QAA Podcast - Episode 219: Attending the Conscious Life Expo (QAnon & the New Age)

Episode Date: February 18, 2023

The great awakening at the LAX Hilton. We attended the Conscious Life Expo featuring a huge array of New Age enthusiasm and conspiracy theorizing. Included in our coverage: Sean Stone, son of Oliver Stone. Anti-vaxx white reggae. Theosophy, hermeticism, UFO disclosure, butthole sunning, the continent of Lemuria, sun simulators, rotating chakras, QAnon, etc. Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like 'Manclan' and 'Trickle Down': http://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous QAA's Website: https://qanonanonymous.com Music by Pontus Berghe, Nick Sena, NAP. Editing by Corey Klotz.

What's up QAA listeners? The fun games have begun. I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm sorry, boy. Welcome, listener, to chapter 219 of the Q&ONANANANANANAS podcast, the Conscious Life Expo episode. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View. I was hungry and somewhat disoriented as I walked into the overlit lobby of the Los Angeles Airport Hilton.

It had taken me a while to find a parking spot many floors underground, and the roof rack on my car had made worrying sounds all the way down. Now I was standing in a sprawling hotel lobby taken over by new agers, milling around, chatting, and forming a long line to get their day-pass bracelets. Loud pan flute music was being piped into the room by unseen speakers, sculpted faces and high-end yoga gear jostled against flowing, colorful robes, dreadlocks, semi-precious stone medallions, long white beards, tattoos of sacred geometry. An old black lady slowly pushed her walk her past me.

Her t-shirt was emblazoned with a wanted poster of an alien gray. A faint smell of incense wafted from the crowded back corridors just beyond sight of the lobby. I could make out several large rooms lined with purple draping and vendor booths. Instead of heading in, I made my way to the cafe attached to the entrance and got line. Ahead of me, a middle-aged woman was speaking to a shorter bald man she had struck up a conversation with. I've been going to less of these things lately, you know, exploring outside. Her hands swung out into a large arc as if to indicate, this gathering, the external world, the ideas of others. She then folded them back towards her chest.

I want to focus on the inside now instead. The man nodded vigorously. I ordered a Ruben sandwich, a medium coffee, and a bottle of water. The hotel workers looked exhausted, but it was clear this wasn't their first freak show. I took a seat on a long brown pleather banquette, sipping burned coffee and waiting for the sandwich. On the wall-mounted television, Wolf Blitzer was questioning a talking head about the unidentified flying objects. Two, or was it three, that had already been shot down over Canada and Alaska. Norad was track in the situation. Despite their predispositions to stories of extraterrestrial incursions, none of the attendees were paying attention to CNN. These were people

who believed decades-long infiltration, wars, and even intergalactic treaties with various alien races were simply the fabric of reality. To them, the mainstream media was just a distraction. Certainly anything that appeared on cable news would be disinformation, perhaps even an outright sci-op. Two elderly East Indian women wearing saris were sipping tea to my right. I wolfed down the reuben as soon as I received it. It was sorely lacking in sauerkraut. Travis was around here somewhere. Now I just had to find him. I wandered back into the Conscious Life Expo, scanning the crowd for his face. A live band had started up at the center of the lobby. This is the 21st Annual Conscious Life Expo.

It is the brainchild of a man named Robert Quicksilver. Based on his name and his occupation, you might expect Robert Quicksilver to be a spaced-out star child, but he's actually a soft-spoken grandfather of six who wore white tennis shoes, jeans, and a gray button-up shirt in the interview I saw him in. Vice News reporter Anna Merlin has published some great reporting regarding Quicksilver and how he created the Expo. Quicksilver says that as a young man, he had spiritual experiences. which led him to leave what he describes as a strong Jewish culture in Brooklyn

and set sail for California in the early 70s. While in California, he had three kids with his wife and ran a successful commercial furniture company. He also got very involved in Theravada Buddhism to the point where he helped form a monastery and became a monk. The predecessor of the Conscious Life Expo is a once-yearly event called the Whole Life Expo, which Quicksilver regularly attended. At its peak, it was more popular than the Conscious Life Expo is today. The Whole Life Expo began in the Bay Area in 1982 and moved to Los Angeles in 1983. By 1989, it had approximately 30,000 attendees.

That beats the estimated 12,000 attendees of the expo that we attended. The Los Angeles Times called the Whole Life Expo, Part Circus and County Fair, part trade show for crystals and gemstones, health foods, and healing devices. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the original organizer of the Whole Life Expo canceled all. of his shows for reasons that aren't fully known. So Quicksilver picked up where the Whole Life Expo left off and started the Conscious Life Expo

and has been held ever since. At both Expos, there's been a long-running debate, sometimes hidden, sometimes not, regarding what kind of content is too out there, because they want to welcome ideas that deviate from the mainstream, that's the whole point of the shows. But when do ideas cross the line from eccentric and unusual to delusional and harmful? In 1986, the organizers of the Whole Life Expo told the LA Times that they were strictly limiting the presence of psychics and mediums of concerns over exploitation. Here's how the comments of Brian Duggan, the events director, were reported at the time. It's not that we have anything against intuitive ways of knowing things.

There are definitely deep connections between people. Duggan explained, adding that individuals, working in areas that are controversial and sometimes abused, must be reviewed by show officials before they are granted a booth. None of this year's applicants among the psychics and tarot card readers pass the test, he said. Now, it's fair to say that psychics and tarot card readers are welcome at the Conscious Life Expo. Yeah, that seems like a quaint worry at this point. Yeah. What about conspiracy theories?

Now, obviously, there's always been some overlap between the New Age world and conspiracism, but how did they decide what's too far? When Annamorland spoke to Pricksilver in 2020, he indicated that he wasn't especially interested in conspiracy theory content. I don't do disclosure or conspiracy stuff or secret stuff. It's more about healing and health, spiritual things like beauty and art and crystals. That's really what I focus on, the upliftment of things. But even by the time he said that, there's already a significant conspiracy track within the Expo. In 2017, there is a screening of the anti-vaccine film Vaxed. David Wilcoq, who lectures on everything from the secret space program to spiritual ascension,

was also there promoting a proto-Q-N-on-narrative about the imminent arrest of how. high-level pedophiles. When Anna Merlin asked Quicksilver about the conspiracies element in the Expo in 2017, here's what he had to say. I learned my lesson and I stopped that. I became disinterested in conspiracy stuff completely. There's things I'm interested in and things I'm not. If I don't like it or it's not my cup of tea, it doesn't have to be at the Expo. I like art and beauty and spiritual things. He said this right before the COVID pandemic swept across the country. And as far as I until he hasn't commented on the conspiracy theories about the Expo since then, but I think it's fair to say that after that, it became impossible to host a new age or alternate spirituality event

without at least tolerating a conspiracist element. This year, conspiracists were not only heavily present, they're granted their own special speakers' room. If you were to take an escalator to the lower lobby of the hotel beneath the exhibit hall, you would find yourself in what the event calls the rabbit hole room. It was helpfully indicated by standing paper cutouts of an illustrated white rabbit wearing a tuxedo and top hat. The rabbit hole room is where you could find speakers like Plandemic Director Mickey Willis, anti-vaccine activist Dale Bigtree, and one-time QAnon pusher Sean Stone. Here's how the event program describes the offerings of the rabbit hole room. Join us in this exciting keynote program as we explore alternative realities

and censored worldviews. Are we in the middle of the great reset or the great awakening? What is the Illuminati's master plan? Are the technocratic elites engineering an AI takeover? What the heck is really going on? So after years of struggle, it appears that conspiracies have handily won their seat at the table at the Conscious Life Expo. Yeah, and I think they also kind of process it with a certain amount of humor now, you know, them being considered conspiracy theorists because after COVID hit, essentially people who were just purely new age and weren't particularly into this Illuminati stuff or the cabal or reptilians started being called conspiracy theorists by their loved ones when they would bring stuff.

up like, Plandemic, Mickey Willis' first film, or Plandemic, too, Mickey Willis' second film, you know, and so I think that there was a general acceptance among all people, no matter what their beliefs were, that the outside world considered them conspiracy theorists and that that was funny because, in their opinion, of course, they weren't. The main conference floor had several rows with dozens of small booze. Some booze were occupied by mediums and mystics, some by sellers of magical ointments and supplements, and some sold simpler commercial products like flowy clothing, jewelry, incense sticks or Tibetan singing bowls. The LA Airport Hilton's 11,000 square foot international ballroom,

as well as the adjacent 5,000 square foot Pacific ballroom, were packed end-to-end with unique ways to heal to achieve your human potential and to learn. At least, that's the pitch. In the world of sales and marketing messaging, there's this concept called the unique selling proposition, or the USP. The USP is the property of the product or service, which makes it different from every other one available. Now, you have to communicate why consumers should choose to spend their time and money with your brand instead of the endless other options available. Each booth was occupied by someone with a practice pitch, and they all offered a USB that was far more creative and exotic than anything you could see in the Super Bowl ad.

For example, I spoke with one man who sold oils, which, according to him, could help its users get a new job. Now, listening back to his recordings, I realized I didn't really ask follow-up questions when speaking with people, because I didn't know how that would come across. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Fantastic. What do we have here? Well, we have energized oils that operate like an attunement. Gotcha.

These are supergroups, so people often ask, well, what do you think is best for me? And I say, well, what category are you interested? Well, I'm looking for a new job, so it would be work or, you know, this or what? whatever. And then of all the 200 different oils that I have, these are the top sellers. Gotcha. And then my partner has got golden light oils. It works with the golden light, which is really the transformation of emotional energy. Gotcha. If I were him, I would devise an oil so that my voice wouldn't crack twice while I pitch my product.

Travis view, the ultimate, ultimate square going, okay, and what are we, what do we have here? Oh boy, old gill really needs a sale. I got I got all sorts of oils. Travis is going around like he's at a middle school science project fair. So what do we have here? A volcano. Wow. Is it going to erupt? I see that. I see that. Always popular going with the volcano, a solid experiment. Yeah, he kept saying things like, oh yes, the oil operates as an tunement. I can say, yes. I gotcha. I understand. I had no clue what the hell that meant. It's just, it's just words, you know. Yeah, I mean, if they believe that everything is a kind of energy frequency, basically,

it means that what you're rubbing on you brings that part of your body and maybe even goes straight through to your soul, and that it would bring it in tune with a greater frequency that perhaps promotes love and peace. Glad to have clarified this for you. Nothing wrong with that. Hey. You know? Nothing wrong with that. Some booth operators pitched an entire world view complete with an alternate history of the world and philosophy of life. The Lemurian Fellowship, an organization based on Ramona, California had a booth. Behind the booth was a large drawing of what was supposedly the lost continent of Lemuria, and it spread across was now the Pacific Ocean.

The man helped explain the geography of the sunken continent. Here in California was part of Lemuria. So this is the whole outline. It went through the Rockies, the western, eastern border, sorry, through the Aleutians. and then encompassed Australia all the way under New Zealand. And Hawaii is right about there. It was about 300 miles east of the capital city, Hamakulia. And you can see over here, the outline of the continents' shelf as it went through the Rockies like that,

all the way underneath the Aleutian Islands and down, around. Why should anyone care about this lost continent? Well, according to the man, it wasn't just because it totally upends history and geology, but the Lemurian people lived in a perfect, peaceful society, and now this organization is bringing that society back. So he was able to see and work with the masters of the Lemurian Brotherhood, and they wanted him to release the philosophy that they used to use on the continent of Lemuria that allowed them to live in peace and harmony for about 50,000 years

before it ultimately sank. And they wanted to release the philosophy now so that it would help us to evolve as humans and to become eventually masters just like they are. And they knew that this would be a pivotal time in human history, that we would really need it now. Not everything pitched was magical and esoteric. The one product that caught my genuine interest was a smartphone that is disconnected from the Apple and Google ecosystems.

That means that giant tech companies can't track you while you use the phone, and consequently, neither can governments. It's a phone that doesn't have any Google or Apple in it. Cool. Like 0.01% of phones that can do this. You don't have to sign into it. There's no advertisements. So you can download all the maps of like the regions you're traveling through.

Okay. And then you can navigate completely offline. Just uses GPS. It's like kind of we're kind of going back to paper maps. Yeah. So now Google doesn't have your location all the time. Yeah, he brought up real instances in which people were like unfairly prosecuted based on some information that was gathered, for example, by their search history.

So it was one of the better pitches, I heard, definitely. The Libertarian and Travis comes alive for the one product that speaks to him. Many booze were occupied by people offering readings, you know, understanding your past, seeing into your future, that sort of thing. I was beckoned by one of the booth operators with the question, have you had your reading yet? I'm doing very, very well. We have not, I have not had my read again. I have a love to read for you.

All right. Destroyed. Destroyed with logic. Wow. All right. All right. He fell into the trap. It is.

It is. I love that. I love the pitch. Because he didn't ask, would you like a reading? He instead asked the trick question, have you had your reading yet? It's clever because if you answer no,

that you agree to this hidden premise, which is that you will get a reading at some point in the future. So it just tricks you to commit him to getting a reading. So I love it. like that very good that's how he's very good salesman yeah we should be using this trick on Travis more often my reading started with him holding a small crucifix in front of his face and like talking to it and they started asking questions about myself and gave some generalized advice what's why on with your emotion oh my emotions you know I'm working hard

you know I'm very stressed but I'm doing good you want you to take a big step back Worry about what you can change. Don't worry about what you can. The spirit says as we see you, you're putting yourself in a position. Now listen to what I'm saying. You can believe what you want. You're looking yourself to have a little bit of stroke

because you're worried about it too much. And this is something that you cannot change. But you keep going in that direction, I'll be visiting you in the hospital. Okay. I'm not joking. I'm looking dead at you. All right.

Okay. You're right. You have it in control. Wait, wait, wait, wait, this is a new one. Sound advice. And he could tell you we're skeptical halfway through, and he's like, you can believe whatever you fucking want. Okay?

Yeah, yeah. You keep going down this path of being busy and being stressed, and guess where I'm going to be visiting you? That's right. The hospital. That would be very kind. I wonder if that comes with the price of the reading is a hospital visit. I wonder if he shows up with magic tricks.

Like, he's like, he's your make-a-wish and, you know, just assigned to you? Yeah, I guess. Yeah, good advice. Don't worry about things that you don't have power over. Always good. He could also see that Travis is on the verge of death. He's like, let me turn the cards. Oh, no, the Grim Reaper.

Over your shoulder, I can see him. He's waiting to claim you. Could you give me the address of the hospital you would end up in if something bad happened to you, sir? He also used this deck of a standard four-suited playing cards with the Joker's, but wasn't just like a standard bicycle deck. The faces of the cards were printed with this sparkly gold color. And he asked me what I wanted to have happen this year.

And I mentioned that I was working on my side podcast, the second season of Trickle Down. I wanted that to go well. And he had me shuffle the cards, split them into three piles, and then choose one of the piles. And he took the pile I chose and started dealing the cards on the table in front of them. And he told me what each card supposedly meant. And then he told me that if the Joker was in the pile that I chose, that means that what I wanted to happen will definitely happen. which is, you know, a nice sentiment. I mean, statistics aren't my strongest subject, but it seems to be like a problem with

the system, assuming that he's using a standard deck in two jokers, that means that there's probably at least one joker in two of those piles, unless, you know, both jokers are in one. So, I mean, that's a pretty good chance that, like, all my wishes will come true. So it's not a very special or rare event. And, of course, you know, I didn't inspect the deck, so it's possible he, like, slipped extra jokers in there. So, yeah. So, of course, while he was dealing, I got a joker.

He was, he seemed very excited. And he did a little celebration right there. He also, very confusingly, said that I would have the opportunity to get married this year. And yes, you'll have an opportunity to be married. Okay. That opportunity. Take it on that. He actually is technically correct.

You have the opportunity to be married. In fact, you are married. But you could also not take that opportunity by getting divorced. So he's technically not incorrect there. I think he's saying that you have an opportunity to potentially get married to Julian. Yeah, I mean, that's what I told Travis is even if he had said you have an opportunity to get married, all it would take would be for me to get on my knee and say, Travis, will you marry me? And you'll probably say no, because you're, you know, you'd mean like that.

But the opportunity is there. There it is. In the state of California, it's still legal. I suppose so, but that's not like information that, like, I was hoping for or looking for. I was wearing my wedding ring, you know? Listen, more empathy than perception. If we now live in a marketplace of realities, then the exhibit halls of the Conscious Life Expo represented the reality bazaar.

In one booth, you could be part of a world in which angels are real divine beings who look after this world, and you can benefit from their heavenly wisdom thanks to a human who offers angel readings. Just a few feet over in the next booth, you can instead step into a reality in which the living Buddha and Reincarnation of Christ, is a man born in Oregon in 1951 to the name Ron Spencer. Ron, better known by the name Buddha Maitreya, by his followers, sells gold-plated pyramids which are meant to be placed on the head in order to aid with meditation. If that story doesn't resonate, then you can keep walking and check out a reality in which organite pendants help align your chakras and protect you from EMF radiation, or the

reality in which dolphins are a source of knowledge and healing energy, which you can tap into by buying a dolphin wisdom retreat. That one's real. That one's real. That's the one I pick. Of course, it's not in either or proposition. You can take any or all of these ideas and combine them, creating a bespoke landscape of personal truth that frees you

from the stifling options offered by the mundane world. Yeah, I remember standing with you outside and I was having a cigarette and just, you know, I mean, been going through some rough times. And I was just thinking, man, I wish one of these booths had the right answer. Just one. You know, I'd settle for that.

Of course, that makes sense. A lot of these people, they felt, you know, rightly or wrongly, kind of like burned by the more mainstream offerings, the more mainstream religions or the more mainstream ways to heal, the more mainstream approach to relationships. And it's like if you are, if those aren't working for you, then it would actually be irrational to keep doing that. It seems like it seems quite sensible to at least explore what other ideas might be out there that might work for you better.

While Travis was having his mind blown open by booth pitches, I was chasing stars. Specifically, social media personalities I was familiar with from my days of watching unhinged New Age videos on Twitch. The first I spotted was a handsome fellow who goes by Raw of Earth. Sporting long black hair and a tangled beard, Ra was the man behind the popularization of the term butthole sunning. The video that started it all had featured three men spreading eagle with their feet in the air, while Ra, the cameraman, asked them how nice the sun felt on their perineums.

Legendary stuff, but unfortunately his content had grown quite stale since then, colonized by his many business endeavors. Long a promoter of multi-level marketing supplement company, Purium, Ra now also sold two subscription-based services offering to rewire people's bodies and psyches through, quote, psychological reprogramming exercises, breathwork, and yoga. I decided there was no point approaching him, as he seemed to be there to schmooze rather than preach or exhibit anything. Raw of Earth, of course, was not the only Rae present that I was familiar with. I also ran into Arcturus Raw, a Sedona-based content maker and craftsman, who believes he's an alien being with a seat on the Arcturian Council. His booth featured two portraits of himself as a purple extraterrestrial with elongated, pointy ears, and both were extremely cool.

You can see them here. One of them is a 3D kind of model, and then beneath that you see a nice, like, 2D portrait. Honestly, like this stuff could be in a paradox game, you know what I mean? Like Stalaris. Arturis Raw comes from Germany originally, and he's a pretty skilled rapper in electronic music DJ. He's also great at design and comes up with fascinating objects adorned with geometric patterns, small metal sculptures meant to be worn on a necklace, and even a series of petroglyphs of ancient astronauts designed with the help of AI.

All of this derived from ancient Arcturian technology that he had access to through his connections. But the jewel of his little booth, which had quite a few people talking about it at the expo, was his medbed. The size of a large tanning bed, it was painted a deep blue and adorned with golden geometric art. In a video he shot at his home in Sedona, he explained what the medbed does. announcement world premiere for the Conscious Life Expo LA out of the world of conspiracies into the prospiracy we're making it true we see this in the back on the trailer ready to go we're shipping it we're bringing it rigged and ready to rock to heal the planet with photon tecion

orgam scalar wave all of the imaginal subtle fields in arrangement bringing higher self into higher ourselves. So come to the Conscious Life Expo and test the cell well, which needs no electricity, it runs on a zero field. Experience it once we're there. So I hope to see you guys there, rock and roll. Wow. Considering it doesn't have any integrated lights or anything like that, or like ventilation, or really anything, because it's not plugged into the wall, yeah. Sitting inside of it with it closed would just be like sitting in a horrible, hard A coffin? Coffin of some sort.

I opted to remain out of the medbed. But during my visit to the booth, I saw a woman laying in it with the top open, and she seemed very, very happy. And, you know, I mean, I guess not closing the top is better since, like I said, that would just block off all light and there's no kind of added element to have the thing closed on you. Yeah, you definitely don't want somebody getting in, them closing the lid, and then, you know, 30 seconds in, you just hear screams coming out from it because that person became very

claustrophobic, which is understandable. There's also the thing of like, you're laying down on basically this kind of glass or plexiglass surface, which is just hard. So the woman in Raw had basically come up with, you know, you keep the thing open and we'll lay a little blanket for you on top of the hard thing that you're laying on. She had a big smile on her face, Jake. All right. Who am I to say?

Yeah. During my visit, Arcturus spoke a bit about his love for AI and distrust for Elon Musk. He was especially alarmed by Neurolink, Musk's supposed brain implant, which he explained was dangerous because inserting technology into the body had already earned humanity an intergalactic warning. So we've been warned once, so it's going to happen to again, no more warnings? I don't know. I mean, I guess they'll warn us again. I mean, you know. I think at that point, they're going to build the freeway through Earth. I mean, one warning ignored. I mean, you had your chance. Yeah, an Arcturian atom bomb will come right down and finish us off if we put NeuralLand. into our bodies if some fucking

Bitcoin nerd decides to actually mangle their head with it. I'm with the aliens on this one, by the way. Do not put the neural link inside your bodies. It has killed multiple monkeys. Fuck that. Arturus Ra, when I brought up his music, told me that he was working on an album, but had grown busy with the medbed,

delaying the effort. After a short chat, I bid him farewell and continued on my way. After walking around the booths for a while, I decided to take a break by taking a seat in the large busy lobby of the Hilton. While I was sitting there, one of the stars of the conference happened to sit right next to me. A man by the name of Foster Gamble.

Foster Gamble is a 75-year-old heir of the Proctor and Gamble fortune. There are lots of things one could do with the endless time and resources that come with being born into a business fortune. But Foster Gamble, after attending elite private schools and Princeton University, decided to dedicate his time to getting pilled and getting others pilled. Ah, the old Jerome Corseye way of going through life. Foster Gamble believes that there is a whirlpool pattern called the Taurus, which is a vortex which can be harnessed to create free, limitless, clean energy. It believes that this Taurus is exempt from the second law of thermodynamics. In his telling, the only reason people don't have access to this world-changing discovery is because a cabal of elite suppress it in order to keep us dependent on fossil fuels. He explained this theory in films which he produces and stars in.

The 2011 film Thrive, What on Earth Will It Take? and the follow-up film in 2020, Thrive 2. This is what it takes. Those sound like dance movie titles. Yeah. Thrive 3, back to the streets. My name is Foster Gamble, and I have spent nearly a lifetime

trying to figure out what happened. That could account for the staggering agony and deprivation on this planet. I set out on a journey, seeking to answer questions like, is it even possible for humans to thrive? I found a code, a pattern in nature that's been embedded in arts and icons throughout the centuries. These films have made Foster Gamble a huge star in the conspiracist community.

Now, I recognized them and struck up a conversation, and I told him I did a podcast about QAnon, and he asked me who I think QAnon is, and he offered his own perspective on, the validity of Q and on. And who do you think is behind it? You know, the Q drops themselves. They say that less than 10, less than 10, there are people are behind it, and it's military intelligence,

so I think that, like, Mike Flynn's one of the 10. But I'm not sure. What do you think? Well, I, whoever's behind it knows a lot. Yeah, yeah. But the hardest part for me is telling which part is real information information that they want us to know to empower us, and to what degree it was either initiated

or a layer was put over it. I think the CIA put a layer over it to discredit the whole thing, just throw out all, because there's a lot of really important information. They just throw it out, oh, Q&ONON is a hoax and get everybody to forget about it. It's tough to understand what he's trying to say there. It sounds like he thinks that there was a lot of good information in Q&ON, but it was like tainted by the CIA with like bad information or something like that and that's that causes people to throw out the whole thing. Foster Gamble also told me that he knows someone who lives in the South Pacific who told him that the person behind QAnon was somehow sickened or injured by the Kabbal supposedly. Gamble's friend also claimed that she helped Q recover.

Well, I had a trusted friend of mine, you know, whose name will remain unknown. But, And when they started getting close to Q&M, she contacted me. She lives in the South Pacific, and she's very well informed and very well connected. And this guy shows up, somebody brings this guy to her, and she contacts me and she said, I can't tell you who it is, but it's Q&M. He's here and he's sick, and I'm helping him recover. And I'm like, whoa. And so I just talked to her a couple days ago, before I came to the conference, and I

and said, so what is the update on that? And she said, well, I'm convinced that he was the real guy, or one of them, super knowledgeable, knew it all about everything. And somehow they had gotten to him in a way that was injurious, but he recovered. And she said, and the plan is that his identity will never be known, probably for the reason.

So I can't rely on that information, But it's coming from a very strong source. Fascinating. Yeah. Hope we find out someday. Yeah. The same with Satoshi Nakamoto. You know what?

This is a fascinating. This is a very cool remake of the English patient in the works. Yeah, I know. It's interesting to me how more and more we're seeing this idea from conspiracy theorists or people who, you know, might have formally been very into Q&on, now including this CIA, sciop as part of its lore. I mean, you know, Michael Flynn has echoed those statements and, you know, you see it sort of trickling out into your average sort of conspiracy theorist that, you know, after all of the predictions didn't come true and Trump lost, you know, how do they, they reconcile

that with maybe their, their former beliefs of what QAnon was or, you know, is capable of doing. And that's, I mean, I guess it's not a surprise that, you know, when things become tainted or there is a, you know, a stigma attached to it that the sort of the natural moves to say, well, this is part of some kind of CIA op, you know, that QAnon was real and there was good information there. There was good intel, but it was so good that the CIA had to come in and orchestrate it to be way crazier than it is. And that's to, you know, hide the fact that there was some truth in it. So obviously, there's no substance to a story. It's anonymous hearsay from a long-time conspiracist, but it sounds like he was just sharing the kind of like

supposedly insidery claims that people might swap at this kind of event. There were definitely two categories of workshops at the Conscious Life Expo. Those you had access to for free with a day pass, and those featuring more prominent speakers who were charging around 50 bucks a pop, basically the price of the day pass for a single talk. I was slated to attend two of these premium lectures in the evening, but had some time to kill before that. So I wandered down into the rabbit hole room, low ceiling, carpeted, melling a little off, to check out a free speaker known as Muslim Mystic, whose talk was titled,

Reshape Your Reality. In the promotional materials, he described himself as a, quote, multidisciplinary spiritualists who is rooted in Islamic mysticism, utilizing the Kabbalah, Vedic sciences, and quantum mechanics for reality manifestation. But on stage, he cut an awkward figure, stumbling a lot over his words, seemingly unprepared to outline his beliefs in a sensical manner. Muslim Mystic had an interesting backstory, however. He had been being a law enforcement officer in Detroit for seven years, later moving to L.A. and starting a YouTube account in 2010, when, in his own words, he was overweight. Through self-help gurus like Tony Robbins, he got into more esoteric spiritual belief systems. But by his own account, began alienating friends

with talk of his new fixations, which took a detour into conspiracy theories. So, like, I had to basically understand all these different concepts. You know, that's where the rabbit holes led me to, not to, you know, different conspiracy theories. and whatnot, like, Rutileans, of course, I did all that stuff, but, but it's like, what was it benefiting me? Fine, there's rutilians there. It's like, why don't you join some groups and always talk about reptilians? You know, it's like, you know, that's what, I mean, I was like that. I was the guy that was inviting people to Riptilin. So, you know, and, and then, you know, then it was like, flat earth and domerth and under, it's like, I realized, like,

all that stuff was actually a distraction, because it is entertainment. It's entertaining, and my, like, my ego is like, okay, fine, let's learn about this. But in the meantime, I wasn't doing what I had to do in terms of, you know, I didn't really have a vision of myself. Like, that's what it is. That's where the magic comes in. You have a vision of yourself in your mind. You know, like, for example, I have a vision of myself, and that reality exists.

This was a consistent theme in Mystic's talk, feeling crazy and isolated as he descended the rabbit hole. The first lecture I did here, 2020, and, um, and it's just, It's the first time I came to an event where people also, like, I didn't feel that's crazy, you know? I didn't feel crazy. But then, and I'm like, okay, because then I'm like, wow, there's even more crazy people, you know. It's like, I feel fine, you know? But the thing is, like, if you, on this path, you don't somehow feel crazy or feel, like, different,

then you're doing it right, you know, you're on the right path. For Muslim Mystic, loss of friends was just a sacrifice one had to make to attain meaningful spiritual knowledge. and self-realization. That was one of the sacrifices I had to make, you know, to even be talking up here is that basically I had to sacrifice, you know, my friends for a long time. I had to sacrifice, you know, going out and being, you know, you can't be the same person. If once you go through certain events and things in your life, you can't be the same person, you know, it's like you can't.

You know, you can't unsee certain things, you know. The main body of knowledge he explored in a disorganized, manner stemmed from a 1908 book called The Kiballion, a study of the hermetic philosophy of ancient Egypt and Greece. These writings, signed by an author known as the three initiates, but often attributed to new thought pioneer William Walker Atkinson, was a foundational text for what came to be known as hermeticism. This was not apparent in mystic's talk, which veered off course repeatedly into tangents. Mystic's main point was basically that you can manifest your own reality, which he explained the system doesn't want you to know about. Clearly cognizant of being placed in the rabbit,

Hall Room, Muslim mystic did make mention of Hollywood and the rituals. But, as you heard earlier, promoted a more practical and less conspiratorial spiritual path. After hearing him mangled quotes by Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, I soon grew restless. As I left the room, he was rambling about the movie Bride of Chuckie and the spiritual meaning behind his son believing the doll was real. That was the only free lecture I attended. I'd stick with the premium content from there on out. I was planning to attend just such a lecture a couple hours later in the same rabbit hole room, that of Sean Stone, son of famous filmmaker Oliver Stone. I considered going to Sean Stone's talk with Julian, but I wanted to push myself and try something a little outside of my comfort zone.

So I instead attended a keynote talk by a woman named Maureen St. Germain, who founded the St. Germain Mystery School. If you're familiar with Western esoterrorism, you'll recognize St. Germain as an important ascended master in theosophy and the I Am activity cult. I decided I was going to enter this event with an open mind because if I approached the experience from the perspective of skepticism or verifiable truths, I'm going to miss the point. So here was an opportunity to understand this community from a more intuitive level. Maureen St. Germain's talk was on ascending and becoming 5D. It promised that attendees would learn what 5D is all about and access tools to help them break free from the 3D matrix and proactively live in 5D. She started her talk by explaining how to tell the difference between being in 5D and being in 3D. And apparently, when you can't find your shit, that means you're in 3D.

You don't know when you're in 5D that you're in 5D because you're so comfortable and happy and plugged in. You don't notice it's when you slide back into 3D that you remember, oh my God, what's this? And a way to know is if you've lost something like your keys or, you know, important sunglasses or something you care about and you look at the place where you last put them and they're not there and you finally use a replacement you come back you've taken care of this errand and you open the Jordan put the thing back forgetting that this is the replacement piece and the original is there right where you left is and you think to yourself how is that possible how do they miss out and the answer is when you're in 5D you put the stuff away and when you're in 3D

if you're rushing and hurrying to find something, you're back in three-day. That's how you know. Wow. Okay. So just being conscious, I guess, being present. Yeah. You know what? I'm on board.

I know when I don't lose my keys, I do feel like I'm in a higher plane of existence. I can't find, you know, my wallet or whatever. I am definitely not vibrating at a high frequency. Now, my parents had a much more reasonable explanation for this. type of event. And they ascribed it to creatures known as the borrowers. These are little creatures who live inside the walls of your house. They have tea parties and stuff. They hang out. They have a great time. And every now and again, they'll take something of yours to use. And then they'll return it when you least suspect it. So surprise to the borrowers weren't brought up here. But

you know, not everybody has the opportunity to grow up with, you know, such knowledgeable family members. Yeah, and unfortunately, when they take that object, they're using it as a mattress to make love. So beware the borrowers. Do not run a blacklight over your keys, over your phone, your wallet. You're going to find some stains that you don't want to see. You'd rather not know about. So I'm being open-minded. I'm nodding along. I'm not being judgmental. But then she dropped a bombshell on us. She said that the earth is lit by multiple sun simulators. Now, we're going to throw you a curveball, and this is for you to ruminate them. You don't have to accept it as absolute until you're ready.

The earth is now lit by multiple sun simulators. A very good friend, a brilliant woman in her at 60s, who was a personal friend of mine, told me a story about her father, who was heavily involved in this secret purpose. and he said to her that the son, he didn't bring his work home, but he told her that he was building sun simulators. And the last project he was involved in before retirement was the construction of an artificial son. This is right about the time that I was being told by my guides that this was so. Okay, all right. She went on to explain that these sun simulators are supposedly four stories high,

and they were created by an engineer who normally works on wind tunnels. Now, this is a reality-shattering revelation. Like, I have so many questions. Like, where are these sun-simulators? Are they orbiting right now? Where's the purpose? Who made them? Who commissioned these sun-simulators replace or supplement them?

or supplement the actual sun? Yeah, how did you do the changeover when the real sun died and then you put the simulators in? Was there a period of overlap where there was a real sun and a couple of simulators all floating around out and outer space?

A lot of good questions, fellas. Do the simulators also make your plants grow? Because I know that when I don't leave, you know, the handful of plants that I'm trying to keep alive in my house, if I don't leave them by the window to get sunlight, they die. But, you know, you put them back in front of the window

and they get a proper day of life. They're doing great. So there must be some other technology than just the visual, you know, just the visual representation of the sun. If you stare into the sun about four times in slightly different positions, you will close your eyes and see four suns. But despite all of my questions, she quickly moved on, leaving the relevance of telling us about the sun simulators unclear. She instead talked about the divine masculine and feminine and how the straight line, is masculine, well, the curved line is feminine, but in 5D, there isn't a division between the two, and she talked about spirals and math and nature, the golden ratio, sacred geometry, and DNA.

She made no bones about teaching theosophy. In fact, at one point, she directly quoted Helena Bolvasky, the founder of the Theosophical Society. It was some incomprehensible nonsense from her book, The Secret Doctrine. In esoteric philosophy, the logos, which is what we just talked about second ago is an abstract term and that was from helen helena bolotsky who wrote the secret doctrine this is a very well-known there is an eternal and periodic law which causes an active and creative force the logos to emanate from the ever-concealed and incomprehensible one principle at the beginning of every new cycle of life as part of theosophy teachings she discussed the colors that correspond to various chakras. Now, this I have some familiarity with, so

chakra comes from Sanskrit and translates to wheel or cycle, I'm told, and it references a spiritual energy center within the human body. Though the concept first emerged in one form in the early traditions of Hinduism, Maureen St. Germain's conception of chakras is more modern and more western. She operates from the framework of there being seven chakras, each of which correspond to a specific color. The idea of colored chakras is also a the theos. philosophical concept, first introduced by the theosophist Charles Ledbeater in 1927. She then guided the room and the meditation designed to open your heart chakra. It involved concentrating on something in your life that you love purely like a pet and then

giving that feeling that arises a name. And I'll be honest, I did not participate because I was still trying to puzzle out what she was talking about when she talked about the sun simulators. I tried to have an open mind and I was punished for it with sun simulators. and I had already failed in my quest to participate in this talk, you know, as the normal participants do. After some explanation about the work of a 17th century German mystic Johann Gitchell, she thinks we're fully prepared for the main exercise. First, we will connect the chakras in a spiral way and then tilt the chakra system

so that the lower orange and red chakras are in front of you and the higher purple and green chakras are behind you. And then we are supposed to rotate the chakra system in the opposite direction, around our hearts. I have no idea what she's talking about. I've lost the ability to parse the meaning of English words at this point. And her attempt at clarification does not help. So let's be really clear, while keeping your chakras connected in an anti-clockwise spiral as shown by the line in this diagram. The line is not orange. You rotate the entire system clockwise as shown by the black lines. So the entire system is rotating

and a counterclockwise way. This is similar to when you have to be in from college. I'm creating the counterclockwise energy. That produces a ratio. That ratio is a creative force. Remember ratios that don't result produce creativity. So it would look like this. You're in the middle, and it's rotating around your heart.

And then finally, we're going to look at your higher chakras and imagine that they are moving in a coil in the opposite way above your head. This part is still a little bit experimental, but we do have this meditation available. and I'm now invited you to join me in doing it. Are you ready? Man, the free talks are really free talks, huh?

God damn. So my experience with meditation is mostly mindfulness meditation, which in my practice, involves concentrating on something specific like your breath and then observing your own thoughts as they emerge in a non-critical way. This left me unprepared for whatever I was being asked to do in that room. This experimental guided chakra meditation comes in the form of a 25-minute recording, and again, I don't participate because I can't. For the same reason, I can't follow along to instructions written in Mandarin. All I'm hearing is signifiers without corresponding signifies.

Instead, I simply enjoy the dim lights and ambient music and wonder what I'd be doing if I had instead attended Sean Stone's talk. The host, a middle-aged woman, walked out onto the stage to introduce Sean Stone and his talk, ominously titled The Great Awakening. Welcome, everyone, to Conscious Life Expo, 2023, and this is the official inauguration of the Down the Rabbit Hole track. Yeah, woo-hoo! I've been coming to Conscious Life Expo for the whole time it's been happening. It's always been on the cutting edge and giving us the next level of the new paradigm.

And this year is exactly that with this track, and I want to honor Brandy, for bringing all the speakers here and coordinating all that she did to bring all these amazing presenters of the truth movement who were so important in these last three years they stood out there and they told the truth and they put up with a lot as you can imagine so there really are heroes now and it's so great to be here now and to see them in person and honor them and appreciate them and really hear what they have to say so we are going to inaugurate this with um truth person who actually was born into the family. Sean Stone, whose father is Oliver Stone,

so he grew up in the film industry where his father was on the cutting edge of telling the truth in a lot of his films beyond what normal Hollywood did. So Sean was a part of that. He apprenticed with it, he was in it, and he's following in his foolish footsteps, but on his own path.

And he's going to talk tonight about the awakening, because that's really what's going on here. That's what's going on for the last three years. As the truth comes out to be revealed and healed, then we're allowed to have our awakening, the planetary awakening. So that's the bottom line of it all. The reason I was so interested in hearing Stone's lecture is because he's a perfect example of somebody with clout embracing QAnon by giving it an air of legitimacy, some historical context, and an intellectual sheen.

Stone is educated, eloquent, and good-looking, leveraging both his lineage and charisma to turn himself into a media figure. He's hosted shows on Russia Today, Gaia TV, and David Ike's streaming platform, Iconic. He's a great example of a public figure poised to keep the Q&on belief system alive by concealing its ugly or ridiculous bits and rewriting it as respectable. Near the beginning of his talk, he asked the audience what they were interested in hearing about. After a few people had taken their turns, one asked if the second coming of Jesus was imminent, I mentioned my interest in the internet, especially anonymous sources of information like QAnon. Stone stared at me for a moment, nodding his head. Yes, he said,

and lifted his head to the crowd. Anyone else? It was a taste of his current approach to the subject matter, namely to reshape it as an accessory to a larger Great Awakening movement, which he claims arose in 2020, around three years after QAnon started posting. Between him and the host who introduced him, a theme was emerging. For them, the people's awakening had taken place in the last three years. Basically, the span of the pandemic. This makes sense when you think about the influx of Normies and New Ages that the broader conspiratuality movement experienced during that period. So this is the awakening process, essentially. Is the mind starting to wake up and say, wait a minute, there's something else going on here. There's some cult-like behavior

of power, a cult of power, if you want to call it. Be it an oligarchy, be it an empire, be it a religious fascination that's taking me away from my internal knowing and my self-respect, my self-sovereignty, and wants me to surrender that. And I don't think I want to surrender that anymore. And somehow, some way this Great Awakening concept started in 2020. Not for the first time, but how did it catch on?

Does anyone know? I saw memes about it, but where did that come from? Was that put out there by cue? Was it just in the collective zeitgeist? People started to say, hey, that's a good concept, great awakening. I like it. Catchy term. Not the big awakening, great awakening.

Why? Early on in the talk, Stone acknowledged that the Great Awakening was not a new term. It was also used to describe a series of Protestant movements throughout history. For those who know an American American, history, the Great Awakening is not a new concept. This actually goes back to the 1730s and 40s time period before America has a revolution. And Jonathan Edwards and other reverence and preachers, but they were from the Protestant sect, were basically doing these revival ceremonies and bringing people together and taking them away from the Catholic sort of ritualized, almost cult

traditions and in the course of these discussions and sermons it was they say it's an awakening because it was basically about it was about the fervor of bringing the spirit into you as a living being that embodies spirit we're here by the power at grace of spirit and so there's certain things that were taken from that era the ideas of individualism that you can individually connect more directly to God, which is not new. It's not like they invented these things. These are very old. The Gnostics talked about them.

Many other sects that were persecuted by Catholic Church in particular. But the idea of a personal relationship to your creator is in some ways blasphemous, depending on your orientation and how you perceive religion. But it's truly liberating, which is why it's so dangerous. And so the Great Awakening's happened. They continue. There's a second Great Awakening. There's a third Great Awakening.

And there's deviations. You could say there's fanatic. There's some fanatical cults that come out of it too. You know, some Manson type of characters come out in the 19th century's second and third great awakening. And then that gives you to the, you know, to the current Great Awakening, right? Because some people say, oh, it's a Q thing, right? That's a cult.

I would just argue that cults are essentially how you relate yourself to the temple or the body of information. So, Travis, you've studied the first Great Awakening a little bit. What do you think of his characterization here? Yeah, well, I mean, like he says, like most historians agree, there were three Great Awakens in American history, the first of which was in the 1730s. Now, I do know that there was a division during this time between two groups called, the new lights and the old lights. And the new lights, they were pro-revival, and they believed in things like apprehending God through the senses and the super passionate enthusiasm for God and

justification by faith alone. Well, the old lights were, they were anti-revival, and they believed in stuff like sober intellectualism, predestination, and, you know, believing in the complex theology based on the reading of the Bible. I mean, you told me about this earlier. So I happen to have a book called Inventing the Great Awakening by Frank Lambert. Here's how he's, describe the central message of these new lights. At the center of the Awakener's message was the necessity of a new birth, also known as the doctrine of regeneration. The defining notion of the new birth was that of, quote, experimental religion, a term evangelicals applied to a personal salvation experience. They drew distinctions between religion of the heart and mere, quote, head knowledge.

The latter was derided as shallow or barren, the product of rationalists who reduced Christian faith to the affirmation of certain reasonable propositions. By establishing the new birth as inward change rather than outward profession, the evangelical revivalists broadened their audience to include men and women within churches as well as those without. So it sounds like the people who participated in the Great Awakening, there was this greater emphasis on like, you know, your senses, your faith, your belief, your passion, and all these things that exist inward.

The core of Sean Stone's message was a sort of spiritual universalism rooted in the power and sovereignty of the individual, which he also associated with the creation of the United States. Liberation, he posited, was the personal and internal process of awakening to our own hearts, and the realization that we are, in his words, different expressions of one consciousness. The talk mixed Protestantism's obsession with our personal relationship to the divine, with terms you might find in the lessons of New Age gurus like Deepak Chopra or Ikartol. That is what the awakening is about, is starting to recognize there is something more here than the material realm can fulfill us with or then the

authority figures can entertain us with and make us feel validated or make us feel we are enough because they can't they are designed by their very nature these authority figures in these structures like the Catholic Church then the Empire of Britain to make us feel subservient to make us feel limited to make us feel weak and disempowered. See the awakening was this lion-hearted roar that we are here by the grace of something much greater. And even though imperfect, we can work on ourselves. We don't need to be told how to work on ourselves. We don't need a priest to tell us, go pay, go say your Hail Mary's, and then you'll be saved. No, I am here to work on

myself. I have to find that path. That is the freedom that Jefferson was speaking of in the declaration. When he's saying all men, women, lipsies are created with the same inalienable rights for life, for liberty, for the pursuit of happiness, which is freedom, right? Liberty, freedom. And that's an ethos. Sean Stone set this philosophy up because he wanted the audience to keep it in mind as they reinterpreted a core tenet of Q&on. the revelation that elites were sexually assaulting and feeding off our children. But to do that, they would have to accept their own capacity for evil.

We all have the darkness that is in us. We all have the potential for doing things that, let's say, I was born in Nazi Germany. There's an aspect of me that would say, I want to be a good soldier. I want to go and serve my nation. I want to be the best at that. I could have been a great SS officer, and maybe I wouldn't. have gone to the place of killing innocent people but maybe i would have gone and fought for the regime it's very difficult to find that line at what point psychologically do you break

because we collectively have histories of trauma and so my experience of life has been generally speaking benign i know many people in the world they could say over 50 percent have Experience, for example, molestation as a child or physical abuse of a very extreme nature as a child. And how that trauma then carries into the psyche and creates a propensity to disassociate when it comes to inflicting pain on others. We cannot discount that. So being honest with ourselves, we have to look at the nature of the reality of what's going on with one we call evil things with a compassionate understanding that these are still human beings doing these things

even when it comes to the darkest of the Great Awakening side, which is the darkest things that were exposed in 2020 was the human trafficking of children and murder of children and rape of children. This is some of the darkest things, arguably the most evil thing that can be done on this planet. Now that is something that is, I don't think I've heard before in which he is sort is asking people to sympathize and see themselves within the pedophile elites. Yeah, the cabal is inside us. The other thing that's worth pointing out there is that his stat that 50% or something of all children have either been sexually or physically abused is just flat incorrect. I looked it up. There's multiple different statistics and none of them even remotely

come close to 50% of our population. At this point in his talk, Stone brought in the New Age concept of an energy body to analyze the supposed revelations of the Great Awakening movement. And yet something is feeding on that purity, on that energy, on the children. It's been feeding on us, our entire existence. We just weren't conscious of it. It's been feeding on humanity for all of its existence, not just our own, but all of humanity since the beginning.

That's what this Great Awakening is actually about. This Great Awakening is taking us to that next level, where we're saying, wait a minute, there's a predator that has been masquerading, as you said, as the authority figures, as the mask of power, as the pretense of power, as occultive power, and at its core it feeds on purity it feeds on children it has no qualms about doing that

that's how dark this really is because we have to face the most evil in order to bring the good because you can't ultimately become the hero until you face the real villain I'm not saying the villain

is one person or one group or it's an energy body Yeah, so, you know, the idea of an energy body or, like, Ecar Toll sometimes talks about a fear body is kind of the idea that there's, I guess, a form of human consciousness that transcends, like, the individual mind. And so I guess he's kind of saying that the cabal is this energy body. Yeah. But then why? It's, like, feeding off us.

So there's some sort of ancient evil involved. It's, yeah, and you can only fight it, like, spiritually, like, within meditation or something. It's like, yeah, certainly it's within yourself that you can fight it. I mean, that's much easier to talk about than, you know, trying to point out, you know, all of the, you know, well-known, uh, specific instances of Hillary Clinton, you know, eating the face off of a child, you know, when you can ascribe this, this evil to, you know, some kind of mist, it's, uh, Sauron, you know, the eye of Sauron, like, you know, just forming, you know, forming in the hills of Mordor. It's much easier to just keep talking about that because you don't ever have to really bring up any specific examples and you don't really have to relate it to anything going on in somebody's real life. It's this feeling. It's it's shrouding you constantly, you know, and a lot of people can take, you know, whatever they can interpret it, whatever way they want if they're feeling down in their life or something doesn't go their way or I don't know. You have a fight with a loved one.

And, you know, it can all be described to this sort of ghostly evil that's constantly trying to infiltrate them. In perhaps the greatest twist in his analysis, Sean Stone explains that we are the cabal in a way and the children we must save are actually inside us. And some of the terminology he used would be at home in a modern therapy office. There is very little evil, pure evil in this reality, but all the things is a little pure evil. It's like that little black ink in the water, right?

just one black ink and all of a sudden the whole water can get muddied and that's all I think it really took I think all it really took was a little bit of pure evil to muddy the whole water for our reality because we perpetuated it not because we wanted to but because once that trauma set in once that violation once that first rape of the child set in once that first violation of us as children, right? Saying you're not a sovereign. You don't have any rights. You belong to the parent or the state.

We own you. That becomes your worldview. So actually the whole work that we're doing with the save the children, protect the children, yes, at one level, there are millions of kids that need to be protected and saved. But it's actually our own work on our inner child.

that needs to be done because you can save a child but if you don't actually have the self-love you can't give it to the child you can't give it to your partner you can't give it to anyone until you love yourself this is the real work of the great awakening it's the awakening of the heart it's the realization that all this darkness as hard as it's been as terrible as it's been it's been a tremendous opportunity for us to grow, to say, okay, I still love, in spite of it all. I still forgive. I still give thanks.

So the ominous laugh you hear is from a room over, just bleeding through the wall at very inconvenient moments. God, this is so warped. Isn't it such a strange take? It's such a unique take. That's why I mean it can keep queuing on going, because it's like, it's more flexible. It's kind of more about just working on yourself. Like, you can basically, you know, be.

a soldier, you know, for QAnon, but like it's a form of inner work, like a form of therapy. The problem is that some of this stuff is actually potentially healthy or at least can be used in a healthy setting. And he's reconfigured all these terms from like new age to kind of geopolitical terms, you know, to like terms about like sovereignty. And he's kind of combined all of these to create a kind of new, slightly more, I guess, benign on the surface version of the Great Awakening and as such of QAnon. Yeah, it's almost like it started with trust the plan, sit back, grab your popcorn, then it transitioned to you are the plan, and this was the plan all along,

that you have to be the change that affects the outside world, to now all you can control is the change within yourself. And healing your inner battle is actually that energy that you're putting out is fighting this very real cabal. Be the plan you want to say. in the world. Yes, yes. Be the plan you want to see in the world. Sean Stone's talk was also peppered with other conspiracy theories. He slyly joked about the panic around CO2 emissions, a nod to the idea that climate change is at the very least overblown. His description of the elites and their many

crimes, in fact, could have come straight from Alex Jones. They're spraying the skies right now. They're spreading this genetic modification agenda into food, into people. They can shut down society. They can tell you not to go to work. They can tell you you have to stay home. Later, when an audience member asked Stone what the limit should be when embracing technology, he clearly stated that nobody should allow the tech into their bodies, including, of course, the MRNA vaccines. Technology and artificial intelligence, however, should not be shunned entirely, in his opinion, because they might take away some of the more boring human tasks and allow us to focus on

self-actualization. To illustrate this, Stone brought up Jacques Fresco's Venus Project, a futurist utopia in which human beings live a life of freedom and volition thanks to the help of robots and automated cities. And you covered this in a premium episode, Travis. Obviously, it never hopped off the page. It was mostly just sketches and stuff. And when it came down to the actual mechanics of it, I mean, everybody was pretty much clueless. Yeah, yeah. It was funny. It was, it was really just sort of a sci-fi fantasy, but he kept insisting that it could be real or would be real. I'm surprised that people are still carrying the torch. What struck me with

Stone was the charismatic, positive attitude he was selling to his audience. Yes, the globalist had turned our reality into a clown world, in his words, and they were feeding off us, poisoning us, and raping our children. But with the right attitude, none of that would matter. If we all worked on our own awakening, a greater change in society would follow. Instead of needing any form of communitarianism, we would heal the connection between human beings by essentially improving and purifying ourselves. I left the talk feeling disturbed by how digestible Sean Stone's version of QAnon and the Great Awakening was. It was a clever balancing act that pandered to a profound individualism, a solipsistic view of the world that promised healthy communities through essentially

more awareness. Coney 2012 in place of a shared and tangible struggle. Extremely convenient for a crowd already frustrated with their own inability to affect the material world and who'd been increasingly turning inward since the 1960s. Stone's talk was very different from what I'd be hearing in the same room just a half hour later from Mickey Willis, who we'll be touching on in our next premium episode, along with his upcoming movie we attended a rough cut of, Plandemic 3. Willis would bring old-school anti-communism back into the mix, earning him a standing ovation from a hugely diverse crowd of New Agers and conspiracy theorists. Around 10 p.m., I found myself in the lobby again.

There, a performer had started what would be one of the more successful musical sets of the whole expo. He called himself Presence with a Z, and he was a white guy called Grant Ellman from Sedona, Arizona, who had made a name for himself by embracing the anti-vaccine movement. This had even led to him collaborating with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on a song called Heart of Freedom, which was produced by the renowned anti-vaxxer's own Children's Health Defense Organization. Now, I want to play a clip from Grant's YouTube channel so you can hear what he sounds like expressing beliefs that lie somewhere between libertarianism and full-blown sovereign citizenship. Keep in mind that when he says the word government and right, he's doing air quotes. The Federal Reserve Bank and also the federal income tax were instituted on the same year.

claiming that the government of the United States of America had the right to collect and levy taxes. Essentially they have the right to steal people's product of their labor or some percentage of the product of some people's labor. Let me ask you a question. If slavery is robbing 100% of the product of one's labor, at what percentage is it no longer slavery? 50%, 25%, 10%, 5%, 1%, yep, you guessed it, it's all slavery. It doesn't matter what percentage the government is stealing from you. It doesn't matter if we are stealing 100% of the product of somebody's labor, like was done in the United States when black men and black women were slaves here.

or if the government is robbing us of 50% of our labor, 25%, it's all slavery. By that definition, all government is slavery because all government collects and levies taxes and forces people to pay a slave tax. So, I mean, I'd heard taxation is theft, but taxation is slavery, literally. That is a pretty out there argument. He also is saying all this while holding an acoustic guitar and, like, has like a hemp necklace and his hats back. I mean, he literally looks like he's about to, like, serenade a dorm room of college girls with, like, a Dave Matthews cover. Yeah.

I play that clip to show you just how Pilled the guy is, but also so you can hear his normal speaking voice, which, as you'll see, is very different than his singing voice and persona. Here's Scam, the song that put him on the map and got so many people of all stripes dancing at the Conscious Life Expo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Break down at one side we got to unify. Differences between us make us beautiful and divine. Politicians and them, they use that difference to divide. I and I know who I am, my heart is in alignment. Standing up to the tyrants, no need to live in confinement.

Bubble and crumbling before my eyes, I'm not surprised. Yet, every breath I take in the oxygen, I'm optimizing. My health is my true wealth and no vaccine will compromise it Needles injecting into this year but they genetically modify Installing the operating system 5G comes online If dead products, the chemicals and heavy metals ever make the headlines Blame it on the virus which they never purified That's right

Because we're living through a scam I said we live in through a scam A scam, a scam I said we're living through a scam Yeah, you said there's a new type of Nazi on the block. Political correctness is the branding on the flock. Operation warp speed coming with their vaccine. When their needles come at me, there's only one who takes a shot.

Hey, I got the 12 gauge in the closet, 3,000. Oh, shotgun in that clip. There are so many things I hate about this. Yeah, so, yeah, when he's talking about the needles coming at me referencing to the vaccine, And he's braindishing a pump action shotgun. Might I list all the things that I hate about that? Is it him saying stuff like Dem and like just kind of? No.

Just the entire basically black reggae persona. Yeah. One, the hat. I mean, this is. Like a felt cowboy hat. We're talking about, if we're talking about big hats, this is one of the biggest I've ever. It's one of the biggest hats I've ever seen. Very stupid

Looks like a big black hole Surrounding his head He's going to be swelled up No, he has a cute dog Yeah He also is sporting The lightning bolt Guitar Strap

Which is like That is a Rivers Cuomo Like stable Like Rivers always Maybe they have more in common Than you think That's what makes me mad That's you know

If you've got the lightning strap Fender strap for your guitar I mean odds are You got that from Murmers Cuomo, which is a very... I don't know. These are wild accusations and also... I feel very bad. Also, hold on, hold on. Because your critique seems a little

about you. The other thing that I hate about this is that the guy is actually pretty talented. If he channeled, if he channeled that music into writing, I don't know, lyrics about, I don't know, breaking up with his girlfriend or getting broke up with or, you know, I don't know, other stuff, you know, life stuff

that happens, he probably could carve out like a decent, you know, a decent audience for himself. Well, it turns out it didn't happen until he released scam, which was his big hit. Yeah, of course, because the right wingers are so starved for any kind of good content that, you know, somebody like him that might have gotten lost in the liberal sea of, you know, like white, white regatone, you know, wannabe guys. It finds a huge audience on the right because they're starved for anything that resembles any kind of talent whatsoever. But it's mostly the hat. It's mostly that hat.

Yeah. My God. Who do you think you are? It's 2023. You're not like a farmer out in the field, you know, and you need a big fucking hat to protect you from the sun. You're just, why are you wearing that? Why do people wear these ridiculous gigantic? I mean, oh my lord.

This is, how do you not feel like a moron every time you look down at this thing the size of a place mat, you know, and you put it on? And you look in the mirror and you go, that's me today. We're going to have to. And my giant hat. James and the giant hat. We're going to have to move on. A not very well-known roll doll book. Oh, my God.

What is happening? Roll doll, James of the Giant Hat. Don't. Don't continue. All right. As the crowd cheered and danced wildly in the Hilton lobby, I started to think about the great schism occurring in the New Age world. The sizable breakaway group, which we could call the Sedona faction, was anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-vax, pro-gun, and proudly American. But on a state level, as they totally.

distrust the federal government. The Koch brothers themselves could not have designed a better version of the New Age movement. It was astonishing. The anti-communism and anti-socialism on the surface might seem like a contradiction, considering the many claims at the gathering that unity was essential and working together was important. But, paradoxically, these people wanted to work together on themselves, each on their own individual path. Instead of real community, the event was a mere simulacra of one. The word exposition was appropriate to describe this inherently commodified space. It was a market, a showroom, where goods, services, ideas, and yes, even realities, were bought and sold. New Agers had long accepted this aspect of

themselves. It had been a slow boil since the 60s, and as such, it makes sense that they'd eventually welcome reactionary anti-socialist ideas into their folds. If there's a demand, the market will meet it. By the end of Presence's set, I was in a bad place. These reflections, surprisingly, were not yielding good vibes. What's more, Travis had bailed after a long day. day of lectures and experiences. My remaining companions and I drifted towards the bar. But we wouldn't remain there long because we wanted to check out what was being billed as a psychedelic dance party held down in the rabbit hole room.

So we once again made our way down a level through purple drapes and a maze of booths now shutted for the night to a small door in the wall. The rabbit hole was unrecognizable. A DJ booth had been set up with what looked like high school dance lights swirling all around it. I was expecting trance, maybe even psychedelic trance, or perhaps some junk. Instead, we were greeted by terrible commercial house music with gaudy vocals. On the dance floor, a white guy with dreads and a look of pure spiritual beatitude on his face was busy peacocking through the crowd, shirtless.

Moments later, he would be seen meditating cross-legged at the edge of the party before joining back in. A young blonde woman in a revealing bunny costume was doing a mix of splits and peasant pirouettes at the center, inspiring a young man to start breakdancing near her. A few dozen other people were dancing around them, and to be honest, everybody seemed pretty happy. I was the miserable old guy, the cynical techno snob. I felt ashamed. There was an imposter in the rabbit hole.

I made my way back up to the lobby, now mostly vacant. Sitting in a big leather chair with a lukewarm beer, I watched another flight crew exit their bus. There had been a consistent stream of them coming in from the airport all day. I wondered what they made of the whole thing. Maybe the captain would sneak down to the rabbit hole for a peek and join in the festivities? Probably not. Either way, it was time for me to go home. I'd be back on Sunday for an advance showing of Plandemic 3.

Based on Mickey Willis' talk, I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. I had heard him compare the liberal agenda to Mao's Cultural Revolution. It did not bode well for his movie. So yeah, we'll be talking about that on this week's premium, where we explore Mickey Willis and attending his talk and then attending this premiere with a little panes. afterwards, basically a rough cut of Plandemic 3. And it was pretty, pretty terrifying stuff. And yeah, I'm excited to get to that. But in the meantime, hope you enjoyed that little exploration of the Conscious Life Expo. Yeah. I can't say I'm sorry I missed it. That seems like a place

where I would not do particularly well. But maybe, maybe I would. Maybe I would let loose and, you know, channel my chakras in a, you know, in a healthy way. The next night there was another band called The Galactivators, from what I heard, and there you could buy a variety of different toad-related drugs and ayahuasca as well. Oh, interesting. That's probably not illegal. Well, let's not get the Galactivators arrested. Yeah, I mean, I look, I have a fair share of acquaintances who've been slinging toad for quite a while. And, you know, I can't, you know, they've you know they don't seem really any worse any worse for where you know maybe maybe a little bit more prone to corner you at a house party and and tell you about burning man but yeah what a what a trip it's so it's so fascinating you know after all of these years to watch this stuff you know it's it's like seeing a you know a vase get knocked off a table and then shatter and then the dirty liquid just slowly seeping into the carpet seeing seeing how how Q&O and its adherence to have evolved slash devolved over the last couple years has been, I don't know what it's been, it's been something.

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Q&On Anonymous podcast. If you haven't already, you can go to patreon.com slash Q&O anonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second episode every week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes, plus access to our podcast series like Manclan and Trickledown. If you already subscribe, thank you so much. It allows us to remain advertising free and editorially independent. For everything else, we've got a website, QAnonanonymous.com. Listener, until next week, may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you. It's not a conspiracy, it's fact.

And now, today's auto-chew. At some level, as we know, harm is done to others in our reality. But inflicting harm to children, for some reason, that's... In the ethic of all beings, we know that is a place that you draw a line. Collectively, I think we know that. We feel that. And it's why. Why do we feel that?

You could argue intellectually, rationally, the child's going to grow up and could become a bad person anyway. Could become a criminal. Could become a terrorist. Could become... You name it, another bum, someone that's irrelevant to society. But somehow in all of us innately we know that there is something in the innocence and purity of children that has to be preserved to be allowed to work its course.

If that child ends up becoming Adolf Hitler, it has to be given the opportunity to find that path for itself as a soul. Thank you.