the work. That's gonna stand the test of time and things that have symbolic meaning usually transcend, right?  Occasionally you can insert something into that but I always try, to me I'm so uncommercial that it's how do you balance being commercial and sustaining revenue with creating art, right? And a lot of artists have to do very commercial things. And just like Michelangelo wanted to paint his own thing but he had to paint what the church wanted him to paint. So it's this struggle through all of time and I've talked about it extensively in places. Ronnie has some thoughts. I got it. I understand your dilemma. Yes, pretty. How do we stay afloat? Yeah. You just have to cut back on your needs. Yes. Like I remember living in my van, I would find cheap spaces and warehouses that would be just so ultra cheap. I remember in Bitterford, Maine I found a place. I got myself my own hot water heater and a cross foot bathtub and I was good to go. But again, there's also something among us that doesn't want us to create and make these movies and write these songs and poems and films and we have to be very cautious especially now with creativity with artificial intelligence and benevolent forces. That's good. That was a good one, Ron. We're gonna get there too. I wanna, let's hit on this point quick just that what Ron's saying about, like you give up some of the things along the spiritual journey. One of the things that has made it so much different today is that now where you said you used to be burned by saying things that were of the .001%, now we actually have more freedom of speech with that which is fantastic. At the same time, we have the, when you take a photo of yourself when you're doing things like, you're worried about judgment. So many people are worried about judgment. Like if Ron is to live in a van or a warehouse as he does the artist or spiritual journey, we're worried that our mom and our friends and that people are going to judge us versus if we were to just be like, I don't care about that and that stuff actually is there to just hold me back from my path. That would help us a lot getting through that. Yeah. It's like human beings aren't designed to be in these massive judge dread mega Tokyo cities, Neo Tokyo cities of big cities of lonely people. We're designed to be in more small town community. And so I think as we live more authentically and you could say that we could have a whole another 17 hour conversation about the oil and the decline of society.  It's just a slow returning to more authentic ways of being. And so you find more modest and realistic ways of living and being and you don't have such a high cost of living and you look at other cultures in the past like indigenous cultures or Native American cultures that lived in more communal aspects and had the village raise the child together and we have no cost of living or the Amish go and build a barn together and it's like it's done. You don't have to pay a mortgage for 30 years. These are ways that give you much more freedom to be the artist or the creative. Or you live in a tiny house these days. You do alternate ways of being and acting that allow you to feel your creative path which I have always said that the creative path through what we create is us self initiating ourselves into our own growth processes. And we always hit these challenges along the way because life is hard and life is a struggle and much of spirituality is this, is life. It's the 3D, it's not often some other dimensional space even though there's a reflection of that because nothing comes from here, everything comes from elsewhere. And that's kind of what you could say. Piece of wisdom is as above so below, right? You know, like if we have a higher dimensional version of ourselves, which people call all sorts of different things and it's fractaling down to this, you know, the inside is the cause and the outside is the effect. Or you could say that for the above and below, right? So just finding ways to give yourself space is key. Time and space.  Bullshit, yeah. And so again, I'm never gonna say that people should just disavow their responsibilities. You know, we all have to make money in commerce in this current time-space vector. But it's always returns to these talks of balance. And I've found a way where luckily in my life I can balance things that I can make a feature documentary about things that would never be allowed through the dark sorcery gatekeepers of, you know, I'm not a big fan of gatekeepers, you know, people that are, we've given ourselves a position of this is what is good. You know, even things like film festivals or laurels or these things, most film festivals aren't there to help your film. They're there to help their festival. Occasionally you will find really cool people there but it's not gonna, you know, allowing content that is so expansive through doesn't usually go over well. But on the other side of that, you will hit an audience where people are really inspired and see it like you mentioned in the work where they get it and that's really beautiful. And so you get occasional nice responses from people that really like the work or respect it. And if I am in some sort of conventional thing where people are picking up on it and we happen to be in some sort of festival and people get it, that's great too, you know. I love the idea of a very deeply spiritual, awakening driven film festival. Things like that that are there not for their own personal growth of the film's gain or the festival's gains. We need to know some questions here around the technicals of these things. So how, what are you, you were giving us the, you were writing out the story and making the narration, these types of processes. Okay, we get that. But then there's the actual process of going and identifying what equipment to use, where to go and film, how to edit it all together, doing things like in situ, you have voiceovers with beautiful visuals happening. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, teach us about all that. You learn from experience and I have a background making essentially pretty pictures for big studio movies that were very high budget. And so I occasionally might still find myself doing a little freelance work directing a commercial for a tech company in the area or something. And so bringing that knowledge of production value into a project, I knew that I had kind of synchronistically built up a skill set where the four legs of my coldrin, my alchemical coldrin or being able to write things, direct things, shoot things and edit things. And if you could do those four, you're pretty unstoppable as a filmmaker. I love that. Yeah. So I got to the point where as I was ever so slowly transmuting myself, my older, dumber self to what I am now. And I certainly as you have cycles of life where you become the wise Gandalf wizard later in life or in another life or many lives down the line, you can argue that people that are understanding or trying to be on some sort of path of betterment have been here longer or older souls, you could say. Also there's one more pillar, the market. I wrote that one down. Write, direct, shoot, edit and market. Yes, that's key. And that's certainly a key component. But anyway, like those technical aspects or things that as I was becoming better at doing those things, I also saw out people that were equally as knowledgeable about the material, if not more so than me. So Neil Cramer who wrote this film is way further on the path than I was at the time and is. So he was the narrator and writer of the doc and could speak to it in an excellent way. So I brought my production value to it. Well, he brought the wisdom to it. And I learned a lot just by being in this proximity with him. There's an ancient term, you'll like this. It's called, Disciplec Succession. And it's basically like when you're next to somebody that's wise, it's like when Luke went to go visit Yoda in the Dagobah system, Luke gets Disciplec Succession from Yoda. Okay, like, Disciplec Succession. You get transmission of knowledge. Okay, Disciplec Succession. I feel like Neil gave me Disciplec Succession just by walking around the Pacific Northwest in these ancient old growth forests with a real mystic that actually transmitted information and insight to me. Just like any, you know, that you go up to the Oshrom on the mountain to learn Kung Fu and the Kung Fu master transmits data and knowledge and wisdom to you. And so the same thing with our...  Yeah, and that's why you, while it's important to put yourself around people that are knowledgeable as well or on your same vibratory level, same wavelength, or people that can teach you things. And that's what we grossly lack in our society is wise elders of knowledge and spirit. Do you ever notice that there are some people that surround themselves with people that are not as smart as they are, so they feel smarter? I'm sort of, you know, we have these people among us. There's also a phenomenon with men and women that surround themselves with people that are not as attractive as they are, so they're more attractive. That's funny, man. Another thing, Niles, when you talk about in your younger day when you referenced that you weren't very bright, you were stupid, I think you said, I find that extremely hard to believe. I think even at your worst, you were just shining above those beers again. Well, thank you, man. I think that we're all, you know, we have these, as kids, we might be this little introspective little kid, you know, who's in our own world and like little kids can see, have read into things well. Like you can be in some weird, like you'd be in some Southern Baptist church, but you'd see this guy that's like, Jesus Christ, he's talking in a fake voice and the little kid in the little Baptist church instantly reads the fakeness and the artificiality of this person, right? So kids have pretty good discernment for that, usually until they're indoctrinated, apparently, if they get you, if something indoctrinates you, it's like by age seven or age 10, if they've got you it's really hard to indoctrinate yourself, to unplug from your matrix pod. So kids are pretty good about that, right? Unplug from your matrix pod, yeah, no. Yeah, that's a great way to put it, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but that's something that I think- Indoctrinating kids into matrix plots. As a little introspective kid, I did see things in other ways and you don't have language to describe what you're interested in or why I like the dark psychedelia of the band tool. Why am I called to, you have a, you know, on your coast or you have a cult image of this hand, right? Which you could argue is like the hand's a hand or the hand of the mysteries as Manly Palmer Hall would say. But like, why do you like a hand that's in dark psychedelia of the band tool? Why are you drawn to that imagery? But you don't know why. So it's like you eventually get discerned enough that you become to be able to describe these things and communicate it to others. And that's what we can do well as we get better and as we hopefully can share knowledge and insight is how you communicate it, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that's the one of the major roles of film, poetry, music, comedy is to disseminate these insights and awaken, inspire people. I love that. Okay, let some, and you said experience was the big thing. So actually going out and learning these pillars, writing, directing, shooting, editing, marketing and going and doing that process over and over again. I got so lucky that a couple of years ago that people started telling me, Alan, just practice premiere, just go and start editing your own stuff. You learn by doing it so quickly. Now we're making these cool 60 second videos and it's really just takes the practice, the experience. Yeah, and if you're going to make something on your own you might as well make it paradigm crushing. You might as well do something that it's not going to come from the top down. It's going to come from the bottom up, right? So you might as well. You may as well make it paradigm crushing. You mean I can't put toothpaste into Oreos and feed them to the homeless and capture it? Well the metaphor is yeah, there's no putting the toothpaste back in the tube when you've discovered something and you want to somewhat insert that. So that is the discouraging thing is there's such saturation of content now that a lot of it is not very good. It's just like it might really win but what does it have to say? And it's not like my work is on this high horse but I think that the works are starting to give out a signal that they have things to say and I'm happy with that, right? From the various forms of media I create. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so now let's get Mr. Shaman's of the Global Village. So the first episode, when was that published last year? We shot it in 2015 and we made it in 2016. So Shaman's of the Global Village I know you talked about with RAC but it's basically an independent investigative documentary series about shamanic cultures and the shamanistic path and how shamanism is a key component to a healthy civilization or community because in our society these days, the metaphor I use is in all respect to our loved ones is we have the society of essentially childish asleep robots where we have these automaton people that are essentially little kids in adult bodies, right? They haven't had an initiatory experience into knowing who they are, how they fit into the greater ecology of things.  And just like these mindsets of having our politicians that sadly every once in a while, Serge's Law, you get people that are decent in politics but you get these other deplorable excuses for human beings that don't know anything and they don't know anything about like who they are, what they're doing or where we're going. So having this mindset where it's like, what if we initiated these people into shamanic medicines as like just number one precursor for being a representative of the people and not just special interests. If you have a larger understanding of what human beings are and where we're going and why we're doing these things and how we can live in more authentic ways of being that connect us more to great spirit, you know, which is if you're interested in nature or animal welfare or the rights of indigenous peoples, it's like all of these things check the boxes of being more connected to great spirit, right? Great spirit just being the larger ecology of things and how animistic cultures have always recognized they've used the term I've talked to spirits, you know, that's just their way of saying that my higher self, my higher vibrational density self, which sounds a little woo, but ultimately like you, your higher self that can connect to knowledge and wisdom through what some people call like a Kashuk record, gives gnosis or insight and you can get that when you're tuned in enough, when you haven't had, you're not eating shit food or you're not like drinking tons of caffeine or you're masturbating every day or you're doing these things that are contractive even though there's great times to have, do all these things, you know, to have all the, there's places for all things that can be. Masturbating every day. Expans it, right. It's great to have an orgasmic experience like on occasion, but you know, everything in moderation that tune you into these larger, you know, the greater ecology of things. So that's just what I'm saying is that if you, again, back to balance always, but we highlight in the show, ancient cultures that do this very well and they have their own problems too. You know, cause they're suffering through the, the crisis times of the environment these days with all the crisis levels that we're at and the struggles of them having to operate within commerce and the current dynamic. So we highlight various tribal cultures that have had a shamanic practice and hopefully have given a lineage of ancient wisdom through some what's called neo shamanism, you know, modern day shamanism through somebody that might be from the United States or might be from Mexico or somebody that's from, you know, an indigenous culture that is training to become a shaman. That's essentially somebody that helps people realize that so much of their problems are a spiritual problem, right, in terms of everything, in terms of their life issues, in terms of health and wellness. And you know, the petrochemical pharmaceutical industry has such a monopoly on health and well-being that they don't, allowing any sort of holistic things through or any sort of things that aren't the status quo is very difficult to get through. So shamanism becomes such a loaded term for the, again, back to the unstreamed, you know, unreality signal of standard operating procedure. And as you could say something very paradigm destroying, which is that all religion is based on astrophiology, our connection to the cosmos and shamanism, right? Because shamanism is as old as the hills. I think shamanism is as old as, however many, many long, long time ago that we are, you know, we see ancient civilizations and cultures that clearly knew things more than we did. And I would say that's because they had connection to Great Spirit. They were getting their, you know, iCloud data downloads that were giving them knowledge and insight as to how to build this pyramid in this specific point with this specific, like, you know, tools, how we did this in advanced ways to connect up to the, you know, the summer solstice of this particular location at this particular time. And you see in ancient civilizations reflections of this, where you wonder how much like, how did these people get this insight and wisdom? And it's because of connection to our higher selves, which is that's the icon of kind of empire is just decoupling from who we really are and what we're capable of, right? And all the powerfulness that we can manifest. And as we seek out our own paths in life, and I would say like you and I talked about earlier, finding our, what Joseph Campbell called like find your bliss, right? Like find your real way in life. That's really the reflection of you. So you do work or what Alistair Crawley says is do what I will. She'll be the whole of the law. Find things that allow you to fulfill your true will and gives you energy. So your work gives you energy instead of taking your energy. Yes, yes, yes. You may be going to, we're here on Market Street in San Francisco, which is a wild and it's kind of like the Cantina in Star Wars or something sometimes. You see a whole spectrum of the freaks of the industry mixed with like, you know, the very professional tech people of going to their jobs on Twitter. It's ridiculous. Yes. And you see the full spectrum of society and how we have massive problems and amazing things that we're doing.  And they're also the most wonderful things ever. Right? And we have amazing capabilities of bettering society. It's just so eloquently described. You're dichotomizing it so perfectly. Yeah, yeah. Kind of like kids, you know, I have a two year old and it's the same way of kids.  Exactly, yeah, exactly. That's how kids really are. And kids show you that, you know? Yeah. And that's, yeah, yeah. Anyway, funny, funny. Very, very well said. So much good stuff there. Now, would we, so the first one was on the Sonoran Desert Toad and that was in 2016 was released. That's correct. And there were some really profound takeaways from that. Just for me, just the way that humans connect to the creatures of the Sonoran Desert Toad, how they connect to the land, how they connect to the spirit that is working with the creature to then get the venom that's secreted from the gland, the 5MEO DMT. Yes. That whole thing, it's not just a come here, let me get this from you, I'm gone. It's a massive intent.  And this next one that's coming out's on the Peote Cactus episode. That's correct, yeah. So, each episode focuses on a specific medicine person working with a specific medicine. So, the first episode was released in 2016, completely independently again, we just made it ourselves.  We're just making episodes, hopefully more often than the band tool makes an album. And you guys, and it's a pay per view of like $5, $10, something like that. Yeah, we just pay for either you can download it or rent it. And in an ideal world, that's how you do it. You create your content that you is your own content and you sell it directly to the audience. So, I really do love. There's some nuance, because also there's like, yes we want to make our ability to continue making content, so people supporting us through five or $10 payments, as well as those that like can't afford it around the world to even pay that much to somehow have like a scholarship version that's free. So like this content is free. And then we just say, hey, like you're getting a cup of coffee, like just give us five bucks a month to help us do this. You know, there's different methods for this process. It's a good point when we go and visit a tribe who has, they do some beautiful things and they also, you see their struggles and their hardships. And how many of those people could even afford to rent the show, right? So as we just, yes, just have filmed the second episode at the time of this recording, which is on Peote. And we just kind of let these things come about synchronistically. Again, using the projects as our own vehicles for growth and transportation and experience. Rack and I just kind of let them come about when they naturally come and we get an offer to do something or the stars align to make it happen, even with limited resources. But it's a good point that even us as independent filmmakers, you know, just having a monetization stream that can keep the show going, even though it's by no means we're getting rich off this stuff. But at the same time, it is allowing the gears to turn ever so slowly to get to more episodes. It's nice that you mentioned that from reference points of like we're in the Bay Area, it's like you hear the statistics about if you make $40,000 a year, that's nothing in the Bay Area, but for most of the world that's an amazing amount of revenue. So it's very, it's very healthy to go into a third world country or a country of struggle and not be the, you know, imperialistic anthropologist, but more the journalist that sees how people live and operate and how see how so much of the world has so little materially and how they have their struggles, but how there's also things that they do very well. Much of South America, you know, they live in dirt floor huts, but the kids are having a great time.  So balance, balance again. I have a smartphone. Yeah, so can we, oh, this is good. So can we, can we balance the, the amount of signal that we're getting from the get out rid of the noise, be vigilant and don't go to the Joker Vortexes but find the signal. I love George Joker Vortexes. That's such a good one. You remember from the old Batman show that you had like spirals come out of things. Yeah, yeah.  That's, they're not a, politics is not about expanding language. It's about contracting language, right? So when you get things that are contracting. Damn, it's not about the nuance. It's about contracting.   You're like, wow, he's actually saying things that are expansive. That is, it should be a beacon for following that signal, right? Ah, okay. Got it guys. So that acts as a beacon too. Okay, cool. So, okay. So a beacon is expansive thinking. Okay. I would hope so. I like that. I like that. And versus contracting, which is a lot of what the, the mainstream political narratives is. Right. Do you ever see the metaphor I use for that as in the 60s, you know, revolution. Did you see Richard Nixon saying really amazing, empowering things? Or did you see Timothy Leary saying amazing, empowering things? And who was the most dangerous man in America? Yeah, yeah. Right. So there's the, I sometimes use this term mirror mirror where it's like everything is mirrored back to front. Right. So what you thought was the case oftentimes turns out to be the exact opposite. Right. And that's, you see that even more in other countries where you see that things are usually back to front and upside down. And so as you start following a path of wisdom or what you could say is occultism just means hidden.  And there are, there is dark occultism out there. And you know, things with high level pedophilia in the entertainment industry and things like that. But much of occult practice is just about empowering yourself through your own practices to do things that, you know, give you esoteric insight. So that comment that I just laid down, I think is a reflection of having esoteric development through our experiences that give us real gnosis that then you can see what is actually the nature ever so slightly of reality. Right. Like what is real versus what is not. And you'd be surprised how much of reality is illusory. Right. And so a lot of the times in shamans of the global village, you know, we'll get some, the shaman will tell us something about how the earth changes now or reflection of how human beings are acting. That's right. If we act like dumbasses, the guy in the ecosystem, the larger ecology will force us to do things that stop us from doing unsustainable practices, things like that. So there's a huge as above so below connection with how we do things and are the larger, greater ecology of things. And I think human beings are extremely powerful and we're tricked into thinking that we don't have any power. Right. So commerce is a huge tool that uses that, that just distracts us into the realm of wasting our time or spinning our wheels. And as everything is corporatized, you see much less wisdom in that.  Yeah. And maybe a good couple of words for it is our origins are obfuscated. Sure. Yeah. Sure. So as soon as that obfuscation happens, distractions, distortions, joker vortexes, the nature, the connection to nature, to the spirit, to source where we all came from, how we all breathe the air and how we're all interconnected with all that is here on the planet, that the gratitude that we have for even the water and the food and the showers. The elements, yeah. It's out the window because the obfuscation is there taking us away from the origins. Yeah. And that's just distraction. I mean, so much of life is distraction from what is a good way of being, right? How you can truly spend your time. And I think that we come here to learn and to grow. And if we spend our time doing things that are excellent and fulfilling, then it's much more rewarding and you feel better. You have much less suffering in your life. And it's just like, it's like the dynamic where some experience that is, if you have years of meditating, how much better you feel, maybe that's not for everybody, or if you have an Ibogaine experience, a Boga can be 10 years of psychotherapy in two nights. So there's all sorts of beautiful ways to get to it. Or you have another metaphor for a spiritual path is like mountaineering or something. Some pilgrimage use go on through a Himalayan trip or something. That's not a good example because people do so much damage to Mount Everest as they climb it. I just read an article, they live thousands of piles of junk on it. But like- I heard that's the reason why the Himalayan's shook off some of the Tibetan from them. Oh really? Was because they didn't ask the mountains if they could set up massive. They didn't connect to the greater ecology and ask the mountain if it was the right time to do it. Or they didn't have knowledge of their solar lunar cycles, the astrological perspectives of like, is this the proper time to do this?  They knew when was the proper time to plant or see or when was the proper time to set up this monument. It's like that connection gives us much more wisdom for a real way of being. And this room too, we have to tell ourselves that where we're at in this room, who was initially on this land 1,000 or more years ago? That was on this land first. Yes, and do you have another way of looking at that is do you know, not to say people to just do an ancestry test, but do you know your lineage of where you're from and where your people are from and have you visited your land? That type of stuff has huge benefit. But the point of what I was gonna say is just the pilgrimage, right? It's the pilgrimage. When we make these shows, it's always like a pilgrimage for us that it's very difficult and a huge amount of struggle and Rack may have talked about that, but it's very rewarding and each time it's like we level up in Donkey Kong. Yeah, you do level up every time. Every show is a level. It's experience points. For you guys, it's a leveling up because you do it so much more rarer. Yes, they're slow drip projects. And these projects, I... This is documentary narrations. Yeah, I've just gotten in the habit of like taking all this, I shoot thousands of hours of this footage. We're hopefully beautiful stuff. And it's like, how can I just use some of this footage as extra little snippets of insight that are smaller drip projects? So I just post them as like these little tone, pole-y essay things.  I find myself occasionally, I will also call myself an essayist, even though I'm amateur at that, but essays are a way to insert some sort of insight into things, just sharing life insights. And so as somebody that creates essays as well spoken word essays, I've also started as a documentary filmmaker, just writing documentaries there, essentially just like a visual essay. So these documentary narrations are just me writing out, hopefully something that's just a piece of insight over something that has relevant visual yumminess and putting those two together, right? And so I'll just drop those as little breadcrumbs along their way.  Just you enjoy doing it. It gives you energy. It doesn't take your energy. It's not about, we could talk about the balance of how great it is to have people see your stuff amongst being so commercial in your promotion of stuff. But I also understand that marketability and commercialism has its place in today's society. So again, as any artist, I'm no different. I would love people to know the work and recognize the work and appreciate the work, but we also see in mirror, mirror that some of the most rubbish content is the most popular content. You know, we don't get, we all know that the little, that the most best music doesn't come from top 40. It comes from the little indie garage band or something like that. Or we know that people's, you know, that sometimes the top 100 people are the worst 100 people. You know, these influencers of, you know, slimy things that just project stuff that doesn't have any. It's all about material game. It's all about materialism, essentially, which, you know, usually gets the most eyes, eyeballs on stuff because of its commercial value. And one secret to real excellence is that it is never commercial, right? Yeah. Yeah. And you, again, balance. So sometimes you'll have something that leads you into something, but if you find the real yummy stuff, the real wisdom, it's not going to be very, it'll be little, it'll have little commerciality, if none. Yes, yes. Yeah. And that's kind of the ancient wisdom, the mystery school dynamic of like, how do you seek out real people doing excellent things in underground ways? Is there not going to be broadcasting signal to the public? They're going to be kind of on the, I don't want to say they're on the shady dark web or something, but they're, you find them through word of mouth or you find them in old paradigm ways of who did that, you know, amazing blacksmith work for you in the old village you hear about it through the networks. Yeah. Right. And that's how you find people that are really, I think are influential to you on your life, in your life. The, there's, like even with the show like this, or with your viewership, is that actually our content is 99% that are people that are watching the content, otherwise there'd be no purpose for it. Sure. So like, it's like, thank you for watching. Yeah. And it's night, it's lovely to have feedback on your work and have people appreciate your work. And as, you know, somebody that is doing their own thing, that's always my, some of my biggest life problems at this time space vector are issues of scale. Right. It's like you do, you find a balance in your life or you're at that frequency where everything you're doing is great and you really are happy and you're resonating, but then how do you make it work scale wise? You don't want it to be so scaled up that it becomes, you know, elements of dark sorcery that become contractive. And I think that when somebody starts some company and it, they have good intentions originally and then it becomes this benevolent thing, this hydra, this tentacle hydra that's invading all aspects of our lives through NSA spying and dark skull Dougry. It's like, did the founder of that small entity really plan for that to happen? I think it gets co-opted at some point. But at the same time as we are small enterprises or maybe small business owners, it's great to support your small business and yeah, let them know that you appreciate the work. Like any author, you know, like anybody that writes a book or paints a painting. It's like, we love your art, we love your work, it's awesome to hear that feedback. You watch a good video, comment, thank you. You know, just the simple things matter so much. Send a quick email, thank you, that was very profound. You've inspired me or what have you. Or if there's feedback, you can potentially do this or that better. We appreciate it. Proactive, proactive feedback.  You also said that there's a ton of signal potentially in the shows that have like the least amount of views and stuff. I thought, there's also poop there too. Oh sure, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  But also, that's a good one too.    There's so much of that, but then there's also really good nuggets. Some of the most profound videos I've seen on the internet have like 20 views or 100 views. Totally, yeah. So these are other things. Let's hit on this point quick and I'm actually interested to hear how Ron ends up playing with you on this point. But tell us about the Dark Gatekeepers. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say. You can only really talk about what you know experientially and you can hear stories from like secondhand type dynamics. I knew somebody when I was working in Hollywood that said that this was not me experiencing this directly because I wasn't at a high enough level in the hierarchy to be invited to this thing. But he said that he was essentially invited to a real Kubrickian, eyes wide shut sex orgy at some mansion in LA and there were very knowledgeable people there. So that type of stuff does go on. It resonates, what you can really only speak to is what. All right, so no surprise that as we literally started talking about the Dark Gatekeepers that the stream crashed. And so now we'll just be stitching together this recording with the first one. So wow, Ron's been talking about this stuff for a long time and it's finally starting to creep up more and more into my awareness and wow, it just happened to us. And you have been talking about these Dark Gatekeepers to me since we started talking as well. So why don't you now start teaching us about what this really is? Again, I'm not an expert on it. I'm just a student of all this. And I could, you can only speak to what you've experienced and what also you feel into, right? So Dark Gatekeepers is just my magical language to describe things that aren't in your best interest or do not provide you with expansion. They provide you with contraction. And we find as we go along a path of self-betterment or being what you might call an auto-didact, a self-taught person, you find it's like, why didn't I know about this? Why is the schooling system intentionally dumbing me down? Or why is the health, you know, why am I getting all this poor information on what is accurate for what I should be putting in my body?  As us are not consumers, we're actually infinite fractals of consciousness. And, you know, we're beings that have huge, powerful capability. We come to realize that these, there's sources at foot that are intentionally trying to restrict us and contract us. And the only way to, again, move beyond these things is how what we do on our own and what we self-discover through our own paths of betterment and discovery. And I would argue that that is an initiatory process for every person in their life. You are here in life to initiate yourself through a series of obstacles in life that the, you could call it empire or what Philip K. Dick called it empire. Just systems that distract and provide illusion through every channel, right? It gets very conspiratorial, you know, it gets through. You could go down endless conspiratorial paths and one step along the journey of betterment or discovery or spiritual growth is, you know, kind of breaking through the glass ceilings of conspiracy and not getting so bogged down and only conspiracy and like FEMA trailers and Chemtrails and all this stuff. But realizing that, again, polarization of life, there's horrendously awful things going on and there's also striking amazing beauty going on. So how do you look at all these things from a glass half full perspective, excuse me, of being a creditor and not a debtor or not somebody that's in service to others instead of just service to self?  But as you could separate the Lord of the Rings versus some sort of legitimate ceremonial magical practice that somebody has in real life. But it feels to me and everything that I've learned through my breakthroughs that I've realized these things are there and they didn't tell me that. And it's like, why didn't you tell me that? You know, why did I have to learn that on my own or why did I have to hear about that word of mouth? So system wise, as things get centralized and big, they're more prevalent in constricting human consciousness and contracting human beings, right? And so the sovereign awake human is there to grow and break through these things. And as every note of the network, you know, slowly improves its kind of end game for old ways of operating. And that's why we see that we need to move on to new societal ways of operating systems. And even people that might listen to this are in their standard operating procedure, know that they're in a system that's rubbish, but people have huge excellence, right? So it's like systems become rubbish. And then we as individual nodes need to do our own, need to broadcast beacons to be our own excellent selves and how can we slowly get rid of old systems? And I don't think it's a massive crash, but it's like how does something like a new technology like cryptocurrencies over 30 years become the new currency from horrendously dark sorcery, centralized fiat money systems that are run by the, what is it in John Carpenter's? They live those aliens with like the rubber masks. Or you can even get into very high metaphysical conversations about entities that are non-corporeal things that are controlling human beings. It's like a control factory. I don't get into that. We're in this hive of restriction in our matrix pods and it's all benevolent. I think that we are in a realm that's a beautiful place, but we act like as we become more conscious, we realize that we're in this, we have this capability to make this reality a garden and that's what we should be. We're not here to exploit and pollute and do awful things that are again, sometimes sustainable becomes a little bit of a buzzword. One of the thoughts is that if this body, if we ourselves are not consciously connected to source of spirit and our own North Star and following that trajectory, avoiding Joker vortexes, that gives the space for the evil entity to occupy and then walk us down Joker vortexes and all the nonsense. Yes, yes. My colleague on transportation, Neil Kramer, does an excellent job of talking about empire from an esoteric perspective. I originally found a modern version of empire through Philip K. Dick in his book, Valis. He continuously references the fact that the empire never ended and it just goes kind of, it's just either on the surface or else it goes kind of underground, right? So it's either, what is it? When it's either out in the open or else it's hidden, right? So that's what's going on is we live in modern times, which it's a beautiful time to be alive, but there's very much still systems that don't benefit us and how can we find ways of doing our true will or following our bliss that operate in new ways of being like systems that are communal sharing systems. And again, I think we get back to old original ways of living in more in community and then maybe we'll have a society that's more connected to spirit and we have excellent wise elders or excellent shamans and the distractions and illusions go away. The signal to noise ratio of the negative is reduced because people don't, it doesn't work on them anymore. Even something like commercial content, it's like, can you listen to, can you watch standard television ads? And does that work on you anymore? No, not at all, not at all. And I've even went as far as to plug my ears when listening to the top radio music in the car. It's like, no, I refuse to listen to it. Cause you're at a level where you're sounds wooly, but you're vibrating higher than that stuff. I don't wanna hear the money, drugs, women, materialistic possessions, music. I don't wanna hear it. If you don't think it makes an impact on you moment to moment to moment, it totally does. So if you can cancel out your neural infrastructure having to deal with listening to that, that actually upgrades you further. And same thing with the commercials you're like, do they work on? No, they answer no. Can you, you're giving us all of this, the Dargay Keeper stuff from the abstract which I totally in big picture stuff which is super important, but give us the exact examples of your, the way that you've been like publishing content and how those, these forces have impacted you. Well, I mean, I think my work personally, I always find that it's hard to reach anything that bypasses a gatekeeper. So my work is constantly shut down by the gatekeepers. And call the gatekeepers anything.  And we could get very deep in the weeds of how commercial and marketable it is. But a lot of it is just designed to not just speak to the Burning Man crowd or the inner crowd of what the psychedelic community is or people that are interested in spiritual growth or occult or esoteric content, which is few. Cause again, back to the origin, origins of this conversation. Most people don't even know what those things are or what they mean. But as they find that these are core excellences that empower human beings and the secrets to reality will be found through the gates of these things, right? Through some of these practices that we mentioned. That's very empowering to people and to people that are interested that have the ears to hear it. So I always try and put forth stuff that even though it's such hopefully decent content, I'm shocked by how much it's shut down, right? Now, that doesn't mean that it's shut down by people that will connect with it. When people see it, it's like, oh, I loved it. That's great. Occasionally I will get great responses like that. Like hopefully you find you knew through the show as well. But I always find that the most, it's not just directly or easy or fair to say that the most rubbish stuff is the most seen stuff. Cause sometimes you see stuff that's very, gets a broad reach and it's pretty good. And that's great.  So as you make things that, the more you know, the less people understand what you're talking about. So you have to find the dynamic of how do I insert something in here that's translatable and relatable versus how do I make something that's so esoterically weird they're not even gonna get it. And you're often, again, the forest from the trees. And then the ultimate way is the more you know and the better you can communicate. Yes. Yeah, that's the real gem of a person. Another example, and I haven't had a direct experience with this is something like this would be super, super paradigm destroying, but you start getting into things where you advocate certain holistic practices for health and you know somebody that's had, has cancer or something and they're, you know, being told the traditional ways of treating cancer when there's all these suppressed ways of treating cancer through herbal remedies or through, you know, shark, what is it?  And I haven't had the personal experience of having cancer and see them work on me personally, but what they're doing resonates with me. And then you see the massive, you know, healthcare industry, which is as, you know, top down as you get as the fossil fuel industry or the pharmaceutical industry is, you know, that's a place that cares more about its profits than the health and well-being of its patients. I'm not saying it doesn't care about the health and well-being of patients. It's just a very distant second to its massive corporate profits. So when massive corporate profits get in the way, and this is not a left or right thing because it's corporatized government. It should be completely not political. It's not political. So perverse incentives. Yeah, so I have had things that I've done holistically or beneficially that I was never told that by a doctor. I was never told that by somebody that's a sanctioned authority on the thing from, you know, they're having a PhD or being a college professor or being a lawyer. It's like there's a lot of things that you can find within the legal industry, within what's called sovereignty of your own legal entity that you're never told by like a standard lawyer or you never are told about the Trivium education system that we used to know about that, you know, in the 1800s, there's like letter, beautifully articulate written letters of deep, verbal sophistication written by war soldiers in the 1800s because they had a traditional liberal arts education.  So there's all this stuff that is essentially kept from us that's suppressed that is now coming. The internet has been a great tool to reveal these things even though there's always top-down forces trying to turn off insightful stuff. And it doesn't mean that, you know, we shouldn't suppress things that are, you know, hateful things, but at the same time as hate speech, free speech. So it gets into a big topic of conversation of like, is it very healthy to recognize alternate spatial models of the universe versus, you know, recognizing and admitting to everything that a massive scientific organization would tell us? So it's a whole, you know, it has to, it goes into every aspect of your life, this stuff.  We'll have to revisit another conversation with Niles about all this stuff and we'll, we could bring Rackback and Ryan and different Boz and stuff and different people.  It would be, it would be another good conversation for sure, we'll have to do that maybe later this summer. Okay, let's wrap on a couple, let's wrap on a couple questions. Yeah. So you've already, I think mentioned this throughout the show a couple of times, but what is the grand narrative of from all that is into these human earth suits? That's a 50,000 hour conversation. I would just say that- If you want to wrap the show up, but then you ask a question like that, let's just ask the simulation question. I have a very simple answer. I get drugs to do, let's go. Very simple answer is that we are, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Spiritual beings having a human experience. That's absolutely, I've found that to absolutely be the case and it doesn't mean that you are in some sort of traditional structure of orthodoxy, but esotericism has helped my life hugely by empowering me and giving me less suffering, right? And so I would highly encourage people to seek out people that have esoteric knowledge and insight. Somebody like Rudolph Steiner, for example, or George Ravanovitch Gurji for Helena Blavatsky, or you can go down the list of various people that have stuff that when you read, you don't understand. It's like reading the Tao Te Ching, where it's like, I don't understand any of this, but keep revisiting it. Keep seeking out good content because what you input will outwardly manifest in what you output. So input yummy information so you can output yummy information and create more and consume less. That's right, I love it. Spiritual beings having human experiences create more, consume less. All right, let's hit on the next question. Are we alone in the cosmos? I don't think so. Again, another 15 hour conversation. When you look at the cosmos of what's off earth as material, I had this bonkers psychedelic experience once where I was gleamed some insight that felt that everything off world is other dimensional. So the inner verse is very cosmic and some of my psychedelic experiences have been very astral cosmic. And what you could argue, there's an ancient book of hermetic philosophy called The Corpus Hermeticum that isn't saying the earth is flat or anything like that, but it's giving you some insights as to alternate spatial models of the universe and what we are in is different than what we think. Nor does it mean it's like a snow globe with puppet string holders out of it that are robots controlling us in some benevolent cage. But what we're in, we don't quite understand. And so I had this feeling that everything in the outer verse is really the inner verse, vice versa. So whatever we're saying that we're alone in the universe so that we can go off world and a gazillion ton beryllium starship like McKenna used to say, is that really the way we do it? Do we just do it by consuming a plant and going to meet our ancestors or see another civilization? That absolutely resonates that you do it through the inner verse, you don't do it through the outer verse. And this is potentially one of the reasons for the Fermi paradox is that civilizations go inward rather than outward. Well said, beautifully said. You said it, yeah. And you could also say that those things technically are the same thing, which is like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, again, you can get caught, you can really spend your wheels in. It's hard to, it takes time to communicate things simply and effectively that are very difficult concepts. And this is why we have to break away from civilization and tune inward and spend lots of time alone to do these things. Tuning inward, that's another good just meme. Yeah, tune in, tune inward, yeah. And then are we in a simulation? Interesting question. I would say if we are, it's not benevolent. It's just something that's a growth lab. It's like a lab for souls to grow. Souls transit here to grow, right?   And you get to a certain state where you evolve to a higher density, right? So there's higher density beings that were once down here in this evolutionary place. The overall game is not malevolent, but there is a malevolent time. There's components of the simulation. For the kids. I wouldn't put it in the malevolent box, but I'd say again, there are malevolent things that there are malevolent forces at play. At play. And part of your growth is working beyond those. And that's really tough because it's like, well, how does that apply to my life now with my problems? I'm struggling with XYZ. I haven't talked to my sister in three years. I struggled to pay rent. These very material, concretized problems. Again, structure of life, so you have more time to look into things of excellence and not spend it with people that are energy vampires. Vampires, you know? Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Okay. And the last question is, what is the most beautiful thing in the world? Conversations like this, buddy. A space where you can have a real conversation is beautiful. I would say that when you wrap it up as well and you have people that are fond of you and remembered you and you had some ever so slight influence on bettering others, right? Service to others and not just service to self. You can only help yourself. You can't help others unless you help yourself though. So it's like help yourself, get yourself good and straight and right and then you can hopefully do your ever so slight part in benefiting others. So there's a beauty when you wrap it up whenever your time is and you've hopefully had benefit to others. And there's a line, I'll tell you one last thing. In the Corpus Hermeticum, which is a book of Hermetic philosophy, there's a thing in it that says don't die without any children. And it doesn't mean physical children, it's encoded. Because again, we're communicated to by synchronicity and symbolism in the day and our dreams at night. We can have a whole another conversation about dreams, but children are those who we help along our journey. That's great. So don't die without helping others. On their journey, it's not just like how you give them material success, how you help them in their journey, right? So yeah, that's a piece of beauty. Yeah. I don't think I've ever taken this many notes from a conversation before. Oh, really? That's great. This has been super profound. Oh, thanks man. Really enlightening. I feel like just on the whole another level, thank you. You should feel better after a conversation. And if you feel like you've had an interview that's gone rubbish or it's weird, or again, it's taken energy and you're just like, ah, I'm not sure about that. You should feel like pumped after the conversation. So I hope that that's great. So pumped, so pumped. Yeah. You crushed it. Oh, thank you. Thank you. That was such a pleasure. Such a pleasure. And we crashed the network too. We crashed it. And we... The mesh network. Ah, wow, but yeah, the fact, right. Oh, will you teach us about the dark gatekeeper stream cuts? Yeah, it was crazy that that happened. Yeah, so huge thank you everyone for tuning in. We greatly appreciate it. Make sure to go and tune inward now as well. Go and check out the links in the bio below to Niles' work. Check out Nilesheckman.com, transmutationfilm.com as well as shamsasglobalvillage.com. Support artists and entrepreneurs like Niles here. Go and rent these, share them with your friends, get talking more about ancient wisdom in modern times. Go and do that everyone. Let's get going towards what we talked about in the conversation today. And support simulation. Our links are below. Help us grow and prosper as well. Huge shout out to Ron Vagus for producing and directing. Thank you very much, Ronnie. And... Thanks, Ron. Yes, and go and build the future everyone. Manifest your dreams into the world. Thank you for tuning in and we will see you soon. Peace.


Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of AWS re-invent 22 from Vegas. We're at the Venetian Expo Hall with, we're hearing north of 50,000 people. I know we've been giving you different numbers, but that's kind of what we've settled on here. Hundreds of thousands are watching online. This is a huge event. People, John Ferry or Lisa Martin, are ready to be back. Yes, it's a really great show. A lot of change is going on on Amazon. They're continuing the innovation, continuing to grow. The theme this year is data security and their partner ecosystem, which is continuing to grow. Their partners are filling the gaps on solutions and it's just a whole another, I think partner-friendly cloud, this next gen wave that's coming is really the next segment, I think speaks to that. I'm looking forward to this. It does. We're going to be digging into that partner network. We've got two guests. One of them's an alumni, Reso Hornamon, SBP Global Cloud at TD Synyx. Great to have you back. Siji Ufarache joins us as well, the Chief Strategy Officer at TD Synyx. Welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you for having us. We'll be back in person, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. That is a great experience. The energy here has been at the highest level since we came here Monday night, which is great. Sergio, I want to start with you. Last year when you guys were on the show, Tech Data. Tech Data has been around a long time. Now you're TD Synyx. Talk a little bit about that. What's new, that transformation? Yeah, that is correct. It's great to be able now to present TD Synyx as a new merger between Tech Data and Synyx Corporation. Now we are the largest distributor all basically across the world with more than $62 billion in a business. And Amazon is obviously an strategic partner with a hyper growth. And we have been very focused on working with them to expand that partner ecosystem across solution, ISVs, and service providers. Then it has been a very nice experience. Combine these two companies and now have the reach and the skill that enable more than 140,000 partner across the world. And the partners message here is changing too. The new leader, Ruba is up on stage talking about this new partner paths. A lot of changes in a good way they're bringing people together. What's your guys take in reaction to AWS's new posture towards partners? Obviously the ecosystem, we see going to be doubling and tripling, we see in size. And also the value proposition is going to be stronger too and more money making of course. But the new Amazon's posture with partners, what's your reaction? We were Ruba just an hour ago. Fantastic, I mean if I look at the change from when we first got here, a few years ago to now it is beyond comparison. The realization is that technology and especially what we work with Amazon is deflationary force and we need scale to actually drive that across all of our partners to the customers. And yeah, I can only see that accelerating now in terms of what Amazon is doing and actually with the channel and what Ruba is doing I think this is exactly in the right direction. What's her message? My message is this is now channel. This is channel and this is serious. So partners with Amazon equals growth. As we've seen so much transformation in the last couple of years Sergio with every business having to become digital to survive great and then to eventually thrive and succeed and grow in the challenging economic times that we've had. What are some of the pivots that TD Synics has made through your partner program to meet customer needs to accelerate their transformation? Yeah, as you said has been a significant transformation. I think that in the past was clear what was a technology company and what's an industrial company, et cetera. And those frontiers are blending right now. Then as a consequence, we have been investing in several elements. One is to really increase the capability of the partner network in a way that they can on one side provide more solution oriented activities to those customers to drive either growth or cost optimization. The other element has been verticalization meaning know the industry where you are playing. We have been investing in the healthcare market of course as a consequence of all the demand that has been generating. But at the same time, and we recently announced the competency in the government sector where we expand drastically our capabilities around specifically the federal and non-federal business but not only in US but across the world with those elements. Then I would say that it's a combination of enhancing the skill, enhancing the knowledge on the industry and finally provide the tools through our platform to enable the partner to operate in a digital way and enable the access of ISVs to digitally and serving the customers end to end. Is that the ISV experience project that I heard about? ISV experience with SaaS companies. Is that what you're referring to? Yeah, ISV is one, ISV experience is one of the components that we use but basically what we are trying to achieve with the ISV is helping in the journey of certification. Is how you transform either a partner that is born in the cloud or a partner that is still in the on-premise side. How you transition to the cloud and enabling how you reach to the end user in a more effective way and how we expose 140,000 partner across the multiple geographies to help those ISVs to reach more customers. It's great distribution. I mean, this is, it's a business model innovation. Sorry. It's a business model innovation for these ISVs. Absolutely, some of the ISVs, as you can imagine, they're in common with us, we work with them. So actually it's finding new ways of consuming technology but there's thousands of them that actually do not understand how to operate with a channel. And this is the part where we help them with the channel builder program, coach them through the process, help them access the partners and the customers that Sergio was referring to. Let me ask you guys a question. Where's the growth going to come from? Have you mentioned ecosystem, more growth? Rubo has mentioned that's where the growth is. They are serious. She's going to deliver that keynote now. Where do you guys see your growth coming from? Well, to be honest, the growth is unlimited in our opinion, right? There's so many areas. The wave is still coming. The world is still there. When you see still the amount of platform that need to be immigrated to the cloud, then we have been investing in a significant way in enable capabilities of migration programs from the on-premise to the off-premise. At the same time, we have been expanding geographically because it's still several segments and markets. We operate globally as an example. We recently launched our public sector capability in Latin America and Europe, expanding those segments. And in addition to that, again, how we bring more ISPs, more solution-oriented driven, then it's many spots of growth. And I think that Amazon Message recently recognized more and more the value of nobody have all the solutions. You need this ecosystem playing together to bring those solutions to market. So if I build on that, if we look at the growth in public cloud last year, it was around $40 billion. We expect a similar growth level this year as well. I mentioned about deflationary force, the technology being a deflationary force. Now, everybody knows a lot of businesses out there are going under a lot of challenges. So they have to compete. They have to have the insights. They have to be efficient. And actually they're going to get a lot of that through the technologies that we're talking about here. The key to that is partners with the right skill sets. What we are seeing is the partners with the skill sets who can participate in that $40 billion growth, take a big, big share of it. And you guys are providing a great service. I think when I wrote the story on Friday that I published, one of my premise was that this next gen cloud is going to lift up more ISVs, which is kind of a legacy classic, independent software vendor, create new kinds of partners that have platforms or unique solutions for verticals. So the ISV classic definition will still exist. And new customers are emerging. It's got a new dynamic developing. We're seeing people build clouds on top of the cloud, tap the ecosystem, partner distribution, services. It's a whole new way to build and take something to market. What do you guys think about that? Yeah, I think that the beauty of our position in the market is that we are in the center of that ecosystem. Again, we have access to thousands of ISVs, thousands of hardware vendors, the hyper-scalers. Then somebody need to put all those pieces together. That is our role in the market. It's a good position to be at. It's a good place to be and enabling those partners now to collaborate with all those entities to bring the solution because the customer is not acquiring technology anymore. They are acquiring a solution to a problem now. And that solution requires multiple components. Last year, no, this year, I'm sorry, you guys were announced as Aimea distributor of the year, congratulations on that. Yeah, thank you. Talk about that in terms of just the evolution of the partnership. The partnership in Aimea is now across our entire geo. The growth that we've driven across the Aimea market space is I think the reason why we have won it as well as the competencies that we have built. Now, you were just talking about ISVs to give you an example. There are many ISVs that sit in Aimea that want to access the U.S. market and vice versa. So where we sit in the middle and enable that access, that the frameworks that they need to move. So those are the kind of things that contribute to the strength in the relationship about what those words are coming from. Yeah, the other critical factor here is, again, how we bring more capillarity in terms of the serve to the market to Amazon. And that has been another component of that word that we are very thankful. Again, we have been enabling and bringing numerous new partners and numerous new end customers that now have access, support and services, including, again, the competencies that we already described, but including service-oriented businesses like migration, like cost optimization of the use, et cetera, that now we through partners serve to the market. Residents, Serge, I want to ask you guys a question around trust. Trust, you're a trust broker because you have a lot of services and people and companies to put together. We were just talking about the good position you're in. Trust is a big part of your relationship with your customers. You've got the two sides of your business. You've got one side is the supply side, you've got the distribution side, and then both sides are working together. Requires a lot of trust. What's that look like inside your company? Can you take a minute to explain, take a minute to explain what's that like, the culture of the company and that trust? Yeah, absolutely, and that is why the term of trust advisor came to the table, right? And again, for more than 40 years, we have been building this ecosystem, we have been driving that motion, and we have been proving to the market a consistent approach with a strong support to the two tier model. We never get in opposition to our customers and we enable those customers in a consistent way. And I think that trust is something that you earn, not something that you ask for, and that is what we are doing day-to-day basis. Well, congratulations. It's been great chatting with you. Challenge time? Challenge time, all right guys, thank you. New challenge on theCUBE, a new format. We usually say, at the end of the interview, what's the take on the show? What's the bumper sticker? So think of it like an Instagram reel, thought leadership, hot take, introduced in a minute, 30 seconds to share, a hot take, thought leadership, what you think was going on on Amazon, why you're here, what's important, what would you say if you were going to do an Instagram reel right now? Yeah, the Amazon enabled a new way to do business and a new transformation of the digital economy. We are here in DCNX to expand that capability across the segments, enhancing partners to reach to their goals and in users to get those transformations. In general, we will provide what is needed and we continue investing to continue growing the capacity across all geographies and all the type of solutions that we deliver. All right, Sergio, you nailed it.  Your hot take, your sizzle reel. Well, frankly, I think Sergio nailed it. It's about covering the geos and taking the competencies and make sure we execute consistently across all of our geos. All right, nailed it. Thanks so much. Consistent execution of Reza, Sergio. Thank you so much for joining John and me on the program, talking about what TD Synix has done since we've last seen you, what you're doing with AWS and the partner ecosystem. We really appreciate you stopping by this time. Thank you, thank you for the time. All right, our pleasure. For our guests and for John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage.


Let's take a look at this next one. Again, we're dealing with two triangles that we want to prove congruent, so let's name them So we can call them triangle TON and triangle FUN as in Proof is a ton of fun. All right, so we want to first prove our TF and OU BISECT each other. What does that mean? Well this word bisect BISECT means cut in half. So TF and OU cut each other in half In other words, TF refers to that long segment. TF is cut into two equal parts Similarly, OU is cut into two equal parts So now we have two pairs of sides. We've got the reds and the blues that's side and side and Right now we're missing a piece, right? We could either use side side side angle side And so we're missing a piece, but the way that the shape is drawn. We've got these vertical angles and Vertical angles are always congruent And so therefore we're going to prove that these two triangles are congruent using the side angle side theorem So let's get started So we know what it is we want to prove we want to prove that triangles TON and FUN are congruent and We agreed we're going to use the side angle side congruence theorem So we can talk about a pair of sides that are congruent a pair of angles that are congruent and Another pair of sides that are congruent in each of those boxes. So let's start with the reds. I Know that UN and ON are congruent Next the other pair of sides the blues those blue sides are congruent and finally the angles the angles up the middle Angle TNO and FNU Okay, so why are all of these segments congruent the red segments UN and ON? Why are they congruent? Well, they're congruent because TF and OU bisect each other and What that means is I know that TF bisects OU Also OU bisects TF So for the red segments to be congruent which segment is doing the bisecting and which is being bisected That's an important question in this case TF is doing the bisecting and OU is being bisected The opposite is true for the blue segments TN and FN in that case OU is doing the bisecting and TF is being bisected Now the connector reason you have to ask yourself. What does bisect mean? Well bisect means cuts in half And so for each of these reasons we're going to use the segment bisector definition And lastly we need to talk about where those green angles came from the green angles came from the vertical angles and always vertical angles Are congruent so we need a box that says hey I have vertical angles and then the box below it can say that they're congruent So there's the statement TNO FNU are vertical angles and as a result Vertical angles are congruent So the statement is if we have vertical angles Then those angles those vertical angles are congruent Super we're done


And the number of eligible people who have taken their first dose of the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in Nigeria has exceeded the one million mark. This was revealed by the National Primary Health Development Agency, while given an update on the vaccination across the country. A total of 1.051 million people have received the vaccine as more people continue to take the jabs across the country and across all states, including the federal capital territory, including Kugee State, where authorities began the exercise late. The latest figures indicate that 7,359 more eligible people took the vaccine in the last 24 hours following the 1.403 million figure that was reported on Wednesday. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.