The Hum of Creativity: Finding Your Flow

What does it mean to create from a place of deep inner alignment? How do we tap into that sacred space where healing and inspiration meet?

This week, I’m joined by Brett Bevell — renowned Reiki Master Teacher, poet, performance artist, and author of Energy Healing for Everyone, Reiki for Spiritual Healing, and many more. Brett is a leader in the field of digital energy healing, having first introduced the concept in his 2013 book New Reiki Software for Divine Living. Today, his innovative healing work continues to reach a global audience through the Soulvana App by Mindvalley.  A trailblazer in energy healing and intuitive technology, Brett Bevell is the creator of the Reiki Divine Healing Oracle Deck, a powerful tool for self-discovery and spiritual alignment. 

In this soulful conversation, we explore the energetic connection between creativity and intuition. Brett shares wisdom from decades of energy work, poetry, and public performance — including insights from his work with Hollywood creatives and his viral NPR-featured poem America Needs A Buddhist President.

This episode is a beautiful invitation to tune inward, trust your flow, and transform your everyday life into a canvas of healing expression.

Find me on Instagram @ToHumisHuman and www.sonorouslight.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:07

Hello, friends. Thanks for coming back to another episode of To Hum is Human, the podcast where we explore the transformative power of tuning into our intuition to express our passionate purpose. I'm your host, Donna Bell, and I'm so excited to introduce today's guest. We will explore the hum of creativity. Finding Your Flow. As my next guest will show us, our inner wisdom is tied to creative expression. Brett Bevel is a poet and performance artist. He is author of America Needs a Woman President and America Needs a Buddhist President, a poem that initially aired nationwide on NPR's All Things Considered. Often compared to the late poet Allen Ginsberg, Brett has electrified audiences with around the world with his live readings. His poetry is featured in the anthology Chorus, a literary mixtape, and his work is also part of NPR's permanent website archives. Brett Bevel is also a Reiki master teacher and the author of several books, including Psychic Reiki, The Wizard's Guide to Energy Healing, The Reiki Magic Guide to Self-Attunement, and Reiki for Spiritual Healing. He is a leader in the field of energy healing apps, first exploring the concept back in 2013 through his book, New Reiki Software for Divine Living, and also now offering energy healing work through the Solvana app by Mindvalley. His latest work is the Reiki Divine Healing Card Deck published by US Games. Welcome, Brett.

SPEAKER_01: 1:57

Thank you. Thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_00: 1:59

Well, it's quite an honor. Your career is quite a kaleidoscope of creative output. I'm curious about your personal journey to where you are right now. At what age did you first feel the pull to write and what did you write about?

SPEAKER_01: 2:19

Yeah, I think for me, for writing probably started in like maybe late junior high, early high school. That's when I kind of found an interest in writing. mostly poetry, maybe some short stories. And then in college, I was really more focused on fiction. My undergraduate degree was in creative writing. And I had the aspiration to write the great American novel, which hasn't happened yet for me. And then after that, I shifted more into poetry. And that was very opening. The shift to poetry, I think, happened really as I was taking some acting classes in Hollywood. I was studying with this man named Eric Morris, and he was very powerful. He may still be teaching. I'm not sure. He's probably in his 90s. But he influenced some very major actors of our time. I think Jack Nicholson studied with him, Johnny Depp, Terry Garr. Oh, wow. I think Barbara Hershey did. Actually, in the same classes that I was in, the late Brandon Lee was often there. And anyway, Eric's really like, it felt like, to me, it felt like, his process was mystical, you know? And I think that's when it really kind of opened me up to this kind of crossover between the mystical and the creative. So he would teach these very powerful method acting techniques. And for those who aren't familiar with method acting, it's where you're really feeling the emotion on stage as opposed to pretending and acting it out. His philosophy always was, if you can't feel it in real life, there's no way you're going to be able to feel it on stage or in front of a camera. And so he had all these exercises basically used to kind of peel away those obstructions that we have to really feeling what's really inside of us. And there were even some therapists in the Los Angeles area that would come take his classes, not because they wanted to be actors, but because they wanted to learn his techniques and use them in their therapy sessions with their clients. And so it was really when I started studying with him that I really started to see the world in a more poetic way. And then things just kind of took off. But really, I think his work was a very strong influence for me. Really, that edge where kind of mysticism and creativity blend. I mean, one thing, and again, this just to kind of give a taste, one thing that he would teach were these very profound sense memory exercises. And, you know, sometimes in... enacting people might use the term sense memory in their idea. Like, oh, I'm imagining I'm drinking a cup of coffee when it's actually a glass of water or whatever. But what he would teach you how to do, like you would have this exercise where you would put like a pencil in front of you and you would ask a series of questions. Like, how long is the pencil? What color is the pencil? But as you asked each question, you were not answering with your mind. You would answer the question with your eyes, right? And then if you took that pen away and then you asked those same questions, a pen and pencil, if you ask that same questions, your eyes would answer. They would start to answer and you would start to see or I would start to see this ghostlike image of a pencil that was not in front of me start to appear. Right.

UNKNOWN: 5:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 5:41

So when I think of it like that, this is kind of stuff that like master yogis would be talking about. So the way that would be used in acting is like, let's say you're in a scene where you have to experience grief. And if you could recreate through that same process, the image of your dead beloved parent or whoever. literally seeing them in front of you, well, then it's gonna be easy for you to elicit that sense of grief on stage. So that's how he was using it as an acting point of view. But I just kept thinking, wow, this is just really magical that you can actually train your senses in such a profound way to elicit specific emotional states of awareness. And I actually think the reason I eventually left his class, I mean, I loved it, but I almost got kind of fed up like, wow, this is so magical. why, why do people even care about, you know, getting headshots and going out for auditions? Like, this is just so mind blowing on its own to me. It's like, this is a, this is a whole realm of mysticism. And so I couldn't put those, I could no longer bridge those two worlds of like, Oh, we have to go out for an audition now. And then it just seemed like, no, no, this is too. And so it kind of led me on my, my journey towards, you know, the mystical and creativity was always a part of that from that point forward, I think so.

SPEAKER_00: 6:54

What were you writing about back then when you were working with him, but also tapping into this part of yourself?

SPEAKER_01: 7:05

Mainly poetry. It was just kind of stream of consciousness poetry. I no longer have that poetry, unfortunately. It ended up in the back of a car that died in Boulder, Colorado many years ago. Everything I owned, I had a backpack. at that point. So it's in the trunk of some 69 Chevy that I lost a long, long time ago. But they were just different kind of stream of consciousness poems. Again, none of them have wound up with me. I don't have them anymore, so I can't recite them or anything, but they were definitely opening me up into a very creative space, I think.

SPEAKER_00: 7:41

Well, they're going on their own personal journey through the back trunk of that Chevy. So I'm curious about your inspiration about writing America Needs a Woman President and America Needs a Buddhist President. Was there a particular state of mind or tapping into sort of the energetic space of what was happening in the world to bring these works out? I'll go

SPEAKER_01: 8:05

chronologically. So America Needs a Buddhist President was written first. And it was because I was considering going to Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. This is the same time I lost all my phones. I was considering going to grad school there for psychology. And while I was there, I also heard a beautiful poetry evening that involved Allen Ginsberg, Ann Waldman, the jazz musician Don Cherry, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It was this really brilliant evening of poetry at Naropa Institute. And I realized that that's really more what I want to be doing. I don't want to be a therapist so much. And so I withdrew my name from consideration. I mean, I honestly don't know if I would have been accepted anyway, because when they were doing the interview, there was me and one other younger woman there. It was a group interview. And everyone else on the interview was like... 40 or early 50s. And we were both, I think, in our late 20s. And they're seeing this real bit like, hey, you two don't really have enough experience to be, you know, going down this road. They didn't say it directly, but it was kind of my sense. But after watching this poetry performance, I also realized, even if they accepted me, I don't really want it. That's not what I want to do. And so at that point, I withdrew my name from consideration and then went to work at an outdoor ed center in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where I had worked previously. My car was no longer running. So that's why a lot of the poems and journals were left in the trunk. I didn't know what to do with the car, so I actually signed the title and I mailed it to Alan Ginsberg, care of Naropa Institute, thinking, oh, maybe he could pawn it or hawk it or something. I didn't know what to do with it. And so then I went to Yellow Springs, Ohio, and I was working at this place called Glen Helen Outdoor Education Center. And again, I had worked there before. And literally one afternoon, as I'm sitting in this beautiful old farmhouse that's in this nature preserve, so it's very serene. And, you know, at night you can hear the owls and stuff. And I'm literally just hearing the poem, like the poem is being written in some other place. aspect of the divine mind and i'm just hearing it like i i'm not having to put any effort into writing it i'm just hearing it like each stanza at a time and typing it down and so you know by the end of that afternoon the poem was there and pretty much pretty much in one shot and again i wasn't really in any effort to write it it was just appearing to me and i was writing it down so that was american needs a buddhist president that was in 1990. So it didn't actually air on NPR for another 10 years after that. Yeah, I did. Eventually, kind of fast forwarding things, I moved to San Francisco by 1995. And I think by 95 or 96, I was publishing it, self-publishing it. as a little kind of staple thing you would do at Kinko's with some illustrations from my dear friend, Evan Dodd, who did these really beautiful illustrations of the poem. And we sold it as a little self-published things out of City Lights Books in San Francisco. And it was selling. We weren't getting a huge amount of money for it, but we were selling copies on a regular basis. And then I did send it out to some publishers regularly. but not until after it landed on NPR. So the way it landed on NPR was I was in a graduate program at San Francisco State University for interdisciplinary art, so you could mix any two different mediums. And I was mixing poetry with performance and also recording. And so this one session that was about American Needs a Buddhist President, at one point I literally took the CD I threw it into a paper bag that was wrapped up with like some napkins and stuff, threw it into an envelope and sent it off to NPR just thinking, what the heck? Like, I don't know. And then I let it go and I totally forgot about it. And then one day I came home and I hear a voice message on my phone from Bob Boylan, who's the person who was in charge of NPR's All Things Considered, like, you know, the musical parts. And he's like, this is Bob Boylan, and we've been listening to your poem, and we'd really like to air it. We've been waiting. You know, one thing from the radio mindset is that we've really liked it since we got it, but we've been waiting for the right time where the length of the poem will fit into a segment at the right moment. Oh, that's

SPEAKER_00: 12:49

really funny.

SPEAKER_01: 12:51

And he's like, for today's segment, it will work. Do we have permission to go ahead? And I'm like, yes. So I called the backup. And then later that day, you know, him hearing my voice on NPR and also, you know, they wanted my contact information and stuff. And I'm also getting phone calls from people from around the U.S. wanting copies of the poem. And so then I thought, oh, I should send it out to a publisher. So it wasn't actually published as a poem until 2004. Again, this is a very long winded answer to your very simple question.

SPEAKER_00: 13:19

I love it. I love it. In

SPEAKER_01: 13:20

2004, by that time, I was working at Omega Institute. And a friend of mine named Paige Kitson, who also worked at Omega Institute, was a big fan of Lama Surya Das. She was taking one of his workshops. He's a meditation teacher. She was taking one of his workshops, and I happened to be maybe walking down the path, and she pointed to me, and she goes, oh, that's my friend Brett Bevel, and he wrote this book called America Needs a Buddhist President. And she was telling that to him because he's a Buddhist, a Buddhist meditation teacher. And Lama Surya Das said to her, Tell him next time that he should write that America needs a woman president. Right. So that was actually the inspiration. I have to credit where it's due. It was from Lama Surya Das. And then it's not that I just went home and immediately wrote the poem after hearing that comment from Lama Surya Das, but maybe it was a few months later, I happened to be taking a a workshop at Omega Institute with Alex Gray, Alex and Alison Gray, the artists. And it was mostly an art workshop, but because to me, all these methods all, you know, influence each other. I was actually also writing poetry a lot during that workshop. So everyone else has their ink and their pastels and stuff, and I'm sitting there with my pen and paper. And so then I basically wrote the poem while taking an Alex Gray workshop at Omega Institute. And for America Needs a Woman president was just thinking about how those divine archetypes, the divine feminine, would kind of alter what a leader would look like if they were really embracing that frame of mind. And so then I reached out to my friend Eben again. He's like, yes, let's illustrate it. And it was his idea. He's like, since we're talking about flipping the script of the power dime here, Why don't we make the image be not only a woman, but a woman of color? And I'm like, yes, Eben, you're dead on. Let's do it that way. And so it came out in 2007, published by Monkfish Publishing as an illustrated poem. So both books were published as short little illustrated poetry books. And so Monkfish published American as a Woman President in 2007. And it came out and it was... It was a total flop in terms of the sales of books. It was an interesting time because everybody knew at that point that Hillary Clinton was going to do her first bid for running for the White House in 2008. I'd actually even sent her a copy of the poem. She wanted nothing. I sent her several copies of the poem, and I never got any response. One of them was even hand-delivered to her by Iyanla Vanzant, and she never responded. So I'm like, okay, that's okay. Mm-hmm. And a lot of people were also confused because I was more of an Obama supporter at the time. It was image of a woman, but it was a woman of color. And so there was all this confusion and people wouldn't buy the poem. It seemed because like it seemed to be splitting things down the middle, you know? So the book itself was a complete financial flop. I actually had to repay part of the advance. It sold very poorly. It

SPEAKER_00: 16:33

wasn't quite time yet. Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 16:34

Yeah. Yeah. So that's a little history around those two poems and how they were written and stuff. You know, I still love both of them, you know, but the Buddhist president, I think, caught on a little bit more for whatever reason, even though I really hoped that the woman president would kind of break through, but it never quite has so far.

SPEAKER_00: 16:58

So far. Well, I feel like there might be a renaissance coming. Because it could, I hope so too. Now, I'd like to speak about your journey to Reiki because that now is a big part of your life. And you received your Reiki master initiation in 1995. So interesting that you're speaking about certain things around your life that were going on. What did you discover or how did you come into working with Reiki?

SPEAKER_01: 17:30

It's funny, you know, because we're talking about creativity, right? And the illustrator for both of my poems is Eben Dodd. He illustrated America Needs a Buddhist President. He illustrated America Needs a Woman President. We were roommates together for a period of time in New York City. And at one point, I had gone to the NYU Dental Center to have a wisdom tooth removed because I was too poor to go to a regular dentist. The student who was working on my mouth was very kind of arrogant and rough. And I probably looked like I'd been in a boxing match with Muhammad Ali after that event. I was in a lot of pain. I went home. And Evan was a massage therapist, but also a Reiki practitioner. He never really talked about Reiki. I had no idea what Reiki was. But when I went home, he offered to do some Reiki on me because he could see that I was in a lot of pain. literally when he put his hands on my face i just felt this connection to something bigger than him and bigger than me and bigger than the pain that i was experiencing it just allowed me thought that the pain went away 100 but it significantly reduced but more importantly there was this sense of like i knew that i was going to be okay i knew i was going to get through this this kind of sense of being held by the universe in a really profound way and so after that i wanted to learn more about reiki so i think maybe two weeks after that experience was when I got my first degree Reiki training from a woman named Elka Petra Palm, who I believe still teaches in New York City and was a member of the Reiki Alliance. And so, yeah, it was very kind of interesting, that connection. Again, creativity, it was through Eben that I got turned on to Reiki and Eben was a big part of my creative journey. And once I got into Reiki, it just really opened so many doors for me, not just creatively, but also in terms of my own journey, because I had been in therapy a lot, I had pretty, pretty horrific childhood. And so ever since college, I've been going to, you know, therapists, 12 step groups doing any kind of healing that I could, you know, access. And so what I noticed is when I got into energy healing, that that my, my own healing really massively accelerated. And in terms of my own sense of self confidence, my sense of being at peace with myself and with the world. It just was a rapid acceleration. And a lot of that, I think, is because with Reiki, as you know, you can send healing through time. So sometimes I think, and again, no disrespect to traditional therapy, it was very helpful and beneficial, but there's often this kind of very linear thing, talking about things in the past as though you can't change them. And what I found out with Reiki is not that you can change the past, but you can actually change the energetic signature of how the past is influencing the present. And once you change that signature in a profound way, those kind of traumas of the past are no longer holding you as their hostage. And so I think that's something that is really worth noting, that through energy healing, you can really shift those energetic ripples that are moving through time and space. And so for me, it was just such a huge boost in my own self-esteem, my sense of who I was that I was like, wow, I, you know, there was no turning back at that point. And so for me, it, it became also really a blending of that, that creative listening and also going, okay, this is what was taught to me traditionally, but how can we change that and make it more accessible or make it heal deeper? Because again, I was came from a very pretty deeply traumatic childhood. And so I was always looking like, how can I, how can I heal myself as deeply as possible to be done with this? I can get out with my life, right? I don't want to be going to healing circles all the time. You know, I want to live my life. And so I would literally experiment with the energies and just try things out that, that weren't talked about in traditional trainings, but which I found actually did, uh, And I did literally experiment, like, let me try this as a repeated experiment over and over again. And do I see results? And I would go, oh, yeah, you know, if I do this, it does work. None of my Reiki masters told me about it. They probably didn't even think about it, but it does work. So it must be valid. So let me put this into a book. And so that's when I first started writing my first books about Reiki, which were honoring the traditional, but also expanding into new territory.

SPEAKER_00: 21:54

Well, and for those who are listening who may not know what Reiki is or are not really familiar what Reiki is, how do you explain what is Reiki?

SPEAKER_01: 22:05

Yeah, so Reiki, the best way I can describe it in a way that I think is really accessible to everyone, you know, and also because my 10-year-old son really loves Star Wars, is if you think of the Force. But if you think of the Force as not with the dark side, but a force that's always used for healing. Right. And, you know, that it is that energy that kind of moves through all life and that binds everything together. And for me, I really see it as an expression of the divine. There's two ways you can interpret the Japanese kanji for Reiki. So Reiki does originate, at least most recently in history, in Japan through the late spiritual teacher Mikala Sui. And if you look at the Japanese kanji, so the Japanese writing, you can interpret it in one of two ways. It can either mean universal life force energy, which is the way most people interpret it. But you can also look at that same exact same kanji and you could interpret it as divine life force energy. And that's more the way I see it. Cause I really do believe there's an intelligence and a wisdom in the energy. And I do feel there's a consciousness there. I do feel like it's part of and coming from the divine. So that's how I interpret it. But either, you know, Either interpretation could be deemed as correct, but I really feel like it's coming from a divine place.

SPEAKER_00: 23:21

And well, and I know because of your experimentation with working with this energy and in a lot of ways, thinking outside of the box, like, you know, there are definitely certain precepts people follow. There are certain methods and ways in which they implement using Reiki in their lives. But you've taken it to another step. And if you could just tell us a little bit about how Reiki has influenced your own way of just thinking and being in the world and how this divine healing energy helps us in terms of creativity or just even the most mundane tasks.

SPEAKER_01: 24:06

So for me, one of the purposes for me writing the books that I do is to take Reiki out of just being something that you pay for in a session with a practitioner and it happens on a table or distantly, but where it really becomes more part of your life and part of your everyday living experience. And so the more you can bring that divine light into your life, into your lived experience, into your relationships, into your workplace, into your food, into your water, all that stuff, then I think it's just brightening the greater whole. So a lot of my books are just about ways to bring that light into your life in different ways. And I think that one of the beautiful things about Reiki, and again, we're talking about a lot of creativity here, is when I, again, was a big fan of Allen Ginsberg for a number of years. And I remember in one of the concerts, if you want to call it that, or performances that I went to, Witnessing him in the late 80s, early 90s, I remember him saying around writing, and I think maybe he was quoting his own Rinpoche teacher, Chingom Trungpa, was first thought, best thought, right? First thought, best thought. And so that always kind of applied. That makes sense when writing poetry, just not to censor and just let go. But I've always thought the same thing about energy healing. So if I'm doing a session and the thought pops in my head around, oh, try this. Well, then I don't question it. I just try it. Right. It's not going to hurt anybody with Reiki. If I if I try something, you know, because Reiki is always going to do no harm. Right. So it's not going to hurt anything if I try that. So I try it, and then usually most of the time if I try it and if I listen to that first thought, then the experience is a positive one. And what I've found is when I think of that concept and dig even deeper into it, I think when you're in that kind of energetic zone, whether it's through being in the zone of creativity or in that zone of doing Reiki, I think it takes you into this place where your consciousness starts to bleed into a place that I call working with divine imagination. And what I mean by divine imagination is that that first thought is not just coming from nowhere, right? There's some impetus. There's some guiding force that is putting that first thought into your awareness. In my mind, I think that guiding force is what I call divine imagination, that there's this place where your consciousness is kind of melding with divine consciousness and divine consciousness is now feeding you these possibilities like, oh, try this, do this. And so I think that works both as an artist or as a writer, but also as a healer. So a perfect example of that is in a modality that I teach. There's one that I channeled in that's called Magical Awakening. There's an aspect of that where you can work with elemental energies very easily. And one time I was teaching this to one of my students and she was doing a healing on me just to kind of demonstrate what she had learned. And at one point, she just, for whatever reason, listening to that divine imagination, decided to use the element of earth to send me the healing qualities of the volcanoes in Hawaii, right? Now, I was in Hawaii once when I was 16 years old for a week. So there was no reason, no rational reason for her to think, oh, wow, Brett really needs the energy of these volcanoes in Hawaii. But there was no rational, intellectual reason that should say, oh, this is what we're prescribing here. The thought popped in her head. She went with it. And it opened my heart in such an amazing way. And so that is how I like to work with energy healing in the sense that There'll be all these different energetic possibilities and something just is, again, I think it's being fed to me by the divine, that first thought, best thought, something pops in your head. And for me, in my mind, it's popping ahead for a very clear reason, because the divine is wanting you to follow this, right? And so when I'm doing energy healing, that's really my creative process. Something pops into my head, I listen to it. And again, with the modalities that I'm working with, there's nothing that would be... potentially harmful to anyone. So there's no reason not to listen to it. There's no reason not to at least try it out. And a lot of times I'll say to my students, they'll come up for me, like with different questions, like, Oh, well, what if you did X, Y, Z? And I'm like, play with it, try it. You know, yeah, you can ask me, but why don't you just try it and just, then you get in the practice of listening to your own impulses and then you try it and then you see what the result is.

SPEAKER_00: 29:04

Can you, you take us to the moment where, where the idea of creating the Reiki Divine Healing card deck came into your awareness. So that, again, that was

SPEAKER_01: 29:16

kind of another divine setup. So I was doing a healing in Mount Kisco, New York at a small healing center there. It was a group healing event. I think it was on a weekend, maybe a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. And so people would just, they would just pay to be there and to just lay down in the room and I would just be sending energy healing to everyone in the room simultaneously. And at the end of the event, a woman from the back walked up and came up to me and she goes, my name's Allison DeNicola and I work for US Games. Would you like to create a Reiki deck with us? And so it was really, it wasn't anything that I had to create any effort around. Now, I will say I had already created a healing deck, but it was based on my Magical Awakening energy healing system, which is not as well known. And it wasn't created through a major publisher. It was basically self-published with me and one of the other Magical Awakening teachers who created the visuals. So when I was given that opportunity from US Games, I said, well, I do have a deck that's already created, but it's not Reiki. And they were like, yeah, that other modality, nobody knows about it. So we really want a Reiki deck.

UNKNOWN: 30:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 30:28

And so then they gave me a list of potential artists that they recommended who they had worked with, with other decks that they do. And again, for those people who don't know, U.S. Games is the company that creates not all, but most of the tarot decks in the world that you see are created through U.S. Games. And so they have a wide list of artists and people that they've worked with. And so they gave me a list of people that they recommended. thought might be good, but they were also like, you know, hey, you've worked at Omega Institute, you know a lot of people. If there's somebody you know that you think would be better, you know, we can work with whatever. And so I was looking both at the artists that they recommended, and I was also thinking of different people that I knew through Omega Institute. And one of the people, a guy who used to work with me at Omega Institute named Ben Sheikowitz, and as I was looking at his work online, I realized, some of the concepts that I had for the cards already existed in paintings he had already created.

SPEAKER_00: 31:32

Oh my goodness. Wow. You

SPEAKER_01: 31:33

know, the deck, there's 44 cards in the deck and I would say maybe around, I'm guessing about seven or eight of those, those images were already in creation. He had already painted them. And so I'm like, okay. And I know him and I know how to work with him and we get along. And so lucky he's the guy. And so, you know, an interesting thing is one of, One of the cards that he had already created is a painting of a woman named Amina Eagle. And Amina Eagle, it's funny how all these things come full circle.

SPEAKER_00: 32:03

Amina

SPEAKER_01: 32:05

Eagle was part of the founding of Omega Institute. She had been around for many, many years. By the time Ben and I signed the agreement with US Games, she was probably in her late 80s, maybe early 90s even, I'm not sure. And it's funny, as we're talking about Allen Ginsberg, this all works full circle. had known the beats and in back in the in the late 50s early 60s because i remember one time at omega institute we were talking about uh there was a movie night in at a little art theater in reinbeck called upstate films and sometimes so mega we would take the staff there you know it's like a movie night and there was a movie about the the trial the censorship trial for howell the poem Howl from Ellen Ginsberg. And I remember asking Amina, like, hey, do you want to go to that movie where a bunch of us are going to go tonight? And she's like, why would I want to go to the movie when I was at the trial?

SPEAKER_00: 33:03

I'm like, oh,

SPEAKER_01: 33:05

yeah. Oh, okay. But anyway, I just find it interesting that we're talking about so many things full circle. So anyway, getting back to the deck, her face was, well, not only her face, but as a person, she just... was so sweet and kind and everyone just always thought of her as really embodying the sense of kindness. And so when looking at that card, I realized this card, you know, or looking at that painting, I realized this painting already embodies the Reiki precept of kindness. So that card's already there, right? Like all we need to do is take that image and, you know, there's the card, right? And just for today, I will be kind to every living thing. And so, again, thinking of synchronicities and everything, Amina was quite old at the time we signed that agreement. And I wanted to make sure we had permission to use her image, even though the painting was already created. I wanted to make sure she was okay with her image being in a deck. And so I messaged her on Facebook, like, hey, Ben and I just signed this agreement. We would love for your image to be a representative of this card. And I told her the specifics and she wrote back, yes, I would be honored to be part of the deck. And then two days later she passed away and moved on to the next realm. So I feel like everything was just kind of divinely set up and just kind of unfolded the way that it should. And what I think is different about this deck than other decks, even though it's published by the company that does many tarot decks, it's not so much a tarot deck. It's not about seeing the future or, I mean, you could try to use it that way and there might be some benefit, but it's really not designed to be that. But what it can do, and this is something that I think a lot of people have a hard time swallowing until they've actually experienced it, is that the cards themselves can actually send you energy healing. The cards themselves are all empowered to what is called the Reiki crystal, which is the foundation of the psychic Reiki work that I do. And a Reiki crystal is an energetic crystal, not a physical crystal, but it's an energetic crystal that would usually be empowered in a person in front of their heart chakra, but again i told you that i like to experiment and try things so for a number of years i realized you could actually empower inanimate objects with reiki or with reiki crystals and then even program them that's very specific functions so the deck each card each of the 44 cards has its own reiki crystal and each reiki crystal in that card in that image is programmed for a very specific function so for example the one that i was talking about with the media eagle the card is about the reiki precept of kindness The Reiki crystal that is in that card is designed that when you ask it to, it will bring you into this deep meditative space on that precept of kindness. So you're kind of in a place of deep reflection on how are you embodying that or how does that show up in your life? Other cards in the deck are designed to send Reiki, maybe do specific things. organs or organ systems or parts of the energy field like there's one card in there called chakra Reiki and the Reiki crystal that's in that card is programmed that upon a person's request it will send Reiki to their chakras or another card is programmed so it will send Reiki to their etheric body so you know again the 44 cards all have their own specific intention but they can actually send you energy healing and And I've had some really wonderful results working with this. And I would say the most profound one was during a live in-person experience that happened at Omega Institute last year. And again, for those who aren't familiar with Omega Institute, it's a beautiful holistic retreat center in Rhinebeck, New York. So Ben, who was the artist, Ben and I were doing a live in-person event at the Omega Institute in September of last year. It was just an evening event where we were talking about the deck and how we created it. And as part of that, we also did a healing on the audience. And in the audience, there were a number of people who just happened to be at Omega Institute that week who were veterans. So people who'd been through the horrors of war who were at Omega to help release that and heal that trauma and find tools to bring in that trauma. And it came back to me about a week later that the vets who were a big part of that audience that night were so excited. receptive to the work of that that the healing that night that they they got word back through their facilitator who informed the ceo of omega that that was their highlight that they really loved their healing experience with with with that deck which was basically me just pulling cards from the deck and asking each card, oh, please send this to everyone who's here in the audience tonight. So that's how the healing unfolded. But it was really moving to hear people who've kind of been through some of the toughest things you can experience, that they found value and that they could feel the shift that happened for them after working with the deck.

SPEAKER_00: 38:00

Well, I love the fact that you make Reiki so accessible to To everyone. Now, most people, they may ask, do I need to be attuned to Reiki to be able to receive this healing?

SPEAKER_01: 38:14

You don't need to be attuned to Reiki to receive Reiki healing, whether it's from another Reiki person or from the deck. And the even more interesting thing about the deck that I find is that you also don't need to be attuned to Reiki to use the deck to send healing. to others, right? But you could use that deck to send healing to a loved one. Obviously you'd want to have that person's permission, et cetera, but you can use the deck. And again, my hope is that people who get the deck will then be so enamored with the healing possibilities of Reiki that they will then want to go deeper and become attuned and use it in that way, but they don't have to. They can actually just ask the deck to send healing to someone themselves, their own life, and also to friends, family, loved ones. Again, I would just always make sure that you have people's consent, but it's a very powerful deck in that way.

SPEAKER_00: 39:08

It's interesting how hearing about your own personal journey, even all the way back to your mystical work in your acting career and sort of being able to visualize objects and the power within that visualization now coming in a way and knowing about the crystal aspect. of each card. It's just, it's just remarkable seeing how that has transformed over time. Now, if you were to think about your Reiki practice and what you've learned so far, is there something that you wish you had known earlier in terms of your creative career back then regarding this, trusting this intuition and this flow? Um,

SPEAKER_01: 39:56

I don't know. I mean, I certainly, I think sometimes I wish, wow, I wish I still had those journals that are in the back of that. Well,

SPEAKER_00: 40:02

yes.

SPEAKER_01: 40:04

You know, there's some times that I wish that I had certain pieces of writing that I had let go through because there was a period of time when I was traveling a lot, I would only travel with what I could carry with me. And sometimes I'd let things go in the process. But in terms of my journey, I don't know that there's anything that could change. Cause I think for me, a big part of the journey is when you reach that place where you realize that everything that's happened, including those things that you see as being maybe mistakes, that there's a perfection that exists in that as well. So even when I look at the horrific traumatic childhood I had, it's not that I'm wishing to have been other than that. I mean, not that I would say, oh yeah, why don't you go have a traumatic childhood? I'm not saying that, but I'm saying it is what it is and I accept it for what it is. And I wouldn't be who I am if it was something other than what it was. And so since I embrace who I am and I love who I am and I love my life, you know, if I was to go back and change X, Y, or Z in that equation of my history, well, then I wouldn't be the same person that I am. I wouldn't have learned the same lessons that I've learned. So I don't know that I could say that there's anything I would change necessarily, you know,

SPEAKER_00: 41:23

So true. So true. Well, Brett, what's next for you? Is there anything exciting on the horizon that you're particularly thrilled about?

SPEAKER_01: 41:33

I mean, I'm working on a book, you know, I talked about wanting to write the great American novel. Yes. Yes. And I have, I have over the years tried to write some more autobiographical pieces of fiction. And then I finally started to realize like maybe I, I was too focused on everything being so autobiographical and it never really came together as a story because good stories are usually where you condense things and change things around and make it happen more swiftly for the reader and stuff. So I am working on something that I would call fiction, but still based in the reality or the truths of what I've learned in my life. You know, will that end up being published? I have no idea, but it's something I'm working on right now.

SPEAKER_00: 42:22

You know, it's really not the product. It's really about the process, especially in creativity. I feel as an artist myself, I find that that is something that sort of propels us and keeps us going. You're clearly someone who has successfully worked in trusting the creative process as it guides you throughout your whole career. purpose in life. And the books, I'm really excited about this deck. I have it myself and have used it in many different ways. And I could attest to the incredible healing power that comes through them. And just the concept of something that is sort of an object that with intention or with asking or with its own inherent properties can provide healing and transformation in ways we could never have imagined. I mean, who, who had thought of that except for Brett Bevel? Who else would have thought of this idea? And, you know, I love also too, that you make Reiki so accessible to people because we can all use more healing in our world and our lives. And, you know, especially this, this deck, how do people, connect with you? How do people get their hands on this deck and your books?

SPEAKER_01: 43:44

Yeah, so my books are available at most booksellers, you know, whether you're you're somebody who orders online through Amazon or Barnes and Noble, or if you're somebody that wants to, you know, support your local bookstore, your local bookstore, even if your local bookstore doesn't have it, your local bookstore has a distributor. Otherwise, they wouldn't be in business as a local bookstore. So even if your local bookstore doesn't have it, you could always say, hey, I would like to get this deck or I'd like to get these books. Can you order them for me? So that's certainly a route that I always encourage people to support their local vendors. But if you want to order it online through Barnes& Noble or Amazon or some other online vendor, you could as well. And so they're available around the world. And especially the deck, again, which came out in August of last year. I love my books too, but there's something about the deck that I feel like it's still teaching me because when you have 44 healers, which is what the deck is, it's 44 healers. Now, yeah, you're telling those healers what to do, but that's 44 possibilities. And then when you amplify, when you do the math, what not only those 44 healers, but also the various combinations of when you're using different combinations of those 44 healers, that's a lot of potential healing.

SPEAKER_00: 44:58

I mean, really? Yeah. You're only limited by your own imagination if you think about using these cards.

SPEAKER_01: 45:07

Exactly. And so I would say, you know, right now my energy is a lot with making sure that those who are in need of healing, you know, yes, my books provide wonderful opportunities to train and learn. But if you just need the healing and you don't want to go down that other path, you know, I would say get the deck.

SPEAKER_00: 45:27

Or they can also learn from you online. Can you tell people about your website and the upcoming Reiki conference at Omega?

SPEAKER_01: 45:36

Yeah, yeah. So I have two websites. One is brettbevel.com, which has my in-person events listed there. And the other website is academyoflovenlight.us. And on academyoflovenlight.us, there are my online offerings. I usually do weekly healings. Also, there's some pre-recorded trainings that exist on academyoflovenlight.us for those who want to explore that. And the Reiki conference that you just mentioned is at Omega Institute. We have it each year this It's going to be the weekend of June 27th through 29th. I am presenting there. There's also a number of amazing other teachers there. William Rand, the founder of Holy Fire Reiki is there. Tina Zion, who does a lot of wonderful work with both mediumship and also just using Reiki for more intuitive purposes. She'll be teaching there some other amazing healers, Nicholas Pearson, who's going to be bringing in an aspect about working with Reiki and the compassion aspects of Kuan Yin. We have a wonderful sound healer, Felicia Bonanno. who always does an amazing sound healing as part of the event. And like I said, I'll be presenting there too. So I'm really looking forward to it. And again, it's the weekend of June 27th through 29th. So if people are interested, please, please come check it out. And the wonderful thing, even though it is a Reiki conference and the intention is certainly that most people there already have Reiki, even if somebody doesn't have Reiki, you can still come to that conference. You will As part of that conference, be empowered. It's not an in-depth training, but you would be empowered to psychic Reiki and learn how to use that to at least do a healing on yourself before the weekend is up.

SPEAKER_00: 47:22

It is not to be missed. I've been, and they are truly transformative. So thank you for sharing that, Brett. Brett Bevel, I just really appreciate you sharing your insight and your process. I've loved hearing about your story. There's so much to take from that. And, you know, I'm hoping someday someone's going to discover those books and put it online and saying, who do these belong to? Because I feel like... They're out there somewhere and they're wanting to come back to you. But anyway, I just really appreciate you joining us today and sharing your wisdom.

SPEAKER_01: 47:57

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. This has been fun to chat about this kind of weaving of creativity and energy healing. So thank you so much. It's been my pleasure.

SPEAKER_00: 48:08

Thanks so much for tuning in today. I'm so glad you spent this time with me. If something in this episode resonated, feel free to share it or pass it along to someone who might need that little spark. I'd also love to hear what came up for you. Send me a message or drop a comment on Instagram at tohumishuman. You can also find more episodes and updates at sonorouslight.com or on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, keep humming.