Otherworld - Episode 121: The Vortex

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Reece, a freelance filmmaker, is hired as a gaffer for a documentary exploring psychics and energy vortexes in Sedona, Arizona — a topic he has little to no personal interest or experience in. During filming, Banah, a local vortex tour guide, leads the crew up a small hill for a brief meditation, where Reece is unexpectedly met by an otherworldy spirit. Check out our Merch⁠⁠ Follow us on:⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠,⁠⁠ TikTok⁠⁠,⁠⁠ Twitter⁠⁠ For business inquiries contact: [e-mail] If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at ⁠⁠[e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This episode takes place in a town that's very near and dear to my heart, Sedona, Arizona. If you're not familiar, Sedona is home to some of the most beautiful landscapes in the entire United States as far as I'm concerned. But it's also a town famous for spirituality and heady culture that attracts a lot of tourists. There are plenty of places where you could get any time. type of psychic reading you could ever imagine, or buy some unusual new age CDs, or perhaps a tie-dye t-shirt featuring the Coco Peli. But whether or not you're a believer in the variety of things that draw people to Sedona, it's undeniable that the area itself has a strong energy to it,

almost a dreamlike electric feeling in the air. The person you're about to hear from did not go to Sedona for spiritual reasons. They actually went for work. His name is Reese. He is a freelance gaffer in the film industry of Los Angeles. And he got called on to a job filming a project out in Sedona. And he went in blind, not knowing much at all. He was there to work. But of course, he ended up having a rather unusual experience. I will let him explain that for himself. This is episode 121. The title is The Vortex, and you're listening to Otherworld. Is this Bobby? Yes, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue.

I'm worried about all the science. Up in the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die. It's blimbs were just wrong. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute. My name is Reese Scarfignato. I'm a freelance filmmaker. I do a lot of different jobs, but during the course of kind of this time period,

I was doing a lot of freelance gaffing and grip work. So what a gaffer is for people who don't know, that's like a guy who's kind of in charge of lighting and electric in a very simplified way. There's a lot of like setting up lights and then kind of sitting back and doing nothing. We're very much like the grunts of like the film. So we'll be moving stuff around, again, setting up lights, you know, bounce cards, you know, negative fill, all that stuff. Working as like a freelancer in L.A., you're kind of hopscotching from one project to the next.

You could be working with a very high budget, very professional crew one day, and then the next day you're working on like a three-person music video, you know, shooting with camcorders and elevators and stuff. It's very unpredictable. There's everything from music videos, television shows, commercials, you know, passion projects, short films, interviews, you name it. I did production design for a Teddy Swims music video recently. They showed clips of it at the Grammys a couple days ago actually, which is really, really cool. But I've also worked on stuff where it's, you know, producer, actor, director, screenwriter, all in one. And, you know, it's kind of a bit of an ego show, I guess.

Those are the ones you really have to watch out for. I got brought on to this project through a good friend of mine, who was the director, producer. We had, you know, worked on a couple things before, but, you know, we're mostly just, like, friends outside of work. And she was like, oh, I've got this documentary. We're shooting in Sedona. We're going to be following some psychics.

I was like, already, I'm in. Like, we're interviewing, like, a bunch of psychics. Like, I'm, this is, this is going to be super fun, funny. Should be a really easy gig, doing some sit-down interviews. Did you know about Sedona before? No. No. I didn't know, like, because I'm really not a spiritual, like,

I was into spirituality more as, like, entertainment. I never took it seriously. And so I didn't really, like, know about Sedona. If I had heard of Sedona, I think it was like, I was like, oh, like, you know, it's probably just a bunch of, you know, white girls with crystals in the desert. But, like, yeah, didn't really take it very seriously. So Sedona is a massive hot spot of spiritual tourism, but also spiritual, like, culture in general. like it's the type of place where you'll drive around

and see just a wizard standing on the side of the road with a crystal ball and a staff. I think we saw at least three to four. Like just separate wizards like out and about in Sedona. It's this beautiful part of northern Arizona covered in like, it basically looks like Zion National Park everywhere, but it's covered in just this lush greenery.

So there's this beautiful, juxtaposition between like the desert red rock and like the beautiful foliage like everywhere you go. It's just, it really is like a very awe-inspiring place just from first glance. If you want to get the vibe of this place, they have a McDonald's with a turquoise M and it's all made out of Adobe, or kind of faux Adobe, I guess. When we went out there, I hadn't met any of the crew prior besides the director. It was just come to this random house in the middle of Sedona and we're going to meet the crew. So I just drove out in my own car, loaded up the rental lights and equipment in my own car, and just drove out to this random house that the financier had owned, I guess, on the outskirts of Sedona.

It was this big ranch house out in the middle of nowhere, and we just live there for the duration of the shoot. Basically, I arrived at the house in the middle of the night, you know, met the crew. It was a very, very small crew. I was kind of the gaffer slash PA. Then we had the DP, the AC, DP is director of photography, AC is the assistant camera, the director producer, and the sound guy. So there were five of us in total, staying at this large kind of ranch house and the outskirts of Sedona. We basically spent the duration of our time there interviewing psychics from, you know, crystal shop owners to personal healers, to tarot card readers, to people who could tell your future. There's a very large community of psychics in Sedona.

So that was kind of, you know, the focus of our documentary was just taking each one of these psychics and interviewing them and then letting them do like a demonstration. Since I was the Gaffer PA, I was the most like expendable member of our five-person crew. Like we joked and said my position was the psychic guinea pig of the crew. So I was most of the time thrown in as like the example for their demonstrations. We had a lot of like group demonstrations where all of us were involved. But for most of the single demonstrations, I'd say like I was the one who was receiving the brunt of the psychic demonstrations. Basically, I thought this was like one big joke. Like I was like, oh, like we're going to.

to come here and like I'm just going to see all these like you know kind of phony psychics like do their thing and I'm you know going to leave just absolutely tickled right like that's kind of how I came in so we had quite a few different ones I think I had one where it was a sound healing ritual that we did up on one of the on the mesas like during sunset which was really cool but I didn't really feel anything when that was going on. But they put like a sound bowl on my chest, made a circle of rocks. And like, you know, I stood there while like they kind of rang the bowl and stuff.

There was another one where I was kind of, there's two psychics and they were trying to read my feature. But I don't really think they got it right. they're also like telling me things about myself which was just like I mean even the crew that had only known me for like about a week where like that doesn't sound like you at all so there's definitely like times where I didn't really feel anything but maybe I just like wasn't open enough or something we were there for I think it was two weeks and it was like every day it was like a new psychic. I could go on and on and on. At this point, I was just kind of doing my job. Gaffing can get kind of physically intensive, even if you're on kind of a lack schedule like we were, you know,

mainly just setting up lights sitting around or just, you know, being thrown in as like the test dummy. So I was having really just a great time, but, you know, still very much in work mode. Like we would be very serious and professional during the day, get our shots, get our interviews, and then go back and we'd, you know, kind of play cards and chat, have a couple drinks with the crew back at our house, and that's kind of was the experience most of the trip. It was honestly, it was just like super fun, kind of like a paid vacation, but you get to do, like, what you love while you do it.

It was during this period, you know, of interviews. One was a little different than the other psychics we were interviewing, which were kind of like in their offices or in like, you know, there's shops or, you know, it was very much inside. We were going to go on like a hike called like a vortex tour. So basically what a vortex is is a concentration of spiritual energy in certain places. Sedona is known for having a lot of them, but they're all over the world. They have these complex like vortex maps that I don't understand.

But that's the reason that a lot of people, people are drawn to Sedona and it has such a big psychic following or psychic concentration is because apparently people are drawn to the massive amounts and powerful vortexes in Sedona. The guy that we were interviewing was a vortex tour guide. That's kind of what he did for a living. He'd done it in many different places. He'd done it in like Hawaii. He'd done it in Sedona, I think parts of South America as well. Basically what he said during the Vortex Tour is that the reason that Sedona has this concentration of vortex is the makeup of the soil.

Basically, it has a lot of iron oxide and quartz, which are both very conductive. Iron oxide, you know, conducts electricity and quartz conducts radio waves and things like that. like it's used in radios to transmit frequencies. And just kind of the shape of like spires and mesas and stuff really helps get that energy flowing. I didn't believe this at all when I was hearing it, especially not from our guide. Our guide was this guy named Bona, despite the fact that he was a white dude from Portland who had like a very youth pastor vibe. he, you know, carried a guitar. I think he was dressed in all white with a white baseball cap when we interviewed him, you know,

would say send it all the time. Definitely not the type of person I thought of as like a shaman or like a spiritual guide. The hike was right off the main trail. It was within sight of like a parking lot and a road. We're walking through just kind of scrubland, like overshadowed by, these massive, massive mesas covered in beautiful green foliage. I think we're there in the winter when it's like probably the greenest all year. So it's just this beautiful contrast between the red rocks and the green foliage.

And we make our way to this thing called the Baby Bell, which is this small hill right near what they call, I think it's the bell. It's this giant, famous rock formation towards the center of Sedona that kind of overshadows most of the city. So as we're ascending this small hill, it couldn't have been more than a few stories high. He starts explaining to us the mechanics of the way in which vortex is form and are kind of transmitted, I guess. he starts talking to us about the soil makeup and how that contributes to vortex is forming, especially in this area. And what he explains while we're ascending is that you can feel this pull inside of your body. Sometimes it'll be pulling kind of upwards, sometimes it'll be pulling downwards, but it's kind of this draw.

Again, I didn't really believe it. I was just kind of in work mode. I was like making sure the lighting on his face looked good when they were shooting him and for the interviews. But as we started to ascend this hill and when we stopped for interviews on each little point, I started to feel that effect that he was describing more and more and more as we ascended. At first I was like, oh, this is totally placebo. He's like bringing this up. And so like, you know, obviously you're going to kind of feel it.

It wasn't enough to like to really feel like a major difference. But there was something that was like definitely there. And the higher we would get, the more I would feel that like pulling sensation. Again, I was in work mode. I was focused on what I was doing. So it's like, and you know, it wasn't really enough to interrupt what I was doing. So I wasn't really that. concerned with it.

It was like a pulling sensation in my chest. That's the best way I can describe it. Like almost like, I don't know, something inside me was being like just gently tugged at. As we kind of conclude our final interview of him in this location, he suggests that we all go to the top of this hill, right? He's like, that's where, you know, all of this spiritual energy, focuses. So I want us all to go on the top of this hill and stand in a circle on the rim of the hill facing the landscape around us. And we're all going to do a group meditation. And so at this point, you know, we've been hiking. I've been, you know, doing lighting stuff. So I'm, you know, a little tired. I'm just kind of glad to get a quick break. You know, I'm like, oh, this will be just like any of the other demonstrations. I'll just, you know, get a break from my work, have a fun little, you know, psychic experiment, and then we'll go about our day. I face away from everybody, and I'm facing, you know, the beautiful, beautiful Sedona landscape,

just awesome cliffs, stretching out, beautiful nature everywhere. And he says, everybody take a deep breath in, and then he strums his guitar twice, and then he tells everybody to breathe out and I sit there for maybe two seconds kind of relaxing, not really feeling anything and then all of a sudden my vision just gets this like kind of ultra-hd effect to it

with like a blurred sort of vignette around the edges of my vision paired with this feeling of calm and tranquility, which is just completely contrasted to kind of my work mode brain. And it's not something I usually feel, especially when I'm on set and kind of have to be on call the entire time. It was instant. Like one moment I was just standing there, kind of waiting for the meditation to be over really. all of a sudden I just was in a completely different headspace.

And before I can really like realize what's happening, I just get this mental image that like definitely wasn't my own, projected into my head, I guess. If you can imagine like a shape floating in front of you in your mind's eye, like that's exactly what it was like. But the only difference was I wasn't in control of that image. So it's like, you know, I could see perfectly fine. If, you know, somebody had come up and walked right in front of me, I could have seen that person.

But I was also receiving these, like, images that were very similar to something that you would, like, imagine if you're trying to, you know, imagine an apple or a cube or something. What flashes in front of my vision is thousands of images of natural-looking spirit, kind of mother-earth spirit. Just this mental image of a forest or earth spirit. And if you can imagine putting pictures frame by frame next to each other and playing it back over three to four seconds, it was very similar to that. just different interpretations of the same idea, all paired with the knowledge that this being introducing itself to me.

It was just pure thought and feeling with no room for any miscommunication or any doubt on the intention. And it was just immediately followed by just this feeling of like, anything that was bothering me, anything that I was thinking of was just completely cleared. It was this sense of calm and synchronicity and togetherness of the universe, very similar to when you take psychedelics. It's just a sense of calm and love, I guess. and they just beamed these thoughts of don't be afraid, you know, all as well, the universe is in perfect alignment. Everything is as it should be.

It was like all around me was what it was communicating. It was everywhere. It was the hill. It was the air. It was the trees. It was the sky. In the same way that everything is connected. It was some sort of thing that was part of the interconnectedness of the world around me.

It definitely presented itself to me with like a very loving mother energy. It seemed like an intentional way to communicate with me. Like it had chosen that sort of form to get the maximum amount of impact on me. Before I could even really grasp what was happening after it had followed up introducing itself, it shifted my focus to this large spire to my right. And when I say shifted focus, I found myself moving my head in the direction of this spire completely involuntarily.

And as I did so, it was kind of like I just blinked and all of a sudden my head was looking at this spire. And I don't even remember looking that direction. and my vision felt like it zoomed into the spire where I automatically knew that was like where I was supposed to focus my attention. Then the entity started comparing me to this spire and like was talking about how like this spire

I was shaped by the wind and the rain and you know comparing that wind and rain to the struggles of my own life and how they had shaped me into the person that I am, just like the wind and the rain had shaped this spire into the way that it looked. And despite being weathered, despite being battered,

the spire still stands strong and has more character based on the struggles that it has endured, or the wind and the rain that it has endured. It was a lot more succinct than my description, but it was able to tie those struggles to the very personal emotional struggles in my own life, so much so that I was overwhelmed with emotion, like almost, you know, as if it knew me. I'm not a big crier.

I very much repressed my emotions. and, you know, when I'm overwhelmed with this incredibly emotional experience, I feel the urge to cry and naturally repress it. That's when it kind of tells me that it's okay to cry and that it's okay to express my emotions. And I feel these tears going down my face. And when I reach up to wipe them away, I realize there's no tears on my face. All it is is this wind, almost like compressed air, being, shot at my cheeks almost to like emulate tears.

So after that incredibly like personal and emotional experience that like really, I mean probably only lasted a minute, but like was probably better than like a year's worth of therapy, the entity asked me if it, if I had any questions for it. I asked it a couple questions, but they're pretty personal to me. I did ask it about my career in film. That's one thing I will talk about. Like, what is going to happen with my film career? What is the future of my career going to look like?

And it gave me the answers in those same visualizations that it had to introduce itself. And these visualizations were kind of cryptic, and I still don't really know what they mean. It was these blue, figures kind of like bathroom people but smaller and shorter filled with this white light energy that kind of looked like veins and they were passing that white light energy back and forth to each other in a circular fashion and as this white light energy was passed to each entity the amount of

entities grew and then it was two and then it was three then it was five and it was ten and it 20, then it was thousand, then it was a million, and it was 10 million. And then just like it had began, it was done. And I was there standing on the edge of the hill with the crew, like exactly how it had started. I don't really know how long this experience lasted for. My sense of time was completely altered. I had no concept of time. It could have lasted anywhere from like five to 10 minutes, but again, I'm not really sure. There is video footage. The DP was filming this, but I haven't seen it. All right. We'll be right back after this quick break. So I just end up right back where I started, you know, on that hill and our meditation's ending. And we walk down and I just sit on a rock.

and I can't talk. I just have the biggest smile on my face to the point where all my crew members who are, you know, all back in work mode, are like commenting on it. Like, oh, you had a good time. Like, you must have had a really good meditation. They all just seemed like they'd had a nice little break from work, and they were just going right back to it.

Getting ready to go to the next location, figuring out logistics, resetting gear, packing up. just hustle and bustle of normal set life. I'm not a very expressive person, and it felt like I could not physically stop smiling. I felt like this massive weight had been lifted off of my chest, and I felt less tired and more energetic and happier than I have in probably years. I don't even remember the walk back down.

I was just in a days. one, just trying to process what I'd just been through, and two, just like feeling definitely like I was in some sort of altered state of consciousness after this experience. I didn't tell anybody what happened to me. I didn't even tell Bono what happened to me because I just couldn't, and we were just, like, on a very tight schedule. And so you're, you know, I was very much back in work mode and trying to focus on that and focus on our next location.

I really was trying to make sense of what happened because there's no way that this had been a drug trip. I know it sounds very similar, but it would have had to been the most conveniently timed, shortest acid flashback ever. I hadn't taken psychedelics. There's no way that I could have been drugged. I didn't ingest anything from the time of meeting him in the parking lot. I don't even think I touched the man. There was no sound that could have been bounced. I was not hearing anything auditory.

He wasn't bouncing any sound off of any cliff walls. We were on top of a hill with just air all around us for miles. It wasn't any sort of hypnotism at all. I wasn't even facing his direction and listened to two notes on a guitar while taking deep breaths so definitely couldn't have been hypnotism couldn't have been drugged I didn't sit on any cactuses I know that's been said it was a it was just like a completely lightweight meditation that just involved a single deep breath and me standing while looking at a view there's no other explanation to

me than that I was contacted by some kind of entity. That night, I talked with the director about my experience, and she shared with me, she had experienced something of her own, also with Bona at our second shooting location. But throughout the duration of filming, me and her were not the only ones who had profound spiritual experiences. I think four out of our five crew members had some sort of spiritual experience that really shook them to their core. It wasn't always with the same psychics, and some of them were with psychics that I didn't respond to. A lot of us, you know, were film people, were very practical, hands-on, technical people, came in very skeptical, and I think all but one of us left, like,

with a new perspective on psychics and spirituality in general. Did you ever end up reaching out to Bona and talking to him about this after everything? So basically Bona would host these psychic gatherings, I guess you could call them, are psychic parties, which we had been invited to since we were interviewing all these psychics. And a couple of them were at this gathering. I kind of was chatting with Bonah after everyone was filtered out of the party. And I hadn't, he'd just heard through the great fine of me telling other psychics that I had had some sort of really powerful experience through his meditation. But he didn't know what it was because I hadn't really told anybody.

And I basically just told him everything that I just told you right now, minus two key details, which is kind of really important. I didn't mention the tone of voice, the fact that it was devoid of emotion, and I didn't mention the wind tears when I was telling him about my experience. But it wasn't until he heard about the blue figures in my final vision that he was like, oh, a lot of people have contact with them around Sedona. It's like a pretty common experience. and he was like, yeah, they like to use a lot of light and wind in their contact. Something I hadn't brought up to him was, you know, the wind tears. So I was like, okay, he's not just talking out of his ass right now. And he told me that they had, you know, were able to speak to people telepathically

where it's very direct and loving, but emotionless. And that was described the way that they communicated to me to a T, something I hadn't brought up in my telling of the story to him. So that really legitimized, like, his opinions on my experience to me as something that he had gone through himself and many others had experienced as well. I know it's a lot, but again, after like independently corroborating something that had happened to me that was frankly inexplainable, I really am a believer in that now. after having this experience i found myself questioning everything i know i was a very deep-reated atheist i was you know raised in the catholic church but didn't believe really in it at all probably had the

the furthest thing from any spiritual experience. That system was a pretty hardcore atheist, didn't believe in spirituality at all, was always the first to be a skeptic and explain things away. But now having this experience, I feel like imagining that we know everything about the universe and everything about higher dimensions. and everything outside of our narrow window of perception, which really, if you even compare it to animals, is tiny. The fact that we think we know everything about that,

I think is a form of ego, really. It's the same mentality when we were saying that the Earth is the center of the universe, then the sun was the center of the universe, and then the galaxy was the center of the universe. it's this same thought pattern that like there can be nothing larger than us because we are everything. But if you really look at the gamut of what we've observed, the room that's there that we just cannot perceive even with machines is just so vast. And like, in my opinion, infinite that it's just, it's so much less likely that there's nothing out there than that there is something larger than us. whether it's physically out there in our third dimension or in the infinite number of dimensions

that transcend and descend below our current one i i just think it's just an ego-driven thought that we are the end-all be all of existence and that there's nothing that knows better than us and that there's nothing that you know can exist outside of our perception it's opened me up to question everything that I thought I knew about existence. Because if I can be wrong about that, what else am I wrong about? And it's really taught me that, like, to really be a skeptic, you need to examine your own beliefs and be skeptical of the things you think you know before you're skeptical of the things that you don't understand.

Dude, I can't help but be tempted to want to go hang out with Bonna and do one of these tours myself. Yeah. This sounds like we're doing an ad for this man's tour, but also to be clear, like, it seems the credit is probably more due to the vortex than Bonna. I feel like could have been anybody up there. Yeah, yeah, 100%. And like, the thing that really, I think, sent him apart, like, people would be like, oh, like, and thank you, Bonner. Like thank you for like making this happen and like appealing to his ego, but he like would deflect and he'd be like, it's not about me. That was like his whole message.

Like the work is within you. The big difference between him and like a lot of the psychics that we worked with, a lot of the psychics were very like, this is about me. I am the key that you need to unlock your psychic gifts. And without me, you would not be able to do this. Whereas like, Bona's messaging was very much different. different than those psychics. It was like, you are in charge of your spiritual journey. This is about you being open. This is about you confronting your struggles, answering your own questions. I am just here as a facilitator. I'm barely part of this equation. Like, you could do this without me.

I'm looking at Bona's Instagram right now. This is crazy. Scrolling this feed, it's very hard to comprehend such a profound spiritual experience coming from this man. I'm just not even trying to be rude. No, I agree. It's like I said, he's, he looked like a youth pastor. Like, he's, he's wearing a Garfield sweater in one of the things. Dude, I know. He's like, respect, but it's just wild that like this was the catalyst for. But I think in a way that's kind of perfect, you know, like I felt like a lot of the psychics that we were interviewing were putting on a show. They made money on the image of what a psychic was supposed to be. Do you know what I mean? and I feel like the fact that he kind of rejects all of that in a way is what makes it that much more

at least that maybe is what resonated with me specifically you know yeah I'm also seeing these like sing-along meditations that he does yeah yeah and um it's funny I'm uh in considering like going to meet this man and give it a try like seeing a video of those activities that's like just not something I'm interested in doing even though you told me it's great if that makes sense look I had the exact same reaction this is not my thing at all but it's like I mean it proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that like it's something there's something there hello hey this is jack Wagner from otherworld

Hey, Jack. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too, man. So how much do you know about what we're up to and who we've been talking to? Not too much. So I talked to this guy, Reese. He was part of the documentary crew that filmed with you. Do you remember that shoot?

Yeah. Yeah, you remember? Yeah, I'm laughing about it. Yeah. What do you remember about it? So I saw a little backstory about me. I lived in L.A. for 12 years and was a musician. I lived in on the east side, L.A.

And so I kind of knew that vibe. And I had moved to Sedona a little less than a year before that. All their Gaffers gear and all that stuff. And looking like totally out of place. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't expecting anything either and just wanted to show them the best time. But I remember Reese was, um, he came up to me I host concerts I host these like singalongs these sing along events and some of the the crew came to the event I think it was their last day in Sedona and we like went outside and he kind of pulled me aside and he's like hey man I didn't want to like tell the rest of the crew but some crazy shit happened to me and I was like well welcome to Sedona and welcome to this to this wacky and wonderful weird world at least that I live in now.

How did you get started doing these tours of the vortexes? Or like, maybe even back it up further. Like, how did you, who are you? And how did you get to the place where you were doing these tours? Who am I? So I've been a musician my whole life. And like I said, I was living in L.A. for about 12 years. and I was

I considered myself fiercely agnostic I didn't believe in anything like supernatural or anything like that and I basically had like a as it goes in L.A. I think for a lot of people I had a huge breakdown and and my life kind of grinded to a halt

and I felt like I needed to look for some answers within myself and that kind of exploded into what I call like a spiritual awakening. So I started meditating. My whole journey's been sober. I didn't use like any drugs or like plant medicines or anything like that. So when I first went to Sedona, I went with some friends, and I was still living in L.A. at the time. And we went out on the land and you could just feel it.

What were you like in L.A.? Like what were you before? Was your name Bana? Your whole life? Yeah, that's your birth name? Yeah, that's my birth name. That's fascinating. Yeah.

Do you have hippie parents? Yeah. Okay. But were you? Yeah. No. What were you like before all this? I mean, LA, I was an indie kid.

I moved there because Death Cat for Cuny sang about Silver Lake and, you know, and the local natives, the silversum pickups. And, you know, I wore, like, black skinny jeans and, like, flannel and shit. I was fully in, man, you know, wrote songs about heartbreak. Yeah. Actually, as that started to kind of take off, I got more stressed and more visible. And then a relationship was a, like a failed relationship was a catalyst. And so it kind of like, kind of slowed my whole life down. And then quarantine happened.

I started meditating a little bit. I always been into yoga. but not really like the spiritual aspect of it just like the physical aspect and i remember someone talking about vortexes in sidona and at first i was like oh we don't need vortexes it's all we just meditate it's all on our minds and then i had a friend i met a friend in l.a and she's she was from sada she just moved from sada and she's like let's go to this trip to sodona together and we went And then I had a super magical time. And as it goes, like, Stadona calls you, you just keep coming back.

Yeah, it was towards the end of my time in L.A. And I felt totally out of residence with the city. And I did the sound bath at Chefiooga in Venice. And the girl, Amber, was, like, hitting the drum going around. And she's saying something really intense. And I was like, oh, that's nice for the class. And she put the drum right over me. And she's like, you need to completely go for it and follow your intuition.

And she hit the drum super hard. And my whole body was like, you need to go to Sedona right now. And I was like, well, fuck. So I just went. The rest is history? I guess, yeah. It's not even that long ago either. No, yeah, not that long ago.

And then, like, I'd never worked as a psychic. And I walked into the top psychic center, basically, in Sedona. And I was like, well, they're psychic. They should just know I'm going to work here. And the owner looked at me and she said, I'm psychic. You're going to work here. And I was like, okay. She said, I don't need to interview you or anything.

And I was like, yep, that sounds better right. I don't know about that vetting process, man. Well, it's on par for the industry, you know. Yeah. Were you doing psychic readings then? Yeah. And the vortex, too, or a side hustle.

They're one of the offerings I had, yeah. That is fascinating. So what are the vortexes? Can you tell me about these? Yeah, so I've heard a lot of things. Essentially, they're concentrated energy points. I think essentially the idea is you literally get these swirling pockets of iron and crystal that create basically energy pattern.

And there's two types of vortexes in Sedona. positive, which is people would consider masculine. And that's updraft. So if you are sensitive to energy, a place like Bell Rock is very updrought. Like the higher you go up on the rock, it more it feels like it's floating through you and you feel like you feel like you're like ungrounded. Like you want to float off the rock and it's like it's a very exciting place. Like I've seen many times people that are that are kind of like timid and fearful when they get on Bell Rock, all they want to do is like run around like a big kid and like jump up and down. And then there's the feminine vortexes, which is a down draft.

You know, that can have a bit more of like a calming, grounding, kind of introspective feel to it. And cathedral rock's probably the most famous one. And then if you go to a place in Boyden Canyon, which is my favorite place, there's places have both. And they kind of act like the ends of a battery. So you can kind of play back and forth between the two, which is pretty cool.

What do you do when you take people up there? Is there anything you expect to happen? Or do you have any expectations going up there with these people? So whenever I do a tour, I always tune in to see where the best place to take the person is. And so every experience is a little bit different. And because I'm a musician, I would bring my guitar. And then I would play and sing and kind of channel the moment per se. Is there, are there any patterns of stuff that happens to people up on those rocks?

Or is this kind of stand out? I tell you this. There's a certain kind of person that, how would I put this? It seems like people are in a certain, like, mindset or energy, you could say, that would be guided to a place like that. Because I've spent a lot of time even just, like, hanging out in the vortexes. And you meet people who are really open. people just seem so happy and open and that kind of like normal shield we have in the city you know like they don't fucking talk to me shield like that's drops because it it's almost like

the whole environment the whole room feels really magical like it's it's it's a fresh bed that is is ready to yeah it's ready to sprout magic there I don't know if that helps. Well, he had like a pretty profound experience, you know, and he was not going into it, taking it very seriously. He said that you, like, strummed your guitar twice, and then all of a sudden he starts seeing things, and it was like, he was almost transported into a different dimension.

Is that normal? I wouldn't say that exact thing happens to people often know. That's definitely a more, a bigger jump. Yeah. I'd say that's a bigger jump that most people have. Yeah. I figured. I figured.

Yeah. Two seconds into a meditation, you know, like. Well, it was pretty crazy for him because I just met them. Yeah. I just met them. And we went from the parking lot. And I knew I wanted to take him to this place called Baby Bell, which is, yeah, which is very, very small. And right next to the parking lot.

So we probably took a five-minute walk. and they took some footage and then we went to the top and then and this was just me kind of you know like I said channeling the moment I said oh let's all form a circle

and I and then this is very specific and I was like we should face outwards and then we should all clap and yell is this like were you making this up on the fly or is this something you normally do with people I make everything up on the fly man really that's why I kind of gave the preface about falling intuition and having full trust in the way it feels

and like what I'm guided by how it feels. To me, like I knew that's like what I was, I don't want to say supposed to and put air quotes. Like, you know, that was my part in it. I knew that was my part in it as it was happening.

I don't know why. And so we did that and we clapped and I was like, huh, something just happened. And then that's, when he told me days later, oh, by the way, I left my body and, like, flew into the rocks and saw a bunch of blue beings. And I was like, welcome to Sedona. That's crazy. What did you think when he told you that? I mean, I think that's really beautiful to be opened up to that.

Like, I guess I can't really comprehend, like, how profound that is for him. I can only, like, equated to my own experiences. And when he told me at the end of the trip, like he's, oh, yeah, like, I'm not, I think he said he wasn't going to be the same. And at the end, he's like, he told me, you're in the right place. You need to be doing this. And that was like a really great message for me. And then, you know, and then two months later, I left Sedona.

Yeah. That leaves me on my next question. I was to ask you, are you still in Sedona doing the tours? No, I'm not. I've been traveling. and traveling. Yeah, I mean, I might be going down there. I kind of want to see what these are all about. What do you suggest? Is this something I could just go up by myself? Are there other guides? Do you have any suggestions? I think that you should either do both or definitely go on your own

adventure. Sedona's is a wonderful place to sort of let that happen and unfold. But I wouldn't deter you from taking a tour for sure. I don't really know much about the other tour guides there. I think that you can have a magical experience either way. You know, and that's why I always like try to tell people like, trust your own gut. Like, what does your own gut say? Like if your own gut is, I would say it's more important for you if you're like, oh, everything in me is saying like, this person needs to be my guide or I need to go here or I should do this or kind of thing. Sedona is like one of the best places to do that, you know, because it will just be amplified there.

All right. Well, I will see how it goes. Dude, thank you so much for talking to me, Bona. Of course, brother. Thank you. I'll report back on my experiences if I have any Reese-like moments up there on the rocks. For sure. Sounds good, brother. Okay. Thank you so much to Reese and also Bona for speaking to me for this episode. You know, I was originally planning on going to Sedona myself to explore these vortexes

as part of the episode. I ended up getting a little too busy over here, but I am hoping to go there someday soon to do an entire episode about the vortexes because I think this whole thing is so interesting. I think it would be amazing to do an episode in Sedona in general. That being said, I feel like Bona would tell me that I'll end up going to Sedona and seeing the vortexes

when the time comes where it's meant to happen. Until then, this has been episode. 121, the title is The Vortex, and you've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our theme song is by Cobra Man. The soundtrack of this episode is by Juice Jackal and North Americans. This episode was edited by Theo Krantz and engineered by Theo Schaefer. Our associate producers are Nikki Kate Delgado and Haley Pearson.

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