The Evolution Is On

THE EVOLUTION IS ON!
Join the Evolver Social Movement, and together we will create a movement to raise consciousness and
manifest positive change across the globe.
Our vision is bold. We bring to the world an emerging value system that is sustainable, full of meaning and
founded on human connection. Our community appreciates the magical aspects of life and cultivates a
visceral connection to the natural world. Where others may hear alarm bells (peak oil, 2012, global
warming) we answer the call -- contributing to a new planetary culture based on ecological values, creative
collaboration, and conscious evolution.
Already, more than 400 others have become members of the Evolver Social Movement -- supporting the
international flowering of consciousness culture that appears on our websites Reality Sandwich and
Evolver.net, and through the quickly growing, global network of Evolver Regional groups. Feel free to join
at whatever amount is comfortable. It’s not about the dollar amount, it’s about the participation.
Whatever brought you to E+SM, now that you're here you are part of the change that is manifesting.
Our goal is no less than the evolutionary transformation of humanity that comes from a shift in
consciousness and a collective heart opening that connects us to the planet and each other.
Joining E+SM today puts you in the vanguard. Two years from now, we aim to attract at least 1% of the
world’s population to share our mutual vision and be part of the change. With your help, we’ll link together
like-minded groups and individuals, using an upgraded technology platform and a revamped and expanded
face-to-face meeting framework to facilitate the transformation.
Become a founding member of E+SM and you’ll play an integral role in transforming the planet in ways
we can hardly imagine. By sharing our vision, and investing in our mutual future, you can expect it to repay
you in some surprising, synchronistic ways. When it does, please share your story with us. If it doesn’t, let
us know and we’ll make something happen! This is the very essence of pay-it-forward mindset, and the
world we are determined to create.
To achieve this on a tactical level, first, we will launch Evolver.net 2.0 -– an expanded social networking
site that
• Preserves your privacy (unlike Facebook)

• Is driven by your needs, not corporate requirement to maximize profits
• Facilitates the raising of human consciousness
• Empowers an alternative currency, building a trust network that lays the ground for a return to a
“pay it forward” society
• Is open-source, thus empowering the community to expand the functionality themselves
• Allows you to easily connect with those who share your affinities and jointly take actions to make
the world a better place
Second, your support of E+SM will help grow the number of Evolver Regional groups from 35 to over 100,
and to
• Expand the content and scope of our Spores (our monthly meetings around the globe that discuss
topics important to our time) and draw more participants
• Get media attention for the events to allow us to reach the wider population, waking them up to
what we’re doing (and that it's magical, fun and loving)
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• Speed the transition from discussing change, to planning positive, measurable, and enlivening
group actions
Please join E+SM now and don’t delay. The Evolution is calling you!
WHAT WE DO
Through Evolver, people who want to build an alternative culture connect with each other, share their
knowledge and resources, and collaborate on projects that are models for change that others may follow.
Your E+SM membership supports our current initiatives:
• Reality Sandwich: The leading web magazine for transformative culture reaches more than
100,000 readers each month from around the globe. New articles, videos, and news items are
published daily, and are available for free. Your membership will cover our basic expenses, allow
us to develop new content and features, produce multimedia (including news and interview
shows), and promote RS content to the world so consciousness-expanding memes and stories
reach an increasingly wide audience.
• Evolver.net: Our social network for conscious collaboration enables our international community
to express itself, find one another, share news, plan events, and work together on projects.
Participation is free. By becoming a paying member, you help Evolver.net add new features that
will make the site more user friendly - make it competitive with Facebook, Ning, and other
popular social networking sites - and assist in empowering this growing network.
• Evolver Regionals: The Evolver Social Movement currently has over 30 regional chapters that
produce themed events, called Evolver Spores, every month. The Spores bring communities
together, educate people on new perspectives and critical issues, and facilitate the sharing of local
resources. Regionals have already organized Evolver-themed festivals, permaculture gardens,
community spaces, and other projects. Your contributions will help us develop Spores in new
locales, and to fund projects and initiatives undertaken by Regional groups.
• Media and Event Production: Evolver publishes books in partnership with Tarcher/Penguin, and
produces teleseminars, which we call Evolver Intensives. Last year we produced two remarkable
Reality Sandwich retreats in south central Utah at the Boulder Mountain Guest Ranch, and we
plan more large events and retreats in the future. Your contributions will help to build these
programs so they can reach more people and become healthy revenue streams to support Evolver's
ongoing operations. With membership dues we will create scholarships for people who can't
afford tickets and plane fare.
FUTURE PROJECTS
Beyond these existing initiatives, member support will be used to develop new projects:
• Complementary Currency and Evolver Exchange: Future plans for Evolver.net include
building a platform for alternative exchanges, time-shares, and barter arrangements, as well as an
Evolver Exchange, for Evolvers to share their goods and services with the community.
• Evolver Festivals and Conferences: Evolver will bring together inspirational writers, thought
leaders and creative impresarios at live events, festivals and conferences. For those who cannot
attend, Evolver will broadcast panels and workshops out to the community, and far beyond.
• Partnerships: We will increase collaborations with organizations involved in the protection of the
Amazon jungle, the rainforest of Guatemala, and other threatened bioregions, as well as with
institutions like the Buckminster Fuller Institute, Burners without Borders, Institute of Noetic
Sciences, Dr. Stanislav Grof's Transpersonal Training Institute, MAPS, the Beckley Foundation,
and more.
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• Community Projects: As E+SM grows, a percentage of revenues will be put toward projects that
gain the most impassioned support from the Evolver community, which will have the opportunity
to vote and comment on what it would like to see manifest.
• Peace2012: In Conjunction with EarthDance, Evolver supports Peace2012, an initiative to create a
synchronized world peace meditation on December, 21, 2012, the last day of a 5,125-year Mayan
Long Count Calendar. Scientific studies have shown that prayer and meditation have measurable
effects, increasing resonance and coherence. A globally synchronized peace meditation - whether
on December 21, 2012, or at another time - could bring about a new level of coherence for our
evolving planetary consciousness.
MEMBER BENEFITS
E+SM members will be invited to participate in monthly calls with Reality Sandwich writers and
community leaders where you can ask questions and engage your favorite transformational provocateur in
dialogue. You can join periodic conference calls with the Evolver team to discuss what we're doing and
what is coming up next. And you will receive discounts to events and Evolver Intensives teleseminars.
COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
Evolver's achievements are largely due to the active participation of hundreds of dedicated volunteers
around the globe. The coming together of this community has been Evolver's most inspiring success, and it
sets us apart from other media companies or not-for-profit efforts, offering a tremendous opportunity to
innovate a new model of " interdependent media."
With the launch of E+SM, we will engage the community we servein a deliberate and thoughtful dialog,
keeping it informed, maintaining transparent operations, responding to suggestions and feedback, and
collaborating on future projects. Everyone who has ever taken part in Evolver has "invested" in this project
and is a stakeholder. As part of an ongoing experiment to create a new kind of socially responsible
company, and to provide a model for others to follow, we are committed to increasing community
involvement in our operations as we grow in the future.
Beyond monetary contributions, we are also interested in other ways you would like to engage in the
movement. We will create a system that will allow people to participate as members by contributing their
ideas, skills, energy, and time -- giving their gift in the best way possible for them. While E+SM actively
seeks paying members to sustain and intensify the range of our activities, both Evolver.net and Reality
Sandwich will remain available to everyone free of cost.
Learn more about Evolver's mission, our current operations and future plans.
We live at a time of accelerating change, increasing threat, and extraordinary opportunity. Currently,
mainstream media and social networks tend to keep their viewers and users distracted and detached. Rather
than alienate people further,the Evolver Social Movement seeks to reconnect people to their local
communities and their native earth, and rebuild the basic trust necessary for society to function. We intend
to use the extraordinary capacities of our communications networks to get people away from their
computers and back in the world, collaborating to bring about the more beautiful and peaceful world we
deserve to attain.
We hope you will be inspired by what is possible here, and contribute generously to the Evolver Social
Movement, a conscious community that reflects your values and your ideals.
http://www.realitysandwich.com/esm/join-evolver-social-movement-esm
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Our Mission
Evolver's mission is to facilitate the emergence of a new planetary culture based on ecological values,
sustainable principles, and conscious evolution. To do this, we create media and events that inform and
inspire, develop social networks for envisioning and collaborating, bring people together to build
community, and define and achieve tangible social objectives that are models for societal change.
Evolver is a mission-driven, socially responsible company dedicated to serving the transformational

community. The company observes a "double bottom line," which means that it measures its success by
both social and financial markers, which are equally important.
The Team
The company has a paid, professional team of 3 full time and 3 part time editorial and administrative staff.
It includes:
• Daniel Pinchbeck, Editorial Director

• Ken Jordan, Publisher and Executive Producer
• Jonathan Phillips, Evolver.net Director
• Michael Robinson, Creative Director
• Jennifer Palmer, RS News Editor
• Steven Taylor, RS Managing Editor
All staff perform tasks for both Reality Sandwich and Evolver. In addition, we employ a team of web
developers, led by Technical Director Dan Robinson, paid on an hourly basis. Our lead developer is Andy
Laken.
The Evolver team collaborates with and coordinates an extended network of incredible, dedicated
volunteers, who participate in much of what we do, including: grassroots organizing, editorial tasks, media
making, social network marketing, community facilitation, and event production. These volunteers are the
heart of our community, and enable Evolver to have a wide impact even with limited financial resources.
The staff is based in New York City and rents a table at an office space in downtown Brooklyn where the
team meets and coordinates interns.
Evolver Social Movement
Since Evolver began in January, 2007, we built Reality Sandwich into a web magazine that reaches
100,000 people each month, launched the Evolver.net social network, and established 30 Evolver Regional
groups around the world that meet monthly at Evolver Spores. Evolver is at the center of an emerging
movement of people around the world who understand that consciousness expansion is a necessary part of
social change. We are now turning to the people who make up this movement for the support we need to
keep going forward.
We can maintain our current operations for $20,000 a month. That averages out to $10 monthly
contributions from 2,000 people.
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Here is a pie chart that shows where the money will go:
Initially, Evolver attempted to build core revenue streams from online advertising and premium content.
Today, however, for all but the most popular websites, income from online advertising is minor. At the
same time, popular standards for paying for online content have not emerged – and possibly never will. We
tried a premium content program with Reality Sandwich Backstage, and while sales have been steady, they
haven't been at the level necessary to support our operations. We'll be converting Backstage Passes into
memberships in the Evolver Social Movement.
As we launch the Evolver Social Movement, we will turn to you for feedback and guidance about what
Evolver should do next to build this movement, and serve our community. This will be an experiment in
how a transparent, socially responsible company can get the support it needs from the people it serves,
while offering most of its services for free. We hope you will be a part of it.
Structure
By incorporating as a partnership – an LLC – rather than as a not-for-profit organization, Evolver has the
flexibility to act quickly and in response to opportunity, without the legal constraints that come with not-
for-profit status. Our aim is to build Evolver into a major voice on the public landscape, and in the process
create a platform for the transformational community as it grows that will reverberate throughout society.
As part of our commitment to socially responsible practices, we will apply for B Corporation certification.
[LINK: the words "B Corporation certification" should link to http://www.bcorporation.net]
We are also committed to supporting efforts that strengthen the commons, contributing to collective
resources that can be shared by the broader community. To that end, our websites are built with Drupal,
which is open source software. And our online content is covered by a Creative Commons license.
Join Now
With your support, we can keep Reality Sandwich and Evolver.net fresh and vital. We will be able to
increase the number of Evolver Regionals, likely doubling from 30 to 60 over the next year. We'll be able
to launch the Evolver Exchange, where Evolvers can exchange goods and services. And we'll introduce an
alternative currency and barter system into Evolver.net.
The movement has already started, and you're a part of it. Join E+SM today.
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My Personal Journey into the Evolver Social Movement
Daniel Pinchbeck
The launch of the Evolver Social Movement has been a process fraught with anxiety and propelled by
enthusiasm. At this critical juncture in the life of our project, I find myself wanting to review the process
that led to this point. What follows is a look back into the remote past, and then a consideration of what we
are doing now, and what may lie ahead.
I started the first version of Evolver about five years ago, with a company in Venice, California. One of the
investors in that company emailed me after reading a few of my columns for a Los Angeles-based alt-
culture monthly. Together, we developed a model for a new company, the Evolver Project combining a
membership program with media, including a print magazine, Evolver. I spent a year and a half involved in
that effort before the company fell apart.
Before I was tapped for that first Evolver attempt, I was truly a rube when it came to business. I was
writing my books and living like a grumpy urban hermit in New York, feeling exiled from the mainstream
due to my fascination with psychedelics, prophecy, and other areas of marginal weirdness. During the brief
poignant life of the Evolver Project, I received brutal lessons in how to not run a business, as I watched
resources get spent before we had a defined product or even a way of making revenue. This was difficult
for me, as I tend to be frugal where possible, having learned to stretch out small publishing advances over
long fallow periods.
Toward the end of that first effort, I brought Ken Jordan on board. Ken was one of my closest friends. He
worked in publishing (following in the footsteps of his father, Fred Jordan, publisher of Grove Press and
the Evergreen Review), but didn’t like the increasingly corporate, cookie-cutter direction that publishing
had taken. I suggested that he seek a job in the then-emergent web world and introduced him to friends of
mine launching SonicNet, a music website, eventually bought by MTV. Later on, Ken joined up with
PlaNetwork, a non-profit think tank, started by West Coast visionaries Jim Fournier and Elizabeth
Thompson, to look at ways that Internet tools could be used to advance progressive goals. Ken wrote a
major PlaNetwork paper on the concept of the Augmented Social Network, the ASN.
The essential problem that Ken’s PlaNetwork group identified was that Internet users lacked a secure,
centralized place to hold their identity. The way the Net is now organized, we carom between different
"walled silos" that take our data and make use of it or sell it, without our knowledge. The ASN paper
proposed the need for a new layer of the Internet, where personal identity information and transactions
would be stored in one place, for the user's benefit. The user would then choose what parts of their profile
to reveal to any group or organization they visited. This would also allow for different organizations or
companies to collaborate effectively, as their users could let them know how they were connected with
other groups. Today, different NGOs reduplicate effort and even compete against each other for the same
members and sponsors, with little coordination, fighting for scarce resources.
Ken had to explain the ASN ideas to me again and again, for over a year, before I finally understood what I
now consider to be their immense importance (some similar ideas have been implemented, such as Open
ID, but these do not approach the scope of the ASN vision). It sounds quite dry at first, but if you spend
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time studying the issue, I think you will find that the lack of a way for people to maintain their own identity
and control their own data is a massive problem, one that thwarts the healthy development of civil society.
I brought Ken into Evolver because I saw the opportunity to implement his ASN vision through our model
of building a membership card program for the "cultural creatives," the most progressive and ecologically
aware subset of US consumers. We intended to build a user-centered profile system that integrated the
latest aspects of this developing protocol. Unfortunately, as the clock ran out on that first effort, which had
been renamed EVO, it did not happen.
In the wake of the collapse of EVO, Ken and I still wanted to work together. Meeting at coffee shops in the
East Village, we considered what we could start for basically no money, which is all we had. I had been
running a discussion board for Breaking Open the Head, my first book on psychedelic shamanism, on the
web. From the impassioned personal and philosophical exchanges on that forum, I knew there was a vast
amount of extraordinary material, important ideas and visionary testimonies, that needed a professional
media presence to reach beyond a small group and influence the broader cultural debate. Ken was able to
get CivicActions to build the platform for Reality Sandwich in exchange for some equity in our company.
I always had an innate tendency to start magazines. In high school I edited our literary journal, Chimera. In
college, my friends and I created our own literary journal, Planetarium Station, which we xeroxed and then
bound together. We featured some amazing writers who later went on to major careers including Mark
Amerika and the poet Anne Carson.
After dropping out of Wesleyan University in Connecticut, I launched a career in commercial art and
lifestyle magazines, working as an intern at Art & Auction, then as an assistant and associate editor at Fame
Magazine (short-lived and unlamented) and Connoisseur Magazine (a century-old Hearst magazine that
went belly up after my first year there). At the same time, I made friends with a tall, charismatic young
fiction writer, Thomas Beller. Together we launched the literary magazine Open City, eventually finding a
publisher in Rob Bingham, a short story writer and heir to a Southern newspaper fortune.
Through Open City, we made a decadent, somewhat glamorous, scene, throwing parties in nightclubs and
art galleries and at Rob's huge loft in Tribeca. Various celebs passed through -- such as Chloe Sevigny,
Evan Dando, Parker Posey -- and we were written up in fashion magazines and gossip columns. I no longer
worked full-time and I spent altogether too much time at Rob's loft playing pool and lounging about. While
my pool game improved, my life stagnated. I was working on fiction but experiencing little success with it,
while I wrote freelance magazine articles to make a sort of living. I began to feel increasingly alienated and
depressed – as described in my books. Eventually I plunged into a massive spiritual crisis and existential
emergency, often feeling I was on the verge of going insane.
I simply couldn't understand the point of all of our frantic activity since we lived in a nihilistic universe,
accidentally created by swirling gasses and particles, where death returned us to an absolute void. In my
social set at that time, to open up big philosophical questions about the nature of reality and the soul was
only to invite sarcasm and hipster dismissal. My friends conceived literature as a way of seeking the proper
pose or stance in relationship to a world that had no meaning outside of one's personal style and ability to
see it with a perfectly jaundiced eye and finely-turned phrases pitched just right.
I became interested in psychedelics as a way out of my spiritual crisis, recalling early college trips that had
opened my eyes to other levels or layers of reality. These substances were scorned by my peers, but I
became fascinated by them again. I went to Gabon for a ritual using iboga, becoming a Bwiti, an initiate. I
wrote about ayahuasca and LSD psychoanalyst Stanislav Grof for The Village Voice. As I was exploring
this area, Rob, our publisher, was found dead of a heroin overdose in his loft, with the page proofs of his
first novel spread across the desk in his extraordinarily chaotic office.
I had already begun to distance myself from the literary culture of my peers, but Rob's death pushed me
further away. I increasingly felt that most current literature as well as much contemporary art had become a
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distraction mechanism and ego trip, offering a way of contemplating the degraded and fragmented state of
our world from a safe distance instead of making active efforts to change it. Eventually, I bowed out of
Open City, which was continued after Rob's death by his family out of a desire to honor his memory and
support his legacy. While Open City still publishes today, I have not been involved in many years. Still I
believe the enterprise has validity as it has given many writers their first publications, launching a number
of careers.
Over the next six or so years, I published my first two books, Breaking Open the Head in 2002 and 2012:
The Return of Quetzalcoatl in 2006. I then resumed my peculiarly inveterate habit of launching new
magazines with Reality Sandwich in 2007. Both Ken and I were astounded by the flood of content that was
quickly offered to us for Reality Sandwich, much of it of a shockingly high quality. We soon realized we
had created something with a life of its own – a nexus where psychedelic culture and mainstream social and
environmental thought could intersect, a cultural dialogue that needed to take place. Some of our features
received hundreds of comments, and the commentators often expressed a yearning to find others living near
them who shared similar interests.
This project has flowed organically since we launched. Once we saw the demand, we decided to build a
social network to bring together our growing community. On modest initial investments, we launched
Evolver.net, using Drupal, an open-source publishing platform. The shift from simply running another
social network in virtual space to using Evolver.net as a hub for organizing off-line real-world communities
also happened naturally: Jonathan Phillips -- one of the four people who initially founded the company
along with Ken, myself, and Michael Robinson, our brilliant creative director -- has a strong background in
community organizing. He began, quite naturally, to guide groups coming together in other cities as well as
the US. We realized that developing these nascent connections into vibrant communities was the central
mission of our project.
Even in this early and challenging stage, we have learned that the merging of professional on-line media
with a social network that supports the growth of off-line communities -- moving from virtual to visceral --
is an extremely powerful innovation. As a new form of “interdependent media,” we can continually offer
new tools and ideas for our growing community to explore, then report on their discoveries through articles
and videos. We live at a time when the financial system and other forms of social infrastructure are
breaking down and the future looks increasingly uncertain for many.
As a recent issue of Time magazine predicts, the new ten-year trend is “The Dropout Economy,” where
young people are forced to explore radical alternatives as work disappears and the financial burden
becomes intolerable: “As conventional high schools and colleges prepare the next generation for jobs that
won't exist, we're on the cusp of a dropout revolution, one that will spark an era of experimentation in new
ways to learn and new ways to live.” Time’s forecast could be read as a desperate plea that young people,
instead of rising up in fury against the older generation that depleted the planet’s resources at their expense,
will make virtue out of necessity: “Faced with the burden of financing the decades-long retirement of aging
boomers, many of the young embrace a new underground economy, a largely untaxed archipelago of
communes, co-ops, and kibbutzim that passively resist the power of the granny state while building their
own little utopias.” Aheard of the curve, we developed Reality Sandwich and Evolver to serve and support
these emergent, now inevitable, circumstances.
We are delighted with the growth of Evolver, and gratified by the intense loyalty and enthusiasm it
continues to elicit. The main thing holding us back has been a stubborn lack of operating capital. We have
started a number of projects and been forced to put them aside. We developed the Evolver Exchange, a
marketplace platform for Evolvers to sell and trade their goods and services, as well as featuring companies
that accord with our community’s values. Due to lack of funds, we couldn’t launch this site. We had the
opportunity to shoot using green screen, recording the silhouettes of a professional dance troupe, for an
Evolver.net promo video. Unfortunately, we never had the resources for post-production. We want to
redesign and overhaul Evolver.net, adding new features and making it far more user-friendly, augmenting
its ability to function as a tool for civil society. We never had a marketing budget for Reality Sandwich,
which now reaches more than 100,000 readers per month on its own merit. I could easily list another ten or
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twenty deserving projects that we have not been able to fund up to this point, tools that would help our
community as well as create revenue for the project.
In the past, a sizable pool of investors understood that the bottom line was not the only determining factor
in deciding whether certain projects got a legitimate chance to succeed. These people would patronize the
arts, endow a magazine, and support other types of cultural ventures and social initiatives. They believed
that championing a vision or fighting for a cause was a way of creating value -- what the sociologist Pierre
Bourdieu called “culture capital” -- and was also a form of reward. This type of patronage still exists but
has become rare. Today, socially progressive investors also confront a bewildering blizzard of possibly
promising projects that incessantly seek their support. Given so many options, they find it difficult to
determine how to use resources most effectively.
While independent media ventures like the Grove Press or The Village Voice were given many years of
support before they broke even, today most independent media start-ups are quickly shut down if they don’t
measure up to the high yields produced by bottom-line oriented companies. Only media that panders to a
low common denominator has a chance to succeed in this financial climate. Evolver has been extremely
lucky to find a handful of brave and visionary investors who saw the value in our project, and provided the
capital that got us to this point. Unfortunately, we have not found enough capital to give us a lead time of
even six months to a year – enough of a cushion to develop and promote projects that generate reliable
revenue, at a time when traditional sources such as advertising have evaporated. We have, therefore, found
ourselves in a constant semi-starvation mode of scrambling for bare resources. I feel sad as well as
frustrated when I compare Evolver’s situation to that of corporate media conglomerates that seem to cater
to the interests of the military industrial complex, as well as so many companies that have deep pockets to
produce, promote and distribute the products of Third World sweatshops, dangerous chemicals, or
industrialized food that is detrimental to human health and the biosphere.
Beyond all commercial incentives, writing my last book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl convinced me
that this is a time of intense transition -- that humanity will either evolve our consciousness and take
individual and eventually species-wide responsibility for our effects on the planet, or we won’t have much
future here. The Evolver Social Movement is the best vehicle I have been able to conceive, along with my
Evolver cohorts, to hasten this transformation, by helping to build a viable alternative culture in local
communities, and by producing media that spreads the word. Media shapes the consciousness of the
masses, and unless we can transmit a different set of messages through the mainstream, it will be extremely
difficult to change our society’s destructive habits.
Vast multitudes are trapped in the matrix -- our culture’s constrained system of rewards and punishments --
and incapable of exploring what might lie beyond it. In New York City, most people do not conceive that
the hyper-consumerist and self-centered lifestyle to which they are accustomed will soon be untenable. In
all likelihood, massive change will come about through a combination of factors that include a much deeper
crash of the economic system, shortages of fossil fuels and other necessities, an intensifying series of
disasters like the earthquakes that recently wracked Haiti and Chile, as well as civil unrest and tax rebellion
as people understand there can be no return to “normal” growth, as we have hit the resource limits on the
biosphere. I am pretty sure this will be the case at any rate – although, admittedly, I don’t know for certain.
It is possible that I am biased, as I innately disagree with many aspects of our society. However, I do feel
that an impartial overview of the available data leads to this conclusion, as many people, and even Time
Magazine, are now realizing.
I look forward to a transformation of our culture and a deep shift in our system of values. Personally, I hope
this happens through a global awakening of consciousness rather than a series of catastrophes. I anticipate
we may have both for a while -- much like the violent convulsions that accompany a birthing process.
Recently, I held a public dialogue with the great filmmaker Abel Ferrara, known for dark underworld fables
like The King of New York and The Bad Lieutenant, at Collective Hardware on the Bowery. Ferrara sees
our society has become untenable and unsustainable. Yet he seemed unable to recognize that this situation
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might require an active rather than reactive response -- that we actually need to build the scaffold for the
new society and value system while the old one melts down. I find that most people from the older
generation share this blind spot. Many artists embrace the culture’s destructive tendencies, even
glamorizing the dysfunctional characters who emerge from our cynical doom-spiral state. We tend to dwell
upon the muck, rather than using art to envision and inspire the way out of it.
We started Evolver and Reality Sandwich because we felt the real need for “interdependent media” that
expresses both a practical and visionary alternative. As Buckminster Fuller noted, we have the capacity to
redesign society, using resources far more efficiently, elevating human consciousness, aligning with the
biosphere, and creating a “win win” scenario for humanity -- but most people have no idea this is possible.
At the moment, we are coming close to failing what Fuller called our final exam as a species, “to take on
the responsibility we’ve been designed to be entrusted with.”
The idea to launch the Evolver Social Movement by going to our community and asking them to support
what we already do, instead of trying to create a new project to generate revenue, came from one of our
investors. Our first reaction was to reject this proposal. It was so simple that it seemed counterintuitive.
Given a few days to think on it, we realized this was, actually, the natural and authentic approach. By
becoming a member of the Evolver Social Movement, you directly support alternative media that presents
radical and transformative ideas, and help develop our network of local communities in the US and abroad.
Since investment is scarce while advertising revenues have dried up, our best hope for Evolver is to appeal
directly to you. We ask that you consider what our project provides, and decide if it is in your best interests
to see it flourish and thrive. If you see the value in it, we hope you will join and contribute. This is an
elegant, egalitarian, grassroots solution. We are letting the people choose. And if you do choose to support
Evolver.net, we intend to solicit your participation at a deeper level as the project goes forward.
To a certain extent, I enjoy salesmanship, marketing, and promotion. When 2012: The Return of
Quetzalcoatl was published, I relentlessly pushed the publicity department to pursue every lead I could
uncover. I intend to be equally relentless about pushing the Evolver Social Movement over the next few
months. I will probably bore, annoy, and irritate many people along the way. But I am used to that. Some
people may feel we have compromised or betrayed their trust. At this point, I don’t mind if we lose the
uncommitted segment of our community, at least for a while, as we make our needs and priorities clear.
While I am sympathetic to the anti-capitalist reactions we get from some people, they simply don’t leave
room for Evolver to survive. Rather than entirely dropping out or abandoning the system, we have no
choice but to make use of it, as long as it lasts.
If the Evolver Social Movement flourishes, we can pursue a number of hopefully useful goals. I admit,
ironically, that I am one of the world’s worst joiners. I almost never join any type of group, affiliation,
association, and will go out of my way to avoid doing so, no matter what difficulties it creates. Launching
the E+SM, I am reminded of Groucho Marx’s quip that he would never belong to any club that would have
him as a member. I have made an exception in this case, and can only hope others will do the same.
Growing up in New York City, I always felt totally alienated from community and from politics. While I
marched in some protests, including those against the Iraq War, I often wondered why I bothered. There are
times when protest is necessary. However, more and more people are realizing that you can never change
anything by opposing it or fighting against it -- often, you end up feeding it energy. The only way to change
a bad situation is to build the thing that is good, that will replace the old corrupt system.
For the most part, we lack forums where people can learn about what is happening, and organize around the
critical issues of our time. The Evolver Regionals can help provide this. Our civil society is a scarecrow of
a true democratic body, with most people passified, distracted, and ignorant. Our financial system is an
extraordinary sorceror’s instrument designed to expropriate value from poor and middle class people and
funnel the wealth to an elite class of financial capitalists and speculators. This process has actually become
far more intense in recent years, reaching astonishingly surrealist levels. The mass media keeps people in a
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state of anxiety and distraction, while our financial institutions entangle people in debt and obligation.
While a few live high on the hog, most people face an ever-more uncertain and impoverished future.
As members of this society, we collude in our government’s ruinous policies if we do not come together to
bring an end to them. To take one example, the US is still engaged in two horrific wars, with over a million
Iraq civilians dead as a result of the campaign in Iraq, for which we still have no legitimate justification. In
actual fact, our social institutions are currently in the throes of a deep legitimation crisis. Overwhelming
force, in itself, does not justify illegal and immoral activities. Given no obvious alternative, people allow
themselves to be distracted and deluded by meaningless infotainment. The only way we can build a more
resilient and sustaining world is by designing new social infrastructure that organizes and activates the
dormant genius of civil society.
Reality Sandwich and Evolver.net are already a hub for alternative news and views, for essays and articles
exploring the radical edge of human thought. Given your support, we can develop more powerful and
professional media that exposes and investigates, incites and inspires. At the same time, the Evolver Social
Movement builds a scaffold for local communities to mesh visionary ideals with practical solutions. In the
future, these communities can take a united stand on issues our global community deems to be critical. We
believe the Evolver Social Movement shows a possible path forward, a way we can find each other, then
use our cunning and creativity to reinvent a society whose destructive activities threaten the future of this
world. Considering all of this, I hope you will decide to join forces with us in this social experiment -- or,
to use a term from the artist Joseph Beuys, “social sculpture” -- and participate in ways that you find
inspiring, and bring you joy.
Comments
Stand-out
Submitted by somantics on Fri, 04/02/2010 - 08:02.
Although I am based in the UK RS and Evolver feel as intimate to me as a local newsletter. However, the
content, ideas and use of language used herein elevate it head and shoulders above any national newspaper
site, indie blog site or alternative media platform. To be honest I have been here since the beginning and
still can't get enough of it. As far as I can tell, there's no question of neglecting your DUTY to put in if
you've taken as much out of it as I have.
It can't be allowed to fall down if we're around to help keep it standing.
Yes fuck capitalism and the marvellous way in which we work harder for less and less (particularly if you
live in a city like London where it costs £10 to get out of bed in the morning) but if you want something to
grow you have to take the long view; nourish it with anything you can until its legs are stong enough to
walk out by itself
• reply
• Report this comment
No shame in the dollar game!

Submitted by linkx on Fri, 04/02/2010 - 09:05.
"I relentlessly pushed the publicity department to pursue every lead I could uncover. I intend to be equally
relentless about pushing the Evolver Social Movement over the next few months. I will probably bore,
annoy, and irritate many people along the way."
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That's the only way to do it, Daniel! Keep it up. So long as the financial activities remain transparent, and
the fruits of the cash ripen for the community, you will have support--even from the annoyed.
• reply
Financial woes view

Submitted by Dizzra on Fri, 04/02/2010 - 11:03.
From above, "While I am sympathetic to the anti-capitalist reactions we get from some people, they simply
don’t leave room for Evolver to survive. Rather than entirely dropping out or abandoning the system, we
have no choice but to make use of it, as long as it lasts."
AND "The only way to change a bad situation is to build the thing that is good, that will replace the old
corrupt system."
I like the idea of embracing a transformation of an existing system rather than a complete overhaul from the
outside of the system. It seems that the power to grow a new organization comes from the same energy
sources as the existing one. We are all part of the system, not outside of it. So many of us want Pandora,
but we don't realize we can have it here on Earth. We don't have to watch a movie, or escape into it only,
rather we can imagine it, then transform our world into it taking the good ideas of the existing system and
apply a sound ethical core to facilitate a new view of the world. Similar to the Buddhist idea of a lotus
growing out of the mud. The mud represents the current place it is as a seed, then it grows out of the mud
and into something beautiful.
I used to see money as the problem in our economy and way of life, which currently, I think it is. I have
since gained a different view of money, one that takes my anger out of the equation, after I looked into to a
book called "The End of Money and the Future of Civilization" by Thomas Greco, Jr. Then I saw money as
just another type of energy we use to exchange goods. I realized that our current monetary system is just
flawed, which intern creates the pyramid of upward flow towards the rich with nothing coming back down,
or balancing back towards the producers of the capital. Instead what was flowing down was consumerism.
The value we created through our labors was being turned back to us as like a drug habit of consuming with
a chain called debt. In order to hold any value, we produced and consumed more because the money wasn't
coming back to the producers as value. I am saying we steal Televisions in exchange for Heroin instead of
money; the corporations/taxes skim off everything and hand us back little.
I may have a strange view of our economy, but I look at money as a need any organization must have to
gain enough energy to create or change the system it is born from. In our current reality, money is the
power to change because we are locked within the money system. We fight money with money, which isn't
really fighting, it's using the money system to reform the money system. It is a means to root out the errors
and correct the wrongs of the system. The big difference: a change in view, beliefs, ethics and attitudes
towards using money to benefit everyone instead of the few. Money has become a new slave system. We
all think money is the problem but it isn't. Labor isn't evil, its what we don't get from it that seems evil; a
trick the higher people on the pyramid use. It is what we do with money, how we use it, like many things.
So don't be afraid of using money to gain some traction for a good cause, just keep the cause ethical!
~ The spice expands consciousness -Dune
• reply
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I greatly admire what you,
Submitted by Chris Hopkins on Fri, 04/02/2010 - 19:16.
I greatly admire what you, Ken, Jonathan, Michael and the rest of the RS crew have been able to do here. I
wouldn't even know where to begin in starting a socially conscious movement across the world, and hear
we have it. It would be a shame to lose something because the restrictions that consensus reality has put on
it. Evolver is something more than consensus reality, it is a step towards changing it. Even in the
individuals that it touches it changes their consensus reality. I love that you have had the perseverance,
passion, and vision to continue to push on, and I can't wait to see where it continues to push to. And what
Evolver has in store for all of us in the future. -Chris
• reply
no complaints?
Submitted by Daniel Pinchbeck on Fri, 04/02/2010 - 19:24.
no complaints or critiques?
i am not used to this.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
• reply
It's hard to complain about

Submitted by Chris Hopkins on Mon, 04/05/2010 - 09:23.
It's hard to complain about something when as far as I can tell it is the leading model for what it is. I could
say there are things that I would have done differently But then I realize that like I said above I don't even
know where I would start to do something like this. And I don't think that anyone else is trying to do
something like this at the time either. I'm sure in the future we will be able to look back and say "I wish that
would have gone different" just like any movement before us has. When it comes down to it if there is
nothing that you would have done different than you just haven't thought about it hard enough. So I'm fairly
flexible in my judgement of pioneers, they have nothing to look at to gauge what they are doing. So yes no
complaints, I think this is going as good as it can for now, and I hope that the community can see that as
well.
• reply
Daniel you know I wouldn't

Submitted by drew hempel on Fri, 04/02/2010 - 20:42.
Daniel you know I wouldn't let you down. Because of you Daniel I've tested my qigong Chunyi Lin master
transmission third eye full lotus yoga training against salvia and DMT. I have no regrets. Mitch Horowitz
replied to my email that he would go check out Chunyi Lin. But I haven't had a chance to read his Occult
America book yet since it's history I kind of doubt Chunyi Lin is in there. Seriously the whole "coast" scene
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SF/NYC gets the slam from the right wing populist fascists (aka fear of the limousine liberals). And I
started out progressive as you have now moved into (meaning overtly political), but now I'm radical
conspiratorial -- i.e. the CIA takes down threats with airplane bombs -- they get Wellstoned. Yep I'm
talking Minnesota radical -- the midwest -- the forlorn freezer somewhere next to Michigan! haha. O.K. so
all you have to do is go to Minnesota and take a class from someone who can see inside your body, who
can read your past lives, who can look at you and transmit a laser into your body. Yes you will feel this
laser! Burning bliss -- be it on your right kidney or the middle of your brain. I'm talking Chunyi Lin here --
and guess what? You don't have to take my word -- not only does he have a dozen or so people posting
videos on his website about how he healed them of serious diseases like cancer, M.S., Parkinsons, etc. but
the Mayo Clinic doctors have recently confirmed, in a double-blind study, that his healing is real. Anyway I
know this is about Evolver and its funding -- seriously though -- my argument is that by the cool coasts
neglecting the "Tibet of the U.S." -- Minnesota with the largest Tibetan refugee community -- (outside
NYC) -- and the climate of Tibet!! My argument is that there's some karmic balance going on here. Either
you all make a mecca to the Midwest -- http://springforestqigong.com style - or the truth will bit you on the
backside! haha. I know you have a family to consider and then there is your innocence to take into
consideration! haha. Meanwhile enjoy this video of John Chang and realize that Chunyi Lin can do this
stuff as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aos0hnwiHt8 Why the two coasts are afraid of Minnesota
is beyond me -- I realize it's cold and isolated -- but what better circumstances to face your inner demons.
• reply
hi drew, thanks for the

Submitted by Daniel Pinchbeck on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 05:56.
hi drew,
thanks for the reminder about qi gong. the videos of the master of java are very inspiring. there are
teachers here in nyc as well. as soon as i can find the time i am in.
i tend to agree with you about the senator - one of many strong messages sent to keep the rabble in check.
there is clearly a psychosis running through our ruling elite. unfortunately i don't think we can hide away
from this situation because the psychosis doesn't just target particular politicians or populations but it
threatens the continuity of the biosphere as a habitat for humans.
we are in a situation where we can neither run away nor fight the situation directly, however we do have the
option of using the media tools now placed in our hands to bring about a rapid evolution of consciousness. i
believe this can be done in a way that is embracing and unthreatening, as the age of opposition (pisces) is
giving way to an age where disparate agendas flow together (aquarius). i am seeing a lot of amazing
transformations taking place, where medicines like ayahuasca (which i would have recommended over
salvia or dmt) are reaching into enclaves of privilege and cultural prestige, and changing mindset.
i will raise with the evolver staff the idea of moving our offices to minnesota, but cannot guarantee it will
be the move we will make.
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• reply
Drew
Submitted by Tristan Gulliford on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 10:38.
I love that you are still talking about third eye laser beams even after five years.
=)
• reply
Sold, American!
Submitted by GuerillaMystic on Fri, 04/02/2010 - 21:18.
I'm sure many of us were turned on to this site as a result of Daniel's books. Given the power and intimacy
of his words, which have affected so many people, what more credentials are needed to entrust someone
with some money? It won't be worth the paper it's printed on in a few years anyways, and you can bank on
that prediction.
I remember 2007 Burning Man, Daniel started talking about high-risk home lending (can't think of the
right word right now, funny how those media-phrases just vanish after they have served their purpose in the
propaganda machine). This was at the end of August, a good four months before there was even a peep in
mainstream media about what was happening. This is not to say that Daniel was the sole assessor
and forecaster of the "meltdown", but if you had trashed all the advice from your Chase-Manhattan broker
and bet with Daniel, you'd have millions with which to support his cause - which, if you're reading this, is
also your cause. Credibility like that just doesn't exist with public figures any more.
Believe me, I am not using even a dash of hyperbole when I say that I loathe capitalism. I have detested
this euphemism for slavery since I first percieved its roots in exploitation and its fundamental vampiric
form, feeding on human suffering, and I will hate it until its bloody, chaotic demise. I have watched in
horror as its sophistication and charisma have swollen - like an engorged mosquito unable to dislodge its
proboscis from a juicy arm - to the point of bursting. But, as soon as I cash in my medical marijuana crop,
I'll also be dropping a check in the mail for Reality Sandwich.
• reply
Tusinde Tak!
Submitted by Todd Casper on Fri, 04/02/2010 - 23:09.
Hey Daniel. I wish I had a critique for you...maybe later. I just wanted to say a quick thank you and let you
know I will be contributing some Kroner as trade for all that you and ken continue to provide.
I left america in 2002, married my danish girlfriend and moved to copenhagen, as i could not continue to
bear witness or be party to the mass deception going on in that country. In my first years of self imposed
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isolation here, i was constantly apologizing for being american. With the coming of your books and the RS
site I found a voice (voices) I could relate to and a newfound pride in being an 'outsider' American with an
alchemical take on the nature of consciousness and an uncompromising eye on the inevitable future.Thanks
again and best of luck.
• reply
the Evolution-of-Evolver; Reality Sandwich in Post-Modern Times

Submitted by Todd Morikawa on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 14:26.
The ending of the Piscean, & the advent of the Age-of-Aquarius; the Kairos-moment; for a coming-
together of Beings; beyond lines-of-tribe;race;class;sex;gender in a multi-dimensional; time-less; border-
less; pluralistic; open; free; tolerant; generous; loving; wise; seeking fashion is the Eternal-NOW.
With the inevitable-collapse of a materialistic-uber-hedonistic; nihilistic; mindlessly-solipsistic; dominator

economic house-of-cards/ponzi-scheme; awash in a glut of trashy-media; sensationalist-claims; unfounded,
& inaccurate views; bigotry; nepotism; corruption; & lies; drunk-on-it's-own-power; there arises a thirst-
for-Wholeness; a desire-for-spirituality (indigenous-Wisdom-of-the-Ages); a strange-attraction towards the
aesthetically; intelligently; beautifully; crafted; perfected; re-vised; enhanced; drawn; refined; & that which
is like the Pearl-of-Great-Price; the authentic; genuine Experience-of- the-Sacred; which is the inspiration,
& the evoked image/response in all true ART; MUSIC; LITERATURE (whether didactic; imaginative; or
even graphic/extreme); RELATIONSHIP; ARCHITECTURE; POETRY; the sea-of-
Dream/picture/symbol-language of the Psyche.
A Community of psycho- & physico- nauts dedicated to the GOOD, TRUE, & BEAUTIFUL; to the Muses-
of-Philosophy; the realities-of-Divinity alluded to in all the known-Religions; sustaining; embracing; &
sticking-with-one another; both together; in-intimacy; & apart; - as Rilke's Solitudes-dwelling-amongst-
one-other; with-one-another; not only in words; images; verbal or written communication; but connected -
Telepathically; in an invisible spatial-array of non-temporal nodes; - like Terrence Mckenna's notion of the
invisible-mycelium/rhizomes of inter-galactic Psilocybin colonies linked by the "Felt-Sense" of the
moment; like Indra's net-of-jewels; each of us an antennae/receiver; responding to; & in telepathic
communion with: powerful invisible frequencies; wavelengths, beings, dimensions that inform-us; sustain-
us; connect-us; & give us Aldous Huxley's "Gift-beyond-Price;" a Gratuitous-Grace; freely-given; the
Elysian-Mystery; the Boon; the Holy-Grail; to see-God ("the eye with which I see God is the same eye with
which God sees-me - Meister Eckhart)
- As Aldous Huxley said; the Psychedelic-experience offers Mystery; Complexity; Depth; in-every-field.
To paraphrase Tim Leary; "One coming back through the door-in-the-wall-will-never-be-the-same; One
will be less arrogant; but more forgiving & appreciative; less sure-of-everything; but more humble & aware
of one's place-in-the-scheme-of-it-all; less-hostile & angry; & more loving, kind, & friendly. To sense the
Sacred; mysterium tremendum et fascinans; the awesome, & terror; in-all, with-all, & for-all; the
seemingly-artificial (i.e. City-Streets/Concrete & Steel) /contrived); as-well as the Flow-of-water; the
Dance-of-the-bees; the never-ending-Patterns of Nature, & Infinite cycles of Time.
We are to see in the world a magnified reflection of the universe; & indwelling-divinity. Outer-trappings;
what Chogyam Trungpa called "Spiritual-Materialism;" may be signs; are outward-Reflections of an
inward; & Spiritual-Grace." (To see the world in a grain-of-sand; & Heaven in a Wildflower; Hold
Infinity; in the Palm-of-Your-Hand; Eternity-in-an-Hour (William Blake).(cf. Emerson's "what lies -
within-us").
The Community-at-Large; reflects the-World; & confirms; embraces; supports the Individual each-in-our-
own-life; in Geometric-Forms; Spiral-Dynamics; & in degrees-of-insulation; comfort; complexity(&
16
simplicity); familiarity; modulation; & calibration - adjusted to each individual's development/force-of-
character; a Feedback-loop; Response; test-for-Echo; & ultimately; the Set/Setting
(location/resources/experience/stories/bonds) in which the Experience-of-Life; of Birth; Death; Re-birth;
Peak/Out-of-Body/Near-Death-Experience(s); States-of-Consciousness; Insight; Active-Imagination;
Dream-work; Narrative-therapy; Journalling; & morphic-Resonance is guided; shaped; arranged; loved; re-
vealed; & unfold in one's noetic; dramatic; mythological; self-expressive; unique; multi-faceted; eclectic;
well-seasoned; noetic; passage/articulation/composition/contribution/presence/in-form-
ations/actions/paths/directions/projects/endeavors.
There is no-better Crucible than such a Consensual; Participatory; Organic; Emerging; Quiescent;
Ecological; Visionary; Learning; Tranformational; Community; modeled around contiguous-Family (such
as the Trust/Empathy one finds in; the Rainbow-family; "Burners"; or online forums of Island; Erowid;
Lycaeum /World-citizenship/Stewardship; or Cells/Affinity-groups/Friends; Nature (Animal-Colonies;
Forest ecologies; such as one-finds in Nature; Constellations-of-Stars; Weather); religious-orders (such as
the Buddhist Sangha; Christian Base-communities (such as one finds: in Latin-America) Retreats;
Sanctuaries; Cloisters; Temples; Communes), & Co-operatives - whose participants regularly, & wisely;
enfold/en-tangle/commune/contact (in vivid,potent encounters) with medicinal-plant-teachers/spiritual-
beings (such as Mckenna's idea of Psilocybin (& Ayahuasca) as an "intergalactic-intelligence" whose
spores activate/facilitate direct telepathic/intuitive/gnosis with the Spirit; (or Mckenna's "machine-elves" of
DMT).
This potent therapeutic life-way; of holistic/integrative medicinal-practice; of healing (on multiple-levels

-physical/psychical/Heart/Soul/Spirit/); Catalytic-Transformative experiences; in telepathic-empathic
connection; with intuitive-Grace; guided, directed, & informed by the Wisdom-of-the-Ages; & the Gods,
Goddesses; Heroes; & Heroines of All-Time; interpreted in all-sector/all-quandrant
(inner/outer/personal/collective); holographic; multi-dimensional Framework; is intrinsically-Amplifying
Themes; Memes; Sentience; Awareness; & Divinity; Re-weaves. & Re-patterns DNA, & intensifies the
acceleration, & manifestation of the Soul's-Code; which is the Strange-Attractor; the White-Hole-at-the-
End-of-Time; the Eschaton; (what the Transhumanists like to call the Singularity in their technological-
views).
These perspectives, & conversations are prefigured; alluded to; prophecied; & explicated - implicitly; in the
writings of Daniel Pinchbeck; Erik Davis; Charles Eisenstein; David Abrams, Terence McKenna; Jean
Houston; (cf. Fiction of Tom Robbins/Dan Brown); or their fore-bearers - like Jung; Maslow; McLuhan,
Bucky Fuller; Robert Anton Wilson; Aldous Huxley (or earlier generations; Abby Hoffman; poet Allan
Ginsberg; or Beat Jack Kerouac) - & also in many, many more contributers (& participants) - particularly
in Reality Sandwich, & projects such as Evolver.
also see (book): The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and
Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America.
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”

-Rumi
"Furthermore.. we have not to risk the Adventure-Alone;For the Heroes; & Heroines of All-Time have
gone before Us.The Labyrinth is thoroughly-known.And where we had thought to journey-outwards- we
will come to the Center-of-our-own-Being; Where we had thought to Slay-another; We shall Slay-
Ourselves; & where we had thought - to Be-Alone - We shall be One with All-The-World." - Joseph
Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces)
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"Learn to Love the Questions -like Locked Boxes - in Your Heart" - Rilke
• reply
joining up?
Submitted by Daniel Pinchbeck on Wed, 04/21/2010 - 22:31.
i love the euphoria of your screed, wonder if it means you are planning to join us in the ESM as well?
• reply
Reality Sandwich
Submitted by coyoteyogi on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 05:42.
Daniel, and the RS crew, It was a pleasure to meet you at the RS retreat in October. Since that magical time
and place I have come to more deeply appreciate the power and influence of the RS site on my imagination,
on my actions and on my sense of hopefulness. I agree that the future holds both cataclysm and
opportunity. I agree that the paper and pixel money represents a collective hallucination. A year ago that
hallucination came close to dissolving. What it showed is that the foundation for money is values and if we
continue to live in a world structured on lies and fantasies the "waking up" or birthing process will be rude,
violent and possibly fatal. I am pleased to be a member of the Evolver Network. I struggle accepting the
reality that there is no such thing as security. It is a collective myth, a shared dream. So I am donating to the
site and the community. My logical, little me, says that my small contribution will make no difference and I
have had fantasies of being rich and simply writing a big check and sending it off in the mail. This is 'old
world' imagination at work. It is time to tell a different story. I will continue to send people to the RS site
and imagine the community of support growing and strengthening. coyoteyogi (Phil in Maine)
• reply
Where is the Diggers Buffet? (wink)

Submitted by sidecross on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 06:37.
Why go for a sandwich when the ‘Diggers’ have a free buffet?
http://www.diggers.org/top_entry.htm
http://www.breakingopenthehead.com/#
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Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
T. S. Eliot
• reply
Right on the Money

Submitted by spencer-wayne on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 09:43.
Daniel, Really helpful post. You continue to distill those rockin powerful ideas. Rarely a cheerleader, joiner
or salesman I'm inspired to rally some friends to ESM. Keep us posted.
• reply
Thanks for this piece of

Submitted by ayatime on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 10:34.
Thanks for this piece of honesty. I was quite disappointed a few months back when I saw all the "articles"
and videos about Chimbre that looked so strikingly like advertisment in disguise. I thought that RS had lost
its objectivity and sold it for the big $. I guess that I - just like many of us who see the absurdity of the
capitalist system - have a tendency to forget that while we might not agree with the system, it still governs
an important part of our life, this part being needing money to live and to carry on project (which I had
paradoxically overlooked in my desire to develop a higher consicousness). Your transparency will certainly
help me understand more of RS future choice while reminding me that I should not so hastily judge. You
really have a beautiful project that I hope will continue to inspire us all towards changes for the better..
• reply
All right then...

Submitted by Workingman on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 10:42.
Well I'm not one much for joining things either, but this is the most awesome website ever, I have gotten a
lot out of it, and I figured I should be able to contribute a little bit. I clicked on the link to join and I was
happy to see how that is set up. The options to pay $5, $10, or $20, or any amount per month are good
choices. So even someone who doesn't feel that wealthy can just choose the $5 option (or they could even
fill in $1 or $2). I also don't much like the automatic monthly deduction thing, but how else are you gonna
do it? I already do that with Netflix as that's the only way they play. And some people don't like Paypal, but
it is a pretty standard, safe, universal tool for web transactions now, and is easy to use. So I signed up for
$5 a month. And like you pointed out in another post, anyone can sign up anytime, cancel anytime, sign up
again, you're not locked into anything. $5 a month is $60 a year, so on one hand it seems like so little to
contribute, but on the other hand it is significant, way more than most magazine subscriptions would be
( but about what it would cost to buy a monthly mag on the newstands). So I hope enough people will sign
up, even for $1 a month, to keep this place alive. These little numbers all add up. Thanks for keeping this
thing going and thanks for making it easy for people to help, and thanks for keeping the money thing purely
voluntary, I hope this site is forever free for anyone to access. You could also consider having a button for
a one-time donation (although people can do that by signing up for any amount and then cancelling). And
maybe even some way for people to bypass paypal - like here's our address, send us a check. But this is
already a good system like it is. Thanks Daniel and everyone behind this for making a serious effort to help
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us all on this currently messed up planet. Thanks for the positive visions of the future. Terry Slade
http://www.ionet.net/~tslade
• reply
A poem
Here's a poem for the movement:
"dementia temporalis"
i am of the twice born
but dead many times over and again
we built these cities
without realizing what we had done
it is really our fate
to live and die inside these invisible cages?
choking on the ashes of love and hope in flames?
we die to breathe life again
and again
if it was our own hand that enslaved us
it must also be our own hand that frees us
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we deserve to bathe in pools of radiance
to taste the divine essence and recognize what it truly is
we deserve to become like the stars
whose immeasurable heat we still vaguely remember
this transformation is slow
but as certain as the rise and fall
of tides, of trees, of empires, and ideologies
the only movement is contraction and expansion
of the same form
our lives are only fragments
like pages torn from an ancient book,
misquoted and mostly confused
because we have been taken out of context
where is our context? where do we belong?
ages of stone and dust,
ages of wine and whispers,
ages of finding and losing
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will never make this clear
only the feeling of it
is what really matters
~ tristan gulliford 2009
• reply
Ghosts of the Underground

Submitted by drew hempel on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 13:24.
This is an amazing documentary on the London Tube -- Ghosts of the Underground.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/ghosts-underground/ Spooky mind-blowing realitysandwich material.
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Thanks...
Submitted by zezt on Sun, 04/04/2010 - 09:58.
Drew for that link. It was really interesting
• reply
The great big crisis tent

Submitted by toylit on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 13:54.
Walking among all the wounded in the streets and alleys, pushing a baby buggy has made me see the whole
issue of "transformation YES! but how do we pay for it" . In a whole new light. The evolver movement in a
kind of cyber media way seems to turn into a psychic "crisis tent" like they have when you take too much
acid at a dead show, or break your arm at burning man. My only suggestion to Daniel, is to take a page
from the catholic church that has lorded it over the ongoing catastrophy of occidental history so bouyantly.
The priest holds the "host" (usually some kind of crackers&wine) and draws down the incorporeal body of
his god, so that it lives in the "host". Then makes the flock CONSUME the now incorporated body of god.
Neat trick. Our god is a beautiful, illuminated world that most of us have actually experienced for periods
of time, from hours to years on end (the fortunate few) a website makes a passable host, but it wants to
enter three space. We all want it to come and live with us forever. But first the grim duty of waking up
from "the nightmare of history". Because if Babylon falls, and there is nobody left to hear it , will it make a
sound? TOYLIT
• reply
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wowzers.......
Submitted by cadalyst on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 15:04.
I've said it before, but I think supporting the evolver social movement though a membership fee will only
be necessary for a period of time.....that is, until our vision of a new type of community exchange is
realized. You always say something very profound that hits home with me Daniel, so thank you. Do you
know the fellas from mgmt? Beautiful music...I could see you liking their psychedelic sound. You are
everything Eternal, perpetual, unending I am the mystical The sweet science of seeing the whole
• reply
appreciating
Submitted by Jeff Charest on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 19:21.
your honesty and forthcomingness. It's hard to argue or criticize someone who has laid out their position in
such a clear manner! Isn't that the reason we're all here? Thank you for being a catalyst for something
positive! much love.
"God sends meat, the devil sends cooks."
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Journey into the Evolver Social Movement

Submitted by Lygeia on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 19:26.
No. No complaints. I think you nailed it.
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Taken from the BOTH web site

Submitted by sidecross on Sun, 04/04/2010 - 17:33.
Taken from the BOTH web site forum by my good friend willoweyes:
World Turned Upside Down (Diggers) (Leon Rosselson) Recorded by Dick Gaughan
In 1649 To St George's Hill A ragged band they called the Diggers Came to show the people' s will They
defied the landlords They defied the laws They were the dispossessed Reclaiming what was theirs
We come in peace, they said To dig and sow We come to work the land in common And to make the waste
land grow This earth divided We will make whole So it can be A common treasury for all.
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The sin of property We do disdain No one has any right to buy and sell The earth for private gain By theft
and murder They took the land Now everywhere the walls Rise up at their command.
They make the laws To chain us well The clergy dazzle us with heaven Or they damn us into hell We will
not worship The God they serve The God of greed who feeds the rich While poor men starve
We work, we eat together We need no swords We will not bow to masters Or pay rent to the lords We are
free men Though we are poor You Diggers all stand up for glory
Stand up now From the men of property The orders came They sent the hired men and troopers To wipe
out the Diggers' claim Tear down their cottages Destroy their corn They were dispersed - Only the vision
lingers on
You poor take courage You rich take care The earth was made a common treasury For everyone to share
All things in common All people one We come in peace The order came to cut them down
Between the idea

And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
T. S. Eliot
• reply
Subverting Capitalism Requires Capital. DONATE TODAY!

Submitted by rationalradical on Sun, 04/04/2010 - 18:26.
I have no critiques for you Daniel. After I read this post I understood 100%. Anyone reading these words;
there is no avoiding the apathetic guilt of knowing that for less than the price of a dime-bag a month you
can make a totally worthwhile contribution to building a participatory counter-culture that doesn't just
challenge the status quo (that's been done in spades) but actively involves its participants in changing
society as well as transforming ourselves.
I did not become aware of the consciousness culture until later in life, after stumbling upon LSD rather
unexpectedly and then desperately trying to make sense of the experience I discovered Reality Sandwich
and the writings of Daniel Pinchbeck. Although I must admit that I don't always agree with Daniel's
conclusions, I've found his work to be an indispensable and cryptic treasure-map through an otherwise un-
illuminated and difficult wilderness of metaphysical queries.
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I come from the much more militant old-school of revolutionary politics. I never rubbed elbows much with
the New Wave or Consciousness Culture. I spend most of my time obsessing over revolutionary classics
and pondering radical politics. Orbiting the Anarchist and Communist constellations on campus has taught
me a lot about "Activism", a rather oblique term representing an entire vocabulary of lost skills and social
techniques better described as "The Art and Science of Organized Human Activity" or more succinctly,
"Revolutionary Practice" or "Direct Action".
I am a student activist and organizer at the University of North Texas where homosexuals, feminists,
anarchists, socialists etc. are viewed as synonymous with terrorists and criminals, and a host of
anachronistic slurs that I need not reproduce. I know what its like to try and organize total strangers
together for the purpose of social change, which is hard-enough in our toxic culture, but damn-near
impossible in the intellectual and spiritual dystopia that is my home state of Texas. (Okay....Austin is kinda
cool, but that's as good as it gets here)
I also know what it's like to be a part of an inspirational attempt at independent progressive media. I co-
hosted a daily political talk-show here in the heart of uber-conservative Dallas Texas at an independently
owned am radio station. I found the station's faculty of white-collar liberals and rank-n-file democrats a
politically limited environment for someone who's personal politics more closely resemble 1999 Seattle
street actions than orthodox party politics. But they were good people trying to create alternatives in what
they viewed as a political dessert of conservative hate-radio and Clear Channel nausea.
I watched that station bleed to death as every frank and honest comment on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine
cut one more advertising life-line from our sinking ship. Comments that any RS reader would see as purely
common sense or human decency. They lasted six months after I arrived before they lost their signal. They
still broadcast online, albeit to a microscopic audience. I know your pain Daniel, on a very specific level. I
am as anti-capitalist as any man/woman/vegetable you will ever meet and I totally understand the
imperative need for the capital, resources, and audience needed to make any media project work. Your
solicitation isn't just understandable, it's an un-ignorable necessity that should foster nothing but solidarity
and compassion from your readers....that and the desperately needed cash.
I have seen the failing broadcast media model die from the inside out. What I witnessed on a small scale is
shaking the corridors of everyone from News Corp to Clear Channel. (Great April Fool's post by the way!)
But the station I worked for, despite it's independent politics, mimicked the exact same ad-model as its
corporate competitors. The big problem with competing with Corporate Personhood on the un-level playing
field of Corporate Capitalism is that the corporations will always be able to compete better than us flesh-
and-blood mortals (As Douglas Rushkoff has eloquently written in his new book Life Inc.) But I feel that
what you and the E+SM are doing is different.
By appealing directly to the audience and soliciting small sustainable individual donations you are cutting
out the middle man; the one selling audiences to advertisers. You are also getting a much more reliable
investment (assuming you reach your goal) from many small donners instead of kissing-ass to a small
number of very wealthy ones. (I know this pain all-to-well) It reminds me a lot of the kind of community
media ecology that projects like The Real News Network and Democracy Now! have mobilized to
challenge corporate controlled news the way we are trying to challenge corporate controlled culture.
I wish you as much success as them. I donate to both regularly although their services are free, as I intend
to do here. There's no getting around it everybody. All of this great work requires cash and capital.
Do you like what you see? Then pony up. People have been subverting capitalism as long as it's been
around. Everyone from the 1st International to the Communist Party to the Paris Commune, the
Sandinistas, the I.W.W., the Black Panther Party, the Zapatistas, and over a hundred years of feminists,
anarchists, socialists, eco-warriors, war-resistors, guerrilla artists, poets, punks, pirates, and propagandists
and EVERYONE OF THEM NEEDED MONEY AND SUPPORT TO DO THEIR REVOLUTIONARY
DUTY! <br />We all want to work towards a free society, but no social movement has ever succeeded pro-
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bono. If you wanna start a revolution you gotta break open a few piggy banks. That's all there is to it.
Donate today. Please.
• reply
Hmmm, HTML?
Submitted by rationalradical on Sun, 04/04/2010 - 18:29.
Hmmm, my above post seemed a lot shorter when it was broken up into nice paragraphs....HTML not
working or am I just that incompetent? I apologize for any damage to anyone's eyesight trying to read the
above post. Revolutionaries love to talk and never know when to shut up. :)
• reply
TinyMCE Drupal config

Submitted by linkx on Tue, 04/06/2010 - 20:37.
Yeah the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor for the comments on this Drupal site is misconfigured, not available
in the initial comment composition screen. It does not do line breaks from [ENTER] unless you are at the
reply or preview stage. Ask Ken and the RS tech team to fix--Civic Actions can help.
• reply
I know the problem too

Submitted by sidecross on Sun, 04/04/2010 - 18:43.
I know the problem too rationalradical.
My last two posts I had to physically hit the 'enter bar' to make my posts readible.
BOTH may not have the flashy graphics and other niceties as Reality Sandwich, but it is much easier to
post in a readable format.
Between the idea

And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
T. S. Eliot
• reply
Thank you Evolver

Submitted by pinkelephantcollective on Mon, 04/05/2010 - 01:00.
As soon as the Elephant has some spare scratch it is coming your way.Thank you very much for making
this all possible and for invoking a new reality.Cheers!-Nano (The Nano Thermitic Pink Elephant)
cargocollective.com/pinkelephantcollective
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"An Elephant Never Forgets...."
• reply
Daniel, Really helpful

Submitted by Ryan50 on Mon, 04/05/2010 - 03:27.
Daniel, Really helpful post video cul rachat credits
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Not More Money

Submitted by sidecross on Mon, 04/05/2010 - 07:38.
We do not need more “join forces with us” capitalism.
The way to a better life cannot be bought. Daniel’s BOTH website has been active for many years now
with little expense and that being paid by those on the site. The cost per year is less than $100.
Between the idea

And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
T. S. Eliot
• reply
A Personal Journey Spin-off

Submitted by Martin D. Anderson on Mon, 04/05/2010 - 12:42.
I was a member of the BOTH discussion board (my handle there: "Mars") and an early member of RS.
Over the years, I've gone in and out of participation with the RS community, both in my commenting on the
website and also as an early and frequent volunteer for events here in NYC. This article by Daniel,
commented on by some familiar names from BOTH (Drew, Sidecross, Willoweyes) reminds me of my own
philosophical journey of the past few years, though I'm somewhat at a loss to accurately describe the terrain
I've been navigating - it's been a real hodgepodge of people and words.
What is clear for me is where to begin, which, like many others, was with reading "Breaking Open the
Head." I would liken that book to a starter pistol of my own interest. What stood out for me in Daniel's
writing was the combination of rigorous skeptical inquiry with an openness of spirit toward extranormal
experiences. Being close to Daniel in age, I recognized a perspective similar to my own, at least at the
intersection of countercultural ideas with the previous generation. In reading it, I remember a doorway of
possibility opening in my own perception that could be summed up, loosely, as the following conceit: "you
27
don't have to throw away your intellect to court these thoughts." As I look back on it, this was a
reconciliation I had been seeking for decades.
On the BOTH board, I was exposed to an enormity of knowledge, some of it highly questionable, but all
exciting. I remember particularly someone posted a transcript of a Terence McKenna lecture on Alchemy
that sent my head spinning in thousands of directions and introduced me to one of the greatest bardic
thinkers of our time.
When my mother began her decline toward death in 2006 I was in the middle of reading "2012." Without
going into detail, I can only say that the act of reading that book at that time fused something in my mind.
My mother was a spiritual counselor and new age devotee, an advocate of the divine goddess in
Catholicism long before "The DaVinci Code." In my adult life I had moved away from anything with a
whiff of New Agism, seeking to distance myself from what I saw as its banalities and lack of emotional
common sense. What I took from "2012" was a kind of permission to return to those interests without the
baggage, and to bridge a gap between my mother and myself. At her funeral, I publicly affirmed my
intention to honor that part of her life.
So when RS started, I readily joined. A bigger canvas and a more ambitious platform were all appealing
and I wasn't disappointed with the content. I deeply admired - and still do admire - many of the contributors
work - ST Frequency, Antonio Lopez, Propaganda Anonymous particularly.
I volunteered for events and helped out by videotaping lower-profile events. When people asked me what I
liked about living in New York, I cited the counter-cultural nexus here as one of the reasons.
Unfortunately, my enthusiasm waned over the years. When I volunteered, I did not feel an immediate
affinity with the people around me. I felt like many of the events were promotional in nature and not
genuinely focused on connecting with people. On the whole, the people I came in contact with seemed - I
want to be delicate here - self-absorbed and self-involved. Those I did find engaging and open seemed to be
exceptions in a "scene." Many others just seemed crazy.
On the message boards, I started to find the commenting - which had always been impassioned but still
managed to be discourse - reaching unparalleled levels of emotional absurdity. A baseline level of self-
awareness seemed to be diminishing and it took a lot of work to get through posts. I was terrifically
impressed with RS's decisions to keep the commenting open even when things got terribly messy, but I
couldn't deny that the "noise in the room" was getting too frustrating and time-consuming to manage.
All this led me to the conclusion that I wasn't as sympatico with this population-at-large as I thought I was.
I'm not a consumer of psychedelics or mind-altering substances of almost any stripe really, I'm sort of
straight-laced on the surface, have a survival job that is fairly uninspiring and am socially reserved with
strangers. Maybe it just wasn't a good fit. I stopped volunteering, found myself visiting RS less often and
rarely made comments. This has pretty much been my current state of affairs.
Reading Daniel's article, however, has reminded me of what drew me to this material in the first place: the
ideas. These ideas spoke to me in words only, in Daniel's books and in the ethereal realm of the internet,
without a culture or scene to approve or disapprove of. In a recent article about community building, Prop
Anonymous wisely pointed out that a "community" doesn't truly come into being until you have people
meeting face-to-face, and I agree with that. It occurs to me now that it doesn't matter if one is or is not a
part of this "community," or if you find many of the people in it unappealing. These ideas - which even
disembodied have a weight and potency of their own, as they did for me at a critical time in my life - are
incredibly important. That they have a high-profile place to commingle, albeit imperfectly, is a necessity
for their continued life.
I know that if RS were to disappear tomorrow, I would sorely miss it and find it hard not to interpret its
absence, sadly, as a symbolic win by monolithic societal forces. So I'll do my part, remuneratively
28
speaking, and hope for its continued growth and life, messily and chaotically, if need be, as the most
interesting endeavors so often are.
• reply
Hello Again
Submitted by sidecross on Mon, 04/05/2010 - 13:53.
"Don't take life too serious, it ain't nohow permanent." - Pogo
Nice to read your post and an excellent one too.
Between the idea

And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
T. S. Eliot
• reply
This: What stood

Submitted by Aizen Myoo on Tue, 04/06/2010 - 11:30.
This:
What stood out for me in Daniel's writing was the combination of rigorous skeptical inquiry with an
openness of spirit toward extranormal experiences.
It's true, that is also what I really really liked about Daniel. (Though I think he could be more skeptical
sometimes). I had heard a lot of spirits, ghosts and whatnot from very unscientific people. But Daniel
seemed more like me, coming from these liberal, scientific epistemology background, he was skeptical in a
healthy non-closed-minded way. People like McKenna and Tim Leary would seem very undisciplined and
uncaring for truth and honesty to me if I had read them first. The angle of Daniel seemed right, and he had
found all these things that I also was beginning to discover and trying to make sense of them.
29
I've become through these years that there is some valuable reality to beliefs like spirits, daemons, Gods,
reaching Illumination, Kundalini, Yoga... I know that once in psychedelic space this so called
hallucinations seem more real and tangible than reality itself.
But skepticism and challenging your own beliefs and perceptions is Pure Gold (Sorry, I was heavily
influenced by Carl Sagan in my adolescent years --thank God). There is Shamanic, magic rituals which I
know have some real value, power, and possibilities... and then there are cargo cults. (read the essay by
Richard Feynman on cargo cult science if you don't understand the refference.)
While there maybe great semiotic value in these actions, there is also a severe and self-indulgent
misunderstanding. Actually, living in such illusion they remind me more of how we live entrapped in these
illusions, samsara if you will, of money, capitalist society, and the inflated value of ego over everything
else.
Thanks Daniel, for being skeptical and trying psychedelics too. We need more people like this. Keep it up,
my heart is too with these projects of you and the others.
---
My good blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of
ten, Because my heart is pure.
• reply
Regrets
Submitted by Martin D. Anderson on Fri, 04/09/2010 - 14:13.
After a bit of distance, it now occurs to me that this was entirely the wrong time to bring negative
experiences onto the table. Mea culpa for my poor judgment and all my best hopes for the success of
Evolver and RS.
• reply
lol
Submitted by Bark on Mon, 04/05/2010 - 21:52.
...
• reply
Sir, I went to see about my

Submitted by Aizen Myoo on Tue, 04/06/2010 - 10:44.
Sir, I went to see about my credit card to day. Have my notes from my job ready and I'm going to search
for a copy of my ID, since I don't have originals at hand. But they tell me they'll give it to me instantly, so I
will be joining officially before April 30th for sure.
30
I'm going to take a while to talk about how I began to get involved into this, see at at the time when I was
discovering psychedelics and their importance --along with that of other non-western philosophies,
paradigms, and spiritual practices-- I don't know what I typed in google searching about infor on
psychedelics but one of the first results was the Breaking Open the Head website.
I read the articles, took a look at what it said about the author, and it was great, I was really delighted by the
work of this "Daniel Pinchbeck", which was special-original in a nice and simple way. I lurked in the
boards and enjoyed seeing what others were writing there. That's where I first heard abouth the project of
Evolver magazine.
That was years before Evolver or RS.
I continued experimenting and began photocopying little booklets promoting honest information about
psychoactives which I distributed locally among friends. That's an ongoing project though now, I'm kind of
distanced from all these projects but I'll be back with them in a few months, when I'm done slaying some
inner demons.
During that time, I saw how more and more the name of Daniel Pinchbeck became more prominent. One
day I visited the boards casually and surprise, there was a link (or wasi tjust talking?) to Reality Sandwich.
Anyway I discovered this site and the content was great. I loved it, and love it. I'm kind of involved in
social activism since always (possibly going to punk meeting tomorrow, going to protest to stop the killing
of the forest this weekend), and now I was seeing all these people connecting social, economical, ecological
concerns, psychedelic, shamanism, oriental practices and philosophies... that was for me, man. That was
what I was doing in my own clumsy distracted way.
Greetings form Mexico, people. Thanks for all the nice writing, food for thought, intelligence, and good
vibes. I'll be joining before the end of this month.
Oh, anyone from Mexico here, by the way?
---
My good blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure,My strength is as the strength of
ten, Because my heart is pure.
• reply
"Sir, I went to see about my

Submitted by little lightening bolt on Mon, 04/19/2010 - 12:29.
"Sir, I went to see about my credit card to day. Have my notes from my job ready and I'm going to search
for a copy of my ID, since I don't have originals at hand. But they tell me they'll give it to me instantly, so I
will be joining officially before April 30th for sure. "
It takes a credit card to join a social movement these days... sign of the times..
I think Ghandi and martin luther king are rolling in their graves...
• reply
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Just a little while longer, please Daniel (and others)

Submitted by Red Collie on Wed, 04/07/2010 - 05:23.
Life today can be frustrating, but please wait just a little while longer, Daniel and others! Daniel was not
the only one to have a shamanic vision in 2002-2003 involving Quetzalcoatl. He also contacted a fellow in
Finland, to help him decode an ASCII message which appeared in crops four days earlier. Part of the vision
was as follows: "I am with a group of people, and feel connected to them. We are discussing how Earth
children will be prepared for an upcoming spiritual change in the world, but Earth governments won’t
support it.” www.cropcircleconnector.com/anasazi/whatsnew.html Thus it may be that Evolver will not
succeed until this current adult generation passes away, and another generation of children replace them. If
so, then we have no choice but to wait, and do what we can in the meantime.
• reply
Paypal!!
Submitted by popgun79 on Wed, 04/07/2010 - 13:47.
I've got some issues using Paypal to join the Evolver movement, which I'm really keen to do. There's a
dispute on my account and they won't even let me use their credit/debit card page, unfortunately. Is there
any other way I can pay?
• reply
“A New Myth of Money”

Submitted by sidecross on Thu, 04/08/2010 - 07:49.
I tried to visit this part of the site and hit a wall asking for money to see the dialogue.
There is nothing ‘new’ about asking for money!
Between the idea

And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
T. S. Eliot
• reply
Horses
Submitted by Augustine on Sun, 04/11/2010 - 19:49.
They kill horses don't they?
• reply
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Lord
Submitted by katsmeow on Fri, 04/16/2010 - 18:38.
Beyond all commercial incentives, writing my last book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl convinced me
that this is a time of intense transition -- that humanity will either evolve our consciousness and take
individual and eventually species-wide responsibility for our effects on the planet, or we won’t have much
future here. The Evolver Social Movement is the best vehicle I have been able to conceive, along with my
Evolver cohorts, to hasten this transformation, by helping to build a viable alternative culture in local
communities, and by producing media that spreads the word. Media shapes the consciousness of the
masses, and unless we can transmit a different set of messages through the mainstream, it will be extremely
difficult to change our society’s destructive habits. This is a time that has come and gone before. This is not
dramatic in any other sense than it is pivotal. But I say to you again, this fulcrum has come and gone
before. And once again, it will fall flat as you cannot see the mirror in front of you. Where has your journey
taken you in terms of history? Has it been from the stand point of "How do I judge this?" I am not talking
to you personally, David. If you judge any truth from that point you are missing it. The actual truth is not
good or bad, it simply is, and then we move on. It has nothing to do with me, my or mine. It is what we
serve and yes, its extremely difficult to change that judgement. Especially, when you do not see what needs
to be changed. The see-saw is so finely balanced and yet its so simple. Accept/Deny...its awefully true.
• reply
www.underthepine.com
Submitted by Stella Osorojos on Tue, 04/20/2010 - 08:41.
• reply
I'm in.
Submitted by Stella Osorojos on Tue, 04/20/2010 - 08:55.
Hey Big D -
I'm in.
Though I do have qualms. Evolver in particular seems like top-down marketing. Trying to push the
scaffolding down from the sky/mind instead of letting it grow up naturally, with roots in each location's
particular community, with each communities' particular resources. And, perhaps later being connected to
the uber Evolver hub.
But there's something interesting about Evolver, too, especially as a counterpoint to RS. The feminine
aspect of a highly masculine figurehead. It does feel as if it's necessary, if only as RS's anima.
Anyway. It does all seem to deserve a chance. I do always go here first for this type of information. So
there.
Love to you.
Stella
33
• reply
Being Stupid
Submitted by katsmeow on Tue, 04/20/2010 - 17:07.
[quote="katsmeow"] And once again, it will fall flat as you cannot see the mirror in front of you. Where
has your journey taken you in terms of history? Has it been from the stand point of "How do I judge this?" I
am not talking to you personally, David. If you judge any truth from that point you are missing it. [/quote]
Yeah, I can quote me fine and apparently I cannot even get your first name correct. But then I cannot get
left or right correct or east or west. I am not smart. It may have been my saving grace, Daniel. :)
• reply
Government, Money Barons and Media all Mirror Our Ego

Submitted by CarloAmi on Thu, 06/03/2010 - 22:34.
Thanks for the insights, Daniel. You write: more and more people are realizing that you can never change
anything by opposing it or fighting against it -- often, you end up feeding it energy. The only way to change
a bad situation is to build the thing that is good, that will replace the old corrupt system.
<p>
******** So anger, protest, outrage are counterproductive just as it is counterproductive to fight with the
egoic self. The revolution can be a peaceful one. It is a revolution of consciousness. An expansion of this is
offered on my blog in an article I wrote last week. http://www.yourpausebutton.com/blogs/inspirational-
articles/item/34-waki... Thanks for what you are doing, being.
Carlo Ami http://YourPauseButton.com
Creating Simple Tools for Consciousness Transformation
http://www.realitysandwich.com/my_personal_journey_evolver_social_movement
Gift Economics and Reunion in the Digital Age
Charles Eisenstein
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Reality Sandwich is facing financial difficulties that threaten its continued publication. That's not because
of dull content, nor failure to connect with an audience. On the contrary: it's an edgy, relevant, and
provocative publication with some very talented (ahem!) writers, but what it doesn't have is what they call a
"monetization" scheme. And in this, it is not alone.
How to monetize digital content? This is a question facing everyone from Rupert Murdoch, the record
labels, and the movie studios, all the way down to Reality Sandwich and the lone blogger. You see,
fundamentally the marginal cost of production for digital content is near zero, which drives the price
toward zero as well. Fixed costs may be quite high, but once those are paid it doesn't cost much more to
serve a million readers than it does a hundred.
Like most websites, Reality Sandwich offers its content for free. How, then, to meet operating expenses?
Various possible solutions include charging for access (remember Encarta?), walling off special "premium"
content, relying on advertising, associating real-world pay services with on-line content, and asking for
donations. I think that, with the exception of certain niche applications, only the last of these has any real
future.
What I am saying here is that the only business model that makes sense for most digital content is the
model of the gift: to offer it as a gift, and to receive gifts in turn.
Primitive economies were wholly gift economies, which was natural when each consumer was also a
producer. Today, the dominant model for profit-making business is to control scarce resources and sell their
produce, or the resources themselves, to people who need them. The earliest example of this was the
control of land. In early times, when land was not the subject of property, it was very difficult for one
person to become significantly richer than another, simply because the source of all wealth was equally
available to all. Unable to compel the labor of others, our primary means of economic circulation was the
gift.
When, as in Roman times, land ownership concentrated in the hands of the few, the many were cut off from
the once-abundant source of all wealth, the land. The conventions of property made land artificially scarce,
and the landless had to sell their labor and surrender their freedom just to survive.
Since then, scarce resources have, one after another, fallen under private control, while many resources that
were once abundant have been made scarce. It is hard to make someone pay for something that they can
easily procure themselves. The quintessential example is water, perhaps the most abundant substance on
the planet, but made scarce today through our our separation from nature and the pollution and chemical
treatment of the water supply. As a result, bottled water has been the number one beverage growth category
over the last two decades.
Water is inherently abundant because of its inexorable tendency to recycle, to flow downhill and return to
its source. The same dynamics apply to another resource equally vital to the human species: information,
by which I mean the sum of human invention, culture, story, and art. Drawing from the reservoir of the
ideas that surround us from birth, we fashion yet new creations which flow back into that reservoir to
enrich it still further. Yet the media has found a way to bottle it up and sell it back to us.
The question, in the Age of Money, has been how to profit from something abundant, because that which is
abundant falls naturally into the realm of gift. In the modern era, it has been possible to profit from the
control of information because the means of its gathering and dissemination required significant capital. To
run a newspaper or record company required a vast coordination of labor. To mass-produce vinyl records or
newspapers required an investment beyond the reach of most people, allowing producers to maintain
scarcity. They were aided by copyright laws that prevented unauthorized replication, which would have
compromised that scarcity. But today the inherent abundance of information is reasserting itself.
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With the Internet today, we again have a situation in which the source of (at least a certain kind of) wealth
is equally available to all, and again in which the distinction between producer and consumer blurs. Less
and less is it possible to compel people to pay for music, for news, for software, and for many other items
of cultural wealth. Websites that charge for access go the way of Encarta, and I think that recent plans by
Rupert Murdoch and The New York Times to put their content behind pay walls will prove just as
disastrous. If you are trolling the web and hit a pay wall, you will probably just go somewhere else to find
similar content for free. Why should I pay to read the NYT, when I can get more-or-less equivalent news
for free elsewhere? Can the NYT compete with the entire Web? And why should I pay for Microsoft Office
when I can use OpenOffice software, which is just as good, for free?
When something is freely available at zero cost, it is impossible to charge money for it. That is why music,
software, publishing, and film companies have lobbied so hard for intellectual property protections and
digital rights management technologies. They are essentially trying to impose artificial scarcity on
something that is fundamentally abundant. It has worked, to some extent, but as the total amount of free
digital content expands, the pay world becomes less and less important and necessary. You can get your
news, your intellectual stimulation, your software, and your entertainment elsewhere.
The financial problems faced by Reality Sandwich are thus nearly universal. With the exception of highly
specialized research firms, charging for digital content doesn't work, nor does charging for certain
"premium" content as Reality Sandwich tried to do with its Backstage feature. Five minutes of a particular
video would be freely available, but if you wanted to see the whole thing you'd have to pay for Backstage.
The problem was that, although the content was quite good, there is plenty of other great content for free
elsewhere. Moreover, this approach essentially boils down to, "I could give you this at virtually no cost to
myself, but I'm withholding it until you pay me," It feels like extortion, and I think I am not the only one
turned off by it. I suspect that the people in charge of the site were turned off by it too, but proceeded out of
a feeling of necessity. They need to meet their operating expenses somehow! Fortunately, it now appears
that Reality Sandwich is abandoning this idea and moving more fully toward a gift paradigm.
The third approach I mentioned, advertising, is also subject to severe limitations. The first limitation is the
ability of the scarce-goods economy to support advertising. The second is that the Internet's ability to foster
peer-to-peer connections is eroding the value of advertising, along with all other forms of intermediation.
Just as the Internet has decimated the professions of stockbroker and travel agent, Craigslist has, according
to one estimate, destroyed $100 billion of classified ad revenue over the last ten years. And whereas once
producers needed advertising to make consumers aware of their products, we can now find them ourselves
with an Internet search. Finally, our capacity to take in advertising has nearly been saturated. When nearly
every blank surface and empty moment, whether on a bus, in a theater, or at a sporting event, is filled with
advertising, we become inured to it, and the effectiveness of all advertising suffers from diminishing
marginal utility. Don't get me wrong -- I am not proclaiming the demise of advertising (I am an optimistic
person, but even my optimism knows limits!). I am suggesting, rather, the advent of Peak Advertising, and
a long, slow decline to follow. The parallel with Peak Oil is nearly exact: in both cases, a vast commons --
in this case, the commons of our collective attention -- has been exhausted. In any event, when even
YouTube with its tens of millions of daily users is unable to break even with ad sales, the prospects for
Reality Sandwich in that regard are dim indeed.
A fourth approach is to piggyback value-added services onto free content. This is what bands are doing
when they give away music in hopes of increasing concert ticket sales. Software companies do the same
when they give away software and charge for technical support or consulting. Reality Sandwich does this
by offering teleseminars and retreats. While this is a valid strategy, I think in the case of Reality Sandwich
the value lies more in its synergy with the site's mission and purpose than with any financial contribution,
since it is hard to make significant amounts of money from such events. Moreover, teleseminars, online
classes, and so forth suffer from the same dilemma of making people pay for something that has a zero
marginal cost. Unless there is one-on-one interaction happening, it doesn't matter how many people are
listening. It is a broadcast model, and the production cost is the same whether one person or a hundred are
listening.
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That leaves voluntary donations -- the model of the gift -- which I believe is the only model for digital
content that is viable in the long run. Reality Sandwich is moving in that direction with the pay-what-you-
like subscription to the Evolver Social Movement. The gift model is quite natural for digital content. In the
age of paper, vinyl, and other physical media that demanded physical distribution and incurred significant
unit costs, it was both possible and to some extent justifiable to charge money for cultural creations. But
today, the medium has nearly dematerialized, and the unit cost to deliver digital content has dropped to
nearly zero. This dematerialization means that no depletion is incurred by giving something away. No
matter how many copies of my book or recordings people download from my website, my store of them is
not depleted thereby. Supply is infinite; therefore, according to the law of supply and demand, the natural
price point is zero.
What, then, shall induce me to produce such content in the first place? It is the same thing that motivates
Reality Sandwich's creators and the creators of innumerable other websites that are contributing to the
Great Turning that is underway today. It is the desire to give of our gifts in order to create a more beautiful
world. While this website's creators may have had notions of launching a successful media enterprise, and
may have incorporated those notions into various business plans to seek investment, I think their true
motivation was that they wanted to give something new and important to the world. Such is the motivation
of any true artist, and when a person betrays his art and subordinates it to the goal of pecuniary gain, the
result is an obvious sellout. It is time for this website's creators to fully embrace the gift paradigm, for it is
aligned with the true spirit behind what they have created. Part of this embrace would be to release all of
the Backstage content to all readers. Another part would be, in addressing investors, to say, "The purpose
of this enterprise is to contribute to the evolution of the human species. You will receive no financial return
on your investment, but we promise to treat your contribution as sacred."
I have found that the more I step into the spirit of the gift, the more the world responds in kind. When we
witness true generosity -- giving without any agenda except that the gift be received -- we are moved to
generosity ourselves, and when we are the recipient of a gift we are moved to gratitude. Accordingly, as the
producers of this website step more fully into owning and enacting their true motives, its readers will step
in to support it. All of us desire to contribute to what I call "the more beautiful world our hearts tell us is
possible." So, I would like invite this website's readers to respond in kind to Reality Sandwich's embrace of
gift principles. I would very much like to be part of an explicitly "gift-based media enterprise". While it
costs a lot of money to produce this website, your particular copy costs nearly nothing. There is thus no
justification to make you pay. But if you feel grateful for what is provided here, then act on that gratitude
and give.
Like many artists, I feel uncomfortable selling my work, because any amount I charge seems at once too
much and too little: too much, because it is sacred to me and I desire to give it without condition; too little
because to put a price on the sacred devalues it, turning the infinite into something finite. Many of us prefer
to offer our work as a gift, and that means contributing to publications that operate on gift principles
themselves (if their main goal is profit, then we feel taken advantage of). Reality Sandwich is a website in
which the spirit of the gift is blossoming. It is about launching (or, to be more modest, helping to
accelerate) a social movement. They call it the "Evolver social movement," but of course it extends far
beyond this site. Ken, Daniel, Jonathan et al have merely named it, yet names can be a powerful way to
crystallize attention, to bring what was unconscious into consciousness.
Part of the shift in human consciousness that is underway today is a transition to a different kind of
economy, an economy that applies the principles of the gift to a modern technological environment. I am
writing a book, Sacred Economics, to create a vision and a vocabulary to speed this transition. Yet writing
about economics, I feel totally at home at a website that also includes articles on ayahuasca, crop circles,
the prison system, dream psychology, and so on. To me the link is clear: all of these topics are like gift
mentality in contributing to a reversal of the ideology of Separation, and the corresponding sense-of-self
that has increasingly dominated our civilization for thousands of years. For the discrete-and-separate self,
inhabiting an objective universe, more for you is less for me. This is the self of usury. In a gift society, that
maxim is no longer true; instead, more for you is more for me, because I know that if you have more than
you need, you will give the surplus to someone who needs it. In this very simple way, we become
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connected; I wish for your good as you wish for mine, and do unto you as I would have you do unto me.
Foretold thousands of years ago, the Golden Rule is the truth of the coming age.
Today we are transitioning into a time that realizes the truth of the connected self, in which not only my
well-being, but my very existence, my very being-ness, depends on the well-being and indeed the existence
of all other beings on the planet. I am merely describing the economic dimension of the truth of
interbeingness. That same truth is also what moves us to compassion for prisoners; it can be experienced
directly in psychedelic states; it manifests in the eerie connections between the crop circles and our own
minds. To move fully to a gift model would bring the form of this website into alignment with its content.
The common thread that ties this website together is the feeling that we are awakening to a much more
wonderful world, something magical, something mind-blowing. We want our minds to be blown because
we are done with the Age of Separation and the small, isolated self that inhabits it. It is time for this social
movement to begin in earnest.
Let us hope and hold for this website that it let go of any residual, unconscious motivations of profiting
from the readers, which is the old media model, and open up fully to the spirit of the gift. It is happening --
it must happen, for there is really no other way. And let us hope and hold that its readers respond in kind,
with generosity and forgiveness, and take Reality Sandwich another step forward as a cocreated, gift-based
catalyst for the evolution of human beingness.
To join the Evolver Social Movement and make a contribution to Reality Sandwich, click here.
Image by MarcinMoga / Lolek, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
• 4-9-10
• Charles Eisenstein's blog
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Tags:
• Transformation
• Reality Sandwich
• Gift Economy
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Comments
Transperency
Submitted by little lightening bolt on Fri, 04/09/2010 - 16:57.
Transperency... What is it exactly that this site needs to much money for? Why does it cost so much money
to run this site? Beleive me I think that your work with the gift economy is wonderful and important. But
Why does it cost so much to run this site? what are people giving to? What do their gifts "pay" for... An
itemized list is nice... This is not a non-profit organization I take it as well... NPOs have trancperency, for
profit organizations often do not... I have run sites just like this in the past and it only needed the most
mimimal amount of money to keep it going. So what is it that people are paying for, not the service itself,
but and itemized list of what their money is going to pay for would perhaps be helpful. It might also help
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people to give more... If I know I am giving a gift to some one who is going to sell that gift and buy heroin
it discourages me to give them because I dont wish to enable that behaviour. Which is why people like
gvinig to NPO's with transperency in what they are spending their money on. Another thing... How many
members does this site actually have? If every one of those members paid the ten dollars a month and say
there are well over 200 members... thats 2000$ a month. Does this site require over 2000$ a month inorder
to run it? Who is getting paid and what for? Are the writters hoping to get paid? I write... I write my ass off
and get through to a lot of people and it costs me maybe alittle bit each year to publish online... but its
worth it because its MY GIFT to my community. I give other gifts to the community that recipricate
monitarily. I do not need ot be a full time writter, or artist, or healer, or teacher. I can do all of these things
anytime it is needed for me to do so. And I dont need to get paid to do any of them. One answer to reality
sand wiches money issues... is down size... show humility, small is beautiful, a butter fly can cause a
tornado... reduce... give a more humble gift... Also I have to say that when i was a child I was taught that
when you give a gift you do not expect a gift in return. Which is I think something that this site has
fogoten.
• reply
Some Answers
Submitted by Ken Jordan on Fri, 04/09/2010 - 17:57.
Hi Little Lightening Bolt,
We describe how Evolver operates, and who does what, here:
http://www.realitysandwich.com/esm/evolver-mission-transparency.
cheers,
Ken
• reply
A couple more thoughts

Submitted by Ken Jordan on Sat, 04/10/2010 - 09:09.
You're right, little lightening bolt, RS/E+ is ambitious -- we're doing a lot, and it takes a team of dedicated
people, some of whom are working full time. I hope that the community appreciates a Reality Sandwich
that publishes daily, the Evolver.net site, the 30+ Evolver Regional groups, as well as the books, events,
teleseminars, etc. RS gets visited by 100,000 people each month. If each person who reads this comment
became an E+SM member, we'd be on firm footing -- and could focus on how to improve what we do,
create videos for RS, do a tech upgrade on Evolver.net, launch new Evolver Spores, and more. Of course, if
there aren't enough people who feel that this project is important to them, and they don't support RS with a
contribution of some kind, then we'll have to cut back. We're only expecting that the community will gift us
with resources to the extent that that our gift is valued by it. But I do hope we have your support, so we can
keep doing the things we do.
• reply
This is a business then...

Submitted by little lightening bolt on Sun, 04/11/2010 - 19:04.
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This is a business then... This is not a social movment it is a busienss.
I think its wise not to confuse the two.
• reply
some good points!

Submitted by Charles Eisenstein on Sat, 04/10/2010 - 09:25.
I agree about transparency -- it is key. In ancient gift economies, it was generally a matter of public
knowledge who had give what to whom, and how much each persoon had. Life was pretty much public,
and that also meant that needs, as well as wealth, were apparent to the community. Today we as a society
seemingly do our best to hide away poverty, illness, and other states of neediness. So, I agree with you that
transparency is fully in keeping with the gift model. It would reassure givers that their money is going
toward a good purpose. Ultimately, I think that all assets and income should be transparent in a Sacred
Economy.
Speaking of transparency, as far as I know none of the writers get paid ofor their work on RS, nor is there
any expectation of that happening. I certainly don't expect it, though I would be amonth the last to qualify
as I am only an occasional contributor. I do know that a lot of the main people work really hard on this
website and the Evolver movement.
Charles
P.s. ha ha, you know something really funny: I am having trouble typing in this response because an
advertisement is blocking part of this window. "Adtech", it is called.
• reply
That does not appear to be

Submitted by little lightening bolt on Sun, 04/11/2010 - 19:23.
That does not appear to be true Charles
"The company has a paid, professional team of 3 full time and 3 part time editorial and administrative staff.
It includes:
• Daniel Pinchbeck, Editorial Director

• Ken Jordan, Publisher and Executive Producer
• Jonathan Phillips, Evolver.net Director
• Michael Robinson, Creative Director
• Jennifer Palmer, RS News Editor
• Steven Taylor, RS Managing Editor
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• All staff perform tasks for both Reality Sandwich and Evolver. In addition, we employ a team of
web developers, led by Technical Director Dan Robinson, paid on an hourly basis. Our lead
developer is Andy Laken.
The Evolver team collaborates with and coordinates an extended network of incredible, dedicated
volunteers, who participate in much of what we do, including: grassroots organizing, editorial
tasks, media making, social network marketing, community facilitation, and event production.
These volunteers are the heart of our community, and enable Evolver to have a wide impact even
with limited financial resources.
The staff is based in New York City and rents a table at an office space in downtown Brooklyn
where the team meets and coordinates interns."
if they are not getting paid I could see why they would want to get paid...because its a buisness... and its
being run like a buisness or at least they would like it to be.
No that there is anythign wrong with that...but a social and ecological change movement of the people is
nto a buisness. If it is a buisness then it is a buisness that capitalizes off of people desperate needs for
change.
"We can maintain our current operations for $20,000 a month. That averages out to $10 monthly
contributions from 2,000 people."
perhaps maintianing the way you currently opperate as a business is not the ideal way of doing things...
perhaps thats the problem... maybe you should think of reducing what it requires to run this "social
movement" and think of the social movment as an act of humble service and find other ways of making a
living...
or perhaps RS+E should clarify that they are not a social movement but a buisness capitializing off of other
social, spiritual and eoclogical movements. Which is fine if your honest about it... once again transperency
allows others to see your ethics...
Reality sandwhich is "a web magazine that reaches 100,000" if that is the case and 100,000 thousand
people join at a membership of 10$ a month at the least... then you stand to make a potenital profit off of
other peoples social, ecological and spiritual movments at a profit sum of $980,000... potentially if your
numbers are correct in that you reach as many people as your site says you do, and that that many people
would be willing to pay 10 $ a month.
You are not a non-profit organization, or a real social movement social movements do not set them selves
up to profiteer off of those they attempt to help. RS+E is a buisness that hopes to profit off of the social
movements of others.
As I said there is nothing wrong with this if your honest about it.
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• reply
who are you addressing?

Submitted by Charles Eisenstein on Sun, 04/11/2010 - 20:14.
I am a little confused -- you seem to be addressing me (as "you") as if I were one of the RS staff. I am not.
I am a contributor commenting on the situation. Whether it is run like a business or not is not my decision.
Also I'm not sure what exactly you are referring to when you say "that" is not true.
Anyway, I agree with your point that there should be more clarity. Based on the comments Ken Jordan has
made here, it looks like the main people involved are in the process of coming to clarity. I agree that it
should not be a business masquerading as a social movement. What I think is happening, is that they started
out with the idea of making a business out of it, but then saw it could be much more. My impression is that
any dreams of being a big new media enterprise have given way to the much bigger dream of helping to
shift consciousness. And I think that more clarity would be helpful in furthering that goal.
Charles
• reply
Excuse me, I could see how

Submitted by little lightening bolt on Mon, 04/12/2010 - 09:09.
Excuse me, I could see how that would be confusing... I did not mean you personally I ment RS+E staff.
" I agree that it should not be a business masquerading as a social movement."
This is my feeling exactly.
I also agree that there needs to be more clarity.
I see that it started out as a buisness and they ended up finding out it could be much more... but from the
outsider perspective and as a reader of the site it apears differently. It appears as if very shred buisness
minded people found a way to capitalize off of the current social movments. With the internet its really
easy to do a reverse promotion strategy where you get people very involved and interested and then start
charging them. You loose a few in the transition but you end up making bank.
Either way there needs to be a clarification of RS+E's intentions. Are they a social movement or are they a
a buisness that sees that they can make several million dollars a year if they play their cards right.
What I said that did not apear to be true was this statement... I do not beleive that you meant it to be untrue
but that you had missed this some how...
"Speaking of transparency, as far as I know none of the writers get paid for their work on RS, nor is there
any expectation of that happening."
Dan Pinchbeck is a paid staff member of this site (or is attempting to be according to the post ken sent a
link to), he is a major writter on this site. If he is a paid staff and writter on this site, then he stands to
make one hell of a profit in doing so... if they continue to go forward with memberships and other
42
contributors such as your self continue to write for free then those writters that create quite a draw to this
site will be making paid staff members LOTS of money. These unpaid writters need to look at this
carefully.
If reality sandwich decided that they wish to be a social movement more power to them I think that this sort
of work is important. It needs to happen, organizers are very welcome.
If they want to be a buisness that works as a counter culture online journalism site supported by
membership fees similarly to magazine subscriptions then I am sure that will be well received and people
will pay and they can make their money and hopefully reivest it int he communities that will be making
them a boat load of dough if they do so.
But for gods sakes I really hope they make a clear and concise boundery between the two. Because I feel
that not doing so is unethical.
My appologies for the misunderstadning of it being dirrected towards you it was not.
BLESS AND BE BLESSED
• reply
A Question!
Submitted by JLM on Fri, 04/09/2010 - 17:38.
Hello friend Charles,
After reading your article, I've decided to give to RS. Now, all I could find on the website is a place to give
a monthly amount. Please tell me if there's a way to give a one-time amount -- that's the way I feel more at
ease with.
No rush, though. If RS must fiddle with their webpages a little while to make it possible, I'll still be here
when it's available. Just let me know when it's ready.
Thank you for your article -- I always read them with great enthusiasm.
Peace
• reply
Exactly my response!
Submitted by ToMarGames on Fri, 04/09/2010 - 18:53.
Charles, I loved the article, as I usually love your articles, and I am especially motivated to join in the spirit
of the gift. So I, too, clicked on the link at the end of the article, and found myself turned off by what I
found there.
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I AM interested in giving RS a gift; I am NOT interested in purchasing an ongoing membership which will
entitle me to a specified list of services.
It's an interesting psychological phenomenon: my initial intent was to give a hundred dollars, yet I balked at
signing on for ANY monthly amount, even one that would have cost me less over a lifetime. I'm not
interested in a social networking site, or retreats, or chatting with authors, or any of it. I do strongly believe
in a gift economy -- I run a free online games website, and I spend a lot of my free time writing games for it
from which I will NEVER see a monetary profit, and I do it purely for the joy it brings me. But a paid
membership is not a gift.
So I'm with you, but unfortunately, I'm not ready to be with Reality Sandwich, not yet.
marie
http://www.tomargames.com
• reply
Just give the one time

Submitted by Satyagraha on Fri, 04/09/2010 - 21:28.
Just give the one time amount at "join for your own price" and after it goes through. . .go into your account
here, click cancel, and it takes you to paypal and you cancel the reoccuring payment there.
thanx
• reply
yeah
Yeah, I think a "donate" button would be good. The monthly thing would be a turnoff to me too.
Charles
• reply
Thoughts on gifts and advertising

Submitted by jaybazuzi on Fri, 04/09/2010 - 19:35.
Something that "little lightening bolt" said rings true for me. I enjoy giving gifts, but I need to know
something about how the gift is received.
44
Recently I've been pondering this question wrt. the gifts I give to my children (like a hot meal, for
example). Do I want them to say "thank-you"? Do I want them to give a gift in return (say, washing the
dishes)? Why do I feel so miserable when they say "I don't like this" without even trying the food?
The answer I came to was that I need my gift to meet the needs of my recipient as much as possible. In the
case of the meal, I want to meet my kids' needs for nutrition and pleasure of eating that food (two sides of
the same coin) and to know that they are the recipients of love and caring from their dad.
If I make food when they're not hungry, or make something they don't like, then I can't meet their needs as
much, and so don't get the full joy of giving.
If I give them cookies, I know that it is meeting some need, because I see how happy they are when they
eat it, but I am also sure that I am causing their need for nutrition to go unmet.
When I read the previous comment about transparency of donations to Reality Sandwich, I have similar
thoughts. Would my gift meet a need? What need? How deeply?
-------------
Regarding advertising: Charles is correct that we are are being bombarded with advertising at every turn.
They're not done; expect to see ads become more ubiquitous over time.
I bet that showing ads to someone who doesn't normally see ads is pretty effective. Previously they were
making decisions based on other criteria, and the impact of the new force of advertising in their lives
probably had a substantial effect.
Today we see ads all the time. Most people in my culture spend all the money they earn, and then borrow
as much as they can with credit cards to buy more. Advertising has encouraged them to do that, but now
they can't be encouraged any more. No matter how much advertising they see, no batter how well the ads
are done, there's not much they can do to increase the amount of money they spend on ads, because they're
already spending all they have.
Perhaps ads have an effect on *how* we spend our money: on this brand vs. that one. In that case, ads
today are really about shifting spending around, but not increasing it. The ads are competing against each
other. Effort put forth by brand A is canceled out by competing advertising for brand B. Net is 0 gain for
the brands being advertised.
So who is really benefiting from all this increase in advertising? It's not the consumer, who is already
locked in to how much they can spend. It's not the brand, which is locked in to competition with the next
advertiser.
My answer is that it's the advertising agencies that are benefiting. They are doing a fantastic job of
convincing businesses that everyone should be advertising as heavily as they can, thereby increasing their
own business. And they're right, since in a world of ubiquitous ads, the business that doesn't advertise
disappears quickly.
What does this mean for me, as a user of "free" web sites? They're not really free, since someone is paying
for them. The money comes from businesses that buy ads, who in turn are getting their money from me. So,
I'm still paying for the web content I want, but along the way I'm also paying the salary of an advertising
executive and for a product that I may not have purchased otherwise. All that together is way more
expensive than the price of the web content by itself.
45
We also know that advertising directs content to produce an audience that is attractive to advertisers. So a
web site that tells you not to earn or spend money has a harder time getting advertising revenue to cover
their costs than a site that offers stock tips. Essentially, the whole web site shifts toward being an ad, itself.
In the early days of the internet, most content and access to it was either a gift or paid for by government,
and so seemed free. As internet usage grew, actual costs increased (more bandwidth required) but the
expectation of "free" made it difficult to collect money for those real costs.
Meanwhile, we experience an onslaught of advertising every time we use the internet. I don't have TV in
my house, but when my children play a "free" online game they see a tiny square of game in the middle of
the screen, with ads on all 4 sides. Many of the ads are crudely sexual, which I'd rather not put in front of
my 8-year-old. At least on TV we have an FCC to regulate things, but on the internet anything is fair game.
Today we have the worst of all worlds. Consumers, content providers, and businesses all lose. Only
advertising agencies really win.
• reply
expectation of return
Interesting to juxtapose this comment, with its observation that we need to know that the gift is being
received, with the first comment, that gifts are supposed to be without expectation of receiving anything in
return. Some spiritual traditions say that to even expect or want a "thank you" pollutes the purity of the gift.
But I think this is unnatural. I think that gifts naturally inspire gratitude, not only in the recipient but in all
those who witness the gift, and that there needs to be a channel through which to act on that gratitude.
There needs to be a return channel. Traditional gift cultures had such channels in abundance. But today, we
are alienated from the gift mentality, so that we have forgotten not only how to give, but how to receive.
Both have become awkward. In a way, to fully receive is itself a kind of generosity, since it puts one in a
position of obligation or gratitude.
Another reason why expressions of gratitude like thank you's and return gifts are necessary, is that they cue
us in to where to direct our gifts. If you have bread, you'd rather give it to the hungry person than the tired
or thirsty person. The response ideally tells us whether we are giving our gifts well. So, for example, if I
give a talk somewhere on a gift basis, and the sponsor treats me shabbily, I will understand that my gift was
not well given. Either I spoke poorly, or my message was not needed there. But if I am thanked generously,
I will want to go back again and do similar talks in the future. So, receiving return gifts helps guide me to
give more effectively of my own gifts. Of course, sometimes the return gift is not very obvious. It could be
money, or words, or just a look in the eyes. I need this affirmation, maybe because I am such a novice in
the world of the gift.
Nearly all of us are novices at it. I think we should therefore be charitable in our judgements toward
websites like this one, as they navigate uncharted waters and learn from their mistakes.
Charles
• reply
alignment
Submitted by imaginal110 on Sat, 04/10/2010 - 06:46.
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It can be thought of as "alignment" with a transaction rather than "control" of it. Charles has provided some
clarity for me around that alignment - thanks for the gft :-); it would be great if Reality Sandwich would get
even more clear and aligned around its ask. It's doing pretty good already! I may go this model myself on
my site, so thanks for that too. I can imagine a "race to the top" as participants give more. As we compete
to align with what's emerging.
http://www.RadicalRelocalization.com
"They'll never see us coming!"
• reply
All Across the Board

Submitted by Pippalayana on Sat, 04/10/2010 - 18:38.
If, in fact, this is problem for everyone, maybe the only real solution will come when the "whole system"
crashes, and/or gets rectified.
Many of us are aware of this prophetic type scenario. Of course the motive for such alternative
brainstorming is done on sites such as this.
A "Catch 22" ... as we only charge each other to the degree we can pay ... advertise only to degree one is
attentive to desire.
Some have too much .. others two little ... the only real problem is balance.
Every aspect of social exchange could be gifted in principle, in other words.
Maybe "part" of the overall problem is for all of us to regulate all of our "plug-in" time ... get more used to
solitary contemplation
... way too much inertia, in other words ... mere habit
Freeing up our information crazed tendencies
.. sheer necessity is a bitch
Home Roaming
{on the art of inner contemplation}
Scratchy-itch twitch … ‘in twilight that twinkle
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nit-picking winch … ‘of circle … and crinkle
Frustration fist … ‘summoning muster
fight to the death … ‘all other “Buster” … {mister}
Peaceful as please … ‘war-goring fit
‘nomads of wander … hermits that sit
Culture of crude … ‘judgmental as civil
wild as willing … ‘ball and chain chisel
A lock to ‘but pick … ‘a safe ‘but to “blow”
a gain to ‘but loose … ‘forget ‘but to know
Remember …’relive … prophesize … ‘sin
temptation and toil … ‘before garden … {Eden}… of whim
Escort and manage … children of thee
‘lest “fruit-of-vine” urge … beckons to flee
Each others wager … ‘a life to ‘but gamble
‘lest brother and sister … forgives all such ramble
Purpose of “spirit” … ‘unknown as “we”
‘anointing all curse … just for trying to be
Godless … ‘or given … taken … ‘or free
boundless … ‘or law … squabble … ‘or plea
License of leader … ‘imprison … and preach
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‘thorn-crowning wincer … as if dying to reach
Lord of abandon … ‘on mission of mess
‘pilgrims on hand … to glorify guess
Surging of soul … ‘fuel beyond fire
water and earth … ‘quench until dire
Borrowing time … lending all space
providence … ‘farce … ‘lest place without trace
Symbol and myth … ‘science … or quack
‘proving only nescience … ‘costing only lack
Fortunes of fetish … ‘needs all too real
meekly, poor … ‘inherit … the debt that others ‘but steal
A place to call home … ‘or no-mans-land path
the un-carving of block … [Tao} … ‘lest graffiti and graph
Insightful … ‘adored … understood better
incentives … ‘but to hoard … in the name of only letter … {legalities}
Gloat-voting gripe … ‘before ears of the peer
policing the free … ‘rioting sheer
No law to women … ‘lest men who ‘but rule
sacrifice … ‘sorrow … dumb-dumb Eden …’clever school
Pippalayana
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• reply
gifting sharing tithing ?

Submitted by kalakalakali on Sat, 04/10/2010 - 14:15.
Gifting is an intense spiritual path, and I feel I've learned a lot from this article. Thanks, Charles.
Paragraph one.
As a person living month-to-month if not day-to-day in Mexico, I have become immensely appreciative of
and learned a lot from a culture that is Sharing in nature, and historically given to community collaboration
and an exchange economy. Here I've learned to exchange every chance I get (in the last month I exchanged
yoga classes at my studio for garden work and for artesan crafts, which I later gifted for birthday presents,
and this month am exchanging yoga and therapy work for murals at home and at work.) In all honesty the
principles of sharing, exchange, and tithing are still easier for me to get my head around than gifting, giving
without expecting anything in return. My survival fears still get worked up! Although the more I give the
more comfortable I get with divine order and divine caretaking.
Paragraph one.
If I think of Reality Sandwich (or any other group that nourishes me that asks for support) in terms of the
exchange mentality: I don't have the time or the resources or even the ability to bring together thinkers and
written and multimedia material to educate and challenge myself, so I'm awfully grateful that someone else,
like Reality Sandwich, does. And so, I'm willing to share something I have in appreciation for what they
share. It's a like a potluck meal--everybody puts something on the table. And money is what they need and
I'm willing to offer, or exchange, that item, because I respect that need. I mean, when my friend asks me if I
can bring a loaf of bread to dinner and I have access to picking up some bread, well, I don't show up with
roasted carrots, you know? It has to do with trust and respect, I think. We're so suspicious in the neoliberal
world about hanging on to what's "ours" and not getting taken advantage of!
Paragraph one.
For me, as I continually try to establish an exchange economy as my day-to-day reality, I have found that
for most of us it is important to be clear about what each party exchanges. At this point I don't tell people,
oh sure, come to yoga, I'm sure you'll gift me something later. Maybe I should! Normally we discuss the
needs of each party and decide mutually on a fair exchange. I've found that this creates enormous trust,
gratitude, clear limits that help keep the relationship smooth and safe, and more often than not authentic
generosity on both ends. Hopefully as we keep evolving we will reach a point where we are all comfortable
enough to simply give, no explicit exchange necessary.
Paragraph one.
In this sense I can understand the whole RS Backstage concept, I guess, wanting to offer an explicit
exchange to people apart from the general gifting that RS does for everyone. It does feel a little hokey
though, or clique-ish--maybe it's the name. Like the real cool scene is only for the people who can pay to
get there. Kind of iffy. I'd say put a huge donate button on the top of the page and a blurb about exchange
or support or gifting or whatever. Also at an NGO where I worked we always had a wishlist up on our
website. So if people wanted to support us they always had the option to gift money or any one of the items
or services we had on the wish-list. Maybe RS needs a wish-list! You can wish-list anything. DJs for a
party, film editing, toilet paper, coffee for the office, weekly massage. Anyway. Some people really like to
donate in-kind.
Paragraph one.
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In general, for me in addition to the exchange idea the idea of sharing is helpful at this point. Sharing for
me means that, as they say in Mexico, if I eat, my child eats. Another way of putting that is that whatever
food is available is equally split between everybody at your table, doesn't matter who brought what. It's a
sort of hive-mind, I guess, or collective thinking, or maybe it's just a lot of love. In my town people are
always opening up their doors to give food to people who ask for it and to animals without owners as well.
And at big group gatherings you are invited and welcomed whether you bring something or not. You only
have to spend a little time in "poor", "developing world" situations to have an experience with sharing and
generosity that blows your mind. Not cause everybody has so much abundance that they can afford to give,
but first off, because everyone is used to living with a little so we're not that attached to hanging on to a lot,
and secondly, because there's this idea that we're all in this boat together: the idea that later on someone
will take care of me in a moment when I need it. That that's what we do for each other. Take turns.
Paragraph one.
So coming back to the metaphor I kind of think of the world as this huge potluck dinner. Sometimes I put
something on the table and so does everybody else and sometimes it's only me cooking up a storm and
other times I show up empty handed without one single thing to offer and I'm served a this overflowing
plate without one judgment or comment. Taking turns. Right now I'm gifted something, later on I will have
the chance to gift to someone else. And vice versa, and ad infinitum...the wheel of life.
Paragraph one.
Curiously enough I do resonate with the idea of tithing, and related notions of seva or karma yoga. Which
are "giving"-based concepts I guess. The idea that I give away a portion of my time or services to those in
need, or in support of causes that I believe in, or to spiritual leaders or artists or whomever whom I feel
nourish my community or the world in an amazing way and through my gifting they can keep gifting. I
don't feel like I owe any person or any institution a portion of my time or services or income, but actually I
do feel like I owe it to the universe. In that sense I gift out of my gratitude and generosity, yes, but I also
give or exchange or share out of my sense of equality and responsibility. So I pick certain individuals, or
groups, or organizations as representatives of the universe. If that makes sense.
Paragraph one.
Charles what do you think of these concepts of exchange and tithing and sharing etc etc? I'll be eager to
read your book as I'm sure it will blow my mind... Thanks again Kate
• reply
gifting, tithing...
Thank you for these thoughtful comments, Kate. I too have learned a lot about generosity from my time in
less developed places. As I mentioned in one of my responses above, I am not so sure about giving only
being real when there is no expectation of return. In a traditional gift culture, if a member of the community
receives without giving back, eventually he or she will be ostracized. Gift cultues usually had very strong
unwritten rules about the appropriateness of gifts. There were, however, some key differences between gift
economies and monetary transactions today. For one thing, even if something was expected in return, it was
usually not specified in advance. A money transaction is "Give me money or I won't give this to you." In a
gift transaction, you give first and hope to get something back, or maybe not hope to, it depends. Secondly,
in a gift community the return gift may not come from the recipient of your gift. Gift circulation was very
complex, dependent on age, social status, kinship, and so on. In some relationships, you might give much
and receive little; in others it might be the opposite.
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Gifts that are public, in the view of a community, are crucial in maintaining that community. In fact, some
have defined "community" as a group of people who share gifts with each other -- a circle of the gift. You
give and you know you will receive from someone else in the circle. So I think that much of our giving
should NOT be anonymous, and should be done within a circle of the gift, a community of people who are
aware of each other's giving. However, I also think that some of our giving should be done within the
broader ecological community, social community, and spiritual community. We should give to the world,
to other beings, to humanity, to God. This is where tithing and other forms of anonymous giving come in.
Each level is necessary, because we are multi-layered beings composed of an individual self, a family self,
a community self, a social self, a planetary self, and a self that partakes in the being of the entire cosmos.
Charles
• reply
BRANDING, Biz Models, etc

Submitted by Twist on Sat, 04/10/2010 - 21:23.
OK, I've chipped in my $10/month, so I'd like to make some scattered comments.
I love the whole gift economy model. That was the basis for all my own activity for many many years -
parties, workshops, booklets, leaflets, zines, all on a purely "donate whatever you can" model. Generally I
took a loss but it always felt good. Sometimes I covered my fixed costs. So I thought it was brilliant when
Burning Man began to endorse the gift economy idea. Its the part of Eisenstein's writings I like the most.
He may be right that the gift, or less rhetorically, the donation economy, may be the way to go for digital
culture. (But can we avoid the word "sacred" please? Is it really necessary?)
But, I don't see RS as having started off that way, with that intention. I witnessed up close the early
organizing around Metacine/Evolver as a print zine, later morphing into RS the group blog (in fact I can
buff my badge a bit and lay claim to having suggested/endorsed the group blog idea in the first place to DP)
and it was all very much about creating a viable for-profit business model, alternative in content, perhaps,
but very much a for-profit business. There were years of brainstorming and rehashing and recasting
different biz plans, in the end only a single pilot issue of a print zine was produced, groovy and slick as it
was. I think people got way too hung up on all that stuff in the first place, rather than just hunkering down
and getting something real out. But that was all prelude to RS, effectively. With RS I have no insight into
the planning process, beyond what the crew have posted publicly so far about it. It seems like the good
intentions are there, but even as a longtime moral supporter, content contributor, and now financial donor,
I'm still not entirely clear what the actual plan is. Maybe its in a state of metamorphosis.
So, umm, perhaps I've missed some words on this somewhere on this site, ... but ... isn't BRANDING what
modern capitalism is all about? Isn't that where RS is going to make its real revenue from, later or sooner?
Isn't the whole idea to launch products to build a brand in the long run, which can then be monetized a
zillion which ways. The initial products may or may not pay for themselves, but they are a loss-leader for
the overall business enterprise, and once a brand is established, all kinds of other niches and opportunities
to make a buck become feasible at much reduced overhead.What's seems to me, from the outside, to be
going on currently is that RS is operating at a loss in order to develop a BRAND, no? Perhaps someone just
underestimated the required time-line to break even?Once the BRAND is popular enough, you can do
anything with it: RS ride-sharing services. RS lipgloss. RS video-games for psychic youth. RS new age
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tours to egypt, chichen itza and shambhala. RS-branded cell phone services. Who knows, any physical
product that people want that generates bucks.
Please don't tell me, after years of brainstorming business plans, this wasn't part of the scheme.
OK, so the money just isn't flowing so far in the right quantity from initial attempts like the teleseminars,
retreats and backstage passes. How soon did you guys realistically think you were going to break even?
And why no Google ads? 100,000 visitors (or hits? please clarify) a month is easily in the range where a
lot of niche sites supposedly support themselves from google ads. RS is saying there's 100,000 "readers",
not just 10,000. I'm sure you have a good reason for not using Google ads, but I don't know what it is
offhand, and haven't noticed it addressed in all these appeals of late.
SO, ... IF we "users" are being asked to keep the project alive, why not at least share the actual biz plan
documents with us supporters, so we have a better idea what our resources are supporting?I don't think its
necessary to turn RS into a non-profit operation, but if its really sooo hard to monetize it, maybe that's the
way to go.
Really, RS is very similar to public radio / Pacifica stations that are almost entirely supported by their
listeners. Unless of course the aim was to USE RS to create a brand to make profits down the road... Those
are not for profits.
As an effective small-time investor into a for-profit RS, am I in line to get a share of future RS profits when
someone figures out how to capitalize on the brandname? If the aim is not so much to return a "PROFIT" to
investors but to provide the service and have the crew make a decent living, then it shouldn't hurt anyone to
reveal more about how the money is used, and what the overall biz plan is, than a simple pie chart.
Probably all these are issues the RS crew is wrangling with amongst themselves, and within themselves.
There's probably no easy answer. But we are certainly in a time of economic transitionS, and I hope RS and
Evolver can become models for a new economics of cultural creation, and a new economics in general.
The thing we are all really lacking is a cool, safe place to keep our money, and see it used for projects in
line with our personal vision and principles -- "triple bottom line" in the current parlance: People Planet
Profits. I've had my savings for a while now in Permaculture Credit Union. A great cause, unfortunately its
almost a zero interest rate. But you know your savings are helping other people implement real
sustainability changes in their lives.
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I don't think that's a task for RS per se, but it could be something that RS could help articulate and advocate
for, and Evolver social NETWORK could help more pragmatically incubate and organize people around.
If you think about the power of leveraged numbers, consider the 50,000 people who attend burning man
each year. What if they were all to sink $20 a month into a savings fund, and part of the interest was used
for visionary community, cultural projects, and everybody could vote on which projects they wanted the
leveraged power of their savings to support? That's $1 MILLION a month. In two years $24Mil. What's the
interest on $24mil? Umm, let's see at a modest 5% a year, like, uh, A LOT OF MONEY. supposing we're
not all looking for high interest rates, but a minimal rate above inflation, and then using the additional
interest for jump-starting needed PROJECTS AND SERVICES. Think how much you can leverage just
that semi-liquid fraction with some outside financing? Basically "our own" credit union. Evolver Credit
Union. <p>Can you imagine if the entire Burning Man community at large - say a few hundred thousand
people, put their entire checking accounts into such a fund?Part of the money could be invested in real
communities, buying real estate, blocks of run down homes ($10 homes in Detroit, anyone?) that could be
developed as alternative living experiments, and which one could eventually have the option of living in
oneself. And if not, at least of having helped support with one's bucks.
There's a pretty good argument that productive land (agriculturally productive, that is) may be the only
long-term holder of value as the effects of net energy decline, oil depletion and credit collapse deepen. I
have more detailed notes on this scheme I should post soon. There's also an old post on RS along these
lines.
Well, nuff random babbling for now. There's a proverbial two cents.
Twist
• reply
some responses
Lots of interesting points here! I'll just respond to a couple things.
Very interesting description of the origin of RS. I think they are not the only ones who come to the gift
model from somewhere else. Hey, back in the day I had ambitions to become a hot-shit bestselling author
and I promoted myself with that end in mind. It was a collossal failure, and it was only when everything
totally fell apart that I was born into the gift spirit. It wasn't any particular nobility on my part, that's for
sure.
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I understand about the "loss leader" model, creating lots of free content with the hopes of somehow
monetizing the resulting mindshare in the future. The point I'm making is that this eventual monetization is
proving elusive, and that is no coincidence, but inherent in the nature of a digital, P2P medium with near-
zero marginal costs. As for Google Ads, I think these are becoming less and less lucrative, right, as they
become more ubiquitous. I woudl guess that RS looked at the numbers and decided the revenue wouldn't be
worth cluttering up the site, but I don't know for sure.
As for pooling money to invest at interest, as you describe above, risk-free interest is at the root of the
essential question I am investigating in my book: Why does money, which should theoretical make us all
richer by connecting gifts and needs, instead generate social polarization, environmental destruction, etc.?
In some of my earlier RS essays (Money and the Crisis of Civilization, Money and the Turning of the Age)
I go into this in depth.
Charles
• reply
Give vs. Join

Submitted by Ken Jordan on Sun, 04/11/2010 - 08:26.
In this thread, some have raised the question why we didn't place a one-time "donate" button alongside the
monthly payment options to join the Evolver Social Movement. Here's our thinking about it -- and please
keep in mind that this is a work-in-progress. We're relying on your feedback in order to tweak E+SM and
get it right.
As an NGO, non-profit veteran, I come to Evolver with my own set of prejudices. The vast majority of
non-profits and NGOs consider their memberships as passive cash cows, who they milk for the occasional
donation. They don't want their memberships to be involved in their organizing or decision making process
-- they want them to sign petitions and show up for rallies, and that's basically it. The relationship is clear --
the organization does the work, and the work is supported financially by donors, who are courted
aggressively with non-stop emails and direct mail solicitations so the checks keep coming.
When the crisis hit RS/E+, and we had to shift gears, we knew that we didn't want to be that kind of old
school, donation supported institution. RS/E+ is largely a volunteer-driven effort. It is hugely an expression
of the gift. So many people are bringing their gifts to this project: writers, editors, grassroots organizers,
designers, socnet posters, video producers, musicians, dedicated interns of all kinds, etc. Each year, it's
hundreds of people. At the same time, we often hear from the broader community -- which participates in
the comments threads, posts blogs on Evolver.net, and takes part in our live events -- that they feel a stake
in this project, that it means more to them than other websites. Indeed, it's the community that makes what
we do special.
Our vision of RS/E+ is for it to embody this multifaceted collaboration in the organization's very structure,
that we become a model for a new kind of "interdependent media." That's why we created the Evolver
Social Movement -- which simply puts a name on something that was already happening. Rather than
receive donations given by passive readers, we want our community to participate in what we do, to join
the effort, to contribute whatever they feel is appropriate (money, labor, and resources), and stay involved.
The way we saw it, monthly payments are a better expression of ongoing participation than one-time
donations. The fullest expression of someone's gift is their ongoing commitment. So we didn't include a
"donate" button.
The program for E+SM is still in development. It's only been five weeks since we decided to take this
route, and three weeks since E+SM went live. Our main challenge at the moment is to raise the funds we
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need to stay in operation. That has to be our focus for the next couple of months, until we establish a
financial foundation that ensures this project has a future. But as I said, this is a work in progress. Look at
what RS/E+ has achieved over the last three years, and decide for yourself if we're moving in the right
direction -- stumbles and all. If you like what you see, I hope you'll join us going forward, in part by
making a monthly contribution (of whatever size you choose).
Of course, if you'd prefer to just give once, and have no monthly charges, there are two simple work
arounds: You can join E+SM, and after the payment goes through, login to your RS account page and
cancel your membership. Canceling only takes a minute and you can do it anytime. Or if you'd rather not
use PayPal, you can mail a check, instead. Make it out to Evolver LLC and send it to me (I'm the publisher
and handle the bank account): Ken Jordan, Evolver LLC, 400 Argyle Road, Apt. RH7, Brooklyn, NY
11218.
However you choose to participate, I thank you for it.
• reply
commitment to transition
Submitted by Philip Diller on Sun, 04/11/2010 - 09:24.
Chuck, reading your words is always a high pleasure, the thought that so many people discover a familiar
and clear path to a beautiful future from your ideas is even more uplifting. Participating in the Gift
Economy requires a leap of faith. Often the more folk are entrenched in the core constructs of culture - I'm
thinking especially of education, business and government - the more they tend to be cynical of the explicit
purposes of their host institution. A friend visiting Burmese govt offices recounted that the functionaries
they encountered all felt that the system required dismantling, yet no one does anything, perhaps for years,
decades. The comfort of the status quo is compelling and perhaps narcotic.We are committed to the
programs of our culture - I've got to do my job now, so I can feed my family, even though I know my work
is BS, and my tax dollars only go to murdering poor people in other countries - but some day I'll catch up
because in my heart of hearts I know what truthful living is. Compromising, we accept much needed but
duplicitous corporate sponsorship. We buy and eat food that we know is not healthy for us.It takes courage
to take the leap of faith. Like swimming for the first time. It doesn't seem it can work unless we're fully
committed?
• reply
institutions
One thing that has always amazed me is that an institution like a corporation or government is perfectly
capable of taking actions that *not a single person* in the institution supports. It's not just that a minority
gets its way in shoving through an unpopular agenda, it is that NO ONE supports it, but everyone thinks it
is iimpractical to do anything otherwise. It is as if the institution had a mind of its own.
Charles
• reply
Cultural Sphere/Civil Society is a Healthy Place for Capital

Submitted by Christy Korrow on Sun, 04/11/2010 - 09:51.
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It's obvious that it takes time and money for Reality Sandwich to operate, and just because it is an initiative
which is spiritually-based does not at all mean that the people who work on the site should do it for free.
While this is an altruistic attitude, I believe that spiritual publishing initiatives are even more deserving of
cold hard cash, putting capital into work such as this, which is consciously working to expand human
capacity, is a small step toward rescuing social structure from its current economic stranglehold. In order
for our society to evolve into one of balance, where the artistic sphere, cultural initiatives, education,
health, etc. are supported and recognized, those with capital must place it "into the hands of people of
capacity and morality, who would use it for the general good of society." (Stephen Usher) Donating or
giving or subscribing--call it what you will--to Reality Sandwich is a step in this direction. Now it's up to
people to wake up to this progressive concept!
• reply
Blessed be
Submitted by lightinmyhands on Mon, 04/12/2010 - 05:25.
I say blessed be to the gift that is RS! My partner is a web designer and computer programmer so I'm
starting to understand the great undertaking that is a website. And RS is a great one! Thanks to Charles and
all the other writers who offer of themselves so that I may have a spot online to read things that are
stimulating to both my mind and spirit. Thanks is not enough to express my gratitude.
• reply
Leap of faith 2
Submitted by Yolanda on Mon, 04/12/2010 - 11:27.
Hi Charles - I love your clarity and articulation of these issues and I find them useful. How useful I asked
myself? You've asked me to take responsibility for that decision and to put my money where my mouse is -
thank you. Thinking about some of the other posts, I agree that transparency is vital but we also need trust.
I don't need to see your accounts or participate in your decision making, because I trust in you and the
Reality Sandwich mission and I don't have the time for that level of scrutiny anyway. I think it is possible
to be business, social enterprise and movement and that this is possibly a business model for the future. I
would like to live in a world where it's possible for people to earn a decent living through sharing wisdom,
challenging perceptions and consciously participating in our evolution in as many ways as can be imagined.
This is a leap of faith because the old economy is failing in all the ways and in all the reasons described and
we don't know what will emerge or when. You have to give it your best shot or it's not worth doing at all.
I've signed up and I wonder whether this will change my use of the service - at the moment I only read a
couple of articles before interruptions, distractions etc. If I'm paying might I value them more?? Best of
luck anyway....Yolanda
• reply
RS Imprint?
Submitted by Twist on Mon, 04/12/2010 - 19:25.
RS should form its own book imprint, to publish hardcopy works by its best writers. You have a marketing
platform and distribution channel in place, with 100,000 steady readers. I realize kindle & ipad will start to
eat away at the book market, but its not going to keel over dead in one year or anything. I'd think you'd be
able to negotiate a better share of the pie, no? Dunno what the deal's like with Tarcher for the current 2
anthologies, but there ought to be a way of leveraging an imprint for bigger revenue. Maybe aim for a
couple splashy coffee table books that have a chance of generating significant cash return to help fund the
operation. For example, there would clearly be an audience for an anthology of 'Temple of Visions' 'school-
of-Alex-Grey" -type psychedelic art. Reality Sandwich calendar? Pornography? ;-) This sorta goes back to
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my branding commentary. If the web is not a reliable way to generate significant income, figure out what
kind of "high value add" product is marketable out there, and use the RS brand to wrap around it, use that
to generate bigger revenue. Big events of course can generate big revenue, but they also tend to be very
high risk, and you need a fair amount of capital to run on til they come to fruition. I dunno, how about an
online TV news/commentary show that accepts ads? You'd probably have some iccky megacorp ads, but
most of the advertisers might be green eco new agey companies, given the audience.
• reply
Innovating around the psychology of the gift; the golden rule

Submitted by Nuncstans on Mon, 04/12/2010 - 21:59.
A couple points for this great article/conversation:
The success of the economy of the gift is built on the promise of self-expression in the support of others
and the recognition and community integration which this fosters. The workability of a gift economy thus
lies in upholding these facets: self-expression, sense of support, recognition, community integration. The
abstract, impersonal nature of money degrades its capacity to facilitate self-expression and recognition.
Likewise, the impersonal and instantaneous nature of the money gift makes it a poor catalyst for
community integration.
Innovations must be developed which address each of these shortcomings. RS has addressed the latter by
implementing the necessity of contributing on a monthly basis, the thought being that monthly
contributions would facilitate community integration. While this is a step in the right direction in terms of
creative thinking about the problem, my sense is that it is a failure because it hinders the already slim
margin for self-expression around the money gift - and the personal freedom which attends and grounds the
gift's efficacy. Putting limits on how and what people can give is precisely what needs to be avoided if one
wants to enrich the gift economy to a point where it functions at a community-sustaining level.
Essentially what is needed is just the opposite, a system of personalization which cultivates integration by
offering opportunities for self-expression, a sense of textural, personal support, and recognition. What
might this look like at the level of RS?
Here are a few brainstorms, many of which may be impractical: gifts of user-chosen amounts (no pre-
requisite options) for specific articles and other facets of the site, each facet/article with publishable
amounts given; gifts for specific uses, i.e. CSA for the office, and published 'registries' of what is urgently
needed (note the connection between transparency and the appeal of the gift); gifts other than money;
opportunities to publish comments along with gifts (here's my comment and here's the link that says I
donated x amount along with it). Reciprocity and giving: give this and we will donate this, expand this,
give you this service or access, etc. Partner with like-minded members of the community and organizations
to enrich these opportunities. More generally, brainstorm around avenues of self-expression, cultivating a
sense in the giver that they are supporting you in an individually recognizable, textural way, cultivating
more avenues of recognition, and connecting the community with opportunities to participate. Note the
order of operations which makes up the system behind the gift in the first place and follow its logic. I'm
sure that you're already doing some of these things too.
One more thing, just a sidenote to Charles. My sense is that the golden rule needs to be looked at as a
harbinger of the isolated self mentality. I thought your article was so solid and this stuck out as a less
developed aspect. The logic behind the Golden Rule seems to be: others are like me and deserve the same
treatment; the best way to understand others is to understand myself; I can love others well by treating them
as if they were me. There is perhaps merit in this filter on one level, inasmuch as it helps us to expand our
conception of Self, but we must be able to step outside of it and recognize others' difference as well. We are
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not all the same, and thank God for that. Tuning in to that is a great way of furthering our expansion of Self
to include Other without simply projecting ourselves with a small s onto others. Thanks for a fantastic
article and I'm looking forward to your book. - Edward
• reply
great ideas
Submitted by Charles Eisenstein on Tue, 04/13/2010 - 12:35.
That was quite a brainstorm. One of the basic distinguishing characteristics of money is that it is
anonymous and anonymizing. That makes it inherently destructive of community, as you have pointed out.
But perhaps that shortcoming can be remedied, as some of your ideas seem to do, by attaching something
personal to the gift of money. I agree that gifts should be recognized by the community; at least, that is how
it always has been in gift economies. Those who give the most deserve to be celebrated.
As for the Golden Rule, I have written elsewhere about it in more depth. But basically what I think is that it
started as a mere statement of fact: "As you do unto others, so you are in fact doing unto yourself." This
statement of fact was a reminder early on, at a time when our felt connection to Other was only beginning
to atrophy. Later, the Rule changed into a prescription, a moral precept to strive toward, and not just a
statement of fact. That's my take on it, anyway.
Charles
• reply
re: great ideas

Submitted by Nuncstans on Tue, 04/13/2010 - 22:25.
I like that reading of the golden rule Charles! Yes that brings out the expanded view of Self, as well as the
many times hidden correspondence between self-relation and other-relation - these seem to be the valuable
parts of the rule. The trouble comes with projecting oneself onto others and the editing out of difference -
and presence - which this involves. What might it look like to permeate the barrier between self and other
in a way that allows each to persist, enables us to be present to both aspects of the dialectic of
same/different or self/other without gravitating to either pole? In doing so we inevitably give the self's
immune system the go ahead to shut out, again, some aspect of reality, and thus isolate itself. A good
onion, thanks :)
• reply
Economic gift
Submitted by kanishk24nov on Wed, 04/14/2010 - 13:09.
it would be great if Reality Sandwich would get even more clear and aligned around its ask. It's doing
pretty good already! I may go this model myself on my site, so thanks for that too. humane mouse trap
• reply
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Cart before the horse
Submitted by Leon Night on Mon, 04/19/2010 - 03:41.
Before your ideas, or anyone else’s, begin to weave their way into human consciousness on a widespread
basis, human consciousness itself has to change. Self-interest, whether it’s mutual, or any other kind, must
first be replaced with universal interest; a consciousness interested in unity. Horses don’t do well when
pushing a cart along uneven terrain.
• reply
A commercial venture or not? I don't care

Submitted by John_King on Mon, 04/19/2010 - 20:05.
This is an interesting thread, with so many thoughts on gifting vs. joining, social movement vs commercial,
etc. What is realitysandwich.com exactly? Frankly, whatever it is, the bottom line is I have been enjoying
this site since its inception, and I will continue to do so, assuming the quality of the content remains so
high. In view of the foregoing I decided to commit a small monetary donation each month to the site. If my
money is funding a commercial venture, so be it. If it is supporting an evolutionary social movement, even
better. (I have a feeling they are not mutually exclusive) Either way, am happy there is a way to offer my
(meager) support.
• reply
'What is realitysandwich.com
Submitted by little lightening bolt on Tue, 04/20/2010 - 12:37.
'What is realitysandwich.com exactly?' IT IS A LIMITED LIABILITY CORPERATION. LCC
• reply
If you are so critical of RS

Submitted by Lightning Hawk on Wed, 04/21/2010 - 00:36.
why are you still here?
• reply
I have no problem with this

Submitted by little lightening bolt on Wed, 04/21/2010 - 12:38.
I have no problem with this site being a LLC, or even it charging money for membership. I do have an
issue with the site posturing as something other then that. My hope is that they clarify that and are honest
about it. if they dont I probably will not be here because I will not be paying to be here unless they are
straight forward about their motivation. I've no problem supporting a magazine that informs people on
interesting subjects. I would have a problem supporting a LLC that postures as a social movement and then
charges membership. I have seen it before, and I have seen many profiteer with the façade that they are
doing what they are doing for a reason other then profiting.
As it stands currently they seem to be on the fence. So until they fall to one side or the other... I am on the
fence as well.
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• reply
My 2c worth
Submitted by lawabb on Wed, 05/05/2010 - 12:12.
I come to this site from time to time primarily to check if Charles has some new thoughts to inspire me. He
usually does.. As do many of the comments from his readers. I'd be just as happy with a mailing list
format... No need for expensive productions.
• reply
Getting from A to B...The Transfinancial Paradigm.. new

Submitted by Searle88 on Fri, 06/04/2010 - 02:17.
I agree alot with the article on gifting economy but it is going to be difficult in extremis to get people out of
the money mind-set. The gifting economy is ofcourse nothing new, and something akin to it can be found
at the Venus Project which believes in a Resource Based Economy... http://www.thevenusproject.com/ But
how exactly are we going to get from A to B. Here, I would suggest my evolving project of
TRANSFINANCIAL ECONOMICS. http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics
http://www.realitysandwich.com/gift_economics_and_reunion_digital_age
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The Sacred Geometry of a Consciousness Movement
Jonathan Talat Phillips
When the Bush administration started the Iraq War, I found myself engaging in politics for the first time,
spearheading a street theater media campaign that protested this violent aggression. I ended up
dedicating more than a year of my life to trying to prevent Bush's re-election, orchestrating elaborate
“media spectacles” that appeared in international media such as MSNBC, Fox, Time, ABC, USA Today,
and the cover of NY Magazine. But when Bush took his second term, I fell into a depression. Our
planetary crisis of melting poles, corporate dominance, toxic oceans, burning rainforests and an extinction
rate of thirty thousand species each year convinced me that electoral politics could not address the scope of
the problems we faced. While contemplating this daunting future, I remembered Einstein’s old line that you
cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that caused the dilemma. What we needed, I began to think,
was a “Galileo-type paradigm shift.” When that 16th century astronomer proved that the Earth rotates
around the sun, it didn’t just change the way we looked at large objects in the sky, but every particle in our
daily lives.
So, I began looking for a “paradigm shift,” and to my surprise, it was given to me on my thirtieth birthday
when I took MDMA and started seeing energy fields (some would call these auras). Up to that point, I’d
always been a dogged skeptical materialist, so at first my mind struggled to make sense of these strange
electric currents that I now saw pulsing all around me. For weeks I worried I might be crazy. But as it
turned out, seeing energy was just the first step in a much longer (and ongoing) initiation process. This
journey led me to taking ayahuasca, experiencing past lives, and having out of body experiences, and to
eventually meeting my spirit guides, undergoing a profound kundalini awakening, and finally becoming an
energy healer in order to utilize this vivifying life force to help others heal “dis-ease.” Perhaps the most
surprising twist on this road was being reintroduced to the mystical elements of my Christian upbringing, as
I began to explore the energetic significance of Biblical symbols like halos, the Tree of Life, the serpent,
the dove and the Star of David.
While this journey had been life changing on an individual level, I still wondered if I could be of service in
a larger context. That’s when Daniel Pinchbeck gave me a call to meet up at the Life Cafe in Alphabet
City. He opened up his laptop to reveal a still-to-be-launched web magazine he’d been concocting with a
couple of friends, Ken Jordan, our publisher, and Michael Robinson,our creative director (our features
editor Steven Taylor and our community director Jennifer Palmer would come on later. The homepage had
a slick urban shamanic look that immediately appealed to my own sensibilities. The sample posts covered
topics as diverse as open source programming, shamanic initiations, DIY art, raw foods, alternative
currencies, urban homesteading, and spiritual activism. Over the previous few months, I’d been
interviewing at various nonprofits for jobs where I could apply my media skills, but I always left these
appointments disappointed, feeling that they were focused on single-issue politics when I wanted to
participate in a project that connected all the different elements of transformation.
This web magazine, Reality Sandwich, did exactly that. It examined ways we could redesign systems,
society, and our own lives. Unlike my old political organizing projects, this magazine wasn’t solely
focused on protesting against injustice; its mission was to foster and transmit ideas that led to new models
of existence. Whereas I had done media stunts to send out messages that were invariably flattened by the
corporate press, these guys were circumventing this problem by building their own media engine to
promote their culture, stories, and mythologies out into the world. My activist days had come full circle. I
was looking at a dream opportunity, especially when Daniel asked if I wanted to come on as managing
editor of the project. There was only one problem: they had no money. There was no doubt I believed in
this project and I wanted to do it regardless off the immediate sacrifice it would take. Each one of us had
hope that we could turn something this inspiring into a financially sustainable model.
So, for the next year, I dedicated over 100 hours per month on top of my day-job to help make Reality
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Sandwich happen. Daniel, Ken and Michael made similar commitments. Although we had no budget to
pay contributors, feature articles kept flowing in from around the globe. Many were grateful to finally have
a home where these kinds of stories could be presented. I was amazed how many of their journeys
resembled my own initiatory process. Emails poured in from our readers describing similar experiences:
“Hi, I live in Duluth and don’t know how to tell my mother I can see auras. What should I do?” “I’m
having a kundalini experience and I’m not sure how to ground myself. Any advice?” “I thought I was
crazy when I started to have dreams about the future that came true. From reading your site, I now know
I’m not the only one.” “I read Daniel’s book and have also experienced a ridiculous number of
synchronicities lately. Is something happening out there?” Incredibly, over time we grew from being four
guys in Daniel’s apartment to connecting a global transformational community with over 100,000
participants per month, including hundreds of inspiring volunteers who make it all possible.
After a year of working on the project, I still wasn’t getting paid, nor was anyone else. The late hours on
top of my day-job affected my health, and my relationship with my girlfriend at the time. Daniel and Ken
saw that I was burning out and they generously offered to make me their first paid employee once we got in
some initial investment money. I kept pushing on, but there were lapses of faith and finally I told Daniel I
didn’t think I could last much longer. “Just a couple more months,” he said. “We’ll get there.” I held out
until our first funding came in from our investors, who own the ranch where we do retreats in Boulder,
Utah. I finally gave two weeks notice at my day job and went on to increase my hours to 50-70 per week
for Reality Sandwich and Evolver. My new salary was small for New York living, but I couldn’t
complain. Unlike everyone else in the project, I was getting paid.
During that time, Daniel would often talk about how those who’d undergone the initiatory experience could
serve as “midwives” to bring forth a new consciousness. We discussed the situation in a number of
editorial meetings, trying to figure out how we could best aid this process. Often we talked about visionary
architect Buckminster Fuller, who believed that most of society’s difficulties were “problems of design.”
Our current models for government, economics, media, and even religion were mostly based on flawed
hierarchical models that bred division while consolidating power to the few at the top. Energetically
speaking, we were “a house divided,” competing for money, land, space, jobs, fuel and other resources,
creating an enormous amount of suffering. As our Reality Sandwich community continued to grow,
members asked to meet and organize with others where they lived. They wanted to pool their resources,
share their ideas and talents, offer up their unique gifts, and create new models of community where they
lived.
Our magazine format couldn’t facilitate this need, so over several months in 2009 we developed our social
network for conscious collaboration, Evolver.net. While creating a PowerPoint presentation about this new
site, Ken showed me a series of diagrams that showed their approach to social mobilizing. The first
presented a hierarchical model, where all the energy unfairly flowed from the edges to the center, where all
the power is centralized. He then clicked to a diagram of a decentralized system of hubs and spokes, which
is what many websites follow, where the energy flows in all directions but then gets stuck with isolated
individuals at the ends (sitting alone at their computers). And then he showed me a mesh model for
distributed networks, which displayed a rich ecosystem of interconnected participants, each equally able to
share information with everyone else. This diagram captured our vision for the Evolver network.
Distributed networks circulate resources, allowing forces to flow and build without losing or dispersing
energy. Looking at this diagram, it suddenly struck me that what Ken and other proponents of distributed
networks wanted to develop was a type of sacred geometry, one that harnessed humans’ creative power to
fashion a harmonious, egalitarian society.
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With Evolver.net, we wanted to do one thing that was very different than Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.
We wanted to actively facilitate people connecting off-line, in actual physical space. Wondering how to do
this, I called up one of the brightest culture jammers I know, Andrew Boyd, who coordinated the
Billionaires for Bush efforts in 2004. The Billionaires had dozens of chapters across the country producing
inspired theatrical street theater protests -- inventive, inspiring, and fun, and all made possible by
volunteers. We had lunch at the Essex Street Market in the Lower East Side, where he discussed various
ways we could spread the memes of Evolver and Reality Sandwich into the media. I took in his advice and
then told him I was also looking for something else -- how to help foster a network-wide consciousness
community. Andrew’s eyes lit up. “You need your ritual,” he said, snapping his finger, “something that
brings everyone across the network together, something they can do together each month.” We discussed
several viral grassroots initiatives, such as Critical Mass Bike rides, Green Drinks, and Drinking Liberally.
This, I felt, was exactly what I was looking for. I brought the idea back to the editorial team, and with
some brainstorming about names, Daniel came up with the term, Evolver Spores.
What would make the Evolver Spores different than other initiatives was that they would not focus on one
single topic, but rather on bridging many diverse tribes, groups, and communities that may not even know
about each other, in an effort to build a wider transformational network. To help ensure this diversity, each
month would feature a different theme, from alternative economies to sustainable food practices, from
holistic health to shamanism. The Spores would connect bicycle co-ops and yoga studios to neighborhood
gardens and urban homesteads to local currency groups and healing circles. There would be great deal of
focus on “local resilience” and creating thriving, sustainable regional communities.
When we first did a call out for those interested in hosting Spores, 17 people immediately signed up in
different cities (Atlanta were the early adopters and already hosting events, so we'd learn a lot from them).
Things were rocky at first. Some organizers had little experience coordinating events. Often, only a few
people would show up for the monthly gatherings. Given our small, underpaid Evolver team, it was a
challenge to set up the support each city needed. Thankfully, the local coordinators stepped up to each
challenge and together we kept working at it, learning from each other, fine-tuning our efforts.
Collectively, we’ve been exploring the incredible possibilities of engaging in a living, breathing form of a
distributed network – the sacred geometry that Ken showed me. We all learn from each other’s successes
and mistakes, reading each other’s “Post Spore Questionnaires” to continually improve upon our activities.
Theme topics most often come from the regional coordinators, or suggestions by Spore participants, to
which the coordinators in the thirty cities comment and vote upon. We share information about which
groups to invite for certain themes, resources that are online, what movies to show, and other things we can
do to make the nights lively and encourage people to take action on the topics addressed. We also travel to
each other's events, being greeted like family.
We’re learning a new model of cooperation, known as “emergent space,” where it’s not just about meeting
and discussing, but creating a “container” that will allow things we couldn’t even imagine to manifest as
we synchronize our energies both locally and internationally. It’s a mystery of sorts, where the
evolutionary whole has already turned out to be much greater than the sum of its parts. Cities that started
with only a few members soon had packed events. Entire communities sprang up where none had been
before. Permaculture gardens, healing workshops, film screenings, time-banks, and even large-scale
festivals have manifested in the US and abroad through the Spores. From our humble beginnings, its
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amazing to see that we now have thriving communities in more than thirty cities, with the seeds of
evolution spreading every month.
I’m truly grateful to all the Spore organizers for getting us so far, so quickly – for being a nexus of hope in
your communities, for giving each other the necessary support on our regional email list, for strategizing in
our monthly conference calls, for all your incredible ideas, suggestions, and efforts, and for coming up with
so many exciting themes to discuss and act upon across the network. I also find it inspiring just how many
strong, compassionate women have heeded the call to hold this space for us, such as Maya (Atlanta), Erin
and Jill (LA), Regina (SF), Corinne (NYC), Robin (Baltimore), Gizelle (Cape Town), and Marisa (Boise).
Your work is creating positive changes in the lives all around you, including my own.
While Evolver and Reality Sandwich have had many successes in our mission to “evolve consciousness
bite by bite,” it has not been easy. As we’ve expanded our services for our rapidly growing community,
we’ve also quadrupled the amount of work it takes to keep it running. Each one of us on the core team
carries at least three of four roles that could be full time jobs in themselves. Investment, advertising, and
other revenue generators haven’t come through in the way we would have liked and we’ve been running at
a “semi-starvation level” (as Daniel has put it) this entire time. Ken and Daniel have never received a
salary, and Ken has been working 60-plus hours a week for 3 years. Our financial situation has been
exacerbated, as many of you know, by an investment that we counted on not coming through, after several
months of intensive negotiations. Now, instead of fixing tech bugs on RS, adding features to Evolver.net,
sending promotional cards and stickers to the Spores, and sustaining our team financially, we have hit a
crisis point, wondering how we’ll pay this month’s rent.
In the healing process, it’s often your lowest moment that provides the greatest opportunity for
transformation. Through this difficult turning point, we’ve heard your suggestions to sustain and grow
Reality Sandwich and Evolver with monthly contributions from the community, creating a model of
“interdependent media.” Together, we can build the Evolver Social Movement, maintaining Reality
Sandwich and Evolver, while creating transformational space in communities around the globe. We are
already planning a multi-regional festival in the East Coast, an Evolver Conference, Evolver Regional
community spaces, as well as making the initial steps to integrate an alternative currency across the
network. Over the last week alone, I’ve been helping coordinators start up regionals in Budapest, St. Louis,
Montreal, Tallahassee, San Diego, Tampa Bay, and Montreal. This is just the beginning. I believe we can
go beyond monthly Spores to creating a viable alternative social structure and culture that values life of all
kinds as well as our individual gifts that we can share with each other.
But in order to make this happen, we need your immediate help. Our goal is to have 2,000 E+SM members
by April 30 in order to continue our operations. We are asking for $10 per month (but you can pay
whatever you can afford). If everyone reading this article were to take a minute and make a contribution,
we would be able to keep Reality Sandwich running and take the Evolver Social Movement to the next
level. If you’re tired of a society built on division, destruction, and oppression, I invite you to spend the
equivalent of a lunch per month to invest in “the more beautiful world our heart’s know is possible.”
I invite you to participate in the upcoming series of Evolver Social Movement calls to discuss how we’d
like to build the movement together. And if you you’d like to start up an Evolver Regional, just contact me
through my profile page (I’ll include some Regional Testimonials in the comments below). I also make
this promise with you: to keep learning and improving as we go on this journey, to continue my own
healing process so I can be of better service to all of you, to listen carefully and incorporate your
suggestions with how we move forward, and to continue to enjoy and appreciate this beautiful network that
we are building together.
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Image: "Earth+Doyle+Mobius+inversion" by fdecomite on Flickr courtesy of Creative Commons
Licensing.
• 3-31-10
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Comments
This article..
Submitted by hello_im_alex on Wed, 03/31/2010 - 02:58.
This article has convinced me more than anything else that it is important to support this project with
whatever means available. Infinite thanks to all of you behind the RS and Evolver projects!
• reply
Thanks & Invite to Participate in the Discussion

Submitted by Jonathan Talat Phillips on Wed, 03/31/2010 - 07:49.
Alex, thanks so much for your support and encouragement. If you'd like to hear more about what's next
and participate in the dialogue of the Social Movement. Please join our first E+SM call tonight with Daniel
and myself tonight. Here's the details. All the best -- Jonathan
First Evolver Social Movement Call
Wed, March 31 9pm EST, 6pm PST
Dial: (760) 569-9000
Then Press Access Code: 491770#
• reply
Unfortunately..
Submitted by hello_im_alex on Wed, 03/31/2010 - 16:40.
I won't be able to attend because I am in Valencia, Spain at the moment and only have a couple euros on
my cellphone haha. However I will send out some positive thought vibrations! I hope the dialogue is
productive and enjoyable and I hope to take part in another one sometime soon!
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• reply
I just signed up...

Submitted by innervisions on Wed, 03/31/2010 - 06:27.
I have been reading RS for a couple of months. Recently, I joined Evolver to share my thoughts with the
community. And although I'm a minimum wage paid college student, I have decided that 10 bucks a month
is worth it. We need to keep this thing going, build something solid and sustainable for when things come
crashing down...I believe will be the ones society looks to for answers in the future. Keep it going gang!
• reply
Gratitude
Hi innervisions,
I too know what it's like to be a financially challenged college student. Thanks so much for your generous
investment in the world we are building. I know it's a bit of a sacrifice given your tight budget but I
promise we'll make it worth your while in creating this consciousness movement together. Also, I was
curious where you're located, as perhaps we have a Spore in your area that you'd like to connect with.
Cheers,
Jonathan
• reply
Some Regional Testimonials

As promised, here's some more testimonials from the Regionals. This is what we've accomplished in just
nine months. Imagine what we could do in the coming years.
Evolver Atlanta --
ST Frequncy
Evolver Atlanta started as a personal vision, a burning desire within myself to "find the others" and effect
positive change in the world. As a contributing editor at Reality Sandwich, I'd been intimately involved
with building this global tribe of evolutionaries since the magazine's inception almost three years ago.
While watching the RS community grow has been an immensely rewarding experience, the mediated
universe of blog posts and online debates wasn’t enough to get me through my days. I needed to find my
people, here, where I live.
With a couple of like-minded friends and local RS cohorts, I put together a few consciousness-raising
events around town. The response was powerful; this was something many people had been searching for.
The crowds grew with each event, familiar faces returned, and before long these informal gatherings had
become a vibrant community of its own. Our core team of organizers expanded organically as inspired
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people stepped up to get directly involved. After several months of hosting small one-offs, we saw an
opportunity to do something big -- an all-day festival with artists, speakers, and performers. Last summer's
EvolverFest drew around 300 people from Atlanta and beyond, a great success and a tipping point for
turning our humble local efforts into an international movement. Little did we know, the model we were
setting would soon be followed by some 30 cities around the world.
As a coordinator for one of the first Evolver Regionals, it's been incredible to see the network spread so
wide and touch so many lives and communities. There's something remarkable happening here -- a global
movement is springing up in our own backyards. My own life has been completely transformed in the year
and a half since Evolver Atlanta began, and countless connections have been made among fellow Evolvers.
People have developed lasting friendships, landed new jobs, and found deep inspiration from their
engagement with Evolver. And over time, the purpose of our work has become clear. We’ve met all of
these collectives of visionary people, from bicycle co-ops and yoga studios to organic farms and off-the-
grid homesteads. Though their interests are diverse, these groups all share a guiding vision of empowering
local communities and co-creating a more beautiful world. Through the Evolver Social Movement, we are
linking up these transformative tribes, to recognize our common dreams and make them a reality. I'm
endlessly grateful to be a part of it all.
Evolver Cape Town
--Gizelle
I'm one of the many who got drawn into Evolver via Reality Sandwich. I loved the articles, seeing
viewpoints that were "alternative" but well thought out, informative, and inspiring. The minute I read about
Spores I knew this was something I wanted to do - become an active participant rather than a passive
reader, a co-creator rather than a consumer of ideas. When I discovered no-one else in Cape Town had
signed up, I decided to be a Regional Co-ordinator myself. It has been an interesting journey so far - every
single month is a completely different experience, each meeting brings new challenges and new encounters.
I've learned a lot - about myself, as well as the topics we've covered; I've engaged with some wonderful
people I would otherwise not have met; and I love the feeling that I am part of something that is constantly
growing, connected to a large and diverse and widely-scattered community, seeking a deepening of our
relationships and understanding rather than the numbness and safety that is often held to be desirable. In
nature, ecosystems thrive on complexity and diversity - and though I am just a little plant, in ground that
often feels hard and rocky, I am playing my part in this evolving system. It is so satisfying to feel that I can
contribute!
Evolver Philladelphia
--Rob Garvan Snyder
For several years, I have found unique contributions on Reality Sandwich, and felt a kinship with others
drawn to that site. It was refreshing to know that a growing number of souls also included a helping of
open-mindedness, visionary creativity, and unbranded hope in their daily diet of media. When I learned that
the creators of that site were launching a new project, Evolver, to ignite the organization of local
communities to gather and share, I knew I would play a part. Philadelphia did not yet have a Evolver Spore,
as these gatherings are known, and I offered to host it myself. Each month, we have forged connection with
local authors, reporters, activists, therapists, artists, event planners, and organizers. Collaborative
relationships continue to evolve at a fearsome pace between each Spore. In a few short months, seeds
planted in the Spore have grown into film screenings, an epic rave, a healing circle, employment
opportunities, a women's new moon circle, and more. And we are just getting started. From our first
gathering last July, I have been astounded again and again by the openness, creativity, gifts and vision that
participants bring to the table. After each Spore, I leave as a more hopeful person, knowing that
communities in cities around the globe are having similar conversations.
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• reply
Mt. Pleasant Michigan

Submitted by innervisions on Wed, 03/31/2010 - 08:20.
Hey Jonathan,
I attend Central Michigan University, located in Mid-Michigan. It is more a large town than a 'city', and the
majority of businesses in town are chain stores, gas stations, and restaurants (like a lot of 'heartland
America'). While there are many stereotypical conservative/ignorant rural folk around, there is also a fairly
vibrant and growing scene of people dedicated to making a positive difference.
There are critical mass bike rallys, a free school dedicated to self-education/empowerment, and I know
there are individuals who would likely be receptive to the ideas Evolver/RS espouses. I have never been a
community organizer, but I have developed a pretty hip/alternative party scene at my house, filled with
like-minded people (currently, parties consist of drinking/smoking/jammin...but I can't help but want to
move beyond it to something more productive).
I would be interested in starting a spore, to connect all of the underground groups in order to have a greater
reach. I probably just need a little help in getting it off the ground...
• reply
Spores in College Towns

It looks like you already are already envisioning what your Spore by thinking of all the great local groups
to connect. I also believe involving college students and bringing in that energy is going to be key in
building this movement and an alternative culture. I'll send you the info to get started, and we'll give you
the support to get your first Spore off the ground.
• reply
Distribution Networks
Submitted by Ora on Thu, 04/01/2010 - 08:18.
Regarding the diagram provided and interpretation:
Our pre-existing world is a combination of all three of those network styles. Centralized networks,
decentralized networks, and, to a lesser extent, distributed networks are existent and interwoven in the
space-time fabric of our society.
To create a distributed network, it cannot come out of nothing. It must come from something. In this case, it
is being run by the engine of a decentralized network leading the "Evolver Movement."
The key event that must occur for the Evolver Movement to become a truly distributed network is for the
central head and subheads of the decentralized system to dissolve both themselves and their
power/influence down to the level that all others have. This might involve relinquishing legal sway (open
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sourcing) over the term "Evolver" and "Spores" as well as claims of foundation/leadership.
A fully distributed network is without ego, for ego is like gravity, and the larger it is, the more it pulls and
tugs on the distributed network in attempts to pull it towards the decentralized model.
This isn't to say ego is necessarily an issue for you all. I don't know you and haven't met most of you,
though I believe we have many mutual friends. However, I know that if I were running this, I wouldn't trust
my ego to hold back enough on its own, to let the system naturally become a distributed network.
As always, practice moderation in moderation, and let the inner struggle be a dance instead.
Blessings, Ora
• reply
Keep going.
Submitted by Aizen Myoo on Thu, 04/01/2010 - 10:19.
As I always said I really enjoy this site and love what you people are doing with it, and I support it. Times
are tough but I'm seeing about a credit card to put my money where my words are. Given the efficiency of
banks it should be ready by, why yes, before April 30th.
Go on, people. I got some personal issues to fix with myself and very little free time but when I'm done I'll
do my best to begin a spore (or a similar) in my area.
I <3 RS & Evolver.
--- My good blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength
of ten, Because my heart is pure.
• reply
Thanks for sharing your

Submitted by justin on Fri, 04/02/2010 - 00:14.
Thanks for sharing your story Jonathan, as well as the story for reality sandwich and evolver. I remember
when I first found the website and felt such a bond with you guys and knew I had to get involved. I
remember asking you who was running the spore in Portland, and you asked me if I wanted to be the
coordinator. To which I responded "Hell No!" But then realized that it was the perfect opportunity to step
up and do something-- a challenge for myself and also a way to contribute to this change I want to see in
the world. Thanks for all your hard work, and know that it is affecting many many people, sometimes in
ways that are hard to see. -justin-
• reply
Thanks Justin for all of

Submitted by Jonathan Talat Phillips on Fri, 04/02/2010 - 11:28.
Thanks Justin for all of your hard work in getting the Evolver Portland Spore going, and for being able to
successfully pass on the torch as you head on your epic bike trip around the US. I wish you safe and
glorious travels and can't wait til we hang out upon your arrival in NYC.
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• reply
i'm pretty new to RS/Evolver

Submitted by jellyfish74 on Fri, 04/02/2010 - 06:54.
i'm pretty new to RS/Evolver and just getting the feel of things around here. but from what i've seen so far,
ten bucks a month is more than worth keeping this thing afloat. i'm in.
• reply
Wildfire
Submitted by BardoBob on Mon, 04/05/2010 - 07:13.
Hey John, Had a great time at the Philly spore this past march. It was great getting to meet Ken, Daniel, and
yourself and having a wonderful dinner. Anyway just wanted you to know I am still hard at work putting
widgets and such for evolver and rs. Every opportunity I get it tell people about evolver and rs and
encourage them to come to spores and join the social movement. I have led 2 couples to join and I feel
more will follow as I spread the message. Thank you for your dedication and sacrifice to help make this
even possible to this point. In lak'ech, Bob
http://www.realitysandwich.com/sacred_geometry_movement
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Reality Sandwich: An Astral Home Companion
Adam Elenbaas
Last week, after 2 years, 48 weeks, and approximately 150 articles written since I helped to open this
amazing website, I went into my first medicine ceremony to pray specifically for the future of Reality
Sandwich. Most of the ceremony I saw two things: childhood memories of listening to National Public
Radio in northern Minnesota, and then all of the blessings I've received since this project started. When I
got home, despite a tight budget and my load of student debt, I committed to contributing $10 a month, and
then I wrote this blog entry about what RS means to me.
***
Recently, in the San Francisco Airport, I was talking to my fiancé about a chapter from my upcoming book.
The particular chapter I was discussing, entitled, "On the Banks of Lake Wobegon" recounts my childhood
memories of NPR and, in particular, Garrison Keilor's "A Prairie Home Companion." Growing up in
northern Minnesota, just an hour or so down the road from the fictional town of "Lake Wobegon," it was
impossible to avoid the popular radio program. The jokes and tall-tales about scandanavian, Protestantism
didn't just poke fun at a local culture, they created one. Growing up I felt deeply "Minnesotan" even though
I had been born in Kentucky and my parents were from Michigan.
Given the other-worldly nature of my ayahuasca adventures over the past five years, and my life since the
start of Reality Sandwich, including the synchronistic way in which my book itself found a publisher, I
shouldn't have been surprised when none other than Garrison Keilor walked off the airplane and into the
lounge. There he was. He stood above me and my fiancé like a giant. Looking around like he had never
seen the inside of an airport before. With two different colored socks and a pair of red, goofy-looking
sneakers.
"G-garison?"
"Hell-oooooooo" he said, like an imaginary creature from The Never Ending Story. Like he had been
expecting me.
"I was just talking about you," I said.
He stared at me.
"I-I-wrote a book about you."
"You did? Hmmm." He looked like a trout wearing spectacles.
"Well. Not about you. There's a chapter in my book about Prairie Home Companion."
"Well that's nice. Good for you, young man. Who's publishing it?"
"Tarcher/Penguin."
"Ahh. The Human Potential people. What's it called?"
"Fishers of Men."
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"A biblical book?"
"Not really. Hey, Garrison. Can I ask you a quick question?"
"Why certainly."
"Do you remember me? I mean. Like five years ago, the very week I started writing my book, you came
and visited my grad school. I asked you how to write about the dark-side of small towns in Minnesota. You
told me a story about how the mayor of my hometown was a republican his whole life. Then you said he
became a democrat in his last year, and he died before he could vote. You said everything has two sides to
it. Do you remember that?"
"I do remember that," he said.
"Well, that's how I wrote about Minnesota in my book. And I was just now telling my fiancé about it. And
here you walk out the door of the airplane."
"Hmmm," he looked as if he was trying to finish a sodoku puzzle in his head. "Well, that is really
something special. What is the name of your book again? I'll look out for it."
***
These kinds of exchanges have become rather common for me. I'm tempted to say they don't surprise me
anymore, but that's not true. Maybe the best descriptors are words like "awe" and "amazement." I'm amazed
by the novelty and the synchronicities. In one second they make everything new. I'm not sure that's an
exaggeration, either. They might truly make everything new. In one instant. And there was a time in my life
where these things weren't happening to me at all. Or if they were, I wasn't conscious enough to recognize
or be impressed by them. Everything felt old and broken down. I was depressed, addicted, arrogant, and
afraid. Thing is, I can't name when, exactly, things changed. Instead I have a long list of transformational
moments, events, and times like the one with Garrison Keilor in the airport. Here's a shortened version of
my list:
• 1. Taking mushrooms on family land in Michigan. I thought they were just another drug. Like
getting drunk, smoking a joint, getting laid, or going to a party. Something you did because you
just didn't give a "cuss." Not so true. Within several hours I was having an intensely personal and
private psycho-therapy session in my closet. All because I couldn't stop staring at one of my
father's bottles of cologne. At the end of the trip, my lid having been flipped open, one of my
friends discovers on my father's bookshelf, Breaking Open the Head, a journalistic odyssey into
psychedelic culture.
• 2. I read Breaking Open the Head and encounter the word "ayahuasca" for the first time.
• 3. After more psychedelic trips, losing weight, and getting sober (all because of insights gleamed
from psychedelics) I am reading everything I can about shamanism and alternative spirituality. I
book a trip to the Amazon.
• 4. After 3 ayahuasca ceremonies in the middle of the jungle, I feel literally born again. The world,
my inner life, and the cosmos itself has become real to me.
• 5. When I return home I consider writing my graduate thesis about my experiences in Peru. The
week I started my book, Garrison Keilor arrived at my school to speak, and I asked him how to
write about the shadow-side of rural Minnesota (where I had grown up).
• 6. My thesis on ayahuasca wins an award at my graduate school and earns me a teaching
fellowship to a MFA program.
• 7. While in my MFA program, and several more trips to Peru later, I receive a vision during a
ceremony that I should contact Daniel Pinchbeck about his magazine project, "Evolver." He writes
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back and tells me about Reality Sandwich. Several months later, I am one of the first news
bloggers for the website.
• 8. During another vision in Peru I receive the inspiration to rewrite my book and title it Fishers of
Men. Back in the United States one of the staffers at RS, Jonathan Phillips, asks me to share my
transformational story at the Ayahuasca Monologues, in New York City. I meet Alex and Daniel
and Ken and the whole crew.
• 9. The day after the monologues I fly to South America to cover a shamanic conference for
Reality Sandwich. While in the jungle, I meet a psychiatrist from New York. Before our last
ceremony together, I share with him my desire to move to NYC after completing my MFA. I want
to be near the RS crowd. I want a spiritual community. There is nothing near my grad school in
Atlanta. During the ceremony he turns to me and says, "I think I know of a job for you in New
York."
• 10. Several months later I've taken the job and am living in New York City and working as a
social worker with schizophrenic adults. I've found a local shamanic circle. Meantime, Evolver
Atlanta starts producing awesome events with lots of people showing up.
• 11. Three rewrites of my book and approximately 40 ceremonies later, and a year to the day of the
monologues, acting as my literary agent, Reality Sandwich sells my book to Tarcher/Penguin.
• 12. Next year, almost four years to the day RS began, I will marry my soul mate (who I met in
New York through yet another synchronistic encounter).
There are so many other wonderful moments since my journey at RS began, I can't recount them all. This
web magazine has molded me in the same way that Garrison Keilor and Lake Wobegon shaped me as a kid
and as an adult writer. For me, it's been so much more than just an intellectual way of looking at my culture
or the collective unconscious or the cosmos. It's been so much more than good reading material. Reality
Sandwich has been this larger than life collection of stories, riddles, humor, and tall-tales that have shaped
most of my twenties. It's been like family. Like discovering a hometown again.
Of course I still dislike nearly every story RS publishes on aliens, conspiracy theories, or polyamory. I will
always loathe and secretly despise people who have nothing to post but negativity after some writer wrote a
heart-felt story. I will always spend way too long looking to see how many people have commented on my
posts in particular, and I will always wonder if "things are being done correctly" or if the site is "in line
with the medicine" or some other self-righteous catch phrase I use when I'm feeling cynical. But at the end
of the day, I will always love this web magazine. I want this web magazine, and this cultural movement, to
grow and flourish and be totally awesome. I suspect that I'm not alone, either.
I suspect that many other personal stories and mind-boggling connections exist because of these daily
sandwiches. So when I heard that we needed 2,000 members as soon as possible, or we would shut down, I
went into an ayahuasca ceremony praying for Reality Sandwich's future.
How can I help?
And that's how I connected my story about Garrison Keilor in the airport, and my childhood near Lake
Wobegon, to Reality Sandwich's membership drive.
In one vision, for example, I saw myself walking the Sunday afternoon streets of my neighborhood in
Cambridge, Minnesota. Knocking on people's doors and asking the question, "Will you pledge a quarter per
book that I read for the MS read-a-thon?" I still like to think that what made me the top fund-raiser at my
school was that I never really cared that much about what prize I got to pick depending on what bracket of
money I collected. I was more concerned with proving to everybody that I could read 50 books in two
months at the age of ten.
In Keilor's Lake Wobegon, the tagline reads, "Where all the women are strong, all the men are good
looking, and all the children are above average." The mythological Minnesotans of the community were
eager to give money to a kid like me. Just like my folks always donated money to PBS and NPR, quite
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proudly. They would say, "If we don't support PBS and NPR those God-awful networks will brain-wash us.
We need education, not materialism!"
I know the comparison might be silly or nostalgic, but I like to think of Reality Sandwich and Evolver as
something like an Astral, or Spiritual, Home Companion. A Cosmic Public Radio. We create healthy
culture by mythologizing it. Even as it's happening. And more than realizing some ultimate "goal," or
winning some "prize," we earn a bigger family and a sense of self-respect that is endearingly "too big for its
britches."
So, if you can afford to donate, please help! And if you absolutely can't afford anything right now, but still
make use of this website, then include Reality Sandwich in your thoughts, prayers or meditations. Ask that
RS be guided by the light into whatever future best serves humanity and our entire planet. Ask that our
project find sustenance enough to continue moving forward. Ask that our project remain transparent as we
do all of this work.
And keep your eyes open. This website creates magical moments! You never know when a mythical
creature will enter the airport lounge you're sitting in, or when the next piece of your evolution will unfold,
quite unexpectedly!
(If you feel moved, please take a moment and post a story below about how RS has changed your life...)
Comments
Amazing
Submitted by innervisions on Fri, 03/26/2010 - 20:49.
I'm from Michigan (grew up in Grand Rapids, currently live in Mt. Pleasant). I too have experienced some
incredible synchronicities in my life, which went up exponentially after I finished reading Breaking Open
the Head. I began tripping a lot, as I had easy access to a certain three letter psychedelic. That was around
2007, since then...realms have opened up in my experience of reality that were never there, especially
because of my one powerful DMT trip.
That Garrison Keeler synchronicity is incredible though, holy shit. You subconciously knew he was going
to walk off that plane, right? That same thing happened to me today at work...I was thinking about an old
coworker who hadn't been at my work in months while I was delivering, and went I got back to the
restaurant...there he was. Weird.
mt pleasant, no way!
Submitted by Adam Elenbaas on Sat, 03/27/2010 - 10:44.
So funny, man. That's where I met Keilor the first time---while getting my MA at CMU in Creative
Writing.... I lived across the train tracks in the international and grad student housing. I taught Freshman
Comp on GA.. haha...that was a while ago now :-) Adam Elenbaas
Similar thoughts
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"Of course I still dislike nearly every story RS publishes on aliens, conspiracy theories, or polyamory. I will
always loathe and secretly despise people who have nothing to post but negativity after some writer wrote a
heart-felt story. I will always spend way too long looking to see how many people have commented on my
posts in particular, and I will always wonder if 'things are being done correctly' or if the site is 'in line with
the medicine' or some other self-righteous catch phrase I use when I'm feeling cynical. But at the end of the
day, I will always love this web magazine. I want this web magazine, and this cultural movement, to grow
and flourish and be totally awesome. I suspect that I'm not alone, either."
I completely disagree about the first part--some of my favorite stories have been the ones about aliens and
"conspiracy theories" if we must use that ridiculously loaded and silly term. Polyamory, I feel mostly
indifferent about.
I really agree with the rest of what you said though, I have been having some similar thoughts.
ha, well there you go!

Submitted by innervisions on Sat, 03/27/2010 - 15:11.
I had a feeling you might have lived here at some point...or maybe I just was thinking "man, that'd be crazy
if this guy went to CMU too!"...i set myself up for that sync, I suppose. Pretty awesome that you got to see
Keilor at Central... I've done most of my psychonautic journeying in Mt. Pleasant...although I abhor
Mission st., there's a lot of great parks around the area to venture out, as I'm sure you already know. I was
actually thinking about starting a spore group up here...
This is up on Evolver
Submitted by Chris Hopkins on Sat, 03/27/2010 - 15:50.
But it works for here also. Reality Sandwich and Evolver have changed my life as well. Here is a short
version of how I got from a year and a half ago to now. A year and a half ago I would have thought most of
the people on this site were crazy, including myself. I would have wondered what the hell most of these
blogs were about, and thought they were ridiculous. Then a few hits of LSD and twenty eight hours later,
which included Time Traveling, Simultaneously existing, and the Grant Morrison speech at the Disinfo
conference in 99 changed all of that. But this blog isn’t about then, and that experience, it’s about now and
this surreal experience. I had just figured out that my whole life was a lie, because quite frankly most
everything is. But I had a new found power to create my life the way I wanted it from scratch. I learned this
through Grant Morrison’s speech and a lot of reading afterwards. I started with Castenada and then Daniel
Pinchbeck’s book Breaking Open the Head. Then I needed a quick way of amassing a lot of knowledge
about the “counter culture”. This was right around the time of the first disinfo podcast being released,
luckily just about the only counter culture website that I knew off. I listened to it and love it. Raymond and
Joe the hosts mentioned in that podcast that they had a 50 episode run with another podcast that you could
find online “Out There Radio”. So I had found my counter culture crash course, I listened to all fifty
episodes in about a month and a half. All along while reading at work every day. I had turned myself into
an information sponge for information of all things that anything to do with the counter culture, Terence
McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson, Chaos Magic (Peter J. Carroll, Phil Hine), Crowley, Castenada, PKD,
etc……. At some point I decided I want to produce some information that others could sponge up and
enjoy as much as I was enjoying this. I wanted to make an impact on other people’s lives like these people
were making on mine. I started with writing, which was tough for me because I never wrote anything I
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wanted to in my life, I barely wrote anything I didn’t want to write. Before now I couldn’t ever imagine
writing for fun. I started posting blogs on MySpace and Blogspot. They got a little attention, but only from
friends. During this process of soaking up information I found my way to Reality Sandwich and making
friends with Reality Sandwich on MySpace. So when they launched Evolver they posted a bulletin about it
on MySpace and I instantly joined. I think there were like forty people on Evolver when I joined. A couple
months in I had gotten quite a bit of attention on Evolver for another blog that I wrote and posted. The topic
of this blog was how computers are simultaneously the best way to control people, but also the best way to
really affect the world. I still haven’t figured out if I’m being used by it or using it, but I’d like to think I’ve
been using it to get where I would like to be. The next step in this relationship was to drive the one hundred
miles down from Sacramento to the San Francisco Evolver spore on Shamanism and Psychedelics, and I
had a blast. I went to the after party, talked to Regina, and she mentioned I should start one in Sacramento.
I talked to both the authors that she had as guest speakers for the spore at the after party also. I mulled it
over for a few days and then I emailed her and asked her to email Jonathan with my email. As soon as I
sent the email I checked my inbox and she had emailed me at the exact same time to tell me she sent
Jonathan my email. So I took that as a sign that I was meant to do this. I was super nervous for the first
spore, and I don’t get nervous. I really wanted a lot of people to come out, and I had like 20 telling me that
they were going to, plus all the posters I put up around town. The space I had lined up was a Art and Yoga
studio, they were also going to have a yoga instructor and a acupuncturist present at the spore (it was on
alternative health). Five people showed up and the space only was willing to let it run an hour and a half.
So it didn’t go quite how I had hoped, or planned. And then I built from there. It’s been a tough long road
building the spore in Sacramento, it seems like everyone in this city is noncommittal. I’ve had amazing
spores and I’ve had spores that bombed, but I’ve always been happy I did it. The next thing that Evolver
did for me is lead me to the woman of my dreams. We started off with a long distance internet relationship.
We lived one hundred miles away from each other. This is something else that I have written fairly
extensively about in other blogs as well. Pretty much the only thing I haven’t mentioned in another blog is
that we are now having a baby, and we couldn’t be more excited. So now I will continue. This part of the
story is when a little bit of the surreal stuff starts kicking in, at least surreal to me. This crisis with Evolver
had been put out in the open. They are just about out of money and need our help. Daniel wrote a blog
about it and I commented on it, he commented back, I commented back again telling him I’d help and do
whatever I could. Then he commented back asking me to email him. It went from there. It started with
email conversation and things I could do to help. Within a couple days I did all of the things that he asked
me to do and had come up with a number of ideas of my own of what could help. One of the things I was
doing was trying to get interviews set up for Daniel where he would be heard by thousands of people. I had
built a very small relationship online with Raymond from the disinfo podcast over the past year or so, so I
turned to him. He told me he would be happy to interview Daniel and lead me down some other paths for
interviews. I lined up six more interviews. Then I started working with Evolver on more projects. I’m also
trying to work together with Raymond to do something big, something I don’t want to mention until it has
gotten to complete green flag. I just finished my first “Evolver the Podcast” that features interviews with
Daniel Pinchbeck, and Joao Amorim the director for 2012 Time For a Change. In just over 24 hours since
posting it has 142 people that have either downloaded, or listened to it. Raymond got me access to post it in
disinfo’s podcast directory as well. Now I find myself thinking back to a year and a half ago, and things I
decided I wanted to accomplish. I wanted to inspire those around me, mainly the Sacramento community.
Which I think I have done, at least in part with the spore. I wanted to find an amazing person to share this
life with, which I believe my soul mate is. I wanted to post something on Disinfo, because that was the only
counter culture site I knew. Which I am now doing with the Evolver podcast. I wanted to write a book and
put it out for people. I have a one hundred page book finished waiting to be edited and released as a ebook
online. I wanted to meet and work with people I looked up to. Which is happening now with Daniel
Pinchbeck, Jonathan Phillips, the rest of the RS crew, and the potential future interviews for the podcast. It
almost doesn’t seem real, but I assure you it is. I’m working with pretty much the first author that
introduced me to this consciousness movement, one of the hosts of the podcast that was my counter culture
crash course, and building a community in Sacramento. This too can be real for anyone that decides they
want it. And don’t tell me you don’t have enough time or money; I work a 50 hour a week job, finding time
to do a number of projects for Evolver, and host a spore once a month. You have enough time and money
as long as you have enough dedication and heart.
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Adam -- I'm in Marine on St.
Submitted by drew hempel on Sat, 03/27/2010 - 18:24.
Adam -- I'm in Marine on St. Croix, the inspiration for Garrison's Lake Wobegon stories as he rented a
place here. Make sure to take a class from Chunyi Lin, the qigong master in Minnesota who works with the
Mayo Clinic. He spent 49 days in full lotus meditation in a cave in China taking no food, no water and no
sleep. I tested my qigong training in full lotus with the ayahuasca -- pretty sweet. Still the qigong training is
even more amazing in many ways. Just watch this vid of John Chang for a taste:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aos0hnwiHt8
Beautiful chronicle of synchronous events!

Submitted by kvbthybrid on Sun, 03/28/2010 - 10:08.
Adam, Loved your article. I can resonate with the "opening up" of the mind, in gradual (but often
explosive) steps, when entheogens are incorporated (literally) into life. The way you lined out the
progression, from your first psilocybic trip to meeting your love, touched a spark in me.I am in progress
writing a memoir about my "awakening" that started with a tab of blotter in 1988. It enabled me to process
some very traumatic things that had just occurred (best friend murdered at age 26 and several other heavy
things that ALL OCCURRED AROUND THE SAME TIME--what I call an "other-realm clusterf*ck!")
and after that I began to experience siddhis. Of course, at first it freaked me out--was not used to
precognition etc. I went into psychiatry as a profession, but was frustrated that at that time, because
research into psychedelics was verbotten under Fuhrer Reagan, and then Herr Bush. So, I never got to
fulfill my dream of being a psychedelic psychcotherapist.By the time I finished my residency training I had
discovered transpersonal psychology, Stan Grof's work, holotropic breathwork, and the mycological society
of San Francisco. Little by little, incrementally-slow-but-real progress was made by M.A.P.S. and other
groups to restart entheogen research with humans. However, due to "bad breaks" and other traumata, I am
no longer practicing medicine. I suffer from PTSD and depression. I am financially-challenged as well. So
now, I am trying to "write myself out" of this box and start anew. Thank you for telling your story, it is
very inspirational to me.
Funny, I really like the

Submitted by microscopic meg on Sun, 03/28/2010 - 19:16.
Funny, I really like the stories on aliens, conspiracy theories, and polyamory but I'm not too keen on stories
about drugs. But I like you and to read what you write, and I can't point the finger at others for going
through psychadelic adventures, it's good for you. It's painful, too! Sometimes it makes me cringe to hear
what people go through because I fear plant medicine to some degree, I feel like the plant takes something
from you that I can't put my finger on. Nothing gives you wisdom without a price. All that aside I do read
you and I imagine I'll continue to do so because you're honest. That's really all I ask from writers that I care
about. Congrats on your marriage and good luck on your book! “An invasion of armies can be resisted, but
not an idea whose time has come.”-Victor Hugo
I read this article shortly

Submitted by Yex on Mon, 03/29/2010 - 01:43.
I read this article shortly after it was first posted, and it resonated with me deeply. I first discovered started
reading reality sandwich a little over a year ago, after returning from peru, where I had heard that the
shaman under whose guidance took ayahuasca had been interviewed on here. (Actually you wrote the
article Adam, entitled "Facing Fear: A Conversation with an Ayahuasquero"). I find myself consistently
delighted and stimulated by the contents of Reality Sandwich; though there are exceptions I cannot think of
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another website that so regularly provides such good reading. The evolver concept is awesome, though I
have yet to attend any of the local spores. This has been a time of great transformations in my life, and the
rate of synchronicity between experiences of my own and things I read here frequently alarms and thrills
me.
The Garrison Keillor story is what really did it though. I loved the radio as a child, and would often leave it
on 24/7 for long stretches of time on some jazz/npr station. Prairie Home Companion was a favorite of
mine then, and even earlier my grandmother and I would listen to it together. My family always had no
qualms with giving to a station that they liked; I remember getting all sorts of thank-you mugs and such in
the mail from my father donating to some station or another. Anyway you got my donation. All love
The arrows along the way...

Submitted by ManyWords-NoClue on Mon, 03/29/2010 - 18:46.
Hello Adam and friends,
I enjoyed hearing of your journey with respect to some of the more eventful shifts as they developed (and
continue to develop) your awareness. I too have enjoyed the RS site for some time and enjoy having a
forum that supports views and possibilities beyond the mainstream. But like anything else in this journey,
my dear brother, I have learned to avoid attachment to any form of 'goodness' that comes along the path.
For me, the journey has clearly shown that I have never had a steering wheel in this awakening game. Good
and bad, right and wrong, light and dark are not what they seem. As a result, 'my' prayers no longer reflect
a desire or preference for anything to be otherwise. RS will flow as it must regardless of my prayers,
though I honor that specific prayer resonates as the truth for many.
It's cool to reflect on our journeys, to be grateful for the arrows along the way. But in my view, they are just
that: arrows pointing the way. Holding on to any one of them is perhaps to cling to the past; something that
may prevent the fullness of present-moment experience...
Surrendering to Source (throwing away the steering wheel) is indeed a challenge, and learning to trust the
flow of what will happen -regardless- is a process.
I am not writing to be contrary to your views, my dear friend, for I understand their wonderful intention.
But as we all know, RS is all about sharing divergent perspective which is what seems to encourage
growth.
Many blessings to you and to the RS consciousness for their perfect contribution to awakening. I pray
acceptance for what will be...
"The greatest Love is Love with no object. For then, you yourself, have become Love itself." -Rumi
Correct prayers?
Submitted by Adam Elenbaas on Wed, 03/31/2010 - 11:56.
Somehow my first post got lost, so I'm writing a new response.
It sounds to me like what you're saying is that you feel there is some degree of attachment in my post,
either in how I pray, the expectations or visions or aspirations or intentions of my prayers, or the level of
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importance I've placed on my "special moments" of awakening. Regardless of your qualifications "dear
brother," "just another divergent voice," etc, that's what I sniff. Though I also sense that you're not out to
get anybody, either. I just want to be clear that I think your post is more contrary than you are saying it is!
To generalize what you're saying here, you believe in a kind of oneness that is essentially deterministic.
"Regardless of my prayers..."
But how do you know with absolute certainty that your prayers can't do anything? How do you KNOW it's
arrogant or attached to suppose they could, to suppose that God is personal, to suppose that prayers can be
personal and petitionary, to suppose that both transcendence and imminence can coexist? What part of your
humility (I don't have the drivers wheel) knows with certainty that your prayers will do nothing? Or that
RS' destiny is not in some way shaped cooperatively between human will and divine will, and some
merging of the two?
You simply do not know these things. And just because somebody has an intention, or a vision, or a prayer
request of the divine, of God, of oneness, doesn't mean they are attached to an expected outcome.
You also said, "Surrendering to Source (throwing away the steering wheel) is indeed a challenge, and
learning to trust the flow of what will happen -regardless- is a process."
What part of your humility knows this and differentiates it with such calculation from whatever you
perceive to be "other" than this point of view, or this "process." Seems hypocritical to me. And hypocrisy,
in my opinion, is just as valid a concern as attachment.
If all cosmic process is about surrendering, ultimately, then I suspect so too is the idea that prayer does
nothing. To me, the idea of surrender and 'throwing away the steering wheel' is in principle no different
from any other principled form of spirituality if it marginalizes someone or something----a grasping.
You closed by saying, "I am not writing to be contrary to your views," yet earlier in your post you also said
that your voice should be considered one of the many divergent views that somehow encourage "growth."
My "prayer" is that if you truly believe in the perfect contribution of this website, and you don't see
yourself as separate from it, or as someone looking down on RS from above, holding onto the "whatever
happens to it hapens to it" philosophy, then you will consider contributing to this website's future by
contributing your own donation, financially.
In addition to needing people to surrender, we need people to be social activists. And I think we need to
learn to know, feel and sense, when which action is called for: push or pull, surrender or stand
up, allowance to direct the current or being directed by it.
INSPIRING!
Submitted by Whs728 on Tue, 03/30/2010 - 12:25.

This article finally inspired me to get off my lazy butt, register an account and start sharing my ideas and
experiences with you wonderful wonderful people. Websites like this give me much hope for the future!
MN in our hearts
Submitted by Bridget Algiere on Wed, 03/31/2010 - 13:46.
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Oh Adam, this is a fantastic set of events you've described! And close to my heart, as I hail from MN.
Family land near Aitkin, grew up in the twin cities, and currently living in a lake town (imagine that, a lake
town in MN) between Marine on St. Croix & your beloved Cambridge... Good roots here! I stumbled upon
RS at it's inception also, and put to task editing stories and building community after talking with Ken.
Then I was invited to write stories myself, shortly before finding out I was preg with our 2nd son. Since his
birth I have been cramming RS in when I can, waiting for the days the little guy would gain independence
so that I could also gain a bit. That day has come for me (he'll be 2 in June), strikingly at the same time this
group is hurting and wondering how it could continue... I too have been 'praying' for this amazing group
that sought me out, and that has contributed to my personal and spiritual development in ways even this
writer finds hard to describe... Harder to imagine something so incredible failing. Anyway thank you for
the memoir, and perhaps collaborating on the call this evening will bring the answer to our prayers.
"The only thing constant in life is change" -François de la Rochefoucauld
Wonderful remarks...
Submitted by ManyWords-NoClue on Fri, 04/02/2010 - 20:17.
Dear Adam,
I agree with you completely.
Many blessings, my friend.
"The greatest Love is Love with no object. For then, you yourself, have become Love itself." -Rumi
Synchronicity
Submitted by bluestar54 on Tue, 04/06/2010 - 17:41.
As your father, I'm remembering how you would stare for long periods of time when you were very young,
at a large picture on the wall of two dolphins rocketing out of the water forming a clockwise spiral with
their bodies. The title; Synchronicity! That we explore those subconscious childhood symbols and
impressions is obvious. Or the night I was rocking you (age 2) to sleep and you were able to see and
understand that your shadow cast on the wall by the nightlite was an extension of you; you were delighted
and waved your arms to continue the fun! It seems that synchronic phenomena is something unique, yet
active all around us always.
http://www.realitysandwich.com/realitysandwich_astral_home_companion
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The Evolver Social Movement Is How We Dream It
Paul Levy
What would we do, I find myself imagining, as we awaken to the fact that we are having a mass, shared
dream? I don't know about you, but I'd certainly want to connect with fellow dream characters who are also
becoming lucid in the dream of life. We could then conspire to co-inspire each other, I imagine, to greater
heights of lucidity. The Evolver Social Movement -- which includes Evolver and Reality Sandwich -- is
like the switchboard of the "turned on" global brain, one that not only connects different parts of ourselves
with each other, but further activates the very awakening of which it itself is a living expression. This
visionary movement offers us the opportunity to put our brilliance together and activate our collective
genius in a way which helps everyone evolve.
Novel forms of co-operative exchange such as this evolutionary social movement are a true anti-viral,
spiritual antibody for the collective psychosis that is wreaking havoc on our planet. In helping to in-form,
create, and cultivate a new planetary life-enhancing culture that is based on our interconnectivity, this
radical social movement provides an alternative model and template for co-operatively changing the
waking dream we are having. In participating in this ripple of evolution, we can help spread the seeds of
these intention-filled, ever-evolving spores to proliferate themselves, inflaming an ever-consuming wild-
fire of awakening mind throughout every corner of the planet.
Unlike the propaganda-based, profit-driven corporate media whose purpose is to manage our perceptions,
Evolver, in media-ting a new way for us to in-form ourselves, provides an alternative platform for us to
take back and expand our minds. This movement is a visionary prototype of an emerging type of
interdependent media that is based on our intrinsic interdependence. This spiritual/social/political network
is a multi-media and multi-channeled (both virtual and visceral, on-line and off-line) entity that we are
literally dreaming up and co-creating so as to potentially wake ourselves up en masse in ways that have
never been seen before in this cycle of human history. Such a living organ-ization is like an Internet
provider of and for the inter-connected soul of humanity, in that it provides a network through which to
network with each other, so that we can co-operatively work together to create a world that works. Evolver
is a portal in the cyberspace of mind through which we can co-ordinate ourselves to come together in full-
bodied form, and through our interplay effect real change in the third dimension of space and time.
Evolver is a new form of inter-active community that, in helping us connect with and in-form each other,
offers us a real-time vehicle for stepping out of the illusion of the separate self together. Offering a forum
for bringing the most creative, out of the box minds of our visionary culture together, Evolver can
potentially help us to realize that we are interconnected cells in a greater mystical body that is awakening
through us as we awaken to it. It provides a skeletal structure upon which to build, give shape to, and
animate the living body of a new world. Communities like Evolver are an antidote for the increasing
fragmentation in the world today. There are so many of us who are awakening in our own way, evolving
within our own limited sphere of influence. Evolver offers us an alchemical vehicle to synergistically put
our unique gifts together in a way that creates a win-win situation for everyone. Each of us can be likened
to pieces of a global jigsaw puzzle; as seemingly isolated selves, we might not know how we fit together in
the greater whole. We are like a "soul family" who has made a sacred commitment over lifetimes to
connect with each other and help one another awaken, remembering that we only exist as relatives of and
relative to each other. We can assist each other to recognize that we are holding pieces of the puzzle for
each other that when put together make all of us more whole; something greater than the sum of its parts
gets created and emerges through us in the process.
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When a community is based on the intention of serving the health of the whole, it is something precious
that is to be treasured. According to the Buddha, such a co-operative venture ("the sangha") is considered to
be one of the supports for awakening, both on the individual and collective level. The Evolver community,
one of whose intentions is to cut through and dissolve the hierarchical power structure of the old paradigm
which engenders abuse of power over "others," can help us to potentially discover creative and novel ways
of waking ourselves up that aren't available to us when we are not connected and connecting with each
other. A community that is an instrument for evolution is a living symbol, an embodied iteration of a
fractal, revealing to us what is available to our species as a collective whole. Being a socially responsible
and responsive organization, Evolver is not just driven by the bottom line, but rather, is drawn towards
breaking the glass ceiling of our evolutionary potential.
Evolver is an agent for an engaged form of spiritually informed political activism (political activism
informed by spiritual wisdom). Infusing its activism with an expanded consciousness, Evolver expresses
this deeper synthesis as a form of "art." Evolver is a creative work-in-progress that is potentially, depending
upon how we dream it, a form of living and lived-through art. It is an empowering arm of what I call the
"Art-Happening Called Global Awakening," in which those of us who are awakening to the dreamlike
nature of our universe come together and discover how we can help each other to deepen and stabilize our
shared lucidity. Being a reflection of the dreamlike universe, Evolver is whatever we dream it to be. There
is no Evolver outside of our own mind. Evolver, and our own evolution for that matter, is purely a function
of how we dream it.
This visionary movement, the Evolver Social Movement, is an expression that our species is growing up,
that we are stepping out of our adolescence, and are becoming adult, as we recognize our responsibility and
intrinsic power to transform our shared waking dream. We can't wait for a divine savior, some off-planet
deity, our government, or other people to save us. We have to do it ourselves. As we mature, evolve, and
step into and flesh out our incarnation, we realize that we are the very Messiah that we have been waiting
for. How our world crisis turns out depends upon us, upon the choices we make, upon how we invest our
attention. How this waking dream unfolds depends upon which thought-forms we energize, invest with
reality and dream up into embodied form. Evolver is an emerging planetary network through which we can
assist each other to snap out of unconsciously playing helpless, disempowered, and passive victims, and
step into our roles as empowered co-creators and dreamers of the shared waking dream that is our world.
Something very magical and potent becomes available to us when members of our species come together
and re-member to remember.
This ever-evolving movement offers us the opportunity to dream into full-bodied materialization the very
world we are imagining. I call this our "sacred power of dreaming," which is the deeper part of us that is
moment by moment dreaming up this universe into materialization. We are all using our sacred power of
dreaming all the time; the majority of people on this planet are wielding this God-given power
unconsciously, however, in a way which creates chaos and destruction. When enough of us consciously tap
into this intrinsic, divinely-mandated power within us, we can get in synch with ourselves and each other,
and in so doing put our sacred power of dreaming together and, I imagine, literally change the world for the
better. This isn't some sort of new age woo-woo; this is precisely the nature of our situation, just like when
a sufficient number of dream characters in a dream become lucid, we can put our lucidity together and
transform the dream we are having. Finding the leverage point through which we can intervene in the
dreaming enables us to reciprocally stimulate each others lucidity and "dream ourselves awake," which is
evolution in action. Evolver is a living example of an archetypal idea that has become activated within our
species whose time has come. Being archetypal, this movement is nonlocal, which means it is emerging
into our world as if from a higher-dimension, while being local at the same time (coming to a town near
you!).
My financial wizard friend Catherine Austin Fitts (Solari.com) reminds us that we vote with how we spend
and invest our money. One of the big mistakes that many well-intentioned and spiritually minded people
make is to turn away from and contract against money and all that it represents. This stance is
understandable from one point of view, considering how money is used in our world in a way which
enslaves so many people and creates so much suffering. Demonizing money, however, can potentially be a
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reflection of avoiding relationship with a part of ourselves. Money, as a form of potential energy, can be
embraced as a means through which we can learn to effectively wield our power in the world. Seen as the
symbol that it is, money is a token, one of the energetic mediums through which we navigate through and
craft our world in such a way so as to make things happen. This is a fact that cannot be ignored, no matter
how much we wish otherwise (at least at this stage of the game). Reality Sandwich cannot survive on
brilliant blog posts alone. It is a joint evolutionary ad-venture that needs an infusion of capital from its
global members.
The evolution movement is one of the best investments we can make, as it is investing in and voting for our
own lucidity. Better than gold and silver, it is an investment in our own intrinsic wealth and abundance.
This ever-evolving field is like a doorway through which the awakening mind of humanity is inspiring, in-
forming, regenerating, and incarnating itself. A modern-day version of collective shamanism, the Evolver
Social Movement is one of the crystallizations of and channels through which the evolution of the universe
is now taking place. Becoming a contributor to and shareholder of this evolutionary social movement is an
incredible opportunity being offered to us to participate and wisely invest in our own mutually shared
evolution. The Evolver Social Movement is a living example of over-unity technology in the medium of
human relationships and information exchange, a true zero point of the mind in the process of awakening,
whose return on investment is endlessly self-generating in ways we can only imagine.
To join the Evolver Social Movement and make a contribution to Reality Sandwich, click here.
Paul Levy is a regular contributor to Reality Sandwich. A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, he is
a healer in private practice, assisting others who are also awakening to the dreamlike nature of reality.
Paul is also a visionary artist and a spiritually-informed political activist. He is the author of The Madness
of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis, which is available on his website
www.awakeninthedream.com. (See the first chapter, The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our
Collective Psychosis). You can contact Paul at paul@awakeninthedream.com; he looks forward to your
reflections. Though he reads every email, he regrets that he is not able to personally respond to all of them.
© Copyright 2010.
Comments
Row, row, row your boat

Submitted by Leon Night on Fri, 04/23/2010 - 02:18.
Hi, Paul. More than your enlightened view of Evolver and of our shared commitment to this platform, I
am struck by the very appearance of your involvement in this fund-raising campaign, and by the sincerity
of your appeal. You raise the bar, as it were.
If it weren’t for the mention of this website in the back of Charles Eisenstein’s book, I wouldn’t have
found my way here. And if weren’t for RS and it’s community I wouldn’t have come to appreciate how
many people there are with my view of our dilemma today and some of the possibilities there are for it’s
solution. RS has accelerated my evolution, not by introducing me to any new concepts, but by
acknowledging that I’m on the right path, and giving me a landscape for the wider exploration of my own
thoughts and feelings as I post my thoughts in response to the thoughts of others posted here..
Most importantly, with the help of my participation here at RS, I’ve come to appreciate what my soul
wishes to accomplish during this particular symbiotic relationship, and although it often seems as if He’s
still dragging me along—kicking and screaming—we are at least on the same page together, and He finally
84
knows how much I love Him now. What greater aid could someone give to an individual than to assist that
person in such an essential and profound relationship?
Many here are awakened, or are awakening; becoming lucid in this mass dream. Listen, please to the
advice of one of my favorite lyrics:
row, row, row (Three mentions for emphasis on hard work)
your boat (Not someone else’s – It appears separate, but all boats float on the same surface)
gently (Working hard doesn’t mean beating yourself up over shit you do wrong)
down the stream (In the direction of the evolution of our species)
merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily (Joy is more important than hard work)
life is but a dream (In which, if we become lucid, we can have a part is shaping)
This is a simple example of what happens when someone awakens to the fact that truth is everywhere.
Think! …and you shall find your truth!
http://www.realitysandwich.com/evolver_social_movement_how_we_dream_it
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E+SM: Month One
Ken Jordan
When we launched the Evolver Social Movement a month ago, the Reality Sandwich/Evolver crew took a
collective step into uncharted territory. For three years, we modeled our efforts on the independent media
companies of the past that had contributed to major cultural shifts, like the Village Voice, Grove Press, and
City Lights Books. A financial crisis forced us to reexamine our efforts and see them through fresh eyes.
Listening to our community, we came to realize that perhaps our most striking achievement has been the
flowering of an emerging social movement, a new cultural force that groks how consciousness expansion is
necessary for meaningful societal change. This has been made possible by hundreds of volunteers --
writers, video producers, event organizers, online evangelists, grassroots conveners, and more. In so many
ways, Reality Sandwich and Evolver are the expression of a community -- that means you! -- activated and
organized to speak its voice so it can be heard. Over the years, we developed a unique structure with a
small paid professional team that facilitates and polishes the efforts of a vast network that donates its time,
all of us united by a shared vision of global transformation -- and an awareness that if we don't have fun
while making it happen, what's the point?
We launched the Evolver Social Movement so the community could directly support this work. With
enough paying members, Reality Sandwich and Evolver would weather this financial crisis and land on
firm footing, ready to expand this movement. Our goal is 2,000 members, paying a suggested contribution
of $10 a month. (Where does the money go, you ask? Click here.) But how many people would be ready to
step up, and pay for content and events they can get for free? By offering membership for a contribute-
what-you-can price, how much would folks actually pay?
After one month, we're off to a solid start. About 400 people have signed up for E+SM membership, with
more joining each day. On average, they contribute $8.50 a month.
These numbers are particularly encouraging because many of the people who the RS/E+ crew knows and
relies on -- friends, family, lovers, allies, accomplices of all sizes and shapes (you know who you are!) --
have yet to get around to joining. That's a good number of people. Once they come on, and they will, that
goal of 2,000 members won't be too far to reach. We may not get there by April 30, as we originally hoped.
But by June 30, that goal is doable -- so we're revising our public deadline, and will continue to focus on
signing up a core group of E+SM members through that date.
If you're not in E+SM yet, please consider joining now. And if you are... Well, first of all, thank you! And,
secondly, maybe you know someone who you think should be a member, but isn't already. Perhaps all they
need is a ping, poke, or prod from you to do the deed? You'll never know if you don't ask.
But participation in this movement isn't limited to opening your wallet. Come out to the Evolver Spores,
now in 35 cities, and help organize one where you live. Post blogs on Evolver.net. Join our social network
evangelist corps to spread the transformational message to the hungry masses (email jennifer (at) evolver
(dot) net for more info). Suggest stories and be part of the team of RS news writers.
This is your movement. Together we make this sandwich real.
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I'm really glad you are doing better.
Submitted by Aizen Myoo on Fri, 04/23/2010 - 09:28.
I'm sorry to say I was rejected for my credit card application having no previous credit history. (I really
dislike any kind of debts.) But I'll try again somewhere else and in the meantime, I'll see if a friend can buy
me a membership... Sorry, guys. But don't worry, banks love issuing credit cards... I't s a matter of time.
I also sent you a story suggestion today, about the World Social Forum. Take a look, I think you'll be
interested. Best regards to all of you.
---
My good blade carves the casques of men,

My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
• reply
thanks
Submitted by Daniel Pinchbeck on Fri, 04/23/2010 - 12:47.
hi aizen,
thanks!
you can also send us a check - let me know if you want to do that, and we will send you a good address to
use.
thanks for the story idea also.
yours,
daniel
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• reply
You can also use a Paypal

Submitted by tayrmf on Sat, 04/24/2010 - 12:43.
You can also use a Paypal account, which safely allows you to donate directly from your bank account.
• reply
Hi Everyone. Good to hear

Submitted by Morgan Maher on Sun, 04/25/2010 - 10:35.
Hi Everyone.
Good to hear things are going well.
I know there's been discussion regarding ESM being something like NPR, or listener supported radio.
Perhaps it would be worthwhile, and maybe even an obvious direction, to explore the types of "Campaigns"
or "Funding Drives" that go on with listener supported radio. Get some sponsors, prize packs, gift packs,
etc.
Why not make the ESM "Campaign" as exciting an event as burning man or something?
For example I just came across the "Spring Campaign" for a radio station around here called CKUA:
The CKUA Radio Network was founded in 1927 on the University of Alberta campus in Edmonton.
CKUA is recognized as the voice of Alberta artists, musicians and cultural enthusiasts
CKUA currently enjoys over 160,000 weekly listeners and is financially supported by listener donations,
program sponsorships, subscriptions, and through corporate partnership.
Their Current Campaign Total: $609,973
http://www.ckua.org/
• reply
Good Idea
Submitted by Ken Jordan on Mon, 04/26/2010 - 06:03.
As you know, Morgan, we're new at this "fundraising drive" thing. I happened to have the same thought
this weekend -- to come up with gifts for new members who contribute at a certain level. What would folks
be interested in? One thing we could do, perhaps, is offer copies of the RS anthology, Toward 2012, signed
by the Reality Four: Daniel Pinchbeck, Jonathan Phillips, Michael Robinson, and me. Maybe we could
even go the PBS route, full on: for $1,500 you get a dinner with Douglas Rushkoff!
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Not sure if this is the kind of excitement you were intending. It'd be good, though, to add spice to the
E+SM campaign. Suggestions, anyone?
• reply
>Not sure if this is the

Submitted by Morgan Maher on Mon, 04/26/2010 - 09:13.
>Not sure if this is the kind of excitement you were intending.
Well, sure, roll with that, whip it up!
I mean, if an Alberta radio station (which of course broadcasts online) can generate over $600 000 in
listener support, and if Wikipedia can get over 6million in donations, then I can't see why RS cannot be
economically sustainable by somekind of donations and/or ongoing "funding campaigns".
I know there's been discussion about not having a donation button, but then - there's a few issues with
people wanting to do a one time payment, and so they have to sign up and then cancel, or the situation
above, with LionKimbro.
Make it easy for people to support the thing!
I'll be honest, personally, having a monthly commitment or signing up making a payment, cancelling
membership, then signing back on, paying again, cancelling etc etc etc --- is just not efficient.
We're in the same boat in some ways, and I'm sure many are in this situation, that is; trouble paying the
rent, bills, buying food. But sometimes we got it and sometimes not.
I'd like it to be very, very easy to drop in a few bucks when I have only a few bucks and maybe a 20 or 30
when I have 20 or 30.
and I'm sure that with the many connections between people related to RS we could come up with some
cool incentives, gifts, prizes... books old and new, used, limited editions, clothing, hand made stuff,
homemade things, art, music events, trips to who-knows-where, some of Leary's lsd, a dinner with
Douglas, dancing with Daniel...
• reply
Back out of payment for a month?

Submitted by LionKimbro on Sun, 04/25/2010 - 19:31.
How can I back out payment for a month? I'm at negative balance until my next paycheck, and I don't like
the $35 overdraft ding. Is there someone I can email to say "hold the next" ..?
• reply
89
Hold
Submitted by Ken Jordan on Mon, 04/26/2010 - 05:54.
Hi LionKimbro,
I'm afraid we can't do a one-month "hold," because of the way PayPal works. The simplest thing is to
cancel your subscription , which is easy to do from your RS account page, then renew it when you're ready
to. In the future, we plan to add other, more flexible payment options.
• reply
Digital Avatars
Submitted by Sean B on Mon, 04/26/2010 - 10:50.
Blizzard made $4 million in a week selling a $25 digital steed for players of the "World of Warcraft"
game...
http://www.news.com.au/technology/celestial-steed-rakes-in-nearly-4m-for...
Amazing that something like RS or Evolver that offer so much are being overshadowed by entertainment.
I'm stumped too, because I figure microfinancing type approaches could really change things. It's a way of
making everything belong to everyone.
http://www.realitysandwich.com/esm_month_one
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The Evolution Is On

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THE EVOLUTION IS ON!

• Preserves your privacy (unlike Facebook)

Evolver is a mission-driven, socially responsible company dedicated to serving the transformational

• Daniel Pinchbeck, Editorial Director

Evolver Social Movement

It can't be allowed to fall down if we're around to help keep it standing.

No shame in the dollar game!

Financial woes view

~ The spice expands consciousness -Dune

i am not used to this.

"Will the transformation."-Rilke

It's hard to complain about

Daniel you know I wouldn't

hi drew, thanks for the

"Will the transformation."-Rilke

the Evolution-of-Evolver; Reality Sandwich in Post-Modern Times

With the inevitable-collapse of a materialistic-uber-hedonistic; nihilistic; mindlessly-solipsistic; dominator

This potent therapeutic life-way; of holistic/integrative medicinal-practice; of healing (on multiple-levels

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”

"Will the transformation."-Rilke

Where is the Diggers Buffet? (wink)

Why go for a sandwich when the ‘Diggers’ have a free buffet?

Right on the Money

Thanks for this piece of

All right then...

Here's a poem for the movement:

i am of the twice born

but dead many times over and again

we built these cities

without realizing what we had done

it is really our fate

to live and die inside these invisible cages?

choking on the ashes of love and hope in flames?

we die to breathe life again

if it was our own hand that enslaved us

it must also be our own hand that frees us

to taste the divine essence and recognize what it truly is

we deserve to become like the stars

whose immeasurable heat we still vaguely remember

this transformation is slow

but as certain as the rise and fall

of tides, of trees, of empires, and ideologies

the only movement is contraction and expansion

of the same form

our lives are only fragments

like pages torn from an ancient book,

misquoted and mostly confused

because we have been taken out of context

where is our context? where do we belong?

ages of stone and dust,

ages of wine and whispers,

ages of finding and losing

only the feeling of it

is what really matters

~ tristan gulliford 2009

Ghosts of the Underground

The great big crisis tent

"God sends meat, the devil sends cooks."

Journey into the Evolver Social Movement

Taken from the BOTH web site

Between the idea

Subverting Capitalism Requires Capital. DONATE TODAY!