The Human Layer
The Human Layer is a podcast for those who refuse to be optimized, for the builders and breakers at the intersection of emergent technology, political resistance, and the fight for a positive-sum future.
The Human Layer
How Surrender, Synchronicity, And Frequency Shape A Life
Surrender isn’t giving up—it’s tuning in. We kick off Season Two with Pedro Senhorinha Silva, a pastor-poet-producer who lives at the crossroads of faith, technology, and creative mischief. Together we explore what happens when high tech outpaces high touch, and how presence, practice, and play bring us back to the true signal.
Connect with Pedro on LinkedIn.
We unpack why The Human Layer exists: because crypto, AI, and social platforms move fast, but humans still breathe at human speed. Crystal traces roots in African developer networks and early encrypted tools; Taylor wrestles with identity across alt-selves, agents, and digital twins. Pedro reframes religion as a pointer, not a prison—love people, love the creator, love yourself—and if your belief system doesn’t deepen that, it’s noise on the sideband. His metaphor from satellite comms captures it: get on the real frequency and life “auto-tracks”; drift on the edges and you lose the connection.
From there the conversation turns embodied. Yoga and tantra become nervous system literacy for an age of acceleration. We look at synchronicity and manifestation without the woo fog, through concrete stories: a screenplay imagined on a plane that later collides with real-world encounters; a racist slur transformed into a joyful doo-wop track built with AI and his daughters, turning rage into responsibility. Comedy’s math—tragedy plus time—becomes a method for alchemy: accept, attune, create.
If you’re navigating AI’s rise, crypto’s promise and pitfalls, or the everyday mess of being many selves online and off, this talk offers tools and language to stay human. We land on practical next steps: Unify’s focus on human flourishing over polarization, Higher Up Consulting’s framework for using your boxes without living in them, and a call to build tech that honors privacy, autonomy, and embodiment.
If this resonated, follow and share the show, leave a review, and pass the episode to someone who needs a reminder to tune to the true signal. Your thoughts and stories shape where we take this next.
Be sure to follow The Human Layer's signals on Substack to stay in the loop!
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Human Layer. We are kicking off season two. We took a hot minute there to kind of regroup and attempt fundraising, which was not successful, which is awesome. So we're just gonna bootstrap it. And now we are kicking off season two with Pedro. And I'm gonna hand the mic over to Taylor and let him run the show.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome. Thank you, Crystal, as always. Pedro, so good, good to see you, man. And thanks for making time. Uh I'll let you do your own intro, but I wanted to just sort of frame things up since we've uh crossed paths off and on. Uh uh Pedro Sanorinha, Silva, uh a quick and close friend, uh both in person, but I think uh by way of the universe deciding we should we should stay connected. Uh a pastor, a producer, a public speaker, a a poet, a project. I I realize that peas are running through your world, so you can probably fill in this list with others. I use peas to parent, partner. There we go. Uh so I'll let you do do your own intro, but I just wanted to uh as I was thinking about sort of the timing and when we connected, I realized it was really uh interesting and uh sort of uh what what felt to be uh timely in a way that I couldn't quite predict or understand, given kind of where I had landed with thinking about just uh religion and this zealotry that I'd seen come in and out of my life for better and worse. And um you I met you at a time when I was really having a hard time like taking into account the values that come from sort of organized religion or or you know uh any sort of uh more hardened uh theistic view or even just moral grounding, what people are running their life on. Like um, and I had discounted a lot and I I realized that like the exponential race of AI, um, this was also at a time when we were, you know, still dipping more into crypto and understanding sort of how that intersected with social collapse. A lot of the human layer stuff sort of surfaced out of a similar timeframe and realization that like the world's changing. So, all that to say, like um I hope we can kind of use this as a thread for me, who's not uh often very spiritual or religious, uh, but also have have kind of come to see the value and you as a person, uh, the timing at which you surfaced, and um, yeah, a realization that like my own thinking around what value can come from whether it's religion in the sense we understand it, or uh just sort of you know deeper grounding by way of something greater than ourselves, whatever, you know, whatever that looks like. You've put a lot more thought into this. Um, that's a bit rambly, but uh wanted that to be a threat, and then also just like uh this idea of manifestation and uh interesting, you know, timing and things that seem to come to be at the right time, whether we uh feel like we're in control of it or not. Um I know you're you're somebody that seems to tap into a different plane of reality when needed, and it's has served you certainly. Um so those are kind of just threads and themes, but want to turn it over to you. Uh whatever intro makes sense, and then and then we'll kind of dive in from there.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. Thanks for having me uh up here. And I know that it took a while for us to land, but I do believe that it's like perfect timing. It just always is. And as I said before, I don't know how perfect timing works, I just know that it does. Um and for me, you know, encountering you was also somewhat synchronistic because I was in a phase of transitioning from being a pastor uh full time and then just going out into the world and trying to uh facilitate spaces where people could connect with the deeper dimensions of who they are, but also to put it into practice. Um, because a lot of times faith communities on the upside um is the community part. You get to be around people who are intentional about um growth to some degree as they understand it. But then on the other side, uh faith communities can also make people feel like just showing up on a Sunday or a Saturday or Friday, whatever their community um holds worship services, is the work. They just come into the building is the work, or saying the magic words is the work. And I personally don't believe that and never have. Uh, and I've been in the church um all of my life. I was raised fundamentalist, um, evangelical, republican, all these things. And but I also held underneath that the undercurrent of all that is love people and love the creator and the love yourself. And if those things don't align, then something's off with the religion, you know, from my perspective. Because the religion isn't the thing, it's something that points you to the thing. And so if your religion isn't pointing you to the thing so that you can practice the thing, then your religion is doo-doo. You know, that's that's my and even the Bible says that. Um then uh I uh trust and I've learned to trust that there is some kind of underlying harmony in everything, and you see it in nature um all the time. And then humans, sometimes we tend to be uh so egotistical that we think that we exist outside of nature and that it's up to us to bend nature, shape nature, or make nature do something, but we are part of nature, and all of those same uh functions and harmonies and uh seeming crises, all those things are a part of the process of unfolding, and we see it in literally everything in nature. So I don't even understand why humans make up our stories that we make up about how we're outside of it because everything has it. Um so I try my best to remind myself that I'm a part of nature, and I'm I'm really influenced by a lot of different um encounters I've had with philosophies and people and relationships, and so I just try to stay open to that um natural way of connecting with people and being shaped and reshaped by encounter, and then it just brings up interesting people like yourself, and uh and so I'm just uh I'm very curious to see how this unfolds and what emerges out of our conversation. But I said a bunch of stuff, so I kind of want to turn a question to you to you two about um.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, he's flipping the script early. I like it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, your your your relationship with with synchronicity and and how even you all came together to create the human layer, which just the name alone is very important. Um, so I'm curious about you know how did the name human layer come about, and how did you all decide that to collapse time into this kind of uh this space for people to to connect and to reflect together?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that that's a great question. I'll I'll jump in with the name and then kick it over to you, Taylor. Um so the name actually started with a group in Africa um called Aya. Some some colleagues from my time at Consensus. And um, they were an organization that was looking for support and wanted to connect. So um yeah, it's it started with them. And they do some amazing um work on the ground in Ghana and Kenya and throughout Africa trying to educate um developers on Web3 and then place them in jobs throughout the West so they can make you know a sizable income and then find stability. And for me, their passion just the first meeting I had with them just like leapt off out of the Zoom into the room. I was like, oh my goodness. So we stayed close over the years, and then last summer, another colleague had mentioned the human layer in a podcast. And then I was like, all right, this thing needs to exist, it keeps coming back. And one of the reasons it matters to me so much, and I think also to Taylor as well, is there's such an integrity vacuum in crypto. And it's so tragic because the underlying technology does have the ability to support and collapse and transition, and it's just amazing tech. And the fact that we perpetually eliminate or or don't take into account the humans that are using technology to better their lives or or to do their mission is stunning to me. And that's not just a crypto thing, that is I we see it in AI, we see it in most tech. Um it's all about the tech, it's not about the humans using it, and that is stunning to me. So that's really the the genesis of this. And then Taylor, I was like, come on, Taylor, let's do a podcast.
SPEAKER_03:Nice.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I I wouldn't add much other than it it was also timing and uh the crystal, I was I was aware we had sort of been at edges, you know, never met directly, but was certainly, you know, you were on a short list of like even in a moniker in like C Street. I was like, this is somebody I know and respect. I've seen some of the writing. Um so I'd built a perception external, and then yeah, you had uh mentioned the crew at Aya, and I was still wrestling with like identity broadly, and the whole this would take another podcast, but um, you know, this idea of sort of standing on shoulders and giving credit to those that have come before taken is something that I've sort of embraced as a paying homage to like thing that we all take. It doesn't have to be if done well, um, it's a really beautiful thing. Uh you know, so this in many ways was taken from uh those those guys at Aya and what they're building. So um it just mapped so well the timing of it. Um and and also, yeah, I was like, I don't have uh a ton of time and energy or the expertise in some of the journalistic background that Crystal came with, but I, you know, had a sort of separate but intersecting network, and so the pieces came together, and yeah, it's been just uh awesome and yeah, could could do this every day all day uh if there weren't other opera, you know, other things we've got to other bills to pay. But um that's cool. So a little more synchronicity, honestly.
SPEAKER_00:Uh yeah. So yeah, yeah. Thanks for the background. So like here's the interesting thing that I've been witnessing or paying it kind of paying attention to is like uh I don't know if you've ever read that book called Mega Trends by John Naisbitt. It's uh it's uh I don't forget how many years. I read it probably around like maybe 2011 or something like that. Um, but essentially um he talks about all these like mega trends that happen in the world, but one of the things he talked about was high tech, and he said that um whenever there's a high tech, um high tech goes up, high touch has to go up as well. And so when that doesn't happen, you kind of set yourself up for a crisis, right? And we f see that like the exponential growth of technology, the internet, like in all of our lifetimes, I'm assuming, I know for sure mine went from like rotary phones to what we have now in this one lifetime, right? And like our my kids can't imagine that world that we came from, and our grandparents can't imagine the world, or great grandparents couldn't imagine the world that we're in right now. The high-tech acceleration has transformed things in a way that um humans I don't know if we're capable of um processing uh because it collapsed time when it happens. You know, um the speed and all those things are something that I don't think our brains are pro are conditioned to process because most of the things for thousands and thousands of years were at the speed of humanity. You know, you could accelerate something with like things that were already naturally flowing, like water, wind, um, you know, gravity, a few things that were already a part of nature that we had to kind of lean into whenever we created things um or created uh innovation because we had to be very intimate with our environment and the environmental laws that were in place. And then with technology and uh being able to digitize and do all these other things, you can you could create these, they're still following nature's laws, but at a rate that the human mind can't fathom. And so we jump into it not really understanding its impact on us, and then our old processes that are really grounded in the earth interact with this new technology, and then we become unconsciously extensions of the technology instead of people who are able to work with the technology, the technology ends up working us um towards a certain end. And it's not like the technology has nefarious means, there's a few people who know that we don't know how we function, and then they and so they use that, you know. And I've been in this interesting intersection of technology and spirituality most of my life because I was always on the spiritual path, but I was um a satellite communications technician when I first went into the military, and through that I learned a lot about frequencies and how things work and how communications work as on the you know mechanical level, but the mechanical level is only an extension of the processes that already exist as humans. Like a satellite, a transmitter is a mouth and a receiver is an ear, you know, and we just expanded on those using our awarenesses and math and all stuff to create an enhanced expression of those things. But most of our technologies just mirror naturally occurring things that are then enhanced by whatever knowledge we've acquired, right? But we haven't adapted mentally, and so we use those expansive technologies to do the same damage that we did before we before we had those technologies, and that's something that I've been witnessing and it's navig it's kind of contributed to my crazy navigation of my career. Um, because I've tried to stay a whole person, has been the thing. I don't want to break myself into parts, so and I don't want to break other people into parts. So I've been um really mindful of that. And with you all being in the crypto space, I'd love to hear a little bit more about you know, maybe your frustrations with what crypto and the blockchain was capable is capable of and how we're using it. Because I have my thoughts on it, but um, I would love to hear more about that from y'all.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that this is a good segue. I mean, I I think the first place I wanted to land was just identity. Uh and to me from the outside, you came with this while I mean, we contain multitudes, this is like the human condition, this is not a Pedro condition, but right, I think you you you uniquely have traversed quite a range uh of sort of professional uh you know lives or selves. So uh um, and I'm curious actually, what Crystal, you're you're maybe even deeper in AI than than sort of crypto. I don't know how you I mean that they intersect, obviously. Um so uh I mean I have, I guess, an answer of I of how I manage it and and why crypto is important, because I do think it does allow for an expression of uh a deeper layered version of all of us, whether that's through you know NFTs and PFPs and being able to sort of have these abstraction layers technically or you know, just the anonymous nature of you know cryptography and it allowing security and privacy. And but that also it's it's funny. I wanted to tee up unify.org too in some of your work. Maybe let's make sure we get there before we're done, um, so you can make folks aware of some of the formal places to connect. But like um that seems at odd in some ways, that fragmentation and the like uh you know, allowing the variety of identities and selves that ultimately we're all made of, like filter back into what we do day-to-day, as opposed to pulling that together into a cohesive Taylor, a cohesive Pedro, a cohesive Crystal. Like um, or you know, now we've got these agents and like m twins, you know, that are more and more really just quite literal duplications of us in some ways. Um, Crystal, curious to hear your thoughts. But yeah, this is a good uh segue into I would just love to hear like how you think about all the silva selves that ultimately do live, you know, within one human being, and how you lean on intuition and manifestation and all of that to like allow those things to all exist in fragment or to you know pull them back into one uh when it makes sense. I don't know, Crystal, go for it first, but yeah, we could I know we could sit here for the entire hour on this, but I'll go for it and then I think I might be able to tie it back into that question you just so we'll see if I can do that though.
SPEAKER_02:My coffee might be kicking in right now. Um I came into crypto around, well, it was on my radar in 20, like right after Occupy, right when it started, when Bitcoin basically surfaced. And then in 2012, I ended up using uh tech for encrypted comms with some friends who were journalists in uh authoritarian regimes. And they were using Gmail. And I was like, stop. So I found this thing called BitMessage, and nobody could figure it out except for me, and I was terrible at it. So um, but it it ran on a blockchain. So then I was like, oh, this is a platform, and I've always been into alternative economics and ways to spurt power. And I I grew up in the South in a um in a Christian home and uh I was Episcopalian, so we were lazy Catholics, but um, and my mom is so excited that I have a pastor on today. She's like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to listen. So my mom was a church secretary, and um, so I grew up in a in a house that we went to church, um, Bible study, youth group, all of it. But religion was just um, it was never forced on us. We when we were old enough to decide, my parents were like, it's it's your choice. And I chose to leave because I found it very stifling. And again, it's the South in the late 80s and early 90s, um, and very judgmental. And I didn't have a spiritual path or religion. So I explored Buddhism, yoga, stuff like that. Um, anyway, so that's always kind of been in the background too. Um, you know, that spiritual grounding, which we need in this technological, you know, accelerated world. So, anyway, in um 2015-ish, I found a hackerspace and we began exploring, um, we explored all kinds of tech. And I went there for privacy, um, really to understand and to teach journalists and try to be an advocate for free speech and for protecting yourself. And that is what crypto does for me. Um in its in its purest form, you can all you can create alternative economics. If it all collapses tomorrow, we can create an economic system that's hyperlocal that we can keep doing peer-to-peer value exchange. We can also, if we're really good, and and I am not, but some of the cryptographic cryptographers in our hackerspace were, they could be completely anonymous and use this technology to do whatever mission they are on. So that to me has always been the north star with it. All of the other stuff is fascinating. Um, I watching it evolve and watching it um get appropriated by corporations and governments and you know political money laundering coins. It's it's this perpetual cognitive dissonance that requires and I I'm a community builder in crypto, which is just bizarre. It's that's what I've always done because I understand humans. Um so anyway, it's I I went back to school in um four years ago, five years ago, to study. I'd studied journalism. Now I needed a different skill set. So I went back to study yoga and got a degree, uh an advanced degree in um, I specialize in tantric yoga. And that allowed me to have a different perspective on where we're going in this collapsed journey, but also a different skill set to what you were talking about earlier. In this acceleration, it's not gonna matter if I know how to make a Bitcoin transaction or you know, run a podcast. It's gonna matter if I can control my nervous system when the shit's flying outside and everything's collapsing. Can I ground myself and the people around me in some sort of practice, spiritual or just presence? And then we can move forward as a community to just get through whatever shit show we're rolling up into. So I'll kick it back to you, Pedro. I don't know if I if I teed up Taylor's question there. Um, but that's kind of the the arc for me is is and there's so much, I have seen so much crime and so much just common, unbelievable actions from the people I've worked with in this space. Do I've seen amazing humans, met brilliant people, but I have also seen the other side and they coexist. And that's where I also turn to the spiritual practice. I'm like, all right, you know, Kali or karma is gonna take care of this, but uh, do I need to accelerate that right now?
SPEAKER_01:Like, you know, maybe the fracturing of identities is part of the problem to loop it back through. I I don't know. I this is to me is an open question. I'd be curious, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so here's an interesting thing. I sometimes think about this, and especially when it comes to Bitcoin. So one of my a thousand careers, I was a um a corporate recruiter, and so I was calling into different folks, um, recruiting for some role, I can't remember which. But this guy said to me, Oh, in a couple years, I'm not gonna need money. So I'm not thinking about a job right now. I'm gonna be a Bitcoin billionaire. And then I said, A what? And he said, a Bitcoin billionaire. And this was like maybe 20, 2009, maybe or 10, I'm not sure. It was early. And he sent me the Satoshi paper. And so I read it, came home, told my wife, the whole world's about to get awesome. And she, and I was believing it. She was like, Why? And I said, Man, there's this thing, there's Bitcoin. And there was one, like, only I found one documentary about it. Um, and I and I watched the documentary, and I was like, this is gonna be the thing. And I but back then there was no um places where you can buy uh there wasn't like Coinbase and stuff like that. So I tried to figure out how to get some, and this guy told me, like, you know, send me 300 bucks and I'll um da-da-da-da. And I was like, uh, I don't know about that, you know, and I'll give you a wallet and all this other stuff. And so um I uh I was like, this is interesting. So at any rate, I've often wondered why, because I knew about it so early. Why didn't uh I end up becoming like a crypto millionaire or billionaire or something like that? Because I was telling so many people about it, then I ended up becoming friends with this guy when it when you first started to be able to buy it, um, and he bought some at like 50 bucks, and then when it got to 2000, he was sold it all and was like, it'll never get past this. And so, so that's why I was around hovering around this, and I kept thinking, okay, I have to get in on this, but the thing that I read from the paper, I was seeing the opposite of it happening, and my inner compass would not let me participate. And I was like, this is so weird because I know psychologically I can buy this and it's gonna do what it's gonna do. Humans are gonna do what they're gonna do to it, but I want it to be what I read in the paper, you know, and I wanted it to be a way of creating multiple economies because we already exist in multiple economies, and then we have this illusion of this like fake economy that we think is the real economy, which is really a way of managing lack. It's like a that's all it is. It's there's this illusion of not enough, and then people buy into this illusion of not enough, and then we track not enoughness and and then try to distribute just enough to survive to people in a world that's actually extremely abundant, and like it really uh I don't know if you've ever read any Buck Mr. Fuller or study his stuff, but Buck Mr. Fuller, way before crypto, way before all this stuff, said we had everything we needed so that every human being could live with a good standard of living. And I so I have I'm deeply influenced by um Bucky, and the guy who um I knew that bought the crypto at like 50 bucks was this guy named Marshall Thurber, who was an acolyte of Buck Mr. Fuller, who's like a um uh kind of like a mentor to me. So I was in this space, but I my gut, my body, and everything was like, this is not going the direction it's supposed to be going, and I can't get myself to participate, you know.
SPEAKER_01:And it was Is that is that you or is that something outside of you that that that how where would you say that that is coming from?
SPEAKER_00:I mean this is intuition, this is the gut feeling, the I would say it's intuition, but I also think it's nature. Um, I think that um I don't I it's kind of interesting, it's kind of weird to kind of describe, but um how would I talk about this? It's like I would say it's like vibrations, right? So, like when I was a satellite communications person, like I said, you know, like if you want to uh tune into a certain signal, you have to tune into this frequency so that you can pick up what's being transmitted, right? And I felt like what the initial intent of crypto as I understood it uh in the blockchain, the it was transmitted on a certain frequency, but people weren't catching it. And so somebody made a basically like a fake signal and a fake version and said, Hey, this is it, and then everybody tuned into this like false one. And I was like, that's like I don't know how much you guys know about how waves like kind of distribute, but there's a when you try to hit like a certain signal, there's things called sidebands that are on either side of the actual signal you're you're trying to transmit and receive at right. So when you're on a soft on the sideband, hopefully this sounds doesn't sound stupid, but when you're on a sideband, you think you have the signal, but you can't auto track on a sideband because there's uh the way that the satellites orbit, you'll fall off eventually if you're on either side of the sideband, the left or the right. But if you're on the actual signal, there's this thing called auto tracking. So you if you're on the actual signal, you can go in the auto track and just stay, and the and the receiver and the satellite will stay in constant communication with each other because it's on the actual signal. And I try to stay on that on the signal and not on the sidebands, if that makes sense. And so the actual signal that was being communicated is what I'm trying to stay attuned to because I I don't have an explanation for that, it's just how I operate.
SPEAKER_01:So it's like I mean, that's what we connected on initially to me, was you know, I had this perception of that having to be uh, you know, very anchored to God or a deity, or have this very like hard theistic line, which is and it can. It's like that's why I found it so interesting because you had and Crystal, even going back to Neuropa and doing some of your work, you know, that that spiritual layer can be that sort of uh you know, external for me, it was like sure, okay, but that's you know, I still had this like naive man in the sky version of it. I was like, Yes, but like, you know, can't a psychedelic be the same? Can't that be a god? It's being it's it's just useful as a transmission layer, like all these other things. Um, and so as I felt like I was starting to find moments of tuning in, um, you know, staying true and not getting into the the wider bands, like you're saying, yeah. Uh, I started to really blend, you know, what I thought to be, you know, I was the gonna be this hard line atheist that was just like rational and practical. Um, but it became this very clear spectrum and like. Like opened a whole new, I think, interesting door, at least for me, in talking to you. And then subsequently, you know, just kind of going on this path of what does it mean to tune in? And for each person, I think it just can be different, which is why carrying multiple identities, and now why AI to me is so interesting. I think for a lot of people it has become it's filling, you know, for better or worse, it is filling this void or being that transmission layer into you know reason and purpose. And you know, I think we all know that that can get quickly corrupted and be problematic. Uh so anyway, uh yeah, I uh I'd say this very honestly, where you you did given the timing, uh, and uh us, I think kind of collectively tapping in at a similar time, really has like yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And that's free. I think that's frequency too. That's frequency. Like for some reason, like we were vibrating with whatever you want to call it at a certain frequency, so it pulled us into each other's orbit. And I think that all of the religions are basically trying to communicate these things, philosophies, all this other stuff. It's trying to communicate it, but what happens is like you have a person, let's say, that has an experience, and they can't really explain it, but they'll say analogously, it was kind of like this, it's kind of like this, it's kind of like this, because you can't transmit a full experience to someone. I think some people can, but most of the time you can't. And so the person has to have the experience themselves. And so, in order to encourage that person to have the faith, if you want to call it that, um, to reach out to try to have that experience for themselves, someone will describe, you know, what it's like. And then the people who are afraid of consequences and fear, they don't take the action, they just but grab onto the description, they grab onto the analogy, and then they try to institutionalize it. And that's like a also a thing that humans do is that if they find if we find something that we think's work think works, we try to institutionalize it, like a recipe. Like you make a food, and maybe the first time you're just playing around with it and it comes out awesome, and then you're like, How did I do that? Let me try to recreate the exact same recipe and then basically institutionalize or make static this way of doing this thing because I want to get the same result. But the thing is with humans, we're unique, and so because we're unique, we cannot systematize or institutionalize um uh this kind of experience. We can get inspired by someone describing it, but we still have to go into it and have it ourselves, and that's sometimes like even for me, I had to go through atheism for a little bit to get to my own experience because I I was aligning with the description, I was compelled by it, and I was having little sparks of awareness from because of the descriptions, but my deeper self wanted to know for myself, and uh the only way to do that is to let go of what you think you know and to let go of what people told you so that you can have your own experience, and that's terrifying for a lot of people because we also kind of have programmed into our culture a fear of failure, and so we're like, well, what if I make a mistake? What if I'm wrong? What if I die, like all these other things? And so we don't take those actions of letting go. But if we don't let go, we'll also never know, you know, and there's this there's so many things that lean in this. I don't want to over buckminister fuller it. Um, so maybe I'll pick somebody else. I'll pick Meister Eckhart. So Meister Eckhart said um that his deepest prayer was God uh rid me of God or something of that nature, because he wanted to be uh released of all ideas of what God was so that he can actually have an experience of what God was, you know, and so he prayed to be that God would rid him of God, and that is stepping off the cliff and trusting that the ground is gonna come up to meet you, or the work of the holy fool, or whatever the case may be. And all uh traditions have some element of that, that but because we look at it through the lens, the kind of cultural lens, the institutional lens, and the lens that believes in lack and all these other stuff, we can't see it, you know. But it's like hanging out right there. Like, I'll I'm gonna give like one not so quick example, and then I want to hear uh more from Crystal 2. Um, so I was on a plane to Japan, I think Taylor knows this, um, and I had the day of two before I found this um book about writing screenplays, and I had this idea for a screenplay in my head, and I said, Yeah, you know what? It's a really long flight to Japan. Let me take this book and I'll just start going through the thing and maybe I'll write a screenplay. So I was just kind of playing around with it, had this idea, started writing it out, and in my mind, I said, Oh, I know I was based off my mom and my aunt. And so uh I was like, I know who I'd want to play, my mom, Lashana Lynch, which is an actress, um, British black woman actress. Like, she could play my mom, and then I was like, Oh, who would I want to direct it? And I was like, Oh man, it would have to be Ava DeVerney. And so I picked her uh in my mind for certain reasons, and then I was like, Oh man, if I took got this story out here, this is one of those stories that Oprah would probably have been interested in if she still had her show. But you know what? Maybe Oprah can produce it, and so I wrote it out on the thing on my phone, just taking notes, started writing out the description, all stuff like that. And it was called like The Protectors, starring Lashana Lynch, directed by Ava DeVerne, produced by Oprah Winfrey. So I landed Japan, I'm in uh Tokyo, and like some days in I'm hanging out, and we meet these people that my wife's old roommate's Japanese, so we were hanging out with them, and then she paired us with her in-laws who we didn't know, and then they were like taking us around and you know being uh cool. But I wanted to go back to the hotel. There's a reason why I'm telling you this. I wanted to go back to the hotel, so I felt this tension of like, I don't want to be here, I want to be at the hotel. But then I surrendered and said, Okay, I'm here. I don't need to want to be anywhere that I'm not. This is where I am, right? So I sat there, decided I was gonna embrace the moment. All of a sudden, something said, Turn around. I turn around, I see this woman, I go, hmm, that looks like Lashawna Lynch. And I was like, that can't be her. So I'm sitting there for a second, then I turn around again, I look at her, but her hair was dyed blonde. So I was like, No, I think that's her. So I walk up to her and I go, excuse me. And she looks at me like, like, kind of like, like, why are you talking to me? And then I said, uh I said, I said, are you are you an actress and uh that played in a movie uh about this magical little girl? Because she played in a remake of Matilda, and she said, Oh, me, no. I said, Okay, sorry, you just look like somebody. And I started to walk off, but then my daughter runs up and sees her, and I so then I said, You didn't play in Matilda, and then she goes, Yeah, I was in Matilda. And I go, Oh, and I say, and the woman, in the woman king, right? And she's like, Yeah. So then we end up having a conversation for about like five or ten minutes while she was waiting for her table at the same restaurant. So then I'm like, Whoa, I met the woman who I said I wanted to play my mom. That's crazy, right? And I said, But it's not that crazy because I was my mind was consumed with the thought of writing this screenplay because my mom has dementia, so it's all about like I was trying to make peace with my mom's dementia. So I'm like all in this energy. So I meet her, blah, blah, blah. Right? And everybody's like, I can't believe you met the woman. That's crazy. And I'm like, yeah, man. And like, look, she, I even wrote her name in my phone. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, a week later, I'm sitting there. We're so it's the day we're supposed to leave. Now we're in Kyoto. We're supposed to be taking off to go home in like two hours or three hours. And my wife says, I want to go to the philosopher's path. I said, We don't have time, we got to get to the airport. She's like, please let's just go. I go, I don't want to. And the reason why I'm telling you this is because of the same energy. I didn't want to be there. So I'm like, I don't want to be here. I need to go to the airport. I'm in this tension. Then I just go, whatever. Never, I'm not gonna do this. Let me just relax and surrender to the fact that I'm here where I am. And even though I my brain's saying I want to be somewhere else, let me just be here. And then I think maybe I'll see somebody I know. Just a random thought. And I'm thinking it'd be some maybe a former military buddy or something. So I'm like scanning around looking for somebody that I might know. I look down this alley and I see this woman that looks like my aunt. And I go, oh my God, is that my aunt Karen? And I was like, that would be crazy if I see her out here. But then as she gets closer, I go, No, she kind of looks like Oprah Winfrey. And I'm like, nah, that can't be Oprah Winfrey. But then I look next to her, it's Gail King. I go, Well, that's Gail King. So that's definitely Oprah Winfrey walking down this um alley. So then as she starts to walk past, I hold my phone up behind myself like this and try to like get a clip a glimpse of her. And as I'm doing it, she's looking in my camera, and I look and I see she's looking at me, trying to take a sneak of selfie. And then I just turn around and I go, Can you act like you don't see me doing this? And then I turn back like that. And then she started laughing and she said, Oh, you're silly. And then she said, What are you doing? And she just talked to me like I knew her. She just said, What are you doing here? I said, Oh, I'm just here with my daughter and my family, and blah, blah, blah. We started talking. Then my family runs up like, Oprah Winfrey. And then we start taking pictures. And my wife, my daughter had asked her, Can we take a picture? So she says, Come here. We take like a family photo. And I'm sitting there like this is a trip. Now I start thinking I'm dreaming. Because I'm like, I just saw Lashawna Lynch a week and some ago. Now I'm seeing Oprah. That's the two people that I two of the people out of the three that I'm thinking are gonna be in this movie or have something to do with this movie. And I'm just like almost like starting to stutter because I'm trying to figure out what's happening, you know. And my wife has this huge camera because she's a photographer, so they thought she was paparazzi, so they're telling her, get out of here. And then she's like, that's my family. So they let her in to take another picture. So we go in to take another picture. And I said, the only thing would be crazier is if I see uh Ava DeVernie. And I'm sitting there talking to Oprah at the same time, telling her about this group I'm a part of. And then Oprah says, Ava, come here. And Ava DeVerney's watching us taking the photo. And then Ava DeVerni comes up and she's like, Hey, get in this photo with us for the Chocolate Circle. This is this group I'm in. And then we all take a picture of my whole family with Oprah and Ava DeVerney. Now that's a long ass story, right? But the but it just happens, right? It just happens, and I take the picture, and then I never worked on the movie again until like a week ago, like for like for like eight months. But uh, but it's like I don't know. I asked myself, and this might go into that hyperstition you were talking about um earlier, Taylor. I was like, okay, what happened? Did I on some level know I was gonna meet Oprah Ava and um Lashana Lynch on this trip? And so it stimulated my mind so that I started working on a screenplay, and then I ended up running into them, and it was it wasn't an event that just wanted to happen, and I was just a willing participant in this event that wanted to occur. And so I by my surrendering in these tensions where I really didn't want to be, caused all of this stuff somehow. Or did I manifest it because I was thinking about it and they showed up? Because in this spiritual domain, time isn't linear the way that we perceive time, so it could have happened in any kind of order, you know, on a certain level, and then it the physical world it looks and appears as it's linear. That was a long story, but it's a crazy story, you know, and that brings up a lot of interesting curiosities about what the F is happening in this matrix that we're in. And and the and the thing that I've noticed is it's tension for me anyway, it's tension and then surrender, and then just allowing, and then something that I that's beyond my imagination happens. My imagination can take me up to a point, and then something beyond my imagination kind of crystallizes the experience. So I know that was a lot of words and all this other stuff, but I think it'll be curious for people to be in wonder about.
SPEAKER_01:I think I think for a lot of people that would completely unground them and they may go mad and never come back. It feels like that level of these things can't be, you know, this this just is a little too. I mean, we've all got versions of what could just be sort of happenstance and chance encounters and things, but that that's a a little different level when you when you're uh yeah, quite literally architecting the movie of your life that then you know is slowly coming to pass. Crystal, I don't know. Yeah, I want to get your thoughts, but um glad you I'm glad you took the time. I've heard yeah different, you know, uh there was layers there that we hadn't talked about. So super cool.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, that was an amazing story. I think for me, what with that and then the conversation we were having before that, back to frequency and energy, that is basically all of yoga. Um that that's the yogic practice. And when we're able to, and as you move to the physical side, yoga is is vast, and the physical part is just a tiny, tiny fraction, but it's designed to align your energies, your chakras, and your frequencies in a way that you can then meditate and then open up to the universe or to whatever higher power you you work with and get on that energetic plane so synchronicity can appear. And so that when the resistance happens, the resistance you were describing, you can acknowledge it, but then move past it instead of leaning into it. And for me, it's I call it the like this voice. I have this yogic voice, and it doesn't happen often. But when I'm quiet enough and it does happen, that's when I make a life pivot. That's how I ended up at Naropa. That's how I ended up at MetaMask, that's how I ended up in these places. And when sometimes that voice pops in, I'm like, not today. Don't want to have a conversation, but it doesn't go away. And the more you resist it, the more the frequencies and the energy itself tends to go away from you, and then you're moving away from abundance and being open. And for me, Ram Das was a big, he kind of cracked things open for his work, cracked it open for me. Um, I'll tell my own little story, but it won't be that long. Um, when I was working as a photojournalist and a documentary photographer and traveling all over the world to do um stories and post-conflict, I always would go to religious sites. And partially because of my upbringing and partially like my mom had this connection to God that I never quite understood, but it was just there. It was inherent, it's just how she moves through the world. And when I would go to some of the holiest sites in the world, um the Holy Church of the Sepulchre, the Dalai Lama's Temple, I would see people having these moments and I would photograph it, but I was never able to understand it. It was just me documenting someone having a mystical experience. And I never got it. And then at Naropa, one of my professors, um, Natanal, I can't remember how we got on the topic. It was in an alternative religion class, I think. A lot of mystic work. We studied Dune and Star Wars and the hero's journey and all of that. And they talked about that mystical moment and where if your energies and your frequency and your heart is open enough, then that mystical connection to something beyond yourself can happen. And that's when it hit me in that class. I was like, that's actually what I was documenting. And in order to get there, you and this is a Ram Das thing, you have to stay, you know, you've got your logical mind and your heart. And as a journalist, as a technologist, we're here constantly. And in the logical mind, that's how we process the world, but you miss the depth and the whole of the world. And then Nandol Shaiva Tantra, which I practice, which also is Ram La uh Ram Das' lineage that we studied in Europa, that do the divine is within. And you begin to connect with that energy inside of you instead of what I grew up with in the South, with a patriarchal, you know, male deity in the sky, when you shift that internally and shift it into the heart, it's a different conversation and it's a different way to go through the world. And then I could understand it's extremely painful, like to walk through the world in your heart and not in your logical mind, because I have some great barriers and protective things that the logical mind will allow me to travel through the world. And I feel like now I'm totally rambling, but I feel like now we're in a space, especially the acceleration with AI and technology, where if we don't know how to go from our heart and our head and then back into the heart, right? We're kind of fucked.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Because there's no grounding to reality at that point. If if you walk through the world just with a total open heart, it's gonna be you you can't function. You're a spiral everywhere. If you stay in the logical mind, you're gonna look at ice rolling down the road and be like, well, that's not my house, it's coming to. Right. And then you're allowed, and then you can, and it's a protective mechanism, I get it. But then you're disconnected from the humans around you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe to go, yeah, this is not my not my nature. So I'm trying to lean into what feels to be a little discomfort. To go more practical, I'd, you know, um I love philosophizing and you know, uh just thinking at that level to me is some of the most joy I've ever found, or the and the people that I want to spend the most time with are, you know, willing to go there. Um, but from a I'd be curious from a more practical view uh in your kind of current reality and work. Um it does seem like there's to me, there's this interest, and it's really uh kind of what the human layer I guess represents uh aside from the practical pieces that are a podcast. And I mean, this is a lot of crystal's effort. Um, but uh it really is this like meeting point between intuition, the sort of inner the inner mythology, and what I've used hyperstition or like the outer manifestation of that, which you your story, I think both those sort of point to. You know, so it feels like it's this meeting point between those. Um and humanity, in some sense, it's like uh a story that becomes real, like like uh that's uh in some ways written. How do we like what story do you hope to write? Um, and maybe that is literal writing. I know you've you're a awesome content creator, you do all sorts of fun, really to me exploratory stuff. Um, maybe it is just that, you know, continuing to do that, and hopefully it lands on some of the right eyes and ears. But yeah, um, given all of that, yeah, give me a practic give us a practical what you're doing that feels very tangible for folks uh amidst all the madness we just dove into.
SPEAKER_00:So this is an interesting thing that includes AI. So last Friday, um, I decided I wanted to do daddy-daughter time with my daughters and some time with my wife. And so we were in Massachusetts for the holiday weekend, and I said to my wife, like, I'm gonna spend an hour with our youngest, then I'm gonna spend an hour with our oldest, and then later you and I can spend an hour together because you know, we when we're all crammed together, it's hard to have focused time. So I spent my hour with my youngest, and it was awesome. And we did a podcast episode together, which was cool. Um, and the podcast episode was that the question was, what if everyone knows the truth? That was the title. And I basically interviewed her from her child mind asking her some questions, and the answers just emerged, you know, these honest answers about relating and da-da-da. And this this is on my sub stack, right? So Panaber and I had this great experience. So then with my oldest, who's 17, she wants to go to like a beauty shop store and buy makeup or whatever things that she wants to do. And I hate that stuff, but I was like, Yeah, I told her I could do whatever, so let me just go. So it was one of those things where I didn't want to be there, but I but I was surrendered and I went. So and we have we're having a good conversation about you know society, social media, all these other things. And as we leave, we're walking down the street, and someone yells at us and calls us the N-word, right? And so when that happens, my daughter's kind of like in shock, like, did I just hear what I think I heard? Yeah, and I'm like, yeah, that was that that absolutely is what happened. So um, this is all about my storm for like so, like, one of the things that I do on the side is I do stand-up comedy, right? So anytime something happens, I'm always trying to look for the funny thing as almost as quick as possible. And the formula for comedy is tragedy plus time. And so this little tragic thing happened, and so I kind of project it into the future a little bit. Like, how would how could I make this funny, you know, with a little bit of time? So I walk through my my daughter's feelings, and we did this process that I call like from rage to responsibility. So I'm like, acknowledge the rage, but then that's that rage is energy, and you're responsible for the energy that arises in you, and you can do something with that energy. You don't have to dis explode it or disperse it, even if that person tried to do like do that by calling us that word, we can be a choice. So we navigated um as far as we could from rage to responsibility, and she decided, you know, she's still processing it. Um, but then I said, Okay, well what I what can I do with it? Because I was like, I'll write a song. And so I I started working on a song, like right after she and I finished, I started writing on a song, and I gave this is like it sounds religious, but it's not really religious, it's just um, and I'll explain more in a second. I took all the energy and said, Okay, this is what I have from the energy, and I'm gonna release it to I would call God, um, but or spirit, and spirit to me is infinite imaginative capacity. So to be spiritual is to tap into infinite imaginative imaginative capacity, so it extends beyond your capacity to imagine. So I released it and I said, This is all the things I've written out everything I got, take it, bring it back to me in a way that I can distribute that's at a lighter energy, blah, blah, blah, blah. So then it was like, I'm telling you, it was like a like a I'll call it a miracle. Like it downloaded so fast, and it's like, write a song, write, write the song like this, because I had an angry song I was writing at first, and it hit me. Don't write it angry, write it happy, but write it about anger, but with a happy hook and a happy sound, and and sing about it in a happy way. So I used AI to take of uh me and my daughter, my youngest daughter did some like doo-wop music on an AI, turned that into a do-wop beat, and then created a song with my lyrics uh called Now I'm Gonna Get Angry. And the song's like, Now I'm gonna get angry. But it's like that, right? So now Now I'm gonna get angry is an acronym. So if you I'm I'm not gonna if you know, you don't know how acronyms work. So now I'm gonna get angry is an acronym. So I made this song with this acronym, Now I'm gonna get angry. And then the whole hook of it is um now I'm gonna get angry. Nothing you can say is gonna ever change me. Been here my whole life, always been the same we. Uh, you look confused. Now me now let me um say it plainly. And then it's like an insult to people who want to call us the N-word, but it's in a happy voice. And I just made a uh Instagram video yesterday of me uh lip-syncing it and like and doing it with a smile on my face. But that's that's how I want to live my life. Like I want the to be a receiver of all the energies that I encounter, and then take those energies and then create something out of those energies that expands and creates light, where some people might mean darkness, and um, and be able to make people question and be in wonder because even the shittiest person in the world is an awesome person deep down that doesn't know themselves. You know, they don't know themselves to be this off, this awesome receiver of infinite imaginative capacity and this channel or express uh has this capacity to express many amazing and wonderful and beautiful things with the energies that have come to them. And they're able to make make light out of the darkness. We all have that capacity, but because of our limited imagination, where we're stuck in the primal, a lot of us are stuck in this primal urges and this primal uh expressions, which the two main primal expressions are sex and violence, and those are kind of intertwined with each other. So then, whenever we build technologies, we usually end up leaning them back into sex and violence because we haven't ended up learning how to like articulate in different ways. So, my whole way I want to be in the world is to take those same energies, convert them using technology, using whatever's accessible to then transmute them and to create just like opportunity for folks to reflect. Like, I want the person or a person who would think, oh, I'm gonna say this and I'm gonna hurt somebody and make and make myself feel better. I want them to hear the song and realize that they're an insecure, weak person who thinks that, but that's how they're being. They don't have to be that way. But I want them to happily discover, you know what, I'm gonna turn that into some joyous song. I'm gonna sing and be doing doo-wop. And then and you're and like, and you're still a piece of shit.
SPEAKER_02:You know, I feel like we're seeing that on the streets in Portland right now with the inflatable uh protest answer.
SPEAKER_01:That's exactly where the frogs is exactly where my head is going. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I saw that when I was documenting in Palestine, um, there was a clown troop that would show up at every week at this protest that we documented with IDF soldiers. And that was their premise. It was to show the absurdity of the situation by being a clown and entertaining at a protest. And it's very effective.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. That's that's what I want to do all day, every day. And like when the energy comes in, I just want to be responsible with the energy and say, thank you for this energy. It comes out right now feeling ragey, but I know that if I sit with it, surrender it, hang out in attention, do the yoga of it, um, which yoga can be manifested in so many ways, not just sitting on a mat, um, and then allow it to come back into the world better than what it came in to me, is basically how I want to do things.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's to me a pretty awesome spot to land. Like, well, you know, whatever that framework is, I think everyone can, you know, for you, you're very exploratory, so it probably comes in and creative, and so it comes in different forms. Um, but I think everybody has the capacity to like build out some version of that for themselves.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, whatever that looks like. I've I've done the same. I think, you know, comedy and and for me it was improv for a couple of years that absolutely was an unlock to to see how that uh yeah, just a a little absurdity and a little bit of time, and all of a sudden a lot of people are laughing. That's a good yeah, it's an easy equation. Um, but I think yeah, everybody has the capacity to to figure out what that what that is for them, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Improv's awesome. I did it that I was doing an improv show the last time you had an event that I would have come to, but I was doing an improv show. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, uh any anything else? And maybe before we close too, uh uh, I mentioned unify.org, but is there, yeah, for folks that listen, is there anything else that you'd want to point to?
SPEAKER_00:With the reason why I started using my middle name, which is senorinha, is because it makes it easier to find me. If you just Google Pedro Senorinha Silva, um Pedro is easy to spell, senorinha is S-E-N-H-O-R-I-N-H-A, and Silva is S-I-L-V-A, then you'll find just like a bunch of different random things that I'm doing. But um, through Unify, we're moving into the space of human flourishing, is the focus that we're moving into. Um, because the depolarization and some of those other things have now become like like anathema, and like so. We're trying to uh encourage people to tap into their capacities and their powers and their potencies and um and more peace.
SPEAKER_01:Look at that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that.
SPEAKER_00:I love the peace, man. So then those things and then. And then on my own side, I am working, I created um higher up consulting, which is H-I-G-H-E-R, up consulting. And that's still uh kind of wet clay, but largely it's framed in helping people understand the boxes that they may be functioning in and learn how to use their boxes, but then not be trapped by their boxes. Because we the boxes exist for a reason. So it's like helping people figure out why they created the boxes, but then they'd be in a place of choice where they can say, Well, I created it for this reason, but this is how I want to use it going forward, or maybe I want to change my box or you know, get a new box, whatever the case may be. So it's um uh I have like a framework that I've been building out to help people do that. And I'm on Substack as well, where I've been playing doing a lot of uh playing and writing and sharing and and um and all the social stuff too, but that's easy enough to find.
SPEAKER_03:Awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Amazing, Crystal. Anything else? Yeah, thank you again, Pedro. Uh I could yeah, sit and listen literally all day, every day, man. You're yeah, an inspiration. I appreciate it. And excited. I know we'll I know we'll cross in person again, but oh yeah, appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, thank you so much for your time. This is a great conversation, and we'll um include your links and everything um when we when we put this out so people can connect with you and and go on a journey.
SPEAKER_00:So thank you so much. That's awesome. Thanks for doing this, and thanks for holding the spaces and bringing all of your unique experiences into this space. I'm glad we were able to hold it together.
SPEAKER_02:Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks. Awesome. Thanks. Cheers.
