TrueLife - Steve Connelly - Omnism: The Unity of Faith

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://omnism.church/Omni- means All.An -Ism is an ideological Path. A Church leads us to the Light.The Church of Omnism is “All the Paths that lead to the Light” and that is our Religion.A New Song composed from the Harmony found in the Many Songs that Sing about the Truth of Love and the Love of Truth. A Religion connecting all Religions together as One. One accepting all Religions as different colors of the same Rainbow created by the Iridescent nature of the Divine many call God, which each of us experiences differently based on our Individual Perspectives.A Home for the Many to Unite as One.“And they sang a new song before the throne.”-Revelations 14:3Today we will speak with Steve Connelly. The social media manager from The Church of Omnism. We will learn about his journey, how he got involved with the church, and all about The Church of Omnism One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, well, well, welcome back to the True Life podcast. It's Magic Monday. I hope everyone is done with that pesky weekend. hope you we're done with that so that we can get to some real true life podcasting right here. I got a great show for you today.

I got a great guest for you today. We're going to investigate what the world may look like if we were to unite under one type of faith. The one and only Steve Connolly from the Church of Omnism. Steve, how are you doing today, my friend? I'm doing good, George. How are you today? I am doing awesome. I'm thinking about working with a new tagline.

Let me know what you think. It's like never underestimate the power of a podcast. What do you think? I dig it. I dig it for sure. Man. What an amazing time we live in, Stephen. I can think of no better time than for people to begin to investigate their own faith of what they believe in and what their higher power is.

And I'm wondering if maybe you can give people a background on what omnism is. Well, Omnis is more of a movement than a religion, and it's been going on for, you know, really, really hard in the trench works out there for about the last 15 years. If you get online, you'll find a lot of Omnius societies, a lot of communities. I mean, the church I'm affiliated with isn't the only ministry out there. I think we're probably the most clean when it comes to the public view of it, just because we're more focused on the community building. than just one particular atypical religious faith. So when you start looking at the construction that we're doing in the community that we're really trying to build,

I mean, it's more of, you know, more inclined to be more of a school of like the ancient Greeks or something like that, more of a study group versus, you know, come in, hey, you know, we have no Messiah. We have no God. We're pushing, you know, the founder of our church is working on a book, and that's his baby. I mean, he's been working on that for about 10 or 15 years now.

But we're not pushing any certain agenda. we're not I mean if you look at our budget we're really not pushing any donations either so I mean what we're really really doing is trying to build more of a traditional spiritual housing for those of us who just don't have it you know you look at what most people have when they fall into their standard religious doctrines they have a priest they can go talk to that they know everything's held in confidence that you know they have something they're dealing with they can go and they can say hey oh shit this is what's on my plate and whether it's a discretion with his spouse, whether it's they stole some money at work, whatever it might be,

they know that their priest and whoever is there be come down to the government, come down to a lot of different things, can sit there and say, no, this was a privileged conversation. This is a rightly federal government recognizes. And our government recognizes those rights because, you know, spirituality, religion, you know, understanding a higher power in a communal sense is just part of the human growth experience, you know, and why should somebody who thinks harder or is willing to go into what I call the spiritual sandbox when you take on crazier ideas or you go in, you explore something, why should

that person be excluded from those rights that, you know, our apex religions of the country have? So that's kind of what we really have going in the works. I mean, personally, my personal story in the infinogenic rights movement kind of go hand in hand awkwardly. The church does. per se, but, you know, there's a lot of spirituality to be found in that movement and in those practices. Yeah. I love the idea of a spiritual sandbox, man. Can you break that down for us?

So, you know, I have a little bit of background, somewhat in IT. And, you know, the term sandbox for that is just, hey, when you got software going out, you want to see what it does, you throw it in a sandbox and you just see what happens. So, you know, coming from my background, I've just had a lot of crazier things. happen in my life. So part of the way I've kind of handled it is just take on some crazier ideas and just run with them for a second. It's not something I would integrate into my life every day. It's just, you know, if you look at most standard religious beliefs and you look at the core ideas of it, if it wasn't a standard of religious belief, it'd be freaking insanity already.

You know, I mean, most people have a religious faith. Most faiths have that exercise of faith. I mean, so if you're one of the apex religions of our country and you believe in a resurrection, that's fine. But if you were to believe someone resurrected in our modern day and time, you'd be freaking insane. So sometimes taking those more liquidy ideas, more of that spiritual play around with it and just run with it in the safe, constructive area. And I mean, obviously, if you've been around people who are experimenting with the anthonygens, crazy ideas gum up, you know? It just does. And that's just, you know, in a spiritual safe place where you can constructively play with some of these ideas and say, hey, you know, let's just say we're all reincarnations of something divine for five, ten minutes. Play with the idea, constructively play with it in our hands, look at it and say, you know what, yeah, maybe I am of the divine.

Put it back down, step back out of the spiritual sandbox and be like, okay, real life bills, that kind of crap. Because there's that hard line to drive in the sand between spirituality and, oh crap, here's government, here's your business. bills, here's everything you got to do, and you got to put it down at some point. So that's what I refer to as a spiritual sandbox. When you take some of these interesting ideas, some of these interesting concepts, and you play with them safely for a little bit, and then leave them in the sandbox to go back into the real world. Yeah, that's beautiful.

You know, I'm often reminded, it seems that when I look towards many of the previous religions and maybe all religions, that on some of the same. some level, they're based on a miracle that happened. And we of people who believe in any sort of spirituality, we believe in these miracles that happened in the past. But none of us seem to believe in miracles that can happen today. That's kind of saddens me. Maybe that's the absence of spirituality. What do you think? You know, I mean, I think a lot of us want to believe in the traditional storytelling of the miracles. And I mean, personally, I can tell you from coming back from a terminal illness, multiple strokes, you know, drop 200 damn pounds.

and didn't go to prison for some crazy crap. You know, that's a miracle in itself. I've essentially came back from the dead for my own dumbass choices and some other stuff. But, you know, it's one of those hard things to grasp when you grow up in a world and you take in, everybody has that base level of education where we say, all right, we know the earth is around at least an atmosphere. We know we're flying around this ball of fire. We know that the seasons are going to come.

We can say this, this, this and this with absolute certainty. and then we're taking on these ancient beliefs that have been part of our society for thousands of years and trying to equate what we know for facts now to some things that might not be as feasible to the people who originally wrote them. And that's where I think a lot of people start getting this disconnect from their own personal spirituality is, you know, in our modern age when, you know, people like us, you know, on different sides of the country, almost the world can have an instant conversation about something like this. when you know the closest thing the earliest writing of this would be nostridamus talking about pocketstones

you know however long ago that was you know our world's rapidly changing and expanding and our knowledge is growing you know the collective consciousness of what we have stored digitally is just mind-blowing yeah and you know there's not been an update to the religious views which is not necessarily a bad thing you know sometimes the practice of the repetitions the you know acknowledging how far something goes back is beautiful. But that was one of my problems growing up was, you know, I was a nerd. I loved to read. I just kept going, going, going, going.

I was a damn sponge for information. So it was just the more and more information I took in, the more and more I was willing to acknowledge and see, I'd go to the standard religious practices. And I was like, wait a second, this doesn't flesh up with what I just learned. And then, you know, I mean, there was years and years of my life where I was going through trials and tribulations with my own faith. and, you know, it was the anthonygenic practices, you know, years and years ago that kind of brought me back to something. Because at least in those practices, there was something greater than my education I was taking in, greater than myself, even if it was housed between my years only.

You know, there was something tangible in that experience, and that's kind of what kept me on track to not just being some faithless bag of flesh. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. And when I look at the Christian tradition, you know, there's this thing of the Eucharist where you go and you eat the wafer and drink the blood of Christ, like the flesh of God, they call it. And it seems to me that when I ingest and in theogen, I have the understanding of, it just seems like the language, the flesh of God. It brings you closer to God. And it seems to me that in theogenic practices, or at least my own personal use, if I were to, to take a high dose of psilocybin, for example, I really feel that oneness. And I'm almost taken back to a time where I'm in the womb and connected to my mother. I feel like I'm connected

to the earth right there. Like, that's, it's, I don't know any other word to better describe it than a religious feeling of, of like a revelation. What is that? It's synonymous there, right? you know and it's during my times of being you know your anti whatever religious establishment there was and i went through that as a teenager i think a lot of us did you know i started doing a lot of research on the early churches and their intonogenic uses and you go to the old greek churches they were obviously spiking the water you look at some of the early christian churches they find traces of the soma plant inside a lot of the blessings water so it's one of those you know that might have just been the tricks of the trade of the original clergy was, hey, we know

this is going to bring this monumental experience. But when you're dealing with massive people who just pray every day that the sun comes up, it might just be easier to not explain the molecular mechanics behind a lot of it, especially because, I mean, a lot of these churches, and not all of them, I'm not trying to sit here and talk crap on any church. But there's a lot of churches that are just money-making enterprises. You know, I mean, there's plenty of private pastors. TV that fly around the private jets. So, I mean, there's a lot of things that are, you have to look back at the past and understand

we're not seeing the full scope of the full story. You know, I mean, there's a reason the soma plant was completely wiped out of existence. Obviously, it did something. Yeah. And there's a lot of evidence to support the idea that, you know, certain types of sacraments were immortalized in stained glass windows. or if you read John Allegro's The Sacred Mushroom in the Cross, or it seems to me that there's lots of evidence that supports this theory.

And if we just take a look at some of the indigenous cultures where they have the shaman, which is like the holy man of some indigenous places, he's the person that ingests the so. He's the person ingests the sacrament. And then he helps people. And why wouldn't it be that same sort of tradition in earlier Western times? if we look back to the early Christian time, why wouldn't it be a set of clergy members

that ingested the substance to get closer to God? And if you look at the Bible and you can see the times in which the burning bush is there, like the references to it are all around us. And we're kind of surrounded by it. If we just take a moment to open our eyes, another favorite one of mine is the Gospel of Thomas, where we talk about, you know,

Jesus talks to Thomas, like come touch the wound. You're doubting Thomas. You don't believe me. Come and see. It's almost like he's offering him the sacrament. And then he says things like, look around. The kingdom of heaven is my father's kingdom is all around us, but yet nobody sees it. But if you take the sacrament, it seems to me, that's what I think is going on there.

I think Jesus is pulling Thomas in. You know, he says, hey, come take the sacrament with me. I'll show you. What do you think, man? Maybe, right? No, no, I can definitely see that. Just because, I mean, you're talking, you know, typically when you see these kinds of movements, you see something monumental happen.

There's going to be something outside of it. these people that's kind of dictating it and altered perceptions really lie along a lot of these movements you know and it's i don't want to sit here and just say hey the only way to have a spiritual connection or the only way to do these things is with certain molecules because there's a lot more to a lot of it i mean you know if you look at the 60s look at the 70s obviously people tried to make this movement happen before and it didn't work out you know all we got was more prohibition and drug wars And there's something really special about the moment we live in now. That's a lot different than it was 50 years ago.

And I think a lot of it has to do with the people who were out in the open because we didn't have bipartisan support for a lot of this. And it's one of those things. So it's, yeah, I mean, obviously I would personally say, yes, there was some ethnogenic uses amongst most religions, at least in their founding. And when you start looking at the way Christianity spread across Europe, there was a lot of interbreeding with the paganist, you know, indigenous religions at that point. I mean, you look at the depictions of Santa Claus.

I mean, most of the time we're going to see the anteas in the background. You know, there's a lot there. And it's just, I think a lot of that scares your more traditional religious groups. Because if you can say, hey, the only way to get to God or get closer to something is by listening to me and only listening to me, that puts you on a pedestal of power. And the second something like psilocybin starts shaking the waters internationally, which it is, I mean, Australia just legalized it for mental health. I don't know exactly how they're rolling it out.

But I mean, at the point that we're saying, okay, Australia is just saying, hey, go for it, essentially. You know, that might scare a lot of the traditional church groups. That might scare a lot of the more economically empowered religious structures. And that's something that I think is going to change when we start seeing, you know, the FDA is doing its trials right now for psilocybin and MDMA. And I've always made the joke the MDMA is God Zoloff, you know. I mean, there's something special about that one. But, you know, that's neither here nor there.

I just think there's a lot changing right now. And I think a lot of the people who are in power that do have these standard religious rasp on people are afraid of what's going to happen when somebody at home legally in the privacy. of their own home, whether they go to a good smoke shop locally or they order it online, can sit there, consume something that they know is going to have a pivotal, powerful experience. And it's not there with the church. There's not a collection plate sitting next to them. And it's something outside of what they're used to. I think that scares a lot of people.

Man, it's really well said. It makes me think there's a couple directions. I guess I'll take this one first. There was a time when the majority of people were illiterate, no one could read the Bible, so they relied on people that were high in the church to translate the Word of God to translate the Bible and speak to them. In a weird sort of way, the same thing is happening with In Theodians.

Because what happens when you no longer need the particular priest or pastor to have a religious experience? And if you can just have that religious experience, what does that mean to organized religion that may not have the people's best intentions in mind, like you're saying? It does begin to shatter this myth that there is one person at the top of a church that speaks for God. And when you begin to break down that wall, when you get to break down that barrier, I could see how an outbreak of true spirituality could be something that people want to keep buried.

because it can destroy a lot of boundaries. There's a lot of particular, you know, structures that have been built up around that rely on a sort of a system of authority still. You know, it's very interesting to think about. Do you think that an outbreak of spirituality could be dangerous? You know, I think if this movement goes in the wrong hands, and you see bad actors come out, then yes, I could see it being very, very dangerous. Because, I mean, when you start talking about what happens to people when they start going on these journeys and the sensitive places that they're at,

if you have somebody, you know, if we just gave one particular religious group the right overall to administer these sacraments or to be the one controlling over these sacraments, could it not be, I mean, you know, I've lived through some of this myself, whereas, you know, if someone has an event, angelical agenda that they're trying to push, you know, when someone's mind and their body, they're going to that state of, you know, helplessness essentially, because that's almost what that, you know, those experiences are just surrendering yourself to something greater than yourself, whether it be a molecule or whatever, you're in a very sensitive place. And I think the abuses that could happen with the wrong people being the one administering these, the mocha, the wrong people being in charge of the way this rolls out, that can lead to a lot of trauma. Because, I mean, religious drama has been happening for hundreds and hundreds of years. I mean, there's institutions that

people are afraid of their priest, you know, you don't want to your kids to do choir. You know, and it's, there's going to be more of that coming up. So if the wrong people are the ones who are promoting this, the wrong people are the ones, you know, with agendas outside of self-healing and, you know, self-growth, if there's anybody with an agenda outside of that and they have people alone in those altered states, yeah, I mean, look at Charles Manson. You know, we could have another health or scalter if we let the wrong people get a hold of this. Yeah. You know, sometimes I, sometimes I think that science might be the wrong people to get a hold of it.

You know, not all science, but in some ways it seems to me that science is its own dogma. Like they have all these rules and they're constantly trying to measure things that they can't understand. and so they put these false labels on them. Almost the way an irresponsible church would label events, so too to science sometimes. Science that's backed by commercial assets seems to be similar to a church with bad faith. You know what I mean by that?

They don't necessarily seem to have the best motivations for the people they claim to want to help. I think that's a fair parallel? It is. It is. And I don't want to sit here and just crap on any institution. Absolutely not. Right. Right. In my awkward situation I'm just kind of rolling out of, you know, there was a lot of people that have speaking, doing medical. And I think a lot of people who are in the more traditional educational practices, their main concern with a lot of this movement is overuse, which can happen. I mean, you know, had I not been handling, you know, what surmised to end of life care, I probably wouldn't, you know, use as much infingens as I did.

But, heck, if you think you're going to die, why not? But, you know, that's one of those, you know, and there has to be a healthy boundary on it because, I mean, obviously the altered states do have something tangible to them. And I've known people who went way too hard with certain molecules, and I never spoke to them in where they just thought they were embracing divinity six times a day, you know, and, you know, it sounds like a great idea, but you have that many near-death experiences in a day for six months straight, you might not be the same person anymore. So there has to be a healthy boundary in it. And I think a lot of us, the people who are traditionally sidelined in this fight, you know,

we're sitting here shaking our fist going, damn it, no, we're going to do it as much as we want to, as often as we want to, as hard as we want to. And I mean, we, we, we personally. personally, the people on the sidelines are the people who are doing the trench warfare on this have to go, wait, maybe we need the scientist on board because they're the ones who can actually write these dissertations that make a lot of this happen. But no, I mean, you start talking about big pharma and the commercial aspects of it and the people fighting to have the patents on it and controlling all the medicine and controlling the therapies on it. You know, I know with the topic of MDMA, that's coming up a lot just because the FDA is pushing it through and everyone wants to see how that's going to roll out. And there's plenty of people in my generation that can prove to you MDMA does not eat holes in your brain. I think a good chunk of my generation would just be falling over and drooling on themselves if that was true. But, you know, it's like, Max is a great organization and they're wanting to see a lot of it come out for post-traumatic stress disorder and post-traumatic stress.

And they want to make sure people actually get the therapy they need to. But then you have the people who are just enjoyers of this in the anthonygenic movement who want to be able to. to go home at night and, you know, use it as an intimacy medicine for them and their spouse or just use it for the hell of it. And I think that's where a lot of this friction starting to come up in this movement is people who are like, I've been waiting 30 years to do it for the hell of it. And the people in the white jacket saying, we've been waiting 30 years to prescribe it. And we have to find that middle ground for everybody. Yeah, I like it. I think that that's the purpose of bringing up this conversation is so that the conversation continues. And I,

I think that spirituality and science need each other the same way that a relationship needs two people. Like they're part and parcel. They're different sides of the same coin. And when they embrace each other, they're really worth something. And I think that, you know, there'll always be the, I'm always reminded of that symbolic symbol of the yin and the yang, how they're pushing each other around. And there's a little spot of chaos in the dark paisley and the little spot of light. in the other Paisley.

And I just see that as science and spirituality. And that's one of the reasons why I'm so stoked to talk to you today. Because I realized that in Omnism, there's a framework of embracing everybody who wants to join. And I'm curious, maybe like you could shine some light on that relationship and how, I think you just did. I think by explaining how both sides need each other, I think that's kind of the same framework for Omnism. but do you do you can can you see that relationship with omnism and with science and religion too yeah no and that's one of the things um you know coming out of everything i just came out of

omnisism is not the first church that reached out to me for getting on board you know i had cannabis churches i had some other other ones and i'm still kind of going i didn't mean to get that public with it but it happens it happens but omnisism wasn't pushing an agenda they're not Right. Right. Right. And with some of the cannabis churches, that's what I saw coming down the line. Right.

You know, and it's a big fan of cannabis, can't say I'm not. Yeah. But, you know, it's one of those I've never wanted to be part of something worshiping a molecule. And so, I mean, one of the things I like to look at when you're looking at Omniism is we're all worshiping the same action. We're all worshiping the same world. We all live in at least similar realities. You know, your reality is a little different than mine. And, you know, that's true for everybody else because you have your own personal perception.

You have to encounter. Then you have the little space between your ears that changes the way you see the world. But we all live in the same world. And if you want to get really semantic about it, you know, you can call God, whatever the hell you want to call God. But we're all talking about the same actions of God. We're all talking about creation. We're all talking about the way we should be living during our lives. And we're all talking about what the hell happens when we die.

You know, and that's kind of where omnism comes in. that's where most of the people I speak with that are members of the church, honestly, they're just religious nerds. They're just religious nerds. They just like to go and see and be like, oh, look what I learned. Look what I learned. I'm the same way. I spent the whole weekend, you know, ennostic text, just going off and doing my thing.

And most of the people who are part of this movement, that's what they do. They just think theology, religion is cool. And they've asked more questions than they could have answered in the first institution they replaced in. And, you know, where you get your apex religions, you know, that get really, really uncomfortable with certain questions. We don't get uncomfortable. We're like, sure, run it. Let's see what happens.

Let's play with the idea for a minute, you know. Whether you want to worship the Pasthafarian or whether you want to worship Jesus Christ or whether you want to do anything in the middle of it. You know, as long as you're understanding, we're embracing the same energy. We're talking about the same act of creation. we're talking about the same rules that dictate the world that we live in, it's kind of where Omniism falls in just because, you know, if you look at, like I've said before, it's very, it's set up how I think the 12 steps wanted a spiritual community set up. And that's just the beautiful thing about it.

Because at the end of the day, we can argue about what we call God, but we could die, get to heaven or wherever. And his name could be Bob or George, and he could correct us all. You know George the whole time. You know, you bring up a fascinating point that I've never thought about before. You know, when we're investigating some of the churches that are brought up to like a church of cannabis or certain churches that worship, you know, and I'm not saying all of them do, but it's interesting to think about an institution that worships a molecule. I've never thought about it from that angle, but it, that's a, perhaps it's a way in which we can legalize a substance. That's one thing. But even if it is that, and you say you worship that molecule,

that's a weird thing to worship a molecule, right? It's a strange idea. Well, and my thing with it is the molecule by itself won't do anything. You know, it's kind of like, you know, I'm a very libertary-leaning person. So it's, you know, I've had the argument about drug policy before, where if you take five kilos of fentanyl, put it in a safe, drop it in the ocean, ain't going to kill nobody. So if you look at the THC molecule,

by itself, it's pretty harmless. It's not going to do anything. And the act of, in my mind, and I know you go, Genesis 129, behold, God says to man, use all the seed bear and earth is your need. You know, I just did my little fund with CBD. I was screaming out of the state of Georgia. You know, and we got that product on the shelves now, thankfully. Yeah. Woo, no jail. But, you know, it's just the idea. And most of this seems about commercialism. Most people want to be the one selling it tax free tax free it was one of the big the big agendas in that but the real beauty of the THC molecule isn't the molecule itself is your body and its endocabinoid system and what it does with that molecule you know and that's one of those where do you want your church to be a chemistry

classroom i mean i wouldn't mind i mean i love some kitchen chemistry don't get me wrong but it's one of those where you're going to shit on this movement you're going to shit on this molecular freedom fight by turning it into something that's because in my mind a cannabis church is a great thing you know it is it's a great concept but if it's just about skirting taxes on you know recreational sales and it's just about being able to push a book and it's just about doing something like that you're no better than timothy leary you're no better than a lot of these people who are out there and honestly i'd love to see the bible belt the regular churches get behind cannabis because it is in the first book of the bible in the very damn first chapter. There is something to it. But there's so much more going on in our religious

express, in our religious expressive rights than just cannabis and then just anthonygens. I mean, honestly, I mean, I think in the next couple of years, we're going to have to deal with religion in the workplace and how people go about handling their religious face. Because, I mean, I've been in situations where people really rely too heavily on their evangelicalism to be able to push their religion in the workplace. And that's going to make some people uncomfortable. You know, I think we're getting to a point where a lot of these truths are going to have to be more open and honest.

And I think that's kind of where at least the concept of omnibism can come in and help bridge some of these gaps between people. Just because we all have a different way that we got to the point we're sitting here now. We all have different visions. We all have different views. But we're still all talking about the same creative action, the same ending moment and all the things we can't explain in the middle. You know, it's interesting.

As someone who has, like you have had lots of experiences growing up in the faith that you grew up in and going and seeking knowledge from different churches, it's interesting to me because it seems to me that one of the cornerstones of whatever church you go to is tolerance. But on some strange level, there's like, yeah, these guys are good, but they're missing this one thing. You know what? What's the relationship between tolerance and different churches? Because it seems like sometimes they're intolerant of each other. You know, and that's one of those interesting things that I think everybody wants to be the one who saves somebody. Everybody wants to be the night in the story of it. Everybody wants to be the main place of salvation. And I've dealt with a lot of different priests, a lot of different people, faith leaders that were very open to the idea of, hey, just go do whatever the hell you want.

Baskin Robbins, all the topics you want on your faith, you know, we'll do it. You like sprinkles today. You want chocolate chunks tomorrow. Go for it. And those have typically been, you know, I think the last priest I spoke to that was of the Christian domination that was really, really open to any ideas, was the Eastern Orthodox priest. Great guy.

He's passed away now. And I mean, there's a lot of people who are just open with the idea of, hey, this is God, this is community, this is what we do. and the people who happen to come here weekly just happen to feel more comfortable here. And if you want to pop in and pop out, that's great. It's just when you start getting to more of, and there's a lot of politics that go on,

at least in the Bible Belt, in the churches. You know, there's a lot of political movements that got embedded in there. If you look at some of our crappier representatives in Georgia, the ones that spout hate speech and just say stupid crap, you'll see them in the churches on the weekends, pushing for their next re-election, funds, pushing their hate-filled agendas, and then you get to the more traditional people.

I mean, like, Reverend Bornax is a great guy, great, great guy, and he runs Martin Luther King's old church to death. And you'll never see him espouting hate speech. You'll never see him pushing a religious agenda publicly. And, you know, there's just, there's a difference with it. And I think the people who can separate their religious beliefs away from their political beliefs are where we're going to see a lot of the progress. Just because, just because, Because I can tell you, you know, personally, I was around too much Trump stuff for too long. And a lot of people started seeing that movement

as a religious movement. And that's kind of where you got some of the awkward stuff like January 6th going too far. A lot of people pushing for a lot of things that didn't need to happen. I mean, I think a lot of people really thought the rapture was coming recently. You know, I mean, with the pandemic,

with some of the newer technologies coming out. I mean, contact was payment scared of the hell out of a lot of people the southeast. I won't tell you that 100%. You know, because they see contactless payments is the next step towards the market of the beast. And that's kind of where you start getting a political push in the church. You've got scriptures that kind of line in with something and things can start getting dangerous. Yeah. It's interesting to, you know, if history is, if past relevant behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, it seems that we are on the cusp of a

religious revival of some sort. I would say so. I would say so just because, I mean, if you look at just in my life, I'm in my mid-30s, you know, the connectivity of human beings is just astronomically shot up. I mean, I remember, you know, as a young child, seeing AOL being like, oh, my God, I can chat with people. And now we are where we are today. where it's, you know, you're looking for work. You can look for work in other countries, just, you know, and work remotely. You know, and now we're able to, you know,

talk to people internationally, get a better grasp on what's going on. You know, you know, it's, and there's a lot changing. And it's just with more information, more data becoming readily available, better tools to analyze the data. You know, that just means the veracity of the truth

that we're working with every day is just becoming more and more true. Our connection to other people is becoming more, more connected. So the amount of bullshit we can get fed and believe it is going down quickly, quickly, quickly. So, and that's, I think, where some of the more standard religious groups kind of get scared because, you know, back in the day, when, you know, church was on Sunday, everything was closed and there was no internet and someone misspoke, you probably would never look into it again. Now you're sitting in a service, you pop open your phone, get on Google,

get on Bing, you can start, you know, all the information you could. ever want is right there at your damn fingertips now and there's a lot less bullshit we can be fed and that's why i really like that idea of the spiritual sandbox because it allows you to have an idea that might not be true tomorrow it allows you to have an idea that might be obtuse irregular you know and it allows you just to be a damn human being and that's just the thing about it you know most people want to look at their religious face and say hey this is perfection and not a progress in your own growth. And, you know, if you're constantly practicing your religious beliefs, your spiritual beliefs, whatever word better suits you in the context, and you're constantly

working on it, you're going to have some dumb-ass ideas. You're going to have some things that just don't mess up later on in the future. And that should be fine. That should be part of the growing experience. That should be something that your church or your faith group or whatever you want to align yourself with should allow. And if it's not, that might be hindering a lot of growth and a lot of the religious, you know, opportunities that are coming out. Just because, you know, we're talking about a mental health crisis right now. You know, that's always going around. Everybody, and you've got all these upstart therapies, you got everybody wanting to become a therapist.

But the original mental health for most people was their priest, was their church, was that organization. And they did not report to big medical. They kept it to them damn selves. So you could go and have a crazy-ass idea, say it to your priest, and it'd not come back and bite you in the ass later on. But if you go on some of these public therapy boards and you kind of say something crazy as fucking shit, you might get something coming down the line later. It gets noted in there. I mean, you know, we all know there's records being kept on us that are astronomical. You know, everything we do, everything we say online, there's a record of it.

So, I mean, maybe some of these answers to this mental health crisis is having them more. open religious type structure. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I was just going to ask. What do you think is the relationship between mental health and spirituality or mental health and absence of spirituality? You know, as somebody who,

if you had seen me about a year and a half ago, two years ago, I was living in a shell of a human body. You know, I had an over-prescription issue. I had some other issues, you know, multiple strokes. And if you could sit in the seat of my head, I was walking around what looked like a building that was full of strobe lights. And every single step I took was, you know, was a calculated five-step process. And thankfully, there was a certain intonogen that just rewired my own neural network real, real quick, coming out of a lot of things.

But, you know, one of the issues that I was coming into with that with was as I was self-regimenting, as I was coming back to life. you know, I was going and also exploring my spirituality. And what I had to come to the terms of is spiritual healing and mental healing are born in the damn same. I mean, religion was the earliest attempt at science by man. It really was because, I mean, at the end of the day, you're a guy running the tribe and you're going, and somebody comes up to you and you need them to go do their chores. You need them to go get done what needs to get done so everybody ease.

And they ask you, how do we get here? You're like, come up with a quick answer, you know, something that's going to get them to ask less questions. and get them back to work quicker, you know, and then maybe go think on it later. So, I mean, the earliest real attempts of science and explanation by the human species was really our religious views. Because if you look at what science is explaining today and what religion was explaining back then, they're about one in the damn same thing. Yeah. So it's wonderful. Go ahead.

Yeah, I was just going to say it's, it seems to me that As we have, we have, it seems that on some level, spirituality became dangerous to the state in a way. It became this thing that, and I guess if you take it back to like medieval times, you know, the church ruled everything. So the state wanted to break away from it because like this, there's too much church involved. There's too much dog. And we got to break out of this so that we can be independent. But like all things that move in this circular motion, it seems that getting so far away from spirit. spirituality. Taking so much out of our lives and just leaving the shell of it has left us empty. The same way that the church used to rule our lives and keep the state down, now it seems the state runs our life and it keeps spirituality away. And so if you just, if I look at it from that angle, of course, any times you get too far away from the center, you're going to have a problem with mental health. You're going to have a problem with emptiness. You're going to have a problem with purpose. And it's really fascinating to me just to see.

see how it's kind of come full circle. And I look back at the medieval mystics and I think about the ways in which they had these incredible experiences. And, you know, it's, it's interesting to see the state of mental health. When I hear your story about about where you were and how you got back there and other people's journey, be it through in theogens or be it through isolation tanks or be it through with communion in God and prayer, but it just seemed that like the way back to the center, is pulling on that umbilical cord of faith and just kind of grounding ourselves a little bit.

It's beautiful in so many ways, but I could understand to the purest why it's scary. And that's like, I'm just trying to really brace it. And I think that's what Omnism does. It's like, hey, everybody come under this tent. Everybody gather back around. Let's have a conversation here. You know, and I love that part about it, man. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. And that's something it's, I think the world's kind of getting ready for that, maybe not this church about. hominism, but that concept. Just because, you know, the Pope almost just died. He comes out of the hospital and says, hey, maybe it's time to focus on the issues and not the scriptures, which for a faith leader of that calibers, a huge deal, a huge deal. I mean, you look at in Israel, they recently had that huge religious deconstructionist movement.

I mean, there's a lot of things changing, but they're also, I completely guilt why the government gets worried about this kind of stuff. Yeah. Because you look at, you know, David Koresh. You look at Jim Jones. You look at some of the people who popped out of nowhere and started espouting something like, you know, Romism isn't a cult because we don't have a deity nor a Messiah that we worship.

There's a difference. But, you know, those kinds of people come out of left field. They target the weak. They target the meek. And then they start manipulating. And the next thing you know, they're sitting on fucking 50 acres with AK-47s, fully automatic, ready to take on the ATL.

You know, and it's like, I can get where the government gets scared and all that because when you start, and this is like we were talking about earlier, the potentials of abuse in this infinogenic movement with the religious structures is strong strong because there are people who are taken weak, meek people and just regular life beat them the hell down. And then converted them over to some crazy ass theology and convinced them that they needed to do something heinous in the name of the God they've been. on you know and then you add in the newer ideas of the anthogenic movement which i mean there's plenty of psychedelic churches there's plenty of churches that are pushing for the rights for that you know there's a lot of potential abuses that could come around the corner and i get i would if i was in a government seat i'd probably be like what the hell's going on too for some of this just because you look at the past history on a lot of this stuff the people who were spouting the

ideas of the anthonygenic routes, typically what kind of shitheads? I mean, the ones who were doing at least under the spiritual guys for a while. And there were some great ones. I mean, don't get me wrong, there was probably more good ones that never got mentioned. But you have your Charles Manson, you have your Jim Jones. You have those shitheads that kind of ruin religious liberties and new religious thoughts. So that's kind of where when, you know, it was after all the kind of got hit from all the random churches when I really spoke to the people of homieism, this church of omnism and where they were with it, I was like, oh shit, you just don't want to see people get bullied and you want people to be able to go out and do what they want to do and not get shit

on. I can back that. I can back that all day. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I think it speaks volumes too of how thirsty people are for something to believe in. You know, it's, it's, it's interesting when we peel back the meaning from from the life we live, how empty of a shell it is. And, you know, it's amazing to think how Colts get started or if you look at Manson or or Jim Jones or, you know, any of these big movements where people are starving for something more. They want more than just to get up and go to work and earn a few bucks and buy a Tesla and go to Costco. Like that's such an empty life that we've been given. And I think the more that the world tries to push this idea of the church of consumerism on everybody, the more angry people get at the door. Like the bigger the monster under the bed gets.

Like we can keep money there for a long time. But if we don't find an outlet, if we don't find a way to quench our spiritual thirst, then the tsunami that's coming for this state is going to be overwhelming. And sometimes I think the state is just trying to throw red meat to people. Like here, get this, hey, have that state. Get mad at black people. Black people, being mad at gay people. Like, they're constantly trying to, like, throw people these silly fights so that they don't see them as the enemy. And it's interesting because I think that on some level, they're beginning to see spirituality as the enemy.

But they should be desperately trying to shake hands with spirituality to make friends with it. You know, I can tell you for the random amount of people. since even before I got involved with Omniism. I can't tell you how many random people I dealt with that were like, what about your religion? What about your religion? I'm still going on and how everything got that public, but whatever. Whatever. You know,

most people in our government are just regular damn people. You know, our government is just more of an idea of what people do 9 to 5 that we elected to go in there. They got placed in a position to do something. You know, and their

general goal is the greater good people with the understanding that most people are not going to be looking out for their best interest 95% of the time. So I wouldn't say the states worried about spirituality. I think they're worried more about the people who are going to be espounding on and the people who are going to be pushing certain agendas just because, you know, a lot of the turmoil we got in the last presidential election and a lot of that was born in the churches in the South. it was i mean you know you have a great idea of what they call cavalry out here

which makes everybody a religious warrior which is essentially the you know apex religion of the southeast jihad of sorts which is a bear good i mean they have good parallel you know they see themselves as spiritual warriors and you know there was talk of there there's plenty of talk in the churches of you know stuff needing to change on harsh harsh terms and it wasn't every church it wasn't every church by any means. I've been to too many churches in my life. So I've seen a lot of crazy things. But that's what I think of the government's worried about. It's not necessarily the individual practicing their own spirituality. It's the one dynamic person that gets out there and start some shit. They can't reel back in. You know, because I mean, if you look at what

happened in D.C. with the last presidential election, you know, that was people just up there trying to celebrate the guy they thought was going to win the presidential office. And the next thing, you know it's all gone to shit. You know, and you couldn't reel that back in. And they could have been handled better. I'm not trying to say anything. I'm not trying to make a political statement on it. But that's what happens when you get people involved with their spiritual beliefs.

Is they're talking about death. They're talking about eternity. They're talking about their ever-loving soul, which is supposed to last longer than our government. And I think that's where our government starts going. Ooh, let's hit the brakes on this a little bit before you start a revolution. because not all revolutions end up well. Yeah. You know, so this brings me to this idea of in the beginning there was the word.

And when I think about the spoken word and charismatic leaders and the ideas of putting on the armor of God and creating a world where people can live a life of meaning, you know, when you start finding people that have found a way to harness the poetic metaphors of life and they begin. filling those metaphors with, you know, the sword is their truth and faith is their shield. Like that, isn't it amazing the power that words can have? And it's right there in the Bible when it talks about in the beginning there was the word. On some level, I find it so beautiful. And there's something dangerously beautiful about the word, right?

That's like the spoken word, too. It's beautiful in some ways. And I think people can be fearful of it because anybody can't. wield the spoken word. It's the weapon that we all hold. What do you think? I mean, I think it's true. And I think where you get into a lot of trouble with a lot of this is you don't know what everybody's goal is going into this. You know, I mean, personally, I never sought out anything with the churches. This church omnism actually sought me down somehow. So it just kind of fell into place, you know. And this, a lot of my work on this stuff is more of a reaction to crap that's happened to me and

understanding that there's people out there who've experienced hopefully less, you know, but they're in the same boat of it. And it's more about making the world more comfortable for people like myself or people like the members of our church who want to be able to go and, you know, read something outside what they were growing around. Yeah. But not everybody who's in this has altruistic goals in this. You know, there's a lot of people in, like I said, you know, I've seen some of the churches that are pushing the molecular sides of everything. Yeah. And a lot of our members do understand their own sacramental rights. We don't have it as a church.

It's just one of those things. You know, government paperwork, all that stuff. But I'm not going to tell somebody who believes that they're seeing something divine that they're, they don't on the level of it that we're on a rock flying around a damn ball of fire trying to make sense of everything until we die. Yeah, sure. You got that right. I'm not going to tell you now. You know, that's not my job.

I'm not the government. But you start getting the people who have these hidden agendas. you know, I mean, when I was dabbling with the cannabis churches, the idea that at least and the summation I got to, and I'm talking to somebody locally who mattered a lot, you know, they were kind of worried about it. I'm like, dude, if anything, I'm pushing an Abrahamian coalition just because we all worship the same God under Abraham. I mean, if you go to the scripture, we do.

Blow some people's minds when I say that. They're like, there's no way Jews and Christians and Islam are all very the same job. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we kind of do, but we can just move on from there. But I had a cannabis company reaching out to me trying to get me to get on board with a cannabis wafer before I even agreed to do anything with this church. I'm like, really, you want me to get on board for a cannabis wafer? If that's not antichrist sounding of any kind of sorts, I don't know what it is, you know. I mean, like that just, it just sounds stupid.

It just sounds stupid. Go to a church, smoke a doofy, eat a cannabis wafer, and leave and pay like 50 bucks in the collection blade. I mean, you know, why can't we just do that? Why can't you just get high before you go to your regular church? You know, but that's where I saw some of the issues coming out with this, because there is something spiritual to cannabis. There is something spiritual to the lot of these anthonyms. And the anthonygens, they go back to almost every indigenous culture of human species.

You know, Ivigo comes from Africa, Amanitas and psilocybin in Europe all the way over to Asia. The Native American church, they got those rights down like that. You know, they're on top of their game on the sacramental rights. almost everybody's indigenous culture embraces that and now we're starting to see that both sides of the aisle and Congress are embracing that there's something mentally benefiting to these you know I mean you know when you hear AOC talking

hey we need to get LSD and psilocybin in the hands of activity military men and women you know when I was considering joining the military you couldn't join the Air Force if you tripped acid more than three times yeah you're crazy if you did that Yeah. I don't know. There's probably some of us on this podcast. I might be crazy, but whatever. Yeah, I agree. You know, here's an interesting thing to think about. Do you think the relationship with fear in organized religions has changed over the last 30 years, 20 years? I think so. I think so because I remember growing up in the Bible Belt and growing up in everything. It was, especially before the internet, you know, you'd go to your services and all you would hear is the rapture, which is something that's really relevant in the Southeast.

But that's an idea that wasn't even cooked up until I think 1851. And, you know, it's one of those, I don't know where it came in at. It's next to the guys who dance with snakes and people who speak in tongues. If you never got a chance to see one of those services, they're a trip up into a view. But, you know, it was easier to expound fear onto people before there was. more information. And that's the thing. When you, when you create a doctor and you create an idea, you create a philosophy, and you're assuming that the flow of information is going to be just as regulated as it is today, 30 years from now, you're going to screw up your long game if that's,

if you have a long game on it. And I grew up around it. You know, it was finger shaking. You're going to go to hell. You know, when I was a kid, I remember I bought a Ouija board one time. And that was all hell broke loose, you know, burn the damn thing up, throw it in a creek, and do some weird ritual around it. I was like, come on, guys, it's Mattel. It's a fucking Mattel board. Like, I don't think it's really got any powers to it, but whatever, whatever, you know, wichi boards are bad. So I think it was just, it was easier to scare people into following a path that was easier to regulate. And when you are sitting there and your end-all goal is, I hate to use the term, sugar candy mountain, but that's what we're really talking about with a lot of these fear-based stuff

is sugar candy mountain. You know, okay, if you touch yourself too much or you do too much of this or you do too much of this, like God's just really sitting up there in heaven with a little scratch about being like, oh, Johnny touched himself a little too much this week, you know? That was the fear. That was, it was easy to regulate that. And then now you're having society change, you're having norms change, you're having what's acceptable change. And I think that's going to scare a lot of people because your methods of scaring people into following are diminishing day by day by day. I think that that is a profound statement that could be put out to almost any institutions

out there that your ability to scare people is diminishing day by day. Excuse me. Yeah. It's an interesting idea because I think on some level, having a close relationship with faith alienates fear. And I love the idea of any sort of religious structure or any sort of relationship that helps you get rid of fear because that's the one thing that seems to plague us, whether it's Satan or whether it is the fear of death. The idea of fear alone is something that can paralyze you. And I think that faith seems to be the antidote to fear. What do you think?

you know that's just one of those things it's anything that's based in fear only and that's based in a punitive action is just going to fall apart especially in a day and age where everything that has been illegal is getting celebrated on a federal level and that's kind of the thing around it i mean it used to be really easy when there was a clear-cut war on drugs there was a clear-cut war on terrorism that we had fucking five different wars on adjectives going at one time You know, because government hates adjectives, right? And it's just, it's, everything's changing so rapidly and so, and so around us. And it's, there's been so many, and my generation, I think it's not as crazy as it used to be just because we, you know, the gay rights movements. I mean, there were so many different movements that happened to the point that now you're looking at it and, you know, there's a whole new movement in the, in the sexual orientations. that wasn't even something we thought was going to come up 20 years ago. So things have just changed so rapidly, and societal norms are changing so rapidly,

that's probably hard for the old hierarchy of religious face to sit there and be like, well, how are we going to keep shitting on these people? Because we don't know what they're going to be doing next week. Yeah. Yeah, you know what? I was revisiting the site, the omnism site. You guys done a great job there. And it seems to me like it calls to so many artists.

Like there's such a, and maybe this is all fades, but it seems to me when I was looking at the site, like the call to artists of music or painting or, I don't know, it just seems to me to have a certain sort of song that sings out to the artist. Is that something that's intentional, or is that something I'm seeing there? Or is that just maybe the mindset of someone who thinks they're an artist?

So, you know, when you're looking at the human expression through art, that's one of the few things you're going to see someone do that, especially if they're doing it for, you know, free hand or they're just doing it to do it. You're seeing a direct expression of themselves internally and something that isn't broken down into words. Not everybody is a sales guy. Not everybody is good with their words. And a lot of people, you know, can't express themselves in a way, you know, successful. with their own words, but they can do it with art. You know, we're kind of in the point of we're saving money. We've got payments coming in.

We're going to be looking at having a location in Texas soon. And what we're going to be doing there is essentially a community arts center where people come in and they can express themselves really through art, through conversations and through all that because it's, I'll tell you, I do a weekly service for the church on Spotify now. It's one of those hard things to really articulate when you don't want to sound like a duchy cult leader. you know so it's you know we're working on that but more of what we're leaning towards is just human free expression and that's something that gets stifled a lot not just by churches not just by government

you know it could be by your peer group it could be by just your neighbors it could be by your own burdens of just adult life get stifled a lot but most people when they do something artistic they do it honestly they do it from the heart and that's kind of where the draws into it because you start looking at what ties people to a lot of religious feelings is artwork. You know, not every religion's cool with it. You know, some people call idolatry, but most people, you know, you go to most houses of worship, art. You go to most, you know, you go to something that means something to somebody.

They're going to have art there. There's something beautiful about the artistic expression. There's something that's so divine about it. That's why the church focuses on it. Because we can all sit down as a human being and look. at a piece of art and be like, hey, I appreciate that. You appreciate that. But everybody can mean something different to everybody else and we're all okay with it at that point. You know, you can look at a painting with a group of people and nobody has to agree that's what the painting

means, but we can all agree we like the painting. Yeah. It's kind of like omnism, you know, if God is art, you know. Yeah. We can all look at it and say, we appreciate it for what it is, and this is what it means to me. This is what it means to me. Yeah. That's really well said. I love that idea of art being the manifestation of the divine through you. It's a beautiful idea. And I think it's a true expression of beauty and love and commitment and hard work and all these things that make up the human condition can be expressed in a non-linguistic way. And when that's done, it really transfers to somebody else. Even though I paint you a picture that's done with my heart and I'm trying to convey a message, you may be able to decipher that message in a way I didn't even know it was possible or even

add on to it in a way. I love that idea. I love it. It's a beautiful idea. And I'm thankful to see an umbrella under which everybody can bring their beliefs and sit and be welcomed and contribute. That's why I love talking to you, man. And it's always a beautiful conversation, Steve. I love the insight.

I love that we can take it in any direction we want. And I'm thankful to get to know you and get to see your ideas being put forth out there. But before I let you go, man, what do you have coming up? What are you excited about? And what are you looking forward to? Well, I'll be honest. What are people find you too? Sorry.

Okay. Obviously go to omnisim. That's where we're going to posting everything up. I'd like to be able to give a definitive time frame on the physical location, not just quite yet. If you're on podcast, if you're on Spotify, look for life according to something. That's our weekly services that come out every Sunday. I try to curse less. I'm working on that.

But it's one of those things. Everybody in the church is like, that's how we know you're authentic guy. And, you know, there's a little bit more coming out on my creative side. I've got a blog going and everything. But I will tell anyone who's listening, please, if you decide to mess around with CBD, do your proper state paperwork first. it's a lot easier when you get state permission and don't ask for state forgiveness. Just trust me on that one.

That was a little bit of a ride. So that's kind of something that's a little bit on the past of it. And so it's, you know, I'm kind of working more towards getting back around to the normal things. It was just seriously, everybody obey your local laws and make sure you do your proper paperwork first. Well, it's beautiful. Steve, I love the authenticity and I love the message, man. All the links will be done on the show notes. People check it out.

Go to the site. check out Steve, check out the podcast and see if it resonates with you. Links will be down below. That's all we got for today. Steve, hung on a second. I'm going to talk to you, but to the friends and people out there, I love you. Have a beautiful day. And we'll talk to you again tomorrow.

Aloha.