Truthfinding, Sensemaking, and the Psychedelic Renaissance

Rebel Wisdom co-founder Alexander Beiner has his finger on the cultural pulse of our times. Here he explores key challenges we face as a global community: sensemaking and truth finding in an culture that has lost its coherence as well as its sense of the divine, and what role psychedelics might play both therapeutically and spiritually in healing our culture. He discusses the need to go beyond the intellectual to find clarity and coherence, using embodied practices like meditation and inquiry, and explains how modalities such as these are an essential container for therapeutic psychedelic experiences.

What if deep, spiritual, psychotherapeutic group processes were to inform political decision making? Are commodification and economics going to subvert the benefits of the psychedelic renaissance? Let’s start asking, what do we want these substances to bring to the culture, and who has the authority to decide what psychedelics are used for? Ali brings keen insight and the wisdom of a dedicated contemplative to asking the important questions and offering up some answers as well.

Recorded September 27, 2021.

Topics & Timestamps: Part 1

• The evolution of the internet—from optimistic to dark and addictive—and its effect on culture (03:50)
• The crisis of trust in institutions creates a Wild West of narratives: Where do we get truth from? (07:03)
• Rebel Wisdom asks, how can we use the attitudes of the personal growth world and ancient wisdom to help us get into a new dialogue with each other? (08:50)
• The necessity to go beyond the intellectual to find clarity and certainty: that’s where practices come in (like meditation and inquiry) (13:35)
• Rebel Wisdom’s online course Sensemaking 101 moves from the inside out, creating a state of presence before tackling making sense of the news (15:55)
• The value of contemplative practices: they help you zoom out to a metaperspective and cultivate perspectival fluidity (17:07)
• The importance of bringing the spiritual worlds and political worlds together (people in the spiritual worlds are reluctant to go too far into the political and vice versa) (20:02)
• Danger of using meta as a “bypass”: focusing on how to make a better world rather than focusing on the realities of what is happening right now (20:57)
• The cycle of withdrawal and return: going within to come back to the world with more wisdom to give and going without to connect more deeply with ourselves (22:20)
• On allowing deep, spiritual, psychotherapeutic group processes to inform political decision making (23:52)
• What would an effective meta practice for people entail at this point? An ecology of practices (27:26)
• The therapeutic potential of the psychedelic experience combined with different modalities, i.e. inquiry + psychedelic experience (30:58)

Topics & Timestamps: Part 2

• The developmental process involved with engaging with the contemplative world (01:30)
• The psychedelic renaissance and learning how best to use psychedelic substances as part of our spiritual practices (02:24)
• Legalizing MDMA (03:46)
• Bringing psychedelics into mainstream culture: the biomedical route (04:23)
• The need to consciously build a psychedelic metaculture and Ali’s Psychedelic Value Survey (05:52)
• Are economics going to subvert the benefits of the psychedelic reemergence? (07:59)
• We need to start asking, what do we want these substances to bring to the culture and who has the authority to decide what psychedelics are for? (10:59)
• Are churches embracing the use of psychedelics? (13:15)
• Religious, spiritual, and therapeutic uses (14:50)
• Karma yoga: the interface between the contemplative and the cultural, the spiritual and the political (16:25)
• The current meaning crisis, the lack of cultural coherence, and the need to commit to something higher (19:12)
• What’s missing culturally right now is a sense of divinity and the ability to surrender (20:34)
• The global coordination issue (24:14)
• The crucial motive of self-transcendence (Abraham Maslow), meta motives and meta pathologies (25:02)
• The crisis of sense making and understanding that making sense doesn’t happen only through thought, it’s an embodied process (29:09)
• Fostering complexity tolerance and resilience in not knowing (32:02)
• What gives Alexander hope? The idea that humanity is at its best under pressure (34:11)

Resources & References

• Rebel Wisdom podcast website
• Rebel Wisdom’s Sensemaking 101 (8-week process begins June 18th)
• Alexander Beiner on Medium.com
• Alexander Beiner on Substack.com
• Terence McKenna, ethnobotanist, author, and advocate of using psychedelic plants, Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness* with Rupert Sheldrake & Ralph Abraham
• Timothy Leary, Harvard psychologist and LSD advocate, Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out*
• Tristan Harris, “Persuasive Technology and the Race to the Bottom of the Brain Stem”
• Venkatesh Rao, “The Internet of Beefs,” Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-driven Decision-making*
• Howard Bloom, Global Brain*
• Peter Russell, The Brain Book*
• Bret Weinstein Talks About His Brother Eric Weinstein
• John Vervaeke, award-winning lecturer at the University of Toronto and creator of the cult hit YouTube series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, author, Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-first Century Crisis,* Four Kinds of Knowing video
• The Ridhwan Tradition: The Diamond Approach
• Jamie Bristow, director of The Mindfulness Initiative, a policy institute teaching mindfulness and compassion to politicians
• Daniel Schmachtenberger, founding member of The Consilience Project aimed at improving public sensemaking and dialogue
• Jordan Hall, futurist and culture hacker
• Arnold Toynbee, historian, A Study of History*
• Living the Path of Love, course taught by Turiya Hanover and Rafia Morgan, co-founders of the Path of Love
• Carl Rogers, great American psychologist, Journal of Humanistic Psychology: The Rust Workshop (The Central American Challenge)
• Wim Hof Breathwork
• Ram Dass, Be Here Now
• Rick Doblin, Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
• Santo Daime tradition
• Burning Man annual event in Black Rock City, Nevada
• Alexander Beiner/Rebel Wisdom film, The Rise of Psychedelic Capitalism
• Norman Spinrad, 1970s science fiction writer, The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde*, review
• North Star Ethics Pledge, a first step in the demanding work of shaping the psychedelic industry around psychedelic wisdom
• Karma yoga, one of 4 classic spiritual paths in Hinduism
• Ranulph Fiennes, British explorer, writer, and poet, the world’s greatest living explorer according to the 1984 Guinness Book of World Records
• Ken Wilber, How Postmodernism Defies its Own Goals
• Daniel Schmachtenberger, founding member of The Consilience Project, which publishes novel research at the leading edges of global risk mitigation, governance design, and culture
• John Vervaeke, award-winning lecturer at the University of Toronto and creator of the cult hit YouTube series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis
• Maslow’s forgotten pinnacle: Self-transcendence
• Naryan Wong, founder of ThinkBetter, a training organization that helps people apply evidence-based approaches to their development, and an active member of the Rationalist community
• Developing Complexity Tolerance with David Treleaven on Rebel Wisdom
• Terence McKenna, ethnobotanist, author, and advocate of using psychedelic plants, Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness* with Rupert Sheldrake & Ralph Abraham
• Doshin Roshi, founder and abbot of Integral Zen

Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos

About the Deep Transformation series

We are clearly in a new era, facing world-threatening challenges and graced with barely conceivable opportunities. In this mind-boggling new world, we all face two crucial questions:

• First, the ever-present conundrum of how to best live fully, deeply, wisely, and well.
  Second, the new question unique to our times, how to best understand and heal our endangered world.
• Wouldn’t it be wonderful to hear responses to these questions from some of the great consciousness pioneers—the outstanding thinkers, sages, scientists, and activists—of our time? These are the people and conversations that Deep Transformation offers.

Deep Transformation: Self-Society-Spirit draws on diverse ideas from around the world. It goes beyond traditional positions and polarities—beyond left and right, material and spiritual—to seek syntheses of deep wisdom and practical know-how that integrate the best of all positions.

Click here to learn more about Deep Transformation!