Todd Bureau

Spoken in English. Their words, as they said them.

Grown, I tend to ask other people their stories because it's such a treasure to hear, but several people have tried to pin me down on mine.

So maybe I should share a bit of that. Well, having had the privilege of a very meaningful life, in places of choosing natural places of harsh, unyielding, but extreme beauty, Alaska being primary, I was able to choose a livelihood of deep meaning in deep beauty, and so that was both a livelihood and a lifestyle. Now, being a retired boy from that, one wishes to look around to see how those opportunities in life can be more for others to have meaning in their lives.

And initially, I spent a number of years advocating for psychedelics, giving talks in general audience situations, versing myself to what degree I could in the science, etcetera, to speak to, sort of, lay audiences, to both dispel the stigma to what degree, also to, in some ways, attenuate the euphoria, because what's being called the psychedelic renaissance was running away in in good ways, but also in ways of euphoric, like a panacea for all. So these were talks that ended with COVID, the inability to be out and about, but it was a privilege to have chosen an avenue that does, in my estimation, have a destined aid to humanity's maturation. Only one way, but I think in the longest terms an essential tool for greater understandings of what it is to be, and from that, can only be a pondering and an engagement with consciousness, which psychedelics are one avenue to explore and see what is there through that means. So, in this lovely stretch called COVID, when one doesn't get to do those things anymore, came to delve more deeply into the literature, mystical literature, the science that has been done in great rigorous fashion for more than one hundred and fifty years, and is ongoing now with great rigor, showing us how much more there is to being human, than most acknowledge to themselves, and we certainly don't, as a specie, to ourselves. So during COVID was a delicious time of immersion in how little we know of consciousness, but how defining it is for what we are, again, both as individuals and as a species. And during that crazy paradox of COVID, there was the ability to reach out to different organizations and become parts of circles that were contemplating these items. And so when COVID was over, I had the privilege to somewhat spontaneously head to a, the first in person event by a little organization called the Pari Center. And that's in a wee, medieval town, hilltop, beautiful little town, Pari in Italy. And showing up there again for the first in person event. But whimsical to say, we'll go fly across the world to be at this tiny tiny place. There was a lineup of folks presenting there in this small place and it's 30 or so people as attendees and six or seven folks of deep note that we're there to be, the folks that chat. And in this wonderful vessel similar somewhat to here where you're together eating meals and everything else, there's a very unique dynamic in a place like that of deep history, visual beauty, and then the depth of conversations that go with talking about some of the deeper questions of what it is to be human. And so that re engagement with that circle in a in person flesh to flesh environment, cause me in quite precipitous fashion before the end of the week of being there to consider purchasing a place there to be there. And so I did such and with great uncharacteristic precipitousness engaged in purchasing a place there to support this organization there called the Pari Center. And it's been a delight since to be in deep association with that organization for the depth of conversations that they both bring in, foster, and then in some ways foster elsewhere via web based offerings. And so, again, a rather crazy decision has had zero second thoughts, which is uncharacteristic. So there was a certain degree of delightful, destined, synchrony to be in a place that felt a both intellectual and spiritual home, and then for the last several years, be a portion of what they do, physically there and elsewhere.

Well, I'd say in looking at myself, it wasn't a moment, a road to Damascus moment, where a sudden unity experience or something like that. It was very thoroughly crediting psychedelics as a catalyst to understand that consciousness was more than my own. My desire to re engage with psychedelics was as a reasonably mature adult and come back to them because I had done so long ago grad school and saw a certain degree of import of what they had as a potential, but it was in a youthful fashion. So I had the privilege in, again, more mature years to try and intentionally go back that way and see what it was initially to with this idea to explore my personal psyche, because that's often what literature and everything else would say buzz, but it became pretty quickly apparent that I was experiencing realms that were not of my personal history or my personal psyche, and so that opened the door to pondering what more consciousness is, and that was the delightful rabbit hole of literature, conversation, communications, and correspondence, finding out to what degree that's knowable, provable, and verifiable through the means of mysticism, and the means of the rigor of science now to bring that home, that the two are not alien, the two dance together, and shall in greater fashion as time goes forward. So that put me on this chair here. But, an evolution of pulling away all the little supports to materialism, because it cannot stand. Because it is not what is. So, an evolution.