Episode 95 - Leo Marrs: Making Things That Matter

Follow, Listen, Rate & Review (thank you!)  in Apple Podcasts 
Subscribe & Listen in Spotify
Subscribe & Watch clips on Youtube
OR listen in your favourite podcast app 

About This Episode

What if the collapse of old systems — the patriarchy, relentless productivity, and hollow doing — is really the birth pangs of something necessary and beautiful? In this conversation, I sit down with Leo Marrs, a writer, creative strategist, experience designer, and the author of the upcoming The New Creator: Rise of the Mindful Artist in the New Meaning Economy.

Leo’s story begins in the wilds of Alaska and weaves through entrepreneurship, breathwork, altered states of consciousness, and a deep remembering that we are it — the universe expressing itself creatively through us.

In this episode, we explore:

• How the collapse of old systems can feel like existential fight-or-flight — and yet a creative rebirth.

• Leo’s spontaneous awakening that revealed the creative intelligence suffusing everything.

• The essential role of art, vision, and imagination in shaping futures worth living.

• How to engage with technology — including AI — without losing our humanity.

• Why presence might be our greatest creative “technology” yet.

• How to drop the striving and become the mindful artist you already are.

If you feel called to make things that truly matter, this conversation is for you.

Listen Now

Apple Podcasts: [listen here]
Spotify: [Lissten here]

Links & Resources

Connect with Leo Marrs: https://www.leomarrs.com

Leo’s upcoming book: The New Creator: Rise of the Mindful Artist in the New Meaning Economy (sign up on Leo’s site for updates)

Referenced in this episode:

• Integral Theory by Ken Wilber — https://integrallife.com/

• The Image of the Future by Fred Polak — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Polak

• Moga Dot (AI & ethics) 

• The Telepathy Tapes podcast — https://thetelepathytapes.com/ 

• Aphantasia resources — https://aphantasia.com

Timestamps

00:00 — Welcoming Leo and the collective moment we’re in
04:00 — Leo’s spontaneous awakening in the shower
12:00 — The power of image, vision, and art to shape the future
20:00 — Engaging with AI and collective intelligence mindfully
30:00 — Aphantasia, inner knowing, and hidden gifts of not seeing
42:00 — Why we must learn to trust uncertainty
50:00 — The billboard message: You’re it — becoming the mindful artist you already are

Go Deeper

Read my blog reflections on this episode inside Patreon

Get bonus episodes, reflections, and community connection: [Patreon]

Subscribe to the Creative Genius Newsletter here

If You Loved This Episode

Share it with a friend — it helps so much.

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts — your words help Creative Genius reach more people who need it.

Join our warm, growing community on Patreon for more bonus episodes, guided reflections, and ways to connect with others on this path.

Stay Connected

Follow me on Instagram: @kateshepherdcreative & @thecreativegeniuspodcast
Follow Leo: @theleomarrs
Reach out to me directly here

Thank you for listening — keep making things that matter.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

We're not here to just make things, but we're here to make things matter. I think
that the trick is develop a path to the moment and build that muscle.
When you get present, your thinking gets right because you're being with what is,
and that could be grief, pain, that could be things that are very real, but you're
being with what is so you're not adding suffering to it. All that we're looking for
is right here, sitting in this seat.
Hello there. Welcome back to the Creative Genius podcast. I'm your host, Kate
Shepard, and I am really thrilled that you're here listening in on this conversation
today. There is so much crazy chaos going on in the world today.
I walk through my days and weeks often with my heart breaking multiple times
throughout any given day with the enormity of what is going on. But I also notice
that there is an equal part of me that is rising in my heart that actually knows
with a certainty that it's hard to really describe that all of this chaos and all
of this breakdown is actually in service to something really magnificent that's
emerging. This podcast up to now has been about our creative journeys as individual
humans. And as I evolve and learn and grow and talk to all the amazing people that
we've had as guests on this podcast, I...
that many of us call creativity. The invitation is to come together to create the
next level of humanity. And I'm really, really excited about that, despite my
heartbreak about what's happening on the ground in the world. It's a big thing to
put your arms around and to walk through, but I know we can do it together and
I'm so grateful that you're here with me. This podcast has always been in service
to you, the growing army of humans, waking up to the knowing that we are here to
help birth this new version of humanity through our creativity, through our
consciousness and expanding our awareness of our own consciousness and through daring
to make things that matter. So today, I'm honored to share a conversation with Leo
Mars, a writer, creative strategist, experienced designer, and someone I'd call a
midwife for this new way of being we're all feeling our way into. Leo grew up in
the wilds of Alaska and somewhere between founding America's first breathwork studio
and writing "The New Creator, Rise of the Mindful Artist in the New Meaning
Economy." He has become a voice for what's possible when we remember what we really
are. In this episode, you'll hear Leo and I talking about what's crumbling,
patriarchy, old systems, old ways of doing, and what's being born in its place.
A humanity more connected, more conscious, more creative. We talk about the power of
vision and image, the medicine of letting go and how each of us really is it right
now if we can only remember to drop into the present moment. This is a conversation
for you if you feel called to be a part of this quiet revolution of making things
that matter. I hope you'll feel as nourished by this conversation as I did.
And if something in this episode moves you, please share it with a friend who might
need to hear it today too. And if you'd like to go deeper, I have so many bonus
episodes guided.
Creative Genius podcast. And finally, for me today, this is one of our last episodes
of this season. I will be going on break as I often do for the month of August.
I will leave you with some replays of some amazing moments from this year and from
past episodes to keep you company over the summer. I hope you use it as an
opportunity to go back and re -listen to your favorite episodes and re -listen to a
couple episodes that maybe you just really loved and you need to be reminded of
their wisdom. There are going to be a couple more episodes before we go. In the
meantime, here's my conversation with Leo Mars. Right now, it feels like such a time
of the collective is in this, it's more than fight -or -flight. It's like
existentially fight -or -flight, right? Like I think that there's this like really
heavy, scary energy happening as what isn't working is dying,
the patriarchy and all the things about that just were not working is collapsing.
There's a lot of pain and a lot of fear and a lot of chaos associated with that.
So, and I can see and I can feel and I'm sure you do too, it'd be interesting to
hear your perspective on it. From a really meta perspective, I'm so excited about
what's happening right now. 'Cause what's being born is amazing, but it's gonna hurt
a lot to get there. Just like childbirth, I have two children that I birthed
naturally, I know what that process is like, like it's terrifying and scary. Birthing
anything, a business, a child, whatever, never mind the new version of humanity. So
my intention for this conversation is for us to co -create something for the listener
that really helps them in this time. - That crisis,
I don't know if there's a way to avoid it, birth is death. One of the things that
I feel strongly about is the need for us,
our community, people who are, let's say, good people striving to live what might be
a spiritual life or a life with context and might be inclined to help bear that in
a humanity to engage technology. I feel like that's something that really needs to
be out in the open. I believe in the power of image and vision. And this is one
reason why I love art and manifesting of imagination so much is because there's some
great sociologists of the 20th century that talked about how art always exists at
the horizon of our now, and it's a pre -vision of what's next. And when our
collective visions are inspiring and plausible, they lead social development and
provide a kind of magnetic pull into a better future. So that's how I lean,
but I'm with you on that. I think the next five years are gonna be fucked up.
- Yeah, agreed. - Five to eight years, yeah. - I feel that I've been called to do
this work with Creative Genius for people who didn't wake up going, "Hey, I want to
be in service to the awakening of humanity." Like, I've intended that for many, for
two decades. But if that wasn't your intention, and you're just like, "Oh, no, here,
we're screached to a halt." My ordinary life that was going really well, relatively
speaking, I thought I could just deal with my own trauma and have a little neat
life. Now I'm helping humanity give birth to the next version of itself. What are
the resources for those people? Like, how do they find their community? How do they
find the things that help them really be in their bodies? Express what creativity is
trying to express through them, because it's creativity that's doing all of this.
When it's creativity, I'm talking about that God or the divine or cause. Yeah, that
energy that is alive, that in the inanimate object, because that's alive,
it's a living being, that thing. being that thing. If you don't have any context
for that and you're just suddenly here, you're like, "Oh my God, something has to
happen through me and I have to become a bigger channel to let it out. How do I
do that?" Why don't you tell me a little bit about who you are? You grew up in
Alaska.
What called you to be interested in a spiritual path, in a creative path? So,
since I was preteen, I was entrepreneurial.
When I was about 27 years old, dropped out of high school my senior year in my
final meeting with my guidance counselor, who'd known me since an infant, I asked
him point blank how much he made last year. And I had made something like $10 ,000
more than him. And he was telling me to go get a business degree. And I was like,
all love, but sayonara! When I was 25, I opened up a nightclub and essentially
award -winning four -star restaurant. My executive chef was Colorado's food and wine
magazine chef of the year. He was on my payroll. Always had an inkling towards, you
could say, beauty and truth quite a bit. I've always seen the divine in beauty and
a lot of that came through nature growing up in Alaska. Always been very creative
and design -y, design -built stuff. When I was 27, I slipped into an altered state
in the shower of all places. I feel like a cliche, but I was visiting my father
in Alaska for about a week, taking a break from the busy life and slipped into an
altered state. I now see it as a non -dual state. So basically when I became aware
of what was going on, I was almost like in a trance, staring through the shower
curtain, like almost like pulsing in front of the hour curtain, essentially, I didn't
have a thought in my mind, not any thought. So I didn't have a sense of locality.
Like it wasn't out of body. I was still looking through my eyes, but my sense of
self permeated my perspective. So beyond the walls of the house, beyond the
stratosphere of the earth. And and that really it was like, I don't know,
Richter 10 earthquake that just my life in my sense of reality to the ground. And
I would say like began the crumbling away of everything untrue in my life. So that
was a big kind of reckoning. I would call it like maybe an awakening or something
like that that really got me interested in the nature of reality, what's going on
here. - Okay, so there's a lot there.
So after that show works, how did you navigate that experience? Did it, how long
did it go on for. So that moment, that might have lasted three or four minutes.
I think I might have been there for 90 seconds before I started going, "Whoa,
what's going on here?" And as that inner dialogue started to engage,
I could feel the state diminish. It was like dilating. And it was so precious.
It felt as 'Cause all I had known prior to that moment was the bottom of the
deepest ocean. And I had somehow shot up and taken my first breath of air.
So it's very precious. And so I could feel the correlation between my awareness of
the state and the dilating of the state. And so I pulled back my awareness, went
back into the state, was there for maybe three or four minutes at the end of it,
seared it and burnt it into my brain. I said, "Please, never forget this is
possible in this life." And then finished my shower. Didn't really notice what had
happened, just very ordinary. Oh, I'm taking a shower, got out of the shower and I
was drying off. I noticed the towel against the calf of my leg. I went,
"Oh my God, that just happened." And I felt at the bathroom floor just weeping with
joy and excitement. - Yeah. - And one of, I resonate so much with what you're doing
because first of all, and as I unpacked that over the following days,
weeks, months, years, I knew immediately that whatever that was like,
it was the chimichanga. It was like, that's what Christ talked about. that's that is
in light, whatever that was. But what was unique was that of,
even though it was mostly felt like a state without qualities, it was like allness,
but at the same time, if there is, if you're connected to everything, then there's
nothing differentiating something from everything, so it's like allness and nothing,
everything and nothing, but there was this knowing, one of the only qualities was
this knowing of, I knew that I could just exhale a universe into existence.
So like omnipotence or something. And I just knew it, it was somatic. It wasn't in
my head, it was just like a wool. And so I've always had this tilt. I was like,
first of all, like enlightenment, whatever that is, isn't just relegated to some
special people out there. It happened to just this ordinary guy. But they think two
things. One, I think that I knew, like without mentalizing it,
I knew that enlightenment wasn't some kind of an end state. If anything,
it's a beginning state. Because of that sense of creativity, that sense of arrows,
it was like, this is just the beginning. So I very much connect with your
perspective and what I've learned about your view on, however you wanna say it,
that Godness, we're made of that Godness, we're made of that creative energy of the
universe. Yeah. And so - - And the yearning, I think about the yearning a lot 'cause
I think we're all yearning to,
I won't say we all are, but my experience, I've had this just yearning to be I'm
nervous to that, which you were just talking about. For many years in my life, I
had no sense of what I was yearning for. I just felt the yearning. I grav
articulated that it's the, that it's the, that creative, alive being that I already
am, that I'm yearning to not only remember that but be it in, and I think that's
one of our biggest struggles right now, especially in like late stage capitalism, is
that yearning comes out in like constantly ordering shit from Amazon and buying,
like we're trying this thing inside of us that actually is already there.
It is the thing that we ordered up, but we're also not, I think probably whatever
we did to create ourselves in this way, there's a wisdom that we don't walk around
in that state all the time because we couldn't be humans and do the amazing things
that we do when we're in this like oneness, right? You can't, it's not a state for
humanity. But I think we've all had, maybe not as dramatic as the example you just
shared with us, but I think we've all had little glimpses like that, invitations.
And I do feel that they change us. So I'm curious how when you look back to that
day and you re, I think of it as like re -entry, like you came back and now
you're out of the shower and you're hitting the road and you're going to your
business. How did that transform
the person part of you? What was the biggest change you'd say from that one?
It took me a lot of years to integrate that experience. Maybe six months after that
shower, I began to go into a very dark depression and was there for almost three
years. What was really challenging for me was without really any teachers or mentors,
grappling with how can I be, 'cause I don't agree with kind of this narrative of
nothing is real, everything is this. I don't know, we're having a conversation right
now, seems pretty real. So it triggered a very deep,
ultimately now it's been 15 years or so, almost more of a rigorous inquiry and like
really wanted to understand what the heck is going on. So, I went back to my life
after that. First, the day after this, I was Googling basically. I wish I could see
this Google search, but it's probably something like, you know, what the hell just
happened to me. I was grew up in an evangelical kind of cult vibe. So,
like, I'm very wary of ideologies and any form of like absolutism. But I found the
work of an American philosopher named Ken Wilber. Are you familiar with that? - Mm
-hmm, yeah. - Pintocal theory. Yep. - Yep. - So I found his work and he talks about
states and stages and so it's a beast of a meta theory. In his states and stages
conception, he says that basically states like the one in the shower or like the
ones that we all experience, those are ever present, you can think of them as
horizontal, like they exist before the personality, basically they're the sub -layer of
our consciousness. Buddha nature, Christ consciousness, whatever it is, these are a
part of you already. They're not something to achieve. I think this one reason why
they talk about realization, like self -realization, and it's like remembering what we
already are. In the states and stages conception, it says states are For present,
stages emerge essentially holarcically or in a sense linearly. You can experience a
state from any stage of development, but you will interpret it through the lens of
your stage. And so I could say, okay, I'm unfortunately inspired by dynamics. I'm at
this orange, modern, egocentric, strive -drive empirical stage, not very flattering. But
at least I know I'm not crazy. I went home to my venue and it was like St.
Patrick's Day, maybe six weeks later. I spent a month and a half greening the
venue. Like basically all of a sudden my lens had just expanded to include way more
than just me. So I spent six weeks re -engineering the menu and changing our sources
and basically becoming a green club and restaurant in a time when it wasn't cool.
It was like, it wasn't trendy. I didn't know of any other business doing it. My
staff were all like, all right, man. Like if you say so, I would say fundamentally
it shifted my sense of self from I am this personality, this body,
these businesses, these possessions to I am fundamentally,
And that's the fundamental reality, and this life of mine is an art piece,
if you will. I feel that way about life a lot. I even feel that way about
humanity. What we're creating, it's all an amazing art piece, or creation. This
episode is brought to you by my art, beautiful jewelry made with objects from nature
that bring you that feeling of wonder and aliveness you have when you're out in the
wild. I also make a very special series of necklaces called pebble bellies. These
are smooth dark stones that I gather with permission from a beach where the Orca
whales rub their bellies right up on these smooth dark stones. It's a part of their
culture and their tradition. These pieces are infused with magic. They look beautiful
layered together. I wear one for each of my children and I call it my little pod.
If you want to see what those look like then get yourself on the waiting list, I
only make a certain number of them every year, go to pebblebellies .com, also find
them on katecheppardcreative .com or onlovemorningmoon .com, where you'll also find all
of my nature jewelry. Sign up for each of my newsletters on those websites for
behind the scenes content, discounts that aren't available anywhere else, and it's a
really wonderful way for me to share with you some of the best things that I'm
discovering in my little corner of the world that pertain to creativity and beauty
and joy that I want to share with you. I also do an incredible giveaway every
month on both of my websites for a piece of my work, and it could be you. So
sign up for the newsletters while you're there.
- Let's go back to when you were 10 years old for a minute, before you were mowing
lawns. There is something at around 10, if you can go back, and it's almost like
that's the print that's in, the imprint that's in you of what you're here to bring
to the world. and already doing it at 10. And then you start to get these ideas
about I can operationalize it, I can, when peer pressure comes in and you start to
see yourself from the outside and you're self -critical and all these things. But I'm
curious, what was your thing when you were younger? What was it that you always
loved to do? What fascinated you? Were you always in trees? Were you looking at how
wheels worked? Were you a mechanical brain? What was the thing that really had your
attention around that age? - Interesting. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that too much.
I would say two things come to mind. One, I, and this might just be that I was
coming into kind of my rational stage of development as any human being does, but I
remember asking real questions of the elders around me, my dad's friends and mom's
friends, and real questions about the nature of reality, and almost having some
traumatizing experiences, like these questions undermined our Christian ideology.
So I was always very curious and independently minded in that way. But my parents
say that, and I do have memories of this, I've always, and what's interesting is
that I didn't start, I was basically learning my dad's apprentice from the age of
12 or 13, I started swinging a hammer. And so I've been building my entire life.
But I've always been very tuned into spaces, physical space. My dad says that I
would have my cousins over, for example, and they were just little hellions. And I
had my room and my toys and Legos and things just all dialed in my little world.
- Yeah. - And they would come in just like racket and I would just be heartbroken.
- Yeah. - Yeah, so I'm very tuned into space. And but I think that's one reason why
I've had three kind of brick and mortars so far and actually don't plan on opening
another retail than you ever again. - It's so hard. - It's so hard. Yeah,
and even it was really hard for me with this last go around. I had a the breath
studio in Venice, California and a gift shop. And I had just gotten to a point
where the LA Times had come in two weeks prior to COVID, they were doing a whole
feature, film crew, photographers, journalists.
That got, unfortunately, it didn't get published because of the news cycle. And then
I had to shut the businesses, but I held on for six months. I was right with my
landlord. I should have just done what everyone else did, but honestly, I got my
butt handed to me in that situation. - You mentioned at the top of our conversation
that you feel really strongly about visions and image and vision. And I wanted to
share with you a little bit why I don't have a good memory for certain things.
My mind's eyes blind, so I actually can't. I'm an artist. I've been an artist my
whole entire life. It's my whole world is about creating beauty with my hands and
feeling it. And I didn't know until about five years ago that you can actually
imagine thing and see them in your mind. I thought that everybody experienced the
world the way that I did, which is it's black when you close your eyes. There's
no, I don't have it in a narrator. I don't have sound in there. There's no image
in there. I'm gonna close my eyes. It's just nothing. And I thought that was just
like how it was to be a person. It was very traumatic for me actually at first to
find out that I was missing this like super power. I feel like to be able to
visualize something and then bring it into being. - Yeah. - Like I can't draw
something without actually looking at a reference image. I can't conjure stuff from
nowhere. - Why are there? - Yet, my sense of knowing,
but you were talking about that knowing earlier, of knowing I could breathe. Like I
have this sense of knowing that runs through me in a way that I don't think runs
through people who can visualize. I wanted to use that as a bridge to go back to
that thing that you said about feeling strongly about image. And I love that I've
heard other artists talk about almost like art being the tip of the arrow,
right? For what we're unfolding culturally, but also spiritually. And so I wanted you
to tell me more about your feelings about that. Oh man, I love that. Wow,
that's wild. I don't think I met someone with that. - It's apparently it's quite
rare, but I think as we discuss it, more people go, wait, I can't see either,
isn't that normal? It's not something you ever, I don't ever say to you like, hey,
what's your inner world? What is your inner landscape looking sound like? Like it
doesn't come up. And we're not mind readers yet. We're not telepathic. We're not
sharing that space yet. So it is a very private thing that I think is just
starting to come out now. But yeah, apparently it's a 1 % of the population. - Wow,
Incredible. What did they call it? You said my inner vision is blind? Yeah, it's
called aphantasia. Aphantasia. I've heard of that.
Wild. Wild. Are you seem to be doing all right?
It was three days of feeling like I got ripped off and then immediate realization
that it was such a gift. Like it's actually probably one of my greatest, I don't
know the word superpowers, but it is definitely a gift. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah.
So there is a... I want to say he was a Dutch sociologist named Fred Pollock,
and he wrote a book. It was a textbook. It's now long out of print, very hard to
find, called The Image of the Future.
And My inclination is that's a strong place for me. If I have a superpower,
it's probably in a way diametric to your superpower because it's something to do
with prayer, but it's vision. Like I can see a future and I can feel it.
And it's always beautiful, true and good. It's utopia. I can feel it in the cells
of my body and almost like commander in to feel it into existence,
like wizardy. And that's something that's always been very active, my imagination, my
vision, inner vision. So when I came across the work of Fred Pollock, I was really
excited because he's an academic sociologist and he writes a lot about the vision
and the image. He says, and I'm paraphrasing in this book, he says, "Art always
contains a pre -vision of that which is not yet. Accentrically located on the
periphery of the times, art contains the heartbeat of the future.
Whether that's objective vision where we're actually seeing something in real life or
a picture of an apple, or we're internally imagining something visionary, there's
something, and I see it as like a sense in a way and like you can see a picture
of an apple or an apple tree and you can simulate the taste of an apple, right?
And it has a kind of like a top -down effect on some of our other sensing and I
think there's something, I forget what the data is but like the amount of our brain
mass that is connected to facilitating imagery is just crazy. It's like way outsized
to our other senses And that makes sense for survival and seeing threats on the
horizon in our evolutionary path. He also says in that book, "When the dominant
images of a society are anticipatory, they lead social development and provide
direction for social change. They have, as it were, a magnetic pull towards the
future." So imagine if on the topic of the headlines these days, A .I., what if the
Terminator series had never been made. We'd be thinking about it probably quite a
bit differently and that's the power of the image. So I think it's really, for me,
it's really important on that, that topic. It's important that people in our
community, people like you and I, people who are seeking to, let's say, make the
world a better place, live a life in alignment, participate with this life to our
fullest, are aware of our creative power through vision and imagination and
creativity, just right there in that ilk.
Yeah. We've been conditioned for hundreds, if not several thousand years to suppress
that and shove that down. It doesn't fit with the very masculine,
dominated rational mind way of operating and the patriarchal society, which is all
about control and dominion. So we're in this beautiful place of relearning,
remembering what we really are. But as that, if you've ever looked at a baby leaf
as it's unfolding, it's super wrinkly and weird and distorted, and it's not until it
fully gets to open. Oh, look at that. That's a beautiful whole leaf that is fully
functioning, and we're in this really crunched up weird. So I'm wondering, what would
you tell somebody who feels that sense of knowing that they have something to
contribute to the shared collective images that we're creating? But they feel,
for a number of reasons, because of all the limited beliefs, all the conditioning,
all of the trauma that we've experienced. And it's not your fault if you didn't
inherit confidence about creatively, like that was done to you. What would you tell
that person who's on this path right now about how to, I don't want to say wrangle
it, but it's almost like you've got this Mustang inside of you and you've got to
wait until it opens before you let it out. Otherwise something will get damaged.
What would you say to people who are listening to this going, "Yeah, I want to
express more, but yeah." - Yeah, I've thought about this quite a bit and definitely
quite a bit the last problem.
realizing the DNA of my soul, I realized at one point a few years ago that this
kind of like this personal ideology of always evolving, always becoming was on a
deep level, it was fortifying a belief that I wasn't enough as I am. And I would
wonder why can I slip into these almost super natural states where Leo is just on
fire. Like I'm in flow for like sometimes three weeks at a time. It's like, why? I
literally feel like I'm in a river and there's almost no friction. It's just like
in life, it's just... And what I've come to see is that those moments have always
been moments when I'm not living in the past or the future. I'm like fully planted
in the moment. And for the longest time, I'd be like, I'd slip into those states
and I'd be like, man, who is this eloquent, intelligent, funny, charismatic,
compassionate, deep listening, super intuitive human? Like, what the heck? Why,
like, why am I in hell the rest of the time? - Yeah, why does he go where?
- Yeah, and I came to realize that those are just moments when I'm really plopped
with my butt right in the center of the moment and And so it's become and now
particularly with the rise of I call it collective intelligence as opposed to
artificial intelligence But with the rise of these amplifying exponential technologies
That are essentially taking the doing out of our human doingness I See we're left
in a position where we're really for the first time get to step into our human
beingness, but not only for our own, let's say spirituality or a sense of a
lifefully lived, but I see these as kind of survival skills for the future in a
way. We already have models that have higher IQs than the smartest humans.
So we're pretty soon IQs really not gonna mean a whole lot 'cause you won't need
an IQ. You'll need what I playfully call like a PQ, like a presence quotient.
Oh, I love.
doing and remembering. It doesn't sound like you're particularly scared of what most
people call artificial intelligence. Yeah, I've been tracking it for a while. In
fact, just after that experience in the shower got me into basically primitive
technology. So I went really deep into the origins of let's say mankind and the
emergence of symbolic thought and ego and the Garden of Eden and language primitive
tools. So I don't see, let's say AI as any different from a spear or language or
fire. It's just a technology. So my biggest concern is these massively powerful
technologies in the hands of bad actors, but I think eventually the technology will
have worked that stuff out and it will, I see it being impossible to act in a way
that causes harm to the collective in probably eight years or so, like theft and
burglary and murder and these things are gonna be very hard to get away with. And
including like one of the things that I really appreciate from some of the highest
levels, Mogadot, Are you familiar with Mogadot? No. He's an ex -Google executive. He's
written a bunch of books. And I used to not really like him because he was much
more doomer. But he's really smart. Very a big voice in the field of AI.
He's recently reflected something that we acknowledge in integral theory. And he says
with intelligence just naturally comes consideration. And with consideration is
compassion. I used to have a spiritual teacher. But one of the questions people
would get up and ask him a lot was like, "I'm too scared to let go. I find
myself at that precipice and there's invitation there to fall in and do the thing.
And I don't want to because I'm scared of how will I be able to live my life?
How will I be able to mother my kids or go to my job?" And he would always kind
of laugh and be like, "No, when you wake up, you're just going to be more of what
you already were. You're not going to be less of, it's not going to take over and
destroy you, it's not this like destructive force. And I felt that way a little bit
when you were saying that about AI, it's almost like it can help us to express,
or it will just help us to express more of what we are. And the reality about
humans in this iteration of us is that we are actually not all good.
And that's also really important. That's actually why we can feel and experience.
And if it was all this monotonous homogeneous experience, like where everything,
there was no texture in life, you wouldn't feel anything, you'd be lost in the
void. You know, when like five or six people tell you about something in a very
short period of time, and you're like, okay, I guess I better go and look into
what that is. For the last two months, at least once a week, someone has asked me
if I've heard the telepathy tapes. Have you heard the telepathy tapes? I am not, at
all. It's this podcast series, this woman who dove into studying non -verbal primarily
autistics whose parents, parents, and particularly mothers, reported ability for them
to telepathically communicate with their children. So mostly their children are able
to read their mother's minds. And these children are sometimes in their 20s and
beyond, and all their lives, they were just dismissed as having rudimentary, like no
intelligence, teaching them kindergarten stuff, because there was no way of
communicating with them. They were nonverbal, and a lot of the time, physically, they
were very jarring. But so they're uncovering many stories of these people who have
been reading their parents' minds all their lives and they're testing them with rigor
in scientific settings. And it's more than statistically significant. It's almost like
they can't get it wrong. These guys can't get it wrong. And It's wild.
It's really opening up my, I'm having this moment in my own life now where I'm
just like, "What is..." Like you said earlier, "What is going on here? How does
this work? And what are we? And how do I fit into this? And what am I not seeing
because of even my human lens that I've put on everything?" And one of the mothers
was saying to her, "These kids who've never met each other before meet,
they call it on the hill, And it's these nonverbal kids who go into this other
space and they talk to each other and they've become best friends and they know
each other. And then sometimes they meet in real life happenstance and it's truly,
it is wild. But this mom said something today. She said, you know, if a cell
phone, if I can send you a text message and it goes from here to there, why
couldn't the brain transmit? It's just energy. It's just that we'd be able to, but
I think in some ways this all coming back to AIC is a little window into how my
mind.
like a kind of like a shorthand version of it. - If I had an intuition that there
was something prior to let's say a big bang as it's so -called, then I would have
a different view on things. It seems like from, there's a certain containment that I
don't really spend a lot of my contemplative energy thinking outside of. Because it's
just some really big question marks out Yeah, this is like a little bit of physics,
but also a little bit of intuition is something like a holographic universe or
parallel universes potentially black holes or doorways to a big bang on the other
side with the universe because it all Sucks down into Theoretically boom and then
maybe spit out in the other direction potentially. I think that As much as I am I
adore meaning and meaning making. I think to a great degree, it's essential to
living in this universe as being a meaning maker. I think it's part of a full
existence. I think that it's something we make. So I don't think that meaning is,
I think that meaning is a way that humans grapple with context and being within
this incredible thing that's going on and I've resolved that like the idea that I
am this ultimate reality that many of the sages and enlightened ones say that's it
I like no it's definitely not it I don't care how famous you were or what books
you wrote that's not it part of it it's a part of it yeah so I think it's what
we make it in many ways and the universe becoming aware of itself through the
emergence of self -reflective awareness or reflexive awareness is an incredible
technology that's come online and allows us to make meaning and make art and
interact with the creation that we are. There's a lot of questions in there.
That's a big one. Yeah. What's your view on that? - I don't know and that's
actually one of the struggles that I've had I think the things that I've struggled
the most with in my life is that I want to know and I think I'm reconciling with
myself that the part of me that wants to know can never know if that perk can
just take a break because the part of me that that knows already knows like I'm
saying it to you right now and there's that part of me that's online right here in
this conversation that's "Yeah, you already know." But then the part of me that
wants to know is, "Okay, describe it." And the other part of me is, "It can't be,
that can't be done." Like you can't, but I guess human. And so sometimes I refer
to myself as, there's human Kate and there's like spiritual Kate. Kate wants to know
how
it works so that I can maybe game it better so that I can have a great life, so
that I can contribute my gifts in a way that's meaningful. I have a really good
heart. I really want to help. That's ever since I was a little girl. Like I've
always just wanted to be in service. I want people to feel loved. I love creating
beauty, not just for me, but also so that it now exists in the world. And I feel
like sometimes if I knew how it worked better, I could make more things better.
So for me sometimes that I've talked to guests who have, for example, really alive
ancestor practices where they will sit in meditation with their or speak to ghosts
or speak to other realms. And that's very real to them. Like it's their, I had a
guy on the show last year. His name is Lemarad Owens. He's got his degree in
Divinity from Harvard. He's a ordained llama. He's a serious spiritual person. And
he'll sit on his front porch and he leaves tobacco offerings and he talks to civil
war soldiers and he has this whole world that's super real to him and he's,
I don't have that. And so part of me is, why don't I, why don't I have that? And
I want to know what I can have. I guess that's why I want to understand more of
how it works so that I can understand my part of it. But I think what I'm coming
to as I discover things like aphantasia or listening to you rattle off that quote a
minute ago. I was like, how did he do that? I can't remember my own thought from
two minutes ago. Can you, I think we're all just different. I think that the secret
is like what you're saying is just to be completely rooted in this moment and being
like, what's here, not what's out there, not what's all possible, probably. What is
what we, like you said, is what we create and what we create. We get to create
with the tools that were given to us in our palette. - Yeah, that's beautiful. I
relate with that a lot. I think there's something to, this is new for me as of,
I don't know, maybe six or seven years, but part of that resolution within my body
mind around how can I be the I am the one and how can I be this human?
We've all heard you can't think your way out of a thought prison. And I think that
coming to, if you look at the universe and it's like the most like fundamental
patterns, it's like you have like oneness and then you have tunis,
you have this whole universe, right? So I think that's why paradox is so
fundamental, at least the way the human brain sees reality. I don't think it's,
I think that it is inherently paradoxical. And so that relief, like you were saying
of like, just so cool. Hey, maybe I can never know through this human brain,
but I can know through that, let's say, surrendering of what I am not on the
surface to get to that primary self, if you will. Well, I don't know if we're ever
gonna resolve that. In fact, I think if we do, through our artificial intelligence
and quantum computing, I think we might just discover that, yeah, turtle's all the
way down, right? As Ken says. - I think there's always more. Yeah, I think that's
it. And I think that's the whole point. And the relief actually comes from going,
okay, good, then I can never know. I can put my arms around it all and know it
all and own it all. And I went with girlfriends many years ago. We went to have
our tarot cards read by this old guy. He was probably a hundred back then. His
teeth were all weird and he was a little bit of a pervert and he used to sit in
this tea shop on Saturdays and read people's tarot cards. And he used to always say
really inappropriate things to us in between our readings, but he also had really,
he was connected to something. And I was asking him something. I think I guess I
must have asked him a bunch of times and he looked at me and he said, "The need
to understand is always about control." I was like, "Oh, I don't care. I'm a
talkative, traffic. I just want to." Yeah. And that has been one of those simple
things that has stayed with me since then. And then whenever I catch myself needing
to understand more, I always remind myself, "Oh, yeah, This is you can drop that
because you can't control it. You can't you're not in charge of the universe. You
are but you're all in yeah Yeah, and that seems to for me that speaks to the
delicate dance that we're or balance and say both words That we're being called into
right now the opportunity. We are so Because of the need to survive Because we need
that ego because I need to control things, we've overdeveloped that, if you will,
most of us, like back to your question earlier about getting to that, like how do
I step into my leadership in a bigger way? I think it's often about letting go of
control. - Yeah, nobody likes to hear that.
- Because that leads you right into uncertainty, right? - Yeah. - Which for a lot of
us, if we had traumatic childhoods or tumultuous upbringings, uncertainty is a very
unsafe place to be, but it's also the most creatively generative. Like that's where
you're gonna get the most out of whatever project, even if it's a little too big.
That, so I think we need to get better at being friends with uncertainty. Okay,
you have a book coming up. Tell us about the book. - Probably been writing this
book for 13 about 13 years now, but I needed a lot more life experience to write,
to really write this book. I started actually writing this after that shower
experience. But it's called "The New Creator, Rise of the Mindful Artist in the New
Meaning Economy."
I think it will end up being probably a zeitgeist -y book because things are moving
so fast, but it's looking at, there's a fundamental philosophy that we are all
creators, we're all creating our lives, but there's this shift underway where we're
moving from, in a sense, like the attention economy, where people are making millions
of dollars just by creating viral short form videos, but What comes after that in
an era in which we are being completely inundated and flooded with information,
with content, with product services, ideas?
The next phase after attention is gonna be meaning. It is going through
interpretation into a deeper layer of value. So it's not just enough to Make things
that catch our attention. We're moving into an age in which, you know We're not
here to just make things but we're here to make things matter and we'll see It's
gonna be wild because we may end up with a certain Wally kind of potential drink
red drink Which we're teetering on that a little bit. Oh my god. I feel like we're
already there. Yeah, the tiktok doom scroll Yeah, blue drink. I see it's a beautiful
time for us, particularly that are wanting to live a life connected to that deeper
core because we're stepping into a time in which that makes good business sense.
That's the only way to really separate the signal from the noise. So, yeah,
the new creator is about living life as art in this rapidly accelerating age of
amplification of the imagination through tech and the need to in a way like engage
in that almost as I hate to use the word like war of good and evil or battles
amongst principalities. So it's a battle cry in a way. It's a kind of a manifesto
battle cry call to arms, but also a book that empowers that creator within.
- What does your knowing tell you about where we're headed as a species or as
humanity? The next one year, two years, five years, 10 years, what are you feeling?
- So I'm definitely what would be considered a techno -optimist.
Technology has created all the abundance that surrounds us, right? Going back to tool
and language and fire and all the things. For me, I'm grateful to having the
integral lens 'cause I see things through the cosmological lens at the full zoom
out. And life has made it through over and over again.
Said that like single -celled life had overpopulated the earth, which is the body of
water, consumed all of its resources, reproduced to oblivion. There wasn't any more
real estate or food. And in a moment of apparent extinction,
life innovated photosynthesis. And so now we could take energy from the sun and this
whole golden age then ensued. So I have a lot of hope. I don't think humans are
gonna annihilate themselves. I don't think we're gonna see nuclear or I think that
the rise of these intelligent systems, you could say the collective intelligence is
going to ultimately marginalize these dictators. So I've been saying for a decade,
like by 2030, we're not gonna have representative democracy. My friends are like,
what? Like here we are, Abu Dhabi is adopting it. They're spending like $8 billion
to eliminate representative democracy by 2028. So they're and have AI running their
government. - That's wild, that is wild. I just have this feeling like,
and I refer to her as a she when I talk about the creator or that. I feel like
she watched for a couple thousand years and was like, "Okay, sweetheart, go, yes,
go, your thing." 'Cause I know what happens when you, and then now she's just like,
"No, okay, enough." And she's up, and we have to, it's time to destroy a bunch of
this stuff. And the next jump, make the next leap. I agree with you. Yeah. And it
seems indicative of the end of an era or of a modality when you have, we have
basically a senile human and then a clown like running a government. Is this a
joke? Is this really happening? It's just so obvious. If you wrote it, people would
criticize you for being too on the nose about it. Yeah. So I think as you were
saying, we were both kind of chatting about before recording, I you think the next
five to eight years are gonna be messy. - Yeah. - And even my most,
like the heroes in my world, the Peter Diamanduses and some of the great
entrepreneurs of today, like the most integrists entrepreneurs of today,
you don't hear them. And some of them are making billions of dollars. They're not
saying, okay, guys, come over and tax me. Even though I am fully employing these
technologies, not hiring people, laying people off and making more money. They're not
saying tax me first. So I do think we're gonna see probably five to eight years of
society falling apart. Next year we're gonna see unemployment on, it'll be probably
the top, one of the top headlines globally. Yeah, it's gonna be bumpy. But long
-term, 100%, like, not 100%, but 80 % utopia. Relative,
But utopia is always receding on the horizon, right? - Yeah, yeah. I'm just thinking
about as we walk through that experience and what we were saying earlier about co
-creating these visions, I personally feel like it's my responsibility to express my
art has never been bigger, has never loomed larger in my mind. When I wake up in
the morning And I just feel there's a color that's like the other day I woke up
and there's a color in watercolor called pains gray And I was like, I felt like I
needed to eat it I was like I need to go and like be with the pains gray today
and listening to those impulses I feel is more important now than ever before
because they like you said we don't get they don't get to make sense to us But we
do need to start to train ourselves to listen to a different source of information
Because the source we've been referencing so far as the rational mind. We're done
with that. We know that got us. We need to learn how to start referencing a
different part of ourselves. So one of the last question I asked in the show has
always been what I call the billboard question. And it's evolved a little bit over
time, but essentially what it is, if you had this magical billboard that was for
somebody who is feeling particularly oppressed by these limiting beliefs around
creativity limiting beliefs that the patriarchy and our system and all that all these
things that haven't worked for so long Have made them like I'm not creative. I
don't have anything good to offer What I have to say doesn't make sense. Oh, yeah,
all the things that keep us quiet and small but you had this opportunity to just
Drop this thing into their heart that could then like. Oh, yeah, help them. No
- What did you say? - I guess the billboard message would be very short because it's
a billboard, right? Like how much can you say? It'd be like, you're it. You're it,
like, stop. - Oh, I love that. - Stop trying to become something because it's futile,
14 billion years of evolution. I think that the trick is, and small text on that
billboard would say, develop a path to the moment and build that muscle.
Make that your number one overeating right, going to the gym, even thinking right.
Because when you get present, your thinking gets right because you're being with what
is. And that could be grief, pain, that could be things that are very real, but
you're being with what is, so you're not adding suffering to it. All that we're
looking for is right here sitting in this seat and we don't need to strive to
become.
I also love your it because it all that one of the things I heard with your it
was like tag your it. Yeah, you have to go and do some shit now.
Yeah, engage in the world. You got to express gotta let this thing move through you
and you know in the moment. Yeah. I like that. You're it. Yeah, you're it. I love
that because we've taken so many different ways. Thank you so much. You're a
delight. And this was a, I needed, I feel like I needed this conversation. It's
heartening to me to know that there are there are humans who also have this knowing
and this feeling. And it makes me feel less alone with some of this work, which
can sometimes feel really heavy and lonely. Yeah, I feel that. And thank you, Kate,
for having me. And you're doing incredible work, keep sharing the message. I love
what you're doing. - I hope listening to this conversation between Leo and I has
left you feeling both steadier and more curious about your own power to imagine,
to create, and to be fully here for what's unfolding. Remember,
you're it. You don't need to become anything else. You're the one you've been
waiting for. Keep listening to that small voice inside that wants to create beauty,
truth, new futures, and honor it however you can. Lean in,
listen more closely.
If this episode sparked something and you moved you in some way, I'd love to hear
about it. Send me a message. You can find all my contact information on Creative
.com, K -A -T -E -S -H -E -P -H -E -R -D Creative .com.
While you're there sign up for my newsletter, people tell me they really love it.
It's something I send out about every two weeks with thoughts and musings and
opportunities to connect. You can see some of my new artwork now and again. And if
you'd like to go even deeper than that, don't forget about all the bonus episodes,
guided meditations, sheets, activities, and powerful materials that I've created for
you to keep you company as you walk through this time, all that can be found over
on my Patreon, patreon .com /creativegeniuspodcast. Until next time, keep going and keep
making things that matter.
Make sure you're signed up for my newsletter. I pick a random person from my email
list once every month and send them an original piece of my artwork. It's one of
my favorite things to do. It takes a lot to put together this show. Please consider
supporting me to do it. You can visit patreon .com /creativegeniuspodcast to find out
more. And please keep my jewelry or paintings and especially gratitude birds which
keep selling out in mind next time you're looking for a treat for yourself or for
a loved one. You can find everything I've mentioned on katecheppardcreative .com. Thank
you for being here, for opening your heart and for listening. My wish and intention
for this show is that it reach into your heart and stir the beautiful thing that
lives in there. May you find and unleash your creative genius.