Technology

#55: Flow States with Bobby Lyte /  by Joe

We invited our friend Bobby Lyte to join us for an awesome conversation about flow states, focus, deep work, and fun. Bobby is a DJ, producer, software engineer, and the host of Flow State – a podcast to help you focus.

We discuss topics including the states of flow: Struggle, Release, Flow, Recovery; Engineering; Managing, and of course, Management.


"Should we be communicating all the time? Most workplaces today are essentially turning humans into message senders and receivers – which is terrible for productivity. We're trying to solve complex problems. We need to focus and stay in a problem space to solve those problems, and the work environments are not helping us get there." – Bobby Lyte @ 32:13

"Revisiting a previous thesis of mine that's been established in the show: Management…" – Brad @ 34:04

"Your lack of planning is not my emergency." – Joe Zap @ 38:06

"The temptation to multitask – I could get ahead a little bit if I just send this email while I drive and eat and read the newspaper at the same time." – Kevin @ 40:30


Bobby Lyte online:
https://twitter.com/_bobbylyte
https://instagram.com/our_flow_state/

Flow State – Bobby Lyte's Podcast to help you focus:
https://anchor.fm/flow-state
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/flow-state/id1573961748
https://open.spotify.com/show/4IssY4XjHXdpTNOzpaeyxh


Other episodes of Entheogen referenced in this episode:

Matteson Perry:
https://entheogenshow.com/podcast/2016/5/14/028-intro-to-entheogenic-comedy-with-matteson-perry

Stealing Fire:
https://entheogenshow.com/podcast/2018/2/18/045-stealing-fire-part-1https://entheogenshow.com/podcast/2018/7/31/046-stealing-fire-part-2https://entheogenshow.com/podcast/2018/10/19/047-stealing-fire-part-3

Julie Holland:
https://entheogen.squarespace.com/podcast/2016/7/12/031-dr-julie-holland

045: Stealing Fire Part 1 /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Elevate the Conversation.

Today is November 5, 2017, and we are discussing Stealing Fire, a book by Steven Kotler & Jamie Wheal.

Find the notes and links for this and other episodes at EntheogenShow.com. Support us on Patreon with a small monthly contribution to help keep the show going. Follow us @EntheogenShow on Twitter and like EntheogenShow on FaceBook. Thanks for listening.

Introduction

In more contemporary terms, the Eleusinian Mysteries were an elaborate nine-day ritual designed to strip away standard frames of reference, profoundly alter consciousness, and unlock a heightened level of insight. Specifically, the mysteries combined a number of state-changing techniques—fasting, singing, dancing, drumming, costumes, dramatic storytelling, physical exhaustion, and kykeon (the substance Alcibiades stole for his party)—to induce a cathartic experience of death, rebirth, and “divine inspiration.”

Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann and Harvard-trained classicist Carl Ruck argued that the barley in kykeon might have been tainted with an ergot fungus. This same fungus generates lysergic acid (LSA), a precursor to the LSD that Hofmann famously synthesized in his Sandoz pharmaceutical lab. — Excerpt from Stealing Fire

Part One - The Case for Ecstasis

Chapter 1: What Is This Fire?
Chapter 2: Why It Matters
Chapter 3: Why We Missed It

“The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.” —David Foster Wallace

  • Entheogen’s take on the book: “We like it.”
  • Debate on how to pronounce the word ecstasis
  • Why does “fire” need to be stolen? Why does access to altered states need to be banned?
  • How the Navy SEALs train for dynamic subordination, another kind of altered state
  • Partying with Eric Schmidt at Burning Man
  • Finding “flow” and why it matters
  • Signature characteristics of ecstasis: selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness, richness (STER)
  • An examining of the word “pale”
  • The “state sanctioned triad” of mind altering substances: caffeine, nicotine, alcohol -- what makes these special? What ends does accepting these particular substances serve?
  • The institutions that create / endorse stigma: the church and the state
  • Are humans already cyborgs? What is truly “unnatural” anyway? If humans are beings of nature, is anything that humans create also natural?
  • How altered states are directly related to evolution of humans as well as certain plants and other animals (like French Bulldogs)
  • The current and historical balance of individualism vs. collectivism, and its impact on the proliferation and acceptance of certain types of altered states

020: Interview with Earth and Fire Erowid, second half /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is December 9, 2015 and we are very excited to feature a special interview. This is the second half.

It is our great pleasure and honor to welcome Earth and Fire Erowid!

Topics:

  • Kevin and Earth reminisce about Burning Man 2007, the “Eclipse/Man-Burn-Early Year”

  • What was Burning Man like in 1995?

  • Fire tells the story of a Burning Man purist in 1995 who had stopped going since there were people there she didn’t know

  • “radical self-reliance” and community reliance

  • Earth asks Kevin: “did you carry out your own poop?”

  • When they moved to California in 1994, Earth worked remotely for his dad’s tech company; what was working remotely like in 1994?

  • Earth started New College in Sarasota, FL, the same year Rick Doblin graduated; Fire joined the next year. (Rick’s wild time at New College in the ‘80’s described in Acid Test by Tom Shroder)

  • Earth and Fire discuss their friendship with Sasha and Ann Shulgin and the famous Friday night dinners

  • Erowid becoming an educational nonprofit in 2008

  • Erowid’s Library

Support Erowid!

And be sure to catch the first half of the interview.

019: Interview with Earth and Fire Erowid, first half /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is December 9, 2015 and we are very excited to feature a special interview. This is the first half.

It is our great pleasure and honor to welcome Earth and Fire Erowid!

For context, Joe reads a quote from Michael Horowitz, personal archivist for Timothy Leary:

“Powerful descriptive writing about personal drug experiences mimics the effects of the drugs themselves. Reading Aleister Crowley on how hashish aided his meditation, or Mezz Mezzrow on playing in a jazz band on marijuana, or Gordon and Valentina Wasson’s otherworldly mushroom journey in a curandera’s hut in Mexico, or Anais Nin describing how LSD turned her body into liquid gold can be mildly psychoactive in itself. Especially so if you’d had your own prior experiences. We also collected books and studied the rituals of the peyote and mushroom cults, the history of the opium wars and laughing gas parties. We learned that drug literature is endless, and drug-taking was one of the earliest and most common activities of mankind.” - Michael Horowitz, from an interview about the Tim Leary Archives

Topics:

  • What role did the “mildly psychoactive” effect Horowitz attributed to some drug literature play in the founding of Erowid?
  • Feeling it before taking it – hours (or days) before
  • Imagination, memory, DMT, neurotransmitters, hallucinations
  • lucid dreaming
  • Oneirogens (dream generators); list of Oneirogenic substances on Wikipedia
  • dream pillows
  • Calea zacatechichi (the "dream herb")
  • the physical expression of one’s intention, e.g. the taking of a substance, can be just as powerful as the substance itself
  • What is it like having a New Yorker reporter in your home for three days?
  • Reflecting on Emily Witt’s profile of Erowid from inside the mirrored bubble
  • Kevin preaches: “drug education about marijuana was the gateway drug itself”
  • What could responsible drug education in school look like? Abstinence, fear-based approaches are the norm. What could be the alternatives for young people?
  • Earth introduces the concept of electroceuticals
  • Brad is hopeful about the psychedelic research renaissance
  • Special thanks to Earth and Fire Erowid for their tireless efforts for over 20 years, and huge thanks to Erowid’s noble crew
  • Erowid Experience Vaults: edited, curated alternative to “wild west” internet forums like bluelight.org; other contemporaries: lycaeum.org, deoxy.org
  • statistics about trip reports submitted, triaged, reviewed, and posted
  • Earth clarifies something in the New Yorker article: “we are in fact ‘the weirdos among the straights and the straights among the weirdos’.”
  • Fire live-edits the Entheogens page on Erowid to add LSD after our observation
  • corrections@erowid.org

FOLLOWUP FROM PREVIOUS EPISODE OF ENTHEOGEN, HONORING THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF EROWID:

  • Earth and Fire helped 17 year-old Brad avoid jail time
  • Earth and Fire helped Kevin get through high school and college
  • Joe got Erowid blocked from the network at his corporate job

SUPPORT EROWID!

015: Burning Man /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. We talk about tools for generating the divine within. It's September 28, 2015. We're talking about Burning Man.

On the first anniversary of Entheogen, to kick off Season 2, we decide to discuss the cultural phenomenon of Burning Man, where the show was conceived.

  • Kevin wonders if setting the stage for a more intentional journey – gathering a group, making a circle, and expressing intentions collectively – empowered him to go further this time
  • Kevin shares the itinerary of his (initially) "hard trip" at Burning Man – well into the spiritual realm, dosage-wise – revisiting and redeeming the journey he discussed in Entheogen 004: Bad Trips, and transcending anxiety and fear to experience bliss
  • The ground as a point of reference: "grounding"
  • Brad and Kevin re-play their Burning Man 2015 experience in the video game tent at Center Camp – the simple controls belying the mind-fuck of "level two" joystick inversion and character mitosis
  • Brad reviews three more excellent talks by Meriana Dinkova at Burning Man 2015
  • Entheogen 006: Interview with Meriana Dinkova Navigating Altered States
  • The feeling/vibe of Burning Man
  • Decommodification
  • The importance of the crazy clothing aspect to Burning Man, a unifying force – "furs" as the eleventh principle
  • The 10 Principles of Burning Man