Welcome to a new and ancient story, a show dedicated to the transformation of self and society. We're moving from the story of separation to a new story of interbeing. We explore it all, technology, spirituality, agriculture, healing, economics, politics, ecology, relationships, education, because the changes that are gathering today will leave no aspect of our world untouched. For deeper engagement with these ideas, join our community at newandancientstory.net. Well, hello everybody. Charles Eisenstein here with our guest for this episode, Amy Vansky, who I first became aware of through a book that she wrote called Impossible Cure. I liked the title alone. Slept with it under my pillow for a while. Never read the thing, but no, no, just kidding. I did read, I don't remember how much of what I read. It was a long, long time ago. I think it was maybe when the book first came out. 2003 came out. 2003, yeah. And we'll talk about that book a little bit, but also some of what Amy's moved on to. It's an example of what I call creeping radicalization, where at first you discover that one certain aspect of our system isn't quite right. It's corrupt, but everything else is fine, of course. It's just this one bad apple on the barrel. So maybe the medical system is a little bit corrupt, but educational system, that's fine, and politics, maybe a few little things that need to be fixed, global economy, but then the radicalism begins to spread until it encompasses everything. And so looking at your bio, I got the sense that that might have happened. So got anything to say for yourself about that? Well, I think that in order to become what I become, I had to start with a little different than most people to begin with. So I do reflect on that, because how did I go from being a computer scientist? I know I can introduce myself. People don't know who I am a little bit. So I have a PhD in computer science from Stanford. So that was my life, math and computer science and Silicon Valley and all that. But I think underneath that, I was always kind of a spiritual person. So I went to a parochial school. I think I was one of the few people actually took the spiritual part seriously. I felt it. It wasn't just... So I always had a somewhat of an interest in spirituality of some kind. So I had that inclination. And before I even discovered homeopathy through, I guess we'll talk a little bit about that. I was already exploring a little bit about alternative medicine, but I didn't really know much. But I was also super into medicine. I don't know.  Because I would sleep with the Merck manual next to my bed and rereading it. He thinks I'm like a medical expert, but I just accumulate a lot of medical knowledge over the years. And so, yeah. So I don't know if you want me to go on how this all happened. Well, I'm curious. I mean, what I found really moving was just the whole story. Like, how did you come to write a book called Miracle Cure? Impossible cure. Impossible cure. Yeah. I mean, I kind of know the story, but maybe you can share... Okay. So here I was, a researcher in computer science.  Now they're 24 and 27, interest, unbelievably. And my younger son was showing signs of what we learned was autism. So this was like at the very beginning of this autism epidemic. And I was like super, conventional medicine-oriented person. We would give every vaccination. We would do everything. Although I would dabble and taking a Qigong class or something like that, I didn't... I would always... I was totally whited to allopathic medicine. But obviously, something was wrong with him and we had gotten to the stage where the nursery school kicked him out and something was just wrong. I had an older son so I could see things weren't right. Did this happen all of a sudden or do you think he was kind of born with it? No, no, no. He was fine until... Well, I have a lot of retrospect. I look back at videos and stuff. I think he started going downhill. I actually think it was vaccination induced, but it was a slow gradual decline. So he was progressing normally. And then at around, I would say, before age two, he just started drifting away. So it wasn't one of... I mean, I'm sort of a... Because it was an autism story, I'm now sort of... I'm not as much in that world anymore, but I became very embedded. And some of these kids are just very stark and they... It's very extreme. In his case, it was like a slow drifting away into his own world, right? So he was happy at home, but he was just not making... He was no longer responding to his name, making eye contact as much with us, yes, but not at school. He was starting to do more classic autistic things. But this was before... This was 1994. So he was born in 1991. So it was before everybody was tuned into this. It was right at the beginning. Actually, that was the year it really increased. And his birth cohort was when it really started going up. I can talk about that. I don't know if I want to get into all of that. But anyway, so we were searching. He was in various therapies. And then I was reading an article in Mothering Magazine, which you probably know about. Yeah, yeah. It's become less radical in recent years, but it was more radical then. And there was an article by somebody who... I mean, I know everybody in the homeopathic world, and somebody named Judith Reichenberg-Ohman, who is a natural path, who does a lot with ADD kids. And so I didn't know anything really about homeopathy. So, three-page article. And I just went, ding! And I had my husband read it.  Still does computer science. And so we went to a homeopath. We found one. And within like a week or two, we were actually within like five days, there was some kind of noticeable change to his therapist. We didn't tell her. We had started on this remedy. She noticed, she said, what did you do? Because suddenly there was this subtle change. And his... Anyway, it was a slow, gradual process, but it was very a beautiful, I know now, like a very ideal kind of beautiful cure. And so, and within... by the time he was five, we started at three and a half. By the time he was five, he was testing normally, but he was still, like I would say, socially immature. You know, if you really could notice things, you might notice some oddities. And we... by the time he was in first grade, we put him back into this whole private school that my other son was in. And he was doing fine. But every year, the teacher would go, you know, we just don't get it. He's just not... there's things that were just off. But that, even that with changes of remedies and stuff stopped by the time he was like in fourth grade.  And then by the time he was like 10, he would be fine. Like, so anyway, so obviously this was mind-blowing to me. You know, it was just... and to my husband. And then we all started using homeopathy.  And so I started... you know, there was this whole thing that started happening in my life then. This was back in 94, 95, 96. I started, you know, doing other kind of energy explorations. You know, I remember I went to a workshop by Barbara Brennan, you know. Yes, yes. And then I also wrote a paper.  So I'm just... I just want to break in here because while you were talking, I just, you know, tuned into an article on quackwatch.com.org called homeopathy the ultimate fake. So how do we know that you're not just hysterical anti-vaxxer parent who, you know, panicked and imagined your child was having symptoms of autism and then went through this, you know, essentially sugar pill regimen and, you know, imagined that there was a cure when actually it was just your hysteria to begin with. Like there's this whole narrative that... Yeah. Well, okay. I mean, I mean, that's totally fair, you know. I mean, I don't actually believe that, but I'd like to bring the shadow side out here. So people don't think that... let me just finish. Like people don't think that we've just kind of hitched our wagons to the latest craze and abandoned our critical reason, but that we've actually faced that, considered that possibility. And having done that, still believe in the efficacy of... I mean, homeopathy is just the beginning of the rabbit hole, right? Yeah. Yes, it is. And well, there's so many things I could say to that. I mean, I guess the fact that I have a PhD from Stanford is helpful to some people and believing me. Right. But I think that, well, I mean, one thing I learned when I started learning about homeopathy, obviously I start reading about it, is that it really has this venerable, very scientific history and that the people who do it are not weirdos or things like that.  Okay. And so, and that's one of the reasons I wrote my book. You know, my book Impossible Care. Yeah, I wrote, I titled it that because people say it's impossible and because also the cure of autism or these other diseases is impossible. But anyway, so there, and so I do include in my book all these scientific studies, there's tons of medical studies, clinical, even lab studies, you know, on. Right. Which is interesting. Like, it's interesting that, that, you know, you can enter that world. I also looked up homeopathy on the skeptics dictionary. Yeah. Says in black and white, right there in the screen, that the overwhelming majority of studies on homeopathy confirm that it is no more effective than placebo. Which is false. Unfortunately, that's just false. But there it is, like in black and white. And so if, if, if somebody wants reassurance that the world is pretty much what science has told them it is, they can find that reassurance. And if you don't like dig deeper, then you're going to stay in the reality that you were in.  Okay. And more and more. And most, but most of them are in the United States. They're in India or Europe where homeopathy is really accepted. Unfortunately, I mean, you know, big money is behind getting rid of homeopathy here. Here's another reason though.  And it's not because of homeopathy per se, but because the fact that these ultra dilutions work. Because think about it, if you can take any substance like a, like an allopathic normal drug and potentize it, and it still works, then, then there goes big pharma, right? So I've written articles about that. Because drugs are free then, essentially. How disappointing. Is there profit motive into this? So, so, so for example, you know, I mean, proof that this is that there's something that like, for example, there's this very famous Nobel Prize winning medical scientist named Luc Montaigneur, who won the Nobel Prize for making the connection between AIDS and HIV not that long ago, a French scientist. And he recently started working on ultra dilutions and discovered yes. And it wasn't even ultra dilutions of, of allopathic drugs, it was of DNA. And he had found the same effects. And so immediately after this happened, he lost his funding. And you know, where he has to do his research now in China, because like, you know, they're not, yeah.  Anyway, in my experience, these quackbusters are, are not the most intelligent people often and have an axe to grind or their or whatever. It's, it's just another form of negativity and stuff. I don't know. So yes, I am on their radar. But I think sometimes I think it's even best not even to engage them. No, I don't. It's impossible. Yeah. You know, I found the same thing, you know, you might ask what happened when all my colleagues with all my colleagues, my computer science colleagues, what did they think of me? That's a good question. What did they think? When I left this behind. Yeah. I mean, eventually, I, I eventually, thanks to like one of the, one of the reasons was that my husband was still computer scientist and two I had invested in a startup of a friend of mine and made a bit of money. And so I realized that, that I could devote myself to these more esoteric pursuit that what did they think they couldn't believe it because I really was one of the, I was getting kind of famous in computer science and I was one of the few women and, you know, I felt bad leaving it behind, but it just seemed so meaningless to me compared to, to what happened to my son to helping other people. And now, I mean, really, my mission is to, is this more about consciousness? That's my second book. To, you know, like what you're trying to do to help the world to change and evolve our consciousness. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so what did they think? What did these colleagues think? Some of them, okay, my friends, if they, they completely couldn't get it, know not to discuss it with me. All right. So there are some of my friends. I lost that last sentence. It didn't come through very clearly. Can you? Okay. Some of my friends who can't go there, they just know not to discuss it with me. So we'll discuss other subjects. Some, but the, some of them who know me and respect me have started to use homeopathy and it works for them. It's, it's worked. I, I sometimes get these kind of surreptitious emails from computer scientists.  Can you help me? I heard you help this other computer scientists. So like those things happen too. I am, and then, and then, and I have found, interestingly, that the most brilliant, the people who I view as truth geniuses in my field are the ones who actually listen and are respectful and actually give me credence. So that's, I think, very interesting because they are, I'm not talking about just smart guys. Then I know a lot of the smart people from Stanford, but there are some who are like the real geniuses. There's not many of them. They're the ones who are actually, you know, actually pay attention and actually start reading about it and start thinking about it. So it's interesting. Anyway, I don't know if you want to keep going along that track. Well, yeah, I'm interested in the way that paradigms shift. And so here, here are people who are wedded or immersed in what I call the old story, which lays out how the world works and how healing happens, for example, and what to do if you get sick and what's possible and what isn't possible. And, and that world also maybe is divided into, from that perspective, there are the rational up-to-date people who, you know, follow the latest medical advice. And then there are the kind of fringe people, the hippies, the irrational people, the superstitious people, right? And so in that world, you, the PhD computer scientist, would surely be among the rational modern people. So when you then come in and say, Hey, guess what? I've cured my child of autism using homeopathy. That is an anomalous data point that doesn't fit into the paradigm. So when people are confronted with that, they have a choice. Either they can maintain their paradigm, which necessitates explaining away your story. For example, Amy's gone off her rocker. She's brilliant at computer science, but outside of that, she's a bit baddie or something, right?  Like that happens to people all the time. They have some maybe even transcendent experience. They see a UFO. You know, something happens, but they just kind of put that into the category of not going to think about that, going to go on with my life. So that's how, that's one choice, you know, they can maintain their paradigm. The other choice is to allow their world to be blown open, to take it seriously. And then, because if that's true, then what's true? And then if that's true, then what's true? Like the whole thing unravels potentially just from one data point, you know, you have, I mean, it's just like in science, if you have a theory and a data point that doesn't fit into that theory, you can either discard the data point, which is very often what scientists do, or you can, you know, come up with a different hypothesis that can incorporate that new data point. And perhaps the, you're saying it's the genius people who are most open to it. Perhaps that's maybe the essence of genius is that you are open to something from beyond what you already knew. Otherwise, you're not a genius. Otherwise, you're just kind of elaborating something that already exists. And that's what most science and most scientists are just, like I call it, there's a phrase in computer science called the closed world assumption. So they have, you have all the stuff that works within that closed system. And they're just, you know, finding every ramification within that closed system. And it's the real genius who are open up and, you know, admit new information. That's how those scientific revolutions happen.  Yeah, it's so interesting because, you know, in my journey from homeopathy and then consciousness, all the stuff I've, I've just, you know, it is, you know, I write a lot about synchronicity and homeopathy is, and about the relationship between homeopathy and synchronicity and all this stuff. Anyway, I've met Rupert Sheldrake. I mean, I know all these people, Dean Raiden, in fact, my husband ended up doing some of the programming work for Dean Raiden's experiment at one point. And I mean, I know all these people now and it's, the same people are attacking them as attack homeopathy. It's the same forces because they just can't, you know, it just can't be admitted. These, these anomalies can't, simply can't be admitted if you're going to keep that mind frame going. And it's the same now with, with medicine too. Yeah. So I don't know what the answer to that is exactly, except, you know, you have to just stay true to what you know. I mean, you know, if something dramatic happens, actually, often it is something to, that's one thing I love about homeopathy. It's, because a lot of these phenomena are very subtle, or you can say it's coincidence, or, you know, even side phenomena are very subtle. It doesn't happen all the time. You can say every synchronicity is a coincidence.  Then it's dramatic. It's like, hey, it works. It's like, how can this be? Right. And you can still, I mean, you can still chalk it up to coincidence or something like that. But you, but if you do that, like what I want people to understand is if you do that, you're making a choice based on something that's not evidence. You know, you're making, if you choose to say, well, that was just coincidence. Yeah, that's one interpretation. Another interpretation is that homeopathy works. And the evidence alone cannot actually compel you to make one of those two choices. Yeah. It's a choice. And I think this is actually, to me, you know, I don't think I've left science as my scientific rational mind behind. I mean, in fact, to be a good homeopath, you have to be very analytical and stuff. It's a very analytical time. But I think that what I did and what I do in all my writing is now expand what my view of reality is. So it's not like I've left, you know, there is a physical reality which operate more or less according to the physical laws that we know. But there's, I believe there's this now expanded reality more than that. And that's kind of what my second books about. Yeah. And even complicating that issue is that physical is much, much more than we thought it was, you know, and this kind of between physical and spiritual or physical and non physical is making less and less sense when especially with, especially with homeopathy, when some of the water science now is confirming that the physical structure of water, it's not just this kind of ideal fluid, you know, with generic particles swimming around randomly, but it, but it can hold structure that can carry information. Well, is that fear, is that physical, you know, or is that it's all of that because like, think about what Rupert Sheldrake says, yes, you have a brain, you know, and there's stuff going on in the brain. I'm sure your brain is doing a lot of the work of our, you know, of our day to day consciousness, but beyond it's the brain is part of the system. It's all connected. So yes, the water is affected. And there might be more effects as well. You know, I mean, at these higher deeper and deeper levels of reality, maybe I don't think of, I don't think of these other realms as, as spear is necessary as nebulous or metaphorical, I think they're just deeper forms of science, we just don't know about yet. So, so just like people didn't know about electromagnetic fields, there's just deeper and deeper fields and they could be in higher dimensions. That's one thing I do discuss in my next book. I pause it, that part of what's going on with our higher energy bodies is higher dimensions in space, higher spatial dimensions. And I, yeah, it's a very broad book. My second book is called Active Consciousness. And I relate all of these things. The more, you know, Sheldrake's Morphic Field and it's all about similarity and vibration, whatever that means in these higher fields and synchronicity and sci phenomena and homeopathy, because that's about similar vibration to and the most amazing thing is that it all is connected to, to meaning, you know, it's not just to, it's not too violent strings vibrating similarly, just that it's actually related to meaning, like the, the field of vibration of fear or of, you know, any other kind of meaning. So, so, so I want to just change, of course, a little bit here. Yeah. You know, your, your book Impossible Cure arose out of a life-changing experience that you had with your son becoming autistic and then defying medical consensus and healing that. So now you're, you're more recent work into consciousness. Was there also a precipitating event or that you could share with us? Well, we'd like to have our minds blown here. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I think less of a precipitating event is more like what happened was, as I was going through, this was before I think I started writing Impossible Cure, but this sounds so nerdy, but I was inspired, this was around in 1995, so things had begun with my son. I watched the episode of Star Trek, the first episode of Deep Space Nine, where Benjamin Sisko goes into a wormhole and meets these four-dimensional aliens, you know? I just, I could not go to bed. I was like up all night thinking, what would it mean if you were four-dimensional, right? So then I start, I wrote this little paper, it was like the beginning of the internet, but I put it out there called Consciousness as an Active Force and it said, okay, well, if you're four-dimensional, that you can control how reality, you know, how it unfolds. It's the, you know, it's just like Bohm's theory of the, of the, the applicate in the absolute, explicate universe, you know, in that four-dimensional or higher dimensional realm, you can, if we're part of us can control that, we can affect how three-dimensional reality unfolds. So I related that to Psy and homeopathy and all these things, I was pretty nebulous in my mind and I put it out there and then all these people started writing to me over the years and interestingly at first it was all these physics journals and I'm like, hey, I don't know anything about physics. They even published it in one. I couldn't even understand any other paper in this journal. But like, but then it was, then people, other people were and then I had this moment, I was actually on the, on the board of the National Center for Homeopathy and they said, oh Amy, you should do this task and I really didn't want to do it. I knew, and I just, I was, you know, I just started receiving like, you know, things like, no, you shouldn't write this book about that paper. This was several years later and so I, and so I just said, okay, oh well, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to write a new book about this and then I went into a process because I am an academic really and I just started reading all these books like by the chief and Steiner and all these things and then wove it all together into this tapestry, which is my second book. Interestingly, now I'm into, I'm starting to write my third book, which is about Huna. I don't have you ever heard of Huna? No. It's a system of thought based on Hawaiian mysticism. Okay. And what I love about Huna is that it's a very practical system that's simple that, that captures all these ideas can be understood in terms of Huna, but it's just simple and it's very practical. You can use these techniques and they work and I experiment with all these things. I try them out and so... So tell me about some of these experiments.  Like, what's, what's changing in you? You know, what's, because I mean this, this transition that we're going through isn't only a paradigm shift that, that replaces one mental construct with another mental construct, right? We're shifting on every level. And, and so eventually, like, these new memes, these new paradigms, they, they, they sink in deeper and deeper and we begin to act from a different place. So can you tell us like, have you been, like, tell us, yeah, like, what's it like to, to deepen that into beyond the mental level?  So I had this instance where I suddenly had this really bad attack of sciatica. And it was just getting worse and worse. I couldn't like, why I was having to use a cane. It was terrible. It was like, about a month in, it was just getting worse and worse. I went to the osteopath. I did this and that. And then I knew it was precipitated by something that had upsetting that happened to me. Right. And so according to Huna, there's, I don't know if we want to get into all this, but there's a part of yourself, you might just call it your subconscious. But it's not, it's not, it's not your, it's not necessarily your ego. It's, it's much more than that.  But it's that carries your emotions, has all your memories in it. And it's also where, that is where your sci phenomena occur. And it's, I think it's the astral body. But anyway, so this, this part of yourself, there's three parts of yourself and this part of yourself is very impressed by physical actions that you do, like rituals, writing things down. You have, you can't just think to it. You can't just say, yes, Amy, you had this, this upset. And that's what precipitated this horrible, you know, month of sciatica and stuff. No, you have to do, you have to do stuff. So you have to write down everything that's upset. I, so I use this now and actually my kids use it now too.  And you have to write it down and you have to say it out loud and you have to talk out loud to this part of yourself. And then just, and then even better if you can do a little ritual of some kind, light a candle, talk to it and all like that. And, you know, after I started doing that, it was better within a couple days, two or three days. So, and this is, this is what who knows about is these, this is what a Hawaiian shaman would do is these kind of things. It's not necessarily about going to a shrink and talking about it for, for months.  Some people would say, okay, you just, you know, it's just a psychosomatic thing and you tapped into it. Maybe that's not the best example. Another thing that happens to me more and more is, is synchronicities. So I don't know if those are examples of things. I love, I love hearing about synchronicities. Tell us, tell us a good juicy synchronicity. Here's one I think is amazing. I just think is amazing. So a couple of years ago, my husband and I drove cross country to Canada and for three weeks. Okay. And because we have a place in Canada and, and we listened to the iPod for three weeks with, he has like 10,000 songs on this iPod, you know, it has huge memory and stuff. And so then we spend the whole summer. We're coming back. We're driving into Buffalo because that's where I'm from. And we're nearing the bridge where we cross over into the United States. And just as, and I was really looking forward to coming back the year because we had driven cross country and it was like, I felt very love of America after driving cross country. And just about a mile or two from the border. Ray Charles comes on this iPod singing. Oh, beautiful. First face, the skies. And, and then just as just at the moment we're cross, there's a part in the bridge where like it's the Canadian flag and then the American flag, right? Yeah. You know, just at that point, and I didn't slow down or ton, you know, or whatever, it came to the crescendo of the song from sea to shining as we enter the United States. I said, Oh man, what is this? This is so amazing. There's another one I write about it somewhere. I guess I've written about it, which is that I was editing the chapter about Rupert Sheldrake in second book. And the next that night, Steve comes home, my husband, Steve comes home from work and says, where have you Sheldrake? I mean, I could never met him. Every time you move your head a whole lot or speak not toward the computer, the sound kind of. Okay. So I was editing the chapter about Rupert Sheldrake. I'd never met him. He was just some guy who lived in England who I thought was amazing. And my husband comes home from work at his research lab and computers, you know, in Silicon Valley and says, tomorrow we're having lunch with Rupert Sheldrake. It was just like amazing.   Well, you should pick him up for the train station and take him out to lunch. That's how it happened. So, all right, so I'm thinking here. Coincident. Yeah. Yeah. One idea that I explore, I mean, I'm actually very interested in ritual in a in the broadest possible sense of the word and interested in reframing a lot of the things that we do in our in modern life in terms of ritual.  And this thing with the Huna that you're talking about that the, is there a name for this part? I remember like there's the coup and like these things. Okay, well, the three parts I'll give you the Hawaiian names. Yeah. All right, Unihi Pili is the lower self or Mike, I usually call the basic self. Yeah. And then there's the middle self, which is Uhane, which is the sort of rational mind, is the rational thinking, I think it's the mental body. But interestingly in Huna, that part of you has known all the memories are stored in the lower self, not the the middle self is sort of like the controller, but it is, it's just sort of rationality. It's just the thinking, you know. And then the higher self is called the almakua. You might have heard of that. Right. Each of those parts of you is also associated with, like you say, it's certain Hawaiian deities like. So the part that you were talking about though, that pays attention to physical things, what, which one was that? That's the lower self. Okay. And the basic self and usually it, you can think of it as often it has, is a sort of a, an awareness that's more like a young, youngish child or a teenager. And so it's usually cooperating and it's also in charge of your body. It's the most connected to your etheric body and your physical body. So, so the energy body. All right. So this basic self, yeah. So this basic self, it's impressed by actual physical actions. So perhaps when, and it's also an incredibly powerful aspect of self. Yes. And I'm suspecting that not only does it influence the physical body, but it probably also arranges life events to give us an experience of reality that matches our state of being. So I'm just kind of guessing here, but the reason I'm mentioning that is, is to flesh out the idea that, that the things that we do to affect our reality, say, you know, we write a check and we buy a car or, you know, something like that, or we, you know, log on to Amazon and we, you know, click something in the shopping cart and all that, right? Those are physical actions. And we explain that the package then comes to our door the next day through a causal chain that involves, you know, payment systems and warehouses and people getting paid to move things. And right, we have a story why that thing shows up at our door. But another way to look at it is that we have done the ritual that impresses that basic self, such that it arranges reality for this package to show up at our door. And that physical action has to feel, for it to be compelling, we can't do it thinking this is nonsense. This is an empty ritual, right? It has to actually, right?   And I wonder, you know, it's not only the physical body that might be sick, but the social body, the ecological body, the political body, there are terrible dysfunctions on this planet right now. And how would we use this, let's call it technology, how would we use this to impress upon the collective basic self, or the planetary basic self, that things need to change and we're ready for them to change. And perhaps even like, when people go out and protest, or they do direct actions, or they're doing something physical, and not just clictivism, but they're actually doing something physical, maybe that, even if the immediate result is not apparent, that they've, you know, maybe it's not apparent that they've achieved anything. Maybe all they achieved was they got arrested or something like that. And the system isn't changing. But maybe by repeating those things, we are communicating with a deeper self that has the power, like it's kind of a prayer. Right, right, right. Okay, so let me, I want to talk about two things, because I'm so interested in this now. Just from the standpoint of like, all those things happening and rain, like, in Huna, it's like these things rain down, I think it's like the synchronicities rain down in response to this kind of a prayer. That is considered to happen from the high self. So there's a prayer ritual that's kind of like what I call active, my thing in active consciousness about manifestation. But it's in the Hawaiian system too, where you the middle self constructs and makes the intention for the prayer. And then it's the, it's the basic self that has to build the energy and send the prayer up to the high self. And then the high self is the thing that can make things happen and change reality and create synchronicities and make pathways into the future. But now in response to what you say, I am writing in my book going to write about our collective basic self and the idea. So there's a process in Huna called ho-o-pono-pono. Yeah, that one's really beautiful process. Oh, yeah, yeah. So that's how you deal with like a family dysfunction.  And the idea is that the base, it's being worked out amongst the basic selves of the family. And so something actually happens and certain things are said and heard and then certain rituals are performed. And then, and the reason why these things are usually done is that one of the family members has become very sick or there's some drug addiction or something, you know, precipitates it and they understand the collective basic self of the family unit is screwed up and they need to do this to heal everybody because there's something bad in the juju of the family, you know. So same thing on the global level. Yeah, what would those rituals be? I mean, what could we do in the Middle East that would be simple rituals of the basic selves of these countries or these people, you know, but the part of the problem is that everybody has to agree to be there and do it and have sincerity in the process too. Yeah. So. Do you want to summarize the four steps of the Hawaii Ponopono? Oh, no, the four, the four steps of hope. I don't know, I can't remember what those exact steps are, but I can send them to you. But I have these four steps in my book of active consciousness, which was sort of a manifestation technique. It's different. It's a prayer ritual. I think the whole Ponopono ritual. It's like, you have to say, I'm sorry, forgive me, thank you, I love you, right? Yeah, it's something like that. Yeah. I have, I have it written down, but I'll be writing about it in my book. Right. It's not, so it's not the same thing as the prayer ritual, which is called the Ha ritual. It's a different process. Yeah. Yeah. So, yes, I think it's really important. How can we do it? I don't want to know. So, I mean, on a global level. But I think these, if it works on a person level, if it works on a family unit, if maybe we just need to build it up, it could work in a city level, a national level, maybe it could work in a global level. And what I'm interested in also is mapping existing practices onto some of these ancient teachings and vice versa. Maybe if you really analyze some of these, you know, some of these kind of maybe nonviolent communication retreats where people from different sides are brought together and they're put into dialogue and they're put in a situation where they can see each other's humanity and hear each other's stories and Yes, yes. Of course. But the thing that's really cool about it, and I don't know if it really would work, but I just feel it might, is that you don't have to if there's sincerity, if there's some kind of active thing, maybe that's enough to set a process in motion. It doesn't have to be, there has to be a sincere awareness that everybody is part of this more global issue. You know, I was actually in a Jewish Palestinian dialogue group for a few years. And so, and what can be a troublesome thing in that is that people come to it with an agenda, you know, they're not, so it's not really, it's both sides, whatever has to be saying we are together and we're all part of this. It can't be, you did this and you got to fix this and stuff like that, although you can express that, that's part of the ritual, you know. But they have to be open to something beyond what they already think they know, right, beyond the story that they're carrying into it, the story which could be, it's your fault you did this, you did that. And, you know, we were justified and you weren't and if you're already, if you're not willing to move beyond that and instead your goal is to defeat the enemy and to, you know, demolish their story and replace it with yours and get them to admit that they were wrong and you were right, like that agenda doesn't leave room for anything but more of the same. Right, right. Nothing else can get in, nothing can fit because it's already got the entire conceptual universe colonized. Right. It's the same mentality as, you know, the kind of dominant scientific paradigms. They've got the whole universe colonized already. Yeah, I guess in the Hawaiian culture they kind of, they bought into this idea already that there is a collective consciousness of the family and that they actually are affecting each other.  And yeah, right. So that's what people have to buy into. They have to know, yeah, we're all part of this thing. This is what you taught, you've been talking about. Right. That we're all part of this, we're all affecting each other and unless believe that it's going to defeat the purpose of these kind of rituals or they won't, they won't work, I guess. Right, because they don't work in a universe of, you know, of separate selves interacting according to impersonal laws of physics in an objective universe. Like how could they work in that universe? There's no causal explanation for it. So we have to step out of that universe, step out of the separate self in order to access these other kinds of technology. Yeah. I got one of those little messages says is unstable. I don't know. Yeah, I know. You know, part of it, Amy, part of the, like, I'm just in this stage of transition now. Like, I don't even have a house. I don't have an office. So I'm kind of trying to find places to do these things. And again, like this isn't, it's not coincidence. This is a synchronicity, too. It's easier to recognize synchronicities when they seem beneficial, you know, when they, when they are uplifting. But, but, you know, sometimes I feel like I'm being forced or walked, let's say walked through, walked on a path that I would never, ever have chosen consciously. But that's the only path to the place that I'm meant to go. So I'm kind of like dragging my feet on this path that right now, you know, includes a lot of instability and uncertainty. And, you know, I think, like, I'm some kind of new at these podcasts, too.  I've done a lot of that. So like, I have, what would you, this is more like a conversation. Yeah. What would you say to me if we weren't being recorded right now? And you're just talking to Charles. What would I'm actually saying what I would say to you? Oh, okay. So I want to ask you a question, something I'm wrestling with. It's just that I've been going through a change just the past few months where I, you know, I just, I've become so disillusioned with our consensual reality of specifically politics in the media that I'm, I feel I have to pull away from it all because I'm being sucked into that whole thing, the fear.  And yeah, I used to, I would always vote. I must engage. I must be a good citizen.  And now I'm feeling like I'm, it's starting to seem like a big fraud to me. It's all, it's all very fraudulent to me. And so, so I, I, I feel a little bad, but I, like I stopped getting the newspaper because I just can't, it's just, it's just permeating my being because I believe that my consciousness will affect my reality. Right? I don't want to start my day reading that. And now I've come to know because of various things that, that they were writing about, that I personally knew about are false. And yeah. So I think this is a very healthy response to not want to participate anymore, to not want to vote, to not want to read the newspaper, because your full, your full participation in that kind of legitimizes and validates it. And, and says that, and it kind of, yeah, legitimizes the story that says, here is what an active citizen should do to help contribute to a better world. Like it's offering you a set of procedures, a recipe, a frame within which to do that. But if that whole frame is a delusion, then why would you participate in it? And I think what's happening to you, this kind of disillusionment is really spreading. The, the, and in a way, like the increasing absurdity of the political culture is, is a good sign. It's a sign that the, that the game is almost up. Yes. It's kind of spinning off into this absurd realm where, where candidates are saying things that know, that almost nobody actually believes and, and that they themselves don't believe. And that's considered normal. Like nobody thinks that, that these candidates actually wholeheartedly believe in what they're saying. It's that they're like, and when they do say something, it's not analyzed for its content. It's analyzed for what its signals and what posture the politician is assuming and what is the messaging, you know, it's not even taken on face value. Like the communication is breaking down and it's becoming this, this farce. I mean, this is not, you know, any deep insight I'm having here. It's obvious that it's becoming a farce and, and a spectacle and no one really believes in it anymore, which means I think that it'll be, it won't take that much for us to let go of it. But I hope you're right. But then the thing is the other thing that's complicated, and this is interesting going back to the beginning of our discussion is that many of the people to that are these conspiracy type people, right? And they're just feet, they're saying, you know, everything they're saying is a blonde, they throw in the conspiracies and some of them might be true, some of them might be false, right? Weed from the chaff is very hard to discern it. When you get into a lot of that, right, you have to be very discerning. Most people aren't discerning. But discerning doesn't even actually help. But I'll respond to that in a minute.  So, but that, but then the horrible thing about that world, and they are attracted to me as well. They read my writings too, right? Right there, right? Is that it's so fear just makes you feel terrible. It's sort of addictive to fear type of thing.  And so you have to find the yourself, you know, this is part of the transition from an old story to a new story, you know, you go through the space between the space between stories and maybe you try out many, many different stories and one of them could be the conspiracy realm. And then you think, then you realize, you know, regardless of the empirical evidence of whether it's true or false, it doesn't resonate with me. And, and, and who am I standing in this story, standing in the story of the reptilian overlords who are controlling everything. And, and they have technology far, far superior to anything we can imagine and mind control technology and, and it's all, you know, like, I see people get caught up in that and they become paralyzed. So that alone is enough to make me perhaps naively or innocently discard that story, that narrative, because of what it does to me, not because I've disproven it, not because I don't think that it's logically incoherent, but because of what it does to me. I agree. And so the deep assumption here, like when you, when you're saying, well, maybe some of them are true and some of them are false, the deep assumption that's shared by almost everybody is that there is an objective backdrop that defines what is true and what is false. You know, there's an objective reality outside of ourselves and the things that conform to that are true, the things that do not are false, but there is a reality out there. But, but what I'm, what I've been coming to, I mean, geez, for years and years now, my son right here is reading The Ascent of Humanity. I was writing this stuff like, here it is, yeah, like 10 years ago, you know, like, and my mind still has trouble wrapping itself around the idea that, that there isn't an objective reality out there. And that the basic elements of reality are not hard physical Newtonian objects, but are themselves stories, narratives. And this was, I mean, my friend, Bio Komalafi reports Nigerian shamans saying this, there are no facts, there are only stories. Then there's the postmodernist error or conceit, which says humans are the creators of these stories. But we can let go of that too and say, well, the stories maybe have their own consciousness. And it's kind of like the dream world, right, where the reality is fluid. It's, you know, what you think is what you create. If you're having a lucid dream or something like that. But that still puts the separate self at the center. You know, what if the dream has a being that's beyond ourselves and we are being created by the dream, you know, like, like, it's a collective, it's a collect. I mean, we're all doing it.  And, and what we, what, what our story is is what's helping create it, right? So you like you say, you're meeting the world is meeting you, what you're putting out. Yeah, that's why it's important not to get into that fear thing, because the reptilian world is that, and that is, that is a world. I don't want to go in there. Oh, yes. So, I don't know. Here's another, another, you know, you sort of wonder, is this true or not? So the listener might teach, I guess, can I say one more thing though? Yeah, I've been studying Gary Sherman for many years and a lot of the meditations in my second book are from him. And what's great about him is that he really is trying to use these practices in day to day life. It's not according to any lineage in day to day life and using these practices in day to day life. And a lot of what he talks about is receiving information.  If you tune in, you'll get perhaps, perhaps to your, oh, yeah, I have, I have been trying to interrupt you for a while because I'm getting really spotty sound. I'm not even sure how much this is recording. Okay. Can we, there's a button that says stop video. Let's just audio record the rest of it. Is it on your screen? Yeah, I see it. Okay. So do that. I think we'll get a lot better bandwidth that way. Okay. Okay. So where, where was I? So I was, I was telling you about my teacher, Gary Sherman, about him teaching us to tune in and receive and so not buying into trusting our own source of information. But the important thing is, is, is that you're really tuning in to really to your inner self, your higher self, and not just more store fears. Rather than believing in these stories that other people are giving you, whether it be conspiracy or the collective media polity. And that's really actually also what I'm trying to do is teach people how to do that. I think that's our only way out. I don't know. But you, people like you and me are trying to, to find a way and help people find this new, new world. So yeah, I liked what you said about, you know, the, the reptilian world, the fear world. One of the assumptions that we carry from the age of enlightenment, you know, the scientific age is that the best way to be an effective person or the best way to navigate the world is to start with a set of solid principles. And then kind of apply those through logic to give us the answers. So that the most important thing you can do is to come up with, at the deepest level, you know, a correct metaphysical theory. And so it seems very important then to, to know, well, you know, what, what is the metaphysical status of stories, you know, are the things that people create? Are they beyond us, you know, and, and is, do we live in an objective reality, a subjective reality, an omnidjective reality, whatever, like, and if we can only come up with this complete, thorough account of reality, then we would know what to do.  So what I'm coming to is, I just want to navigate by something else that doesn't require me to know, that doesn't require me to understand everything, it doesn't require me to, to be able to account for everything in one or another conceptual category to, that doesn't require me to know how the world works.  Right. And now, and maybe someday we'll have a better story about how the world works that again tells us how to navigate. But right now, we're in that space between, we don't have a navigating, we don't have a map anymore. And absent a map, well, what's the compass? You know, how do we, how do we navigate? And for me, it comes, it does come back a lot to, to, you know, how does it feel to be in that story? Or even when no story works, I mean, I've had situations come up in my life where I don't like any of the stories I could tell myself about it. Well, then what do I do? How do I choose? Maybe that's not even the right question. How do I choose? Maybe that's not the right question. Maybe I make my choices based on something completely unconscious. And then I tell myself I'm choosing when I'm not. I'm in this space of, I don't know, with all this, which it's fun to play with all the things that you're talking about. Yeah, yeah.  Cause like, yeah, I'm like a researcher and scientist and I read all the stuff and I'm trying to, you know, I love seeing that, oh yeah, this Hoonus stuff aligns with the stuff in my second book and with these other ideas. And I'm kind of always trying to come up with the new unified theory, you know, of how I'm working. And yet, for example, my team, oh, it's just another story. Just go within and listen, you know. So maybe this, I think that human beings need stories too. There's part of us that needs some kind of structure to help us navigate. And then I think it's useful. That's why I want to write my third book, because A, it's a useful, it's full things that really work, things that make sense, things that help people. That's good. I don't think that's bad. And we can't always, every person can't trust themselves to, or isn't able to go within and he receive information from their higher self. It's just not possible. So, so tools that work like Hoonah, like homeopathy, I need it. I mean, yes, yeah, they're needed. But the trouble is, is that every tool is self perpetuating and then don't work, or they fall outside that, then people get angry, and then they go crazy. Yeah. Well, yeah, we're definitely not talking about forever letting go of story. Yeah, yeah. But we are definitely in a transition in our stories. Yeah. And I just hope the other end better. So Amy, I want to sign off in a minute or two here, but yeah. Okay. Is there anything else you'd like to just, like what, maybe like the core essence of your work and what you want to bring? Do you want to try to put that in a short statement? I guess what I usually try to say to people, remember that they, that there's more to themselves than they realize. And that, that you operate on many different levels. And yes, you have a physical body, but you have all these other aspects to your physical body. And that there's these other tools that can, can help you that you don't realize are out there. So homeopathy is one of them. You know, all these tools are there for us. And they also should give you confidence that things aren't as bleak as they seem. So, you know, I think things like synchronicity are, is just a different form of causality at a higher level of, or a deeper level of reality. And so the world is more mysterious than we think, which should give us hope that things aren't as bleak as we feel. And that we don't have to follow the prescriptions that everybody's telling us that there's different answers. I might paraphrase that in, to use your words and say, be open to the impossible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And impossible, meaning of course, what we've been told is impossible. Yes. Yes. But which actually may be possible. Yeah. And if what, you know, if an incurable disease can be cured, then what else is possible on this planet? What else is, what other situations do we face ecologically, politically that seem incurable and that seem hopeless, but that when we shift our paradigm actually can be healed. Perfect. That's great. That's right. And you know, I, as, as in my life work, what I see happening is that somehow I'm like a connector. I'm able to like look at lots of different things and, and understand the relay and then explain them to people in kind of simple, in a simple way. And I mean, that's, I feel it's emerging is that's what's my task in this, this lifetime is a Claire. I see my husband calls me the clarifier. So I'm, I'm not there to be a deep scientific area. I'm there to sort of see all the connections and sort of explain it to people and try to help people. So anyway, that's who I am. Thank you, Amy. And for those people who might have missed the beginning, I've been talking to Amy Lansky, who I wrote the book Impossible Cure. And what's the title of the next one? The second one's called Active Consciousness. Active consciousness. That's right. Yes. And you can, we'll have the, her websites up on the screen. But the, they probably all link to each other. One of them is, is, is it? Yeah. Amy Lansky.com. Yeah. So yeah, that's impossible cure.com, active consciousness.com and Amy Lansky.com is my blog. All right. Great. So thank you, Amy. Thank you. Yeah, this was great. And so as usual, I'm Charles Eisenstein and this is, has been a new and ancient story. So yeah, we'll see you next time. Thank you. You've been listening to a new and ancient story with me, your host, Charles Eisenstein. To engage more deeply, you can join our community on new and ancient story.net where we have live chats, forums, meetups, and all kinds of other tools for collaboration. If you want to find out more about my work, then visit my website, CharlesEisenstein.net.


It's one thing to read from my memoir that I talk about things I did, but it's a little weird to read my memoir in front of people who lived this with me. And there's some people here. I'm not going to point them out in the room, but there's people here who actually lived this with me. So if I get a little feclumped, that's what it's about, you know. I'm just going to start at the beginning, which we all should do. Last day, San Francisco, June 25, 1997. First of the door frame, fly through the air and fall either side of me. I stand there, immobile. A hundred cops outside, some in uniform, some not. Guns drawn, faces some body's tense. A tall, heavy-set, blonde police officer steps forward through the doorway and smacks me in the face with a butt-averse shotgun as more cops push past her into the apartment.  A plainclothes policeman shouts, where are the guns, motherfucker? His badge hanging loosely on a chain around his neck swings back and forth over my face. Are you alone, asked another? Before I can reply, I hear Jenny, oblivious, slurring her words, wanting what all the noise is about. A finger to his lips, the plainclothes cop points towards the bedroom. My stomach tightens as I fear what the cops will do to Jenny if I don't try and make her understand what is happening.  Jenny, Jenny, I shout, can you come out here? What for, she asks, and then there's a crash of breaking glass, furniture being shoved, voices shouting for her to get down on the floor. They must be coming in through the window. Then someone's turning me over, handcuffing me on my arms behind my back, and I'm being lifted, half carried, half dragged out into the daylight.  I'm dragged to the nearest patrol car, and over my shoulder I can see my friend Dolan, spread eagle being searched on the hood of another car. Tossed in the back seat, I try to sit up and ask the nearest cop for a cigarette. He slams the door in my face. A minute later, a man in a suit walks up, opens the door, introduces himself as a detective, and apologizes for the cop's behavior. Then he calls me by my name, says he's been watching me for some time now. I'll see you down at the station later on tonight, Mr. O'Neill, he says, and then he shuts the door, tells the driver to take me downtown, and stands there staring at me through the window as we drive away. I keep thinking that this isn't real, that none of this is happening, that the cop who's driving the car will pull over to the curb and unlock the handcuffs and set me free. Every turn of the wheel makes me lose my balance, and I push up off the seat with my elbows to keep myself upright. The cuffs dig into my skin. The monotone of the police dispatcher's voice coming out of the radio is the only sound piercing the oppressive atmosphere in the car. My heart pounds, the motor accelerates, and abrupt stop sends me crashing into the metal cage that separates the back from the front. I feel helpless, I feel like screaming, I feel like crying, only I don't know how. I want a cigarette so bad I can't think of anything else. I start to get angry. I start yelling.  I tell him this is all a mistake, I haven't done anything, and I kick the cage and tell him he's got to believe me. San Francisco passes by, the ferry building, the waterfront, Bay Bridge, Harrison Street. We arrive at a parking lot behind the Hall of Justice and pull into a space marked official vehicles only. The cop opens my door and I feel the cool air against my naked chest. Without saying a word, he grabs my arms and drags me out onto the ground.  One cop pushes the intercom button and waves to the camera above our heads.    Pushed along by hand on my shoulders, I stumbled down a hall lined with empty holding cells. The cop signs a couple of forms of the booking desk before handing me off to the sheriffs who run the jail. My anxiety has been holding the heroin in check, but now the pills I also took are starting to kick in and I'm fading. Slurring, I mumble my name, address, social security numbers, a woman in uniform types it all into a computer. Hurting through a maze of desks and filing cabinets, I lose my bearings. An older deputy, balled with glasses, tells me it's almost over and I wonder just what he means. One of the sheriffs grabs hold of my fingers if they want to attach to me and shoves them in black ink, pressing the tips to a sheet of paper leaving smudged imprints on the appropriate squares. Someone hands me a brown paper towel and I try and wipe the blackness from my fingertips. My surroundings are becoming more and more in focus, the meaning of what is going on increasingly vague. A deputy gives me a shirt with frayed cuffs and I open my eyes and a flashball erupts, temporarily blinding me. I'm turned to my left, profile shot. Metal hitting metal, the sound of a door closing, the constant roar of jail decreasing to a low growl. Excuse me. Half crouched and half in my back against the wall, I feel a surface and collapse. Exhausted, I nod off into a dream about a large Siamese cat that rubs against my body, her fur soft on my skin. She tells me she's been starved for days and stands on my chest screaming for me to feed her. Our protruding ribcage is meshed together, her paws in bed themselves on my skin. I'm confused as to why she doesn't just turn and run away when she has the chance. I reach to pet her and feel my own cold skin taught against my bones. Running my fingers along my ribs, I press the bottom of my sternum and hear it click. I try to light a cigarette with the cat's face. Its claws tear my arms and I start to bleed. With a jolt I wake up freezing on a cement slab that sticks out of the wall forming a bench. I look for the cat but she's gone.  It takes a minute for me to realize where I am. I want a cigarette really bad. I want to go back to sleep.   I can see Dolan in a cell across the hall. He flashes me a weak smile. I can tell from his eyes these words as I am. Twelve years younger than me, less experienced but as I kept him from driving the getaway car for most of my recent hold-ups.  I think about Jenny. I wonder where she is and she's okay. Last I saw she was in handcuffs being led to a cop car.  The cell door opens.  Where am I going? I ask. It really doesn't matter. And the look on the deputy's face tells me he doesn't care either. We walk down the corridor to an unmarked elevator against the wall he commands. I turn, face the wall, raise my arms. Take my right hand, he circles the handcuffed around my wrist, pulls the other down, cuffs it too. The elevator door opens. It's dirty inside. It smells like piss. The deputy motions for me to enter. When I hesitate he pushes me in against the back wall. I hear the door close. I feel the elevator cars start to rise. You a tough guy taunts the deputy. I stare at the wall saying nothing. There's no point getting in with this guy. I'm handcuffed. He's not. I'm under arrest. He's an officer of the law. And I'm not a tough guy. Never said I was. The elevator shutters to a stop and he pulls me onto a corridor, hand-clanter on the back of my neck. He leads me through a door with robbery detail written across it in black letters with gold trim. Inside there are four or five empty desks. A man at a computer, his shirt sleeves rolled up to elbow, looks over as he continues to type. Put him there, he says, pointing to a chair by a desk in the middle of the room. I'm suddenly very tired. I can feel that familiar emptiness creeping in. It's not the drugs have worn off yet. It's more like my anxiety has kicked in full force. I can't count the number of nights when I'd be asleep at home then suddenly so gripped with fear of this exact moment I'd all of a sudden be awake sitting up in one motion holding my chest, my heart fought to burst through my rib cage. Somewhere deep down, whether I wanted it or not, I knew all this was coming. I knew someday I'd be sitting here in handcuffs. Thank you.


I'm gonna need some coffee for this. I'm sure you can all see my train of thought over the last few weeks. It's basically been TikTok, TikTok, TikTok, putting blush really close to my eyes, having cute bangs. I should have bangs. I feel like 20 year old me would be like, give me some scissors, let's do this. And 33 year old me is like, you know they make products for that. Or you could like maybe go to a hairdresser for the first time in three years. But you know, when these little clip-in like bangs and ponytails came out, I feel like I missed all of it because it was at a time in my life when my hair was like every color under the sun. It also got very damaged during that whole time. Hence this long streak of growth. It's amazing how one bad decision really takes like three years to undo. Because I kind of want to know, like am I the type of 33 year old lady that can wear like a fake ponytail or like fake bangs? Or am I the type of 33 year old lady that wears flannel shirts with toothpaste on them? Maybe I can be both. What kind of list those? Give me this hair. This looks like a hair piece. Wait, I want to put this on Kermit so bad. Okay, so I got a couple of different kinds of this because I'm concerned that this is ridiculous. Is it not? No, it quite literally is ridiculous. Okay, so if I were to just, oh my God. Wait, wait, wait. It looks like that Instagram filter. Chris uses this. This looks awful. Hey, Bonnie, come here. I got to show you something, honey. You love hair. Okay, Peachy, you want to try? Peachy sit. Girl, okay, sit still, all right? Oh, this is my girl. Oh, Bonnie wants a hair piece. Oh, Peachy, that's so pretty. Sit. Kermit's like patiently waiting for his turn. Okay, you got to sit if you want the hair. I know you want it to be about you. If you want it to be about you, then sit down, please. Do you want to see? It's not a toy, okay? Do you want me to hit it on her? It's not a toy.  Kermit, Kermit, you want to go to the... Hey, Kerm. Singles mixer? I mean, maybe the flannel shirt really was a good idea for today, because I feel like it really does complete this look, you know? What's the name of this look? A Marama dirt bike to 7-Eleven and get some M&M's. Let me actually clip it in. Three easy steps before, oh, look at her before. I got a secret. Hey, what is she hiding? And then she secures the front clips then the center clips, hand blend part with own hair. Okay, okay, you ready? Yeah. Just in case for all of you that were like, Jenna, you should totally cut your bangs. I just want to remind you guys what I look like with bangs. Does it look natural, Julianne? Stop laughing at me. No, it looks good. It looks cute, that's why I'm laughing. It says hand blend, is it blended? Yeah, it looks really cute, that's why I'm laughing. Should I wear it behind my ears, or should I let it, like, you can't tell from the top? I don't know, I feel like you can tell from the top. You can do that, oh no. I don't know, I feel like you can tell from the top. Okay, that's like a very, that looks like I'm looking at a map and there's two states being divided. Julianne, don't call my hair a map. I mean, it's super easy to put in. I don't know anyone anymore that like genuinely uses one of these all the time and is like, there we go. I want to try on bangs. Yeah, I got two bangs. You got me so bangs energy. Do I look like my mom? A little bit. She's got bangs. She does have bangs. Stop making that face. Do you think I could swim in them? No, to the side, other side. Why, so you can roast me? Oh no. Don't worry about it. What's wrong with it? It's a color match when you're looking this direction. Any other direction ain't a match. This is like a picture of me and my mom when I was a kid, because we both had those bangs, like super straight across bangs when we were talking to me and my son again. Right, little fun? What do you think, Bunny? Is that nice? Bunny. Oh, she's so beautiful. She's... You have that wig? I hope I'm not the only one that has the dog that really likes hair. She really likes it. Did you steal that? What if I want to put it in my hair? Bunny, this is not a toy. It's your hair, baby girl. Bunny. Good girl. Good girl. Yeah, that looks so nice, baby. What a look. What a look. Good girl. You're so pretty. You're so pretty. Good job, honey. It's not a toy. So you don't think I can pull this off? I'm sitting in a bar and someone was like, excuse me, and I was like, yes? Why did you laugh? Hold on, let's play it out. Why was your first reaction to the laugh? Look the other way, look the other way. Hey, Miss, can I buy you a drink? Can I get a rubble vodka?  Well, what if I actually did this? I feel like some bangs are cute and some of them are just like, no. Julian, that's so... What do you mean? That's literally not the one I got for you. I had to sift through so many boxes of hair to find the right color for you. It goes this way, right? Yeah. Like I'm also by no means like I'm not making fun of any of these products whatsoever. I think it's brilliant and genius and I'm sure a lot of people have had so much fun with them. Like what a smart idea. It just looks like... Did somebody say smart? I'm alive. You turn to the side. That is such a look, Julian. The long pieces. Hi, baby. Hi. Okay, stop. Choose your character. Fix it a little bit. Can I play with it for a second? Yeah. Because I have a vision. Ow! Julian, you just... That one actually scared me today. Don't do it, don't do it. That, right there. This is so I can steal your man while I'm not even looking at it. It looks like you lost a bet. Put these ones on in the front and where that one ends in the back. Baby, in the back. Business in the front. Bad business in the back. Can I talk to the manager? I'm the manager. Let's move on. I make this thing called hairdo top where instead of just being a piece of bang, apparently it goes over the entire top with a bang.  I was, I haven't thought about growing out a full mullet before. I think you should. This is sort of like a little teaser. Hair is so fun and such a fun way to express yourself.  Okay, is this better for me or worse? Worse. Is this better or worse for me? It's hot. I'm taken. Please? Okay.  I want to show them. I had to get a clip because it says vibes. So you can use the vibes clip right now. Don't put it up there. When the vibes, hold on. Babe, I'm filming something. Babe, when the vibes be hitting the right. How about now? Can I wear this now? Now that I have a vibes clip? I feel like you can tell at the bottom here that this is not my hair. No, I can't tell. Blend's better with O on camera. It looks a little different. What's it look like from the back? Looks good. Hi, I love it. I love the way this cake is cut. Is it like the time when I went like this and all my tape and extension showing? It's not as bad as that, but it's like there comes a point when you're looking down the bottom of your hair that it's just like, where did that come from? Whose fault this whole thing is? Whose? Hers. What? Hers personally. Hers personally. Did she attack you, Julie? This model punched me. What she said? I have never, ever, ever. Oh, you're doing a pony? Yeah. Because I feel like... That was my pony sound from the song Pony. Thank you. By Jean White, one of the greatest rappers of all time. Thank you, Julie. I feel like the best way to blend your fake bangs is with a fake pony. Well, if you have no real hair showing, then all the hair is blended. So I feel like the bangs look way more natural, at least for me, if I have my hair up, because then it doesn't look so like dirt bike on me. It looks a little more like... A TV. A TV. Ow. Oh. Oh. I'll give you something to say foul about. I was gonna ask you what kind of ponytail you want, but I don't think we have the choice. Oh, I see. Oh, fun. That is so fun. I did not know that this was a thing. It's Velcro, so I just take the piece and Velcro it to itself, and it sticks to itself, and then I take this extra strand of hair and just wrap it around, and then I'm gonna pin it. It's not staying. You're sitting on it, first of all. Let me know when I should start working. Okay, you can start working. Wait, it's like slopping everywhere. Oh, it's gross. The pins are coming out, but the length is gorgeous. Wait, Julian. Party in the front? Weird on the sides. I guess this video is really more like, how many pieces of fake hair can I put in my head without wearing a wig?  Julian? What? Not helpful feedback. Where'd you park your horse?  I wouldn't be too mad though. I do definitely have horse people energy. Yeah.  I feel like you can just tell when somebody has horse people energy. It's a lifestyle, you know? I'm gonna get a zoomed in shot of this, so you can see. Oh, yeah! Oh, this hurts. Wait, is this what Ariana Grande feels like? This hurts. Oh, damn! Does it look natch? It's the Pony Ari Pony. Yeah, but does it blend with my hair? Yeah. Stop saying yeah like that! She said yeah. Give me a definitive answer for once. Ow, everything hurts. It is so heavy. It's in like a, how does it not sag? It feels like it's falling down. It's heavy. Like what started as a high pony is now like a mid-librarian pony. I think that's so cute. Wait, it's actually the same length as my real hair. Even though it's not super high Ari Pony, like it still looks cute. It goes with the shirt you're wearing. It's just got horse energy.  Well, it's part of living with a horse. Is the other part just wearing cute boots and tight leggings? When your husband's a horse. Give us a surf. It's heavy. I can't surf. It's heavy.     All right, you ready? I got one. Yeah. Giddy up. Oh. Is it because it's brown? I bet if my hair was blonde, this would look, it would have a different. Whole different vibe. Whole different vibe if it's blonde. There's no more horses involved. I think some of it's my flannel. Some of it's the general color. Some of it's just my attitude. Yeah. Did you just put the vibes in? Does that help my look? No, you've been lying to me. This looks awful. Just a girl and her horse.  Can I fix yours? Can I actually put them? My little pony. Look at how fun that is. It's fun. Look at us.  You look good. What if horse is barked? Jelena doesn't look good. All right, that was hot. Is this the car that you picked? Okay, no magic. Where should I park my horse? Stop. I thought you were the horse. Woof. Stop. I don't know. I don't think I can pull that off. You can. No, I can't. Just pull it a little bit harder. Pull what a little bit harder?  When your horse breaks up with you. When Ariana Grande looks like this, it's like cute and clean and good looking. And when I do it, it's just horse people energy. This is meant as no disrespect to horse people. Y'all are cool. I think this is the last time that I'm ever going to wear this bang piece, that's for sure. Bang. I feel like maybe I could make the ponytail work for me. But it would take a lot of finessing. But I really like the way that the pony looks. Once Kermit gets his, now we're a bang family. We're a bang family. Family picture. So we'll meet bang. I think we look sick. Your bangs look good. You can say you don't as much as you want, but I think you look good. Not as good as me or Kermit, but you look good. I think honestly, out of all of us though, Bunny looked the best. Bunny did look the best. Oh! How does Ariana Grande do like a whole concert like this? That's all real hair, babe. Definitely. Will you take mine out of my head? Like everything hurts. Don't do glib-tons, kids. See how I'm gonna take this out of your head? Yeah. Juliet, oh my God. I don't know what, I don't know. I don't know how to do this. Ow! What's up, say that again? Stop zooming in on my pain! Look at it, it's like stuck. Just thinking of the horses. Look at that episode of Seinfeld when Elaine takes George's toupee like this and just goes, I don't like this thing! He just throws it out the window. When you've had a long day at this. The record, I love horse people and they have really good energy. I think it's more about my shirt than anything else. I've always wondered if I could be the type of sophisticated lady that could just pull off these little pieces of bang and have everyone be like, oh, cute. But you know, I don't think I have, I don't think I have the it factor for it. As a person that has cut my own bangs many times on my own, I do know that sometimes you can end up with bang regret. So that this is a nice way to see what your bangs would look like. Just make sure y'all really all know in the comments if you'd like me to cut and color my hair like my actual TikTok e-girl video. We really look into something like this, you know? That wig was working over time. It was over time. My hair would not look like that if I actually cut it and dyed it. Nay! We made carrots. Something we got very hard for carrots. Well, make sure you subscribe to my channel. I put out a video today Wednesday slash Thursday and I make only the hottest horse people content on YouTube. Is this video going to be tagged for horses? Yeah. When you need a new look for riding your horse. Stop, no, no, no, no. End it on the good note, not that. Nay.


All right, so we've seen the definition of this quantity of called the variational energy where even if we don't know whether a function, this function phi is or is not a wave function, we can at least tentatively compute the energy of that wave function by doing this set of integrals in the numerator and the denominator. And in the occasion where we happen to have gotten lucky and guessed the right wave function, then this energy function now will tell us the correct energy of that wave function. So to see how that works in practice, let's do a relatively simple case. Let's imagine that the problem we're trying to solve is the one-dimensional particle in a box. So this is a case where we do know the correct solutions. We solved Schrodinger's equation for the particle in a box. Those wave functions look like the ground state wave function psi sub 1 looks like some normalization constant times a sine function, sine of pi x over the length of the box. And remember what that looks like is if I have a box that runs from 0 to a, the sine wave hits 0 at the two edges of the box because the probability has to be 0 outside the box and it looks like the ground state wave function looks like a sine wave, a half lobe of a sine wave inside the box. And the energy, remember, not pi but m, energy of that wave function is h squared over 8 times the mass of the particle times the box length squared in the denominator. So our task is, let's say we don't know the right answer. Let's say we couldn't solve Schrodinger's equation or we don't feel like it and instead of using the correct solution, we know at least qualitatively that the function should start at 0, it should go up and then it should come back down and land at 0 at x equals a. Another function that has that at least qualitatively correct behavior is a parabola, a parabola that starts at 0, rises to a maximum in the middle of the box and then decreases to 0 at the other edge of the box, has two 0s, a 0 at x equals 0 and a 0 at x equals a. So this function gives an expression for something that at least looks somewhat like the right solution. So let's see if we can figure out what the variational energy of that trial solution is. So we'll start with first just by calculating the quantity in the denominator. We'll do these two integrals one at a time to calculate the integral of the trial function times itself with a complex conjugate. We don't need to worry about the complex conjugate here because there's no i's, no complex terms in our wave function. So this is just going to be the integral of the wave function times the wave function integrated over the variable in our problem, x, integrated from one side of the box to the other. So that integral, if we work it out, that's the integral of, so x times x is x squared.  If I then multiply by the x squared, I'm going to have an extra x squared, x is going to become x cubed and x squared is going to become x to the fourth. That's the thing that I want to integrate from zero to a. So integral of a polynomial, integral of x squared is one third x cubed and I've still got an a squared in front of that. Integral of x to the fourth is one fourth x to the fourth with a minus 2a. Integral of x to the fifth is one fifth of x to the fifth and that whole thing is evaluated between zero and a. So taking those terms one by one, if I plug in a in free checks, a squared times a cubed gives me a to the fifth. There's a three in the denominator. A fourth, a to the fourth times a is also a to the fifth and this time I've got a two over four is two in the denominator and in the last term a to the fifth with a five in the denominator and then when I plug zeros in for x is all those terms go away. So I don't have to worry about the second set of three terms. So this is all equal to each term looks like an a to the fifth. My fractions, if I put them all over the same common denominator, common denominator of three and two and five looks like it's going to be 30. So I've got 10 over 30 is the same as one third. 15 over 30 is the same as one half and six over 30 is the same as one fifth. 10 plus six is 16 minus 15 is one. So I end up with the result of a to the fifth over 30. So all that work was just to figure out what is the value of this integral in the denominator. Notice that my way function, I didn't take any care to normalize it. This is not a normalized way function. If it were normalized, the denominator would be one. In this case it comes out to some value that's probably not one depending on what the length of my box is. So essentially I've just done the work of having to normalize the way function since I didn't bother to do it when I set the problem up. The next step, let's calculate the integral in the denominator and that one's actually going to be a little bit easier as it turns out. So if I continue my work over here, way function complex conjugated if I need to, which I don't for this example, multiplied by the Hamiltonian times the way function again, that's going to be the integral of my function x times a minus x. Hamiltonian, remember for the harmonic oscillator, I've been saying harmonic oscillator, I mean particle in a box. For the particle in a box that Hamiltonian is just h squared over 8 pi squared mass times the second derivative. And the thing I want to take the second derivative of is again the wave function. This is probably a good time to say that I can rewrite this wave function x times a minus x as x a minus x squared as an intermediate piece of work. So the thing I want to take the second derivative of is the wave function, which I'll write in this case as x a minus x squared. Second derivative of this quadratic just gives me, if I take the first derivative, I'll get minus 2x and the second derivative turns that minus 2x into a minus 2. So this whole second derivative term is just gives me minus 2. So the result is I want the integral of x a minus x, which I can go ahead and write since I've done the work, as x a minus x squared. My constants stick around minus h squared over 8 pi squared mass. Second derivative has given me minus 2. And I want to take the integral with respect to x integrating from 0 to a. So these are all constants which I'll pull out front. So h squared over 8 pi squared mass times a 2. Integral of x a minus x squared is 1 half a x squared minus 1 third x cubed. Again evaluated from 0 to a. If I plug in a's for my x's I'll find for the term in brackets 1 half of a cubed when I plug in a here and then minus a third a cubed when I plug in a in for the x right here. So the net result 1 half minus a third is a sixth. Two times a sixth is a third. So I can write my result as h squared over 8 pi squared mass. 2 divided by this six is 1 over 3. And I have an a cubed on top. Alright, so that's the second piece of work I needed to calculate the numerator of the function. The final step is to figure out what the variational energy is itself. That variational energy is numerator divided by denominator. So I've got h squared over 8 pi squared mass times a cubed over 3. That's the numerator. I'm going to divide by the result I got for the denominator 8 of the fifth over 30. So when I divide by 8 of the fifth over 30, I'll write that as 8 of the fifth under 30. We have a lot of cancellation. Let's see. The 3 cancels the 10, cancels the 30 and leaves me with a 10. The a cubed cancels 3 of the a's hiding in the a fifth. So I get an a squared in the denominator. I've still got an h squared on top. An 8 in the denominator. The pi squared in the denominator. I'm going to move over to here. And I've got an m in the denominator. So the reason I've collected the terms in that particular way is I've put the h squared over 8ma squared together because that reminds me of the correct energy of the ground state of this particle in a box. Energy is h squared over 8ma squared if I had chosen the correct ground state wave function. I didn't. So what I got was not exactly the ground state energy, but the ground state energy multiplied by some other collection of constants. Turns out that 10 over pi squared is larger than one. It's not far away from one. Pi squared is 9 point something. So if I calculate the value of 10 over pi squared, what I find out is the energy, the trial energy, the variational energy I've gotten for this trial function is the correct energy times 1.013. So essentially by guessing a function that looked reasonable but wasn't quite right, I got an energy that was 1.3% larger than the correct ground state energy. And it's no coincidence that the energy I got was larger than the correct ground state energy. It turns out no matter what trial function I guess, unless I guess the correct ground state wave function, I'm always going to get an energy larger than the ground state. And that's something we'll take advantage of a lot and something that will prove to be the case in the next video lecture.