The Retro-Futuristic Vision: Balance, Abundance, & Conscious Community

Podcast Highlights

• Mystic Manor, The Positive Head Podcast, and Brandon’s creative ventures.
• Brandon’s psychedelic journey from a conservative background to open-minded spirituality.
• A “retro-futuristic” approach to co-living and human thriving.
• How the “villains” in our lives can be our greatest catalysts for growth.
• Mastering the YOUniverse and other nuggets from “The Golden Key.”
• How psychedelics can dissolve illusions and awaken reality

Show Links

1. Positive Head Podcast
2. Positive Head on Instagram
3. Brandon’s Book, “The Golden Key: Modern Alchemy to Unlock Infinite Abundance” (use code LOVE at checkout)
4. Mystic Manor
5. HelloVacay
6. ResortShare
7. (article) Can Psychedelics Guide Your Spiritual Practice?
8. (podcast) How To Reach A Critical Mass Of Spirituality with Mike “Zappy” Zapolin
9. (podcast) Can Plant Medicines Enhance Spiritual Beliefs and Shift Religious Barriers? With Dennis McKenna

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Podcast Transcript

0:00:00.0 Paul Austin: Welcome back to The Psychedelic Podcast where we explore how the safe and skillful use of psychedelic substances can catalyze powerful transformation. Today, I'm speaking with Brandon Beachum, entrepreneur, host of The Positive Head Podcast and author of The Golden Key: Modern Alchemy to Unlock Infinite Abundance.

0:00:22.5 Brandon Beachum: I think humanity right now kind of like the dangerous teenager, they just turned 16, they have an adult body maybe or damn close to it, they got the keys to the car, but man, their physical development has outpaced their mental maturity and they're kinda dangerous. So I think our technological evolution has surpassed our spiritual evolution and that's dangerous. And what are we doing with shows and conversations like this and advocating for plant medicine and psychedelics helping to really, I think, play the catch-up game. So I think that's where we're at currently. It's an interesting time to be alive.

[music]

0:01:06.5 Paul Austin: Welcome to The Psychedelic Podcast by Third Wave, audio mycelium connecting you to the luminaries and thought leaders of the psychedelic renaissance. We bring you illuminating conversations with scientists, therapists, entrepreneurs, coaches, doctors and shamanic practitioners exploring how we can best use psychedelic medicine to accelerate personal healing, peak performance and collective transformation.

0:01:39.5 Paul Austin: Hey listeners, today's podcast is brought to you by the Apollo wearable. I first started wearing the Apollo in the midst of the COVID quarantine over two years ago. It helped my body to regulate itself, to calm down, to stay more focused, and to meditate in the morning. And I use it to really regulate my nervous system in a time of incredible stress and I've continued to use it on a day to day basis. It is indispensable in my daily routine. Here's the thing, the Apollo is a wearable that improves your body's resilience to stress by helping you to sleep better, stay calm, and stay more focused. Developed by neuroscientists and physicians, the Apollo wearable delivers gentle, soothing vibrations that condition your nervous system to recover and rebalance after stress.

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0:03:24.1 Joseph Anew: Today's episode of The Psychedelic Podcast is brought to you by Psyched Wellness. Psyched Wellness has this amazing product, it's called Calm, and it has been developed by wellness professionals, along with leading scientists, and is the very first over-the-counter Amanita muscaria extract that may help you reduce stress, ease muscular tension, and promote deeper, more restorative sleep. This natural supplement is lab tested. It's been detoxified, and it is fully safe for consumption. For the first time in modern history, scientists working with Psyched Wellness have successfully distilled the restorative and healing elements from the Amanita muscaria mushroom and placed them into a powerful extract that is now the first legal Amanita muscaria extract available for sale in the USA. If you would like to be one of the first to try this breakthrough product, then you can go to shop.psyched-wellness.com. That's shop.psyched-wellness.com and use code thirdwavepod, that's thirdwavepod to get 15% off when ordering. Again, that is shop.psyched-wellness.com, and use code thirdwavepod to get 15% off your order.

0:04:52.4 Paul Austin: Hey listeners, this is Paul Austin, Founder and CEO at Third Wave, and welcome back to The Psychedelic Podcast. In the episode today, we explore a couple of key questions. What is the role of conscious community in catalyzing spiritual evolution? How can we utilize psychedelics to accelerate awakening? And what does it mean to see beyond reality's illusion and tap into infinite abundance? Today, we have Brandon Beachum on the podcast. Brandon Beachum is the host of The Positive Head Podcast and author of The Golden Key: Modern Alchemy to Unlock Infinite Abundance. He is also an entrepreneur, having co-founded the travel company ResortShare, and also founding HelloVacay and Industree. I actually went to Brandon's home, the Mystic Manor in LA, a few years back before knowing him, and then was introduced through our respective teams.

0:05:42.0 Paul Austin: And Brandon was invited to be on the podcast, and I will also be on his podcast, and he was really a pleasure to get to know. So as always, if you want to go deeper into the episode with full show notes, transcript, and any links that we mentioned in this conversation, just follow the link in the description or head to the thirdwave.co/podcast and scroll to episode 216 with Brandon Beachum. Here's a taste of what Brandon and I cover today. We explore Brandon's creative ventures, including the Mystic Manor co-living space, The Positive Head Podcast, and Industree, a collective platform to support artists and musicians. We dive into Brandon's journey from his Christian conservative background to becoming a spiritual explorer through the use of psychedelics.

0:06:26.7 Paul Austin: We envision a retro future where humans thrive through communal wisdom, and we examine how the villains in our lives can be our greatest catalysts for growth. This episode is all about mastering the universe using psychedelic to dissolve illusions and awaken to infinite abundance. All right, before we dive in, take a moment to follow The Psychedelic Podcast on your favorite app or like and subscribe on YouTube. It's a simple and small action that you can take right now to amplify psychedelic awareness and shift the cultural conversation around psychedelic substances. We are all in this together. That's it for now. I hope you enjoy my conversation today with Brandon Beachum.

0:07:08.5 Paul Austin: Brandon, welcome to the podcast. It's good to have you.

0:07:10.3 Brandon Beachum: Hey, Paul. Thanks for having me, buddy.

0:07:13.0 Paul Austin: So you live at a place called the Mystic Manor. And a few years ago, I was hanging out with a friend in Venice and we just happened to show up there. I think there were some folks who were doing some wood shop and some building in your garage and we're like, "Let's stop by. Let's say hi." Beautiful venue, huge open gardens, and the name in and of itself feels very, very Venice. So I'd love if just as like an opening story, you can tell us a little bit about the ethos behind the Mystic Manor and how that came about. How did you find yourself opening a beautiful space in the midst of conscious LA?

0:07:58.2 Brandon Beachum: Yeah, great question. Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. And yeah, the Mystic Manor, I always say I fancy myself as the steward of the spaceship because the property looks pretty epic, pretty unique architecture, spaceshipy. And so yeah, my original vision, July 2019 is when I originally moved in. And I'd been doing The Positive Head podcast for about four years at that point, 2015. And for years, I had supporters and fans of the show reaching out and saying, "Hey, when are you going to do some kind of retreat sort of thing?" And I had also gotten inspired to do something other than audio. At this point, I've done Positive Head, there's probably 2100 episodes or so, so I've done...

0:08:49.2 Paul Austin: 2100? Okay, that's a whole other story then that we get into.

0:08:52.6 Brandon Beachum: Yeah, I've done a lot of podcasting. And with help from my co-host, who does two episodes a week, I currently do three, so five total. But yeah, years of that point I had done audio only podcasts and I got inspired to do something a little more creative. And so I wanted, the vision was to do a late night style consciousness centric talk show called Optimystic, hence the Mystic Manor. And what I did was... And then I was like, "Okay, how will I put all this together?" Well, first off, at the time I lived in Orange County, which is kind of in between LA and where you're at, San Diego, as you know, and about an hour South of here. And so I was like, "Well, I need to be near the LAX airport if I'm going to have live in-person interviews in front of a studio audience." So I want a place, the vision, to call in was a place that was big enough to host retreats to help fund the whole venture where supporters and fans could come and spend a week on retreat.

0:09:55.4 Brandon Beachum: And then the last night of their stay, we would have 30 or so people come, live audience and I do an opening monologue and visionary artists, live painting. You've been here to the Mystic Manor once and so you probably remember there's visionary art everywhere. And so we'd have a visionary artist live painting, we'd talk about their piece, then I would have my main interview. Then retreat guests would come out towards the end of the interview and share a little bit about their week and ask questions of my guest and then a musical performance on the outro. So we filmed about 17 of those episodes between July, 2019. And then the COVID asteroid hit and, you know, life's what happens when your plans don't work out. And it's like, okay, we can't do retreats anymore or live tapings of a show. So yeah, we went into the COVID chrysalis.

0:10:50.0 Brandon Beachum: And at that time, I'm definitely one of these people who tries to bite off more than maybe a sane person should. And so I got excited about other things. Oh, I'll write a book. Oh, I have other projects, other entrepreneurial ventures. I have a travel company called HelloVacay, that's taken a lot of my attention. So I haven't gotten back to doing more of those episodes, but it was great fun, cool experience. People can check it out at optimystic.tv and see the... Actually there's still some of them we haven't even edited and released, but we'll get to that eventually. It's a lot more complex than an audio only podcast. So, but yeah, that's sort of how the Mystic Manor originally started.

0:11:33.7 Brandon Beachum: And then as fun as it was living in a retreat center, three weeks out of the month, there were guests from all over the world here on retreat, it was a lot. And so after COVID kind of started to mellow out, I decided I wasn't quite ready to go back to full retreats. And that's when we sort of opened it up to a co-living and event space. Every six to eight weeks or so, we do our own production of a sort of transformational festival for a day with workshops and vendors and DJs, and so we do... Like our next big event is Halloween. So that's... And then other small things happen all the time, sound healing and yeah, different aligned events from time to time. And that's sort of where the Mystic Manor is at in its current iteration.

0:12:26.9 Paul Austin: So there's, I feel like an hour probably won't be long enough for us to talk about all of the creative projects that you've either built in the past or you currently have going on. So I'd love to hear, from your lens and your perspective, what are maybe three to four of the most exciting or creative projects that you're either currently working on or have built out in the past that you really feel like, not define you as a creator, but are some of your greatest contributions as a creator?

0:13:00.0 Brandon Beachum: Love that question. So I would say the most rewarding thing that I've done is The Positive Head podcast. It's super blessed, it's reached 25 million or so downloads. So it's gotten out there pretty good. And to get, as I'm sure you can relate, getting feedback from listeners who, "Oh my gosh, I found this podcast and it had this huge impact on my journey." In my case I really focus on talking about consciousness and the ultimate nature of reality and spirituality and sort of teach best what I most need to learn, as I like to say.

0:13:36.4 Paul Austin: Right.

0:13:36.9 Brandon Beachum: And here's my thoughts and my sort of spin on who we are and what's going on and how we can apply that, certain perspectives to create more magic in our lives. And so that's been really the most rewarding. Then... And two years ago, I wrote The Golden Key, a book, Modern Alchemy to Unlock Infinite Abundance. And that was really... The idea of that was, okay, I'm really verbose, 2200 episodes and counting or 21, whatever it is, it's a lot to listen to. What if I distilled my ideas down into 100 pages, three hours to listen to and found a unique way to kind of get it out there and gift it to the world, which you can... I've done. If you guys are interested in checking that out, you can go to goldenkey.gift and use the code LOVE at checkout and you can get the audio or ebook.

0:14:29.9 Brandon Beachum: And so, yeah, Positive Head and The Golden Key really summarize like, hey, how can I help teach, like I said, teach best what I most need to learn, you know? And so those have been really rewarding. I made music for many years. I was in a band called Kundalini. So when you ask creative ventures, that was a big impact in my life and led me to coming from the East Coast to California many moons ago and a lot of great growth and creative expression with that. It's been a long time ago, but it was a big impact in my life. Let's see, what else? I have a travel company called HelloVacay, which is something that I have worked a lot on.

0:15:13.4 Paul Austin: Which feels very different from The Golden Key and Positive Head and like...

0:15:17.4 Brandon Beachum: It is. I've walked in multiple worlds, yeah. I've had some success in, I guess, the default world, if you will, with a previous company called ResortShare that was, went from me living on my friend's couch to an Inc. Fastest growing private company. And it was really... The vision for it, though, was to fund another project called Industree, which is, it's a whole another story. [chuckle] But you asked the question, you opened a big can of worms because I've done too many things. But Industree was sort of a platform pre Spotify that was like allowing fans to support artists. And definitely my, probably my craziest spiritual breadcrumb story where I sort of followed nudges from the universe and I launched this platform that was like... Industree, it's spelled T-R-E-E, the idea of reinventing the music industry.

0:16:16.2 Brandon Beachum: And I launched it, it was kind of like Spotify meets MySpace before Spotify. I had my own token called Blooms before crypto. This is like 2009. And it grew to thousands of users. And then I hit an issue with my funding and that's when I was like, "I need to manifest the money to do this right." And that's when I got into the travel space and had some real success there. And never went back. And I've really been guided in recent years to revisit that project as a DAO, version 2.0 that allows fans to co-own music rights with artists and create community around it. So that's something in the headlights, if you will, that I'm looking at helping to foster the next version of that in the coming year or so, really putting more energy into that.

0:17:07.1 Paul Austin: So, I mean, there's some common patterns here that are emerging, right? ResortShare, I mean, just by the name of it, I have a sense of what it's about though I'd love to weave that in further. I know, just doing a little research in HelloVacay, it looks like that's somewhat decentralized or NFT approach to travel. You talked about Industree and what that includes, The Positive Head Podcast. So I'm curious, before we get into some of these patterns, because that is a question that I have, what are some of these patterns that you've noticed are emerging from all of your projects? What is sort of the anchoring or rooting of those patterns? In other words, how much acid did you do and when did you do it?

[laughter]

0:17:52.0 Brandon Beachum: I love that. That's a great question. Yeah, and it's funny, but it's true. I mean, I am 49 years young at this point. I feel like I'm 21. My life is like more fun than it was at 21, but at around that time, I started experimenting with psychedelics, mushrooms and LSD and it really catalyzed, having some experience with someone who claimed to have some psychic ability. Really, I was raised very conservative Christian and combined open mind, psychedelics and seeing some things that sort of shake the foundation of my paradigm and I started really exploring a lot of spiritual texts and ideas, and this is mid to late 90s, it was a very different world. I was reading these things that you didn't have access to the authors. And so for me, I can only think because it's really such a part of my Dharmic path to help people to remember who and what they are and tap into their innate divinity, if you will.

0:19:07.4 Brandon Beachum: That once I started having my own remembering and awakening with the confluence of these different things, psychedelics, books, meeting people who were displaying some psychic ability that shook my foundation, it, I just got so lit up about it at the time. I remember I would just talk to anyone who would listen. Like, "How is everyone not freaking out on this?" Like, "Holy shit, we're spiritual beings having a human experience, and we just have amnesia to who and what we were prior." And so I would talk to anyone who would listen at the time. And it was sort of like, "Ah, what are you smoking, dude?" Or, "That's interesting." And people would go about their daily lives. Now it's, all these years later, it's like every 21 year old I cross paths with at an event or whatever, "Yeah, of course I know I'm like Source incarnate and physical, that's old news."

0:20:00.6 Brandon Beachum: But it really has become such a much more common view on reality. And so, but yeah, because it is such a part of my Dharmic path, I think I got really lit up about it early on, and of course started the podcast talking about these kinds of concepts relatively early as far as podcasting goes, as did you. So, but yeah, psychedelics really played a role in that and have had half a dozen ayahuasca experiences and of course that's profound as well. And yeah, I recommend... I mean, I don't know if psychedelics are for every single person, but it's such a great tool to help break the pattern. And it's, if I had a nickel for every time someone told me mushrooms changed their life, I could retire, so. [chuckle]

0:21:00.4 Paul Austin: Yeah, I mean, we have a similar story, and listeners of the podcast will be familiar with this or have heard this before, I also grew up in a, I would say traditional religious family in West Michigan, so more the Midwest than the East coast. And similar to you, at the age of 19, I started to drop acid, from the age of like 19 to 21, I probably did acid and mushrooms 15 to 20 times. And a lot of it was around healing this sort of restricted, sheltered, conditioned, overly conditioned environment that I grew up in, which allowed me to see sort of the fundamental truth of who I was. And then from that came a lot of other things, but one of the core things was this whole concept of the Third Wave of psychedelics and the importance of decentralization and the mycelial network.

0:21:51.4 Paul Austin: And as you may be aware, there's a really interesting history between LSD and even the computer revolution and what computers have now made feasible. And one thing that I saw in, I was doing a little bit of research before we hopped on the pod together, and one thing that I saw was your interest in these, let's say, future conscious wellness communities, right? And what that might entail. And clearly that's what you've built with the Mystic Manor to a large degree. So I'd love if you could just tell us a little bit about, we've heard about what the Mystic Manor is, but a little bit more about the vision of what that represents in your mind's eye and why you think co-living and co-creating is really the future for human thriving.

0:22:45.9 Brandon Beachum: Yeah. Industree was really my first sort of vision with, "Oh, how do I create community around art?" And how, the way I kind of view us is we are a puzzle putting itself back together again. And you have codes and a piece that fits perfectly with the piece that I carry. And if the sum being greater than equal parts, how do we put the pieces back together again? And I think to do that, I think this is sort of the dance that Source plays with itself throughout eternity. Separation, unification, separation, unification. And I think we're in a trajectory where it's like, okay, time to come back together, time to wake up, the alarm bell's going off, it's time to remember who and what you are.

0:23:33.8 Brandon Beachum: And the only way you're gonna survive is if you come together and bring your gifts together. And like I said, the sum will be greater than the equal parts. And so for me, I think that the thing that connects and binds us more than anything, it's like the universal language is music. And so... And art, and if we can get people to rally around that with some sort of a framework that allows us to have fun, create community, and then you get everyone with the... If we can get everyone operating from the foundational premise that what's good for you is good for me because I am you, the separation between us is illusory in nature and it is, Gandhi said, if you wanna find yourself, lose yourself in the service of others.

0:24:31.4 Brandon Beachum: And the reason I believe that holds true is because there are no others. So if you can get to a point where people really understand that, and they're all operating on that as a foundational operating system, then now you're coming from a place of, okay, now we now we can find a way to connect and weave and co-create and come together that is congruent, we have the same core principle and ideas about the nature of reality, let's shift the consciousness by... It's like I can make an impact certainly on my own, but it's like even the Bible referenced this, and I think what it said is like, where there are two or more gathered in my name, I'll be there. And it's supposedly a quote from God in the Bible.

0:25:26.4 Brandon Beachum: And it's that concept, I think it's what it's really getting at is like Source is amplified if we're coming together congruently, and we are moving in the same direction. And we've seen this with like meditators descending on DC in the '90s and saying, "Okay, we're going to lower crime by 20% or 30%," or whatever it was. And the chief of police said it would take a snowstorm to do that. And what do you know, by the end of the experiment of all these souls coming together and focusing their intention in that way, crime was reduced exactly like they said it would be.

0:26:06.5 Paul Austin: Really? I've never heard this anecdote before, it's super interesting.

0:26:09.4 Brandon Beachum: Yeah, it's really fascinating. It's like, so we have the ability to shift the field collectively, we just need some framework and some reason to come together. And so I think the future is gonna be all about more of getting back to our roots, what are our roots? We were hunter gatherers. We lived in these sort of tribal communities where it was fierce egalitarianism, and we shared resources, and it was only, I mean, they say modern man's been around like 300,000 years or so, it's only... And of course there's different arguments and perspectives on that, but that's sort of like base level science, everyone will agree to that typically. And it's like, well, only the last 10,000 years or so recorded history have we had like farming, and then it was turned into, oh, what's mine versus what's yours versus... And I think, and now we've gotten to the point where we're living in boxes cut off from our, the person to the right and left of us, we don't even know their names.

0:27:18.8 Brandon Beachum: It was nothing like that with our ancestors, and so getting back to that more natural state, I think, is essential for us to survive the point in sort of the... I think humanity right now, kind of like the dangerous teenager, they just turned 16, they have an adult body maybe, or darn close to it, they got the keys to the car but man, their physical development has outpaced their mental maturity and they're kind of dangerous. And so I think our technological evolution has surpassed our spiritual evolution, and that's dangerous. And what are we doing with shows and conversations like this and advocating for plant medicine and psychedelics helping to really, I think, play the catchup game. So I think that's where we're at currently. It's an interesting time to be alive.

0:28:22.4 Paul Austin: There's a couple thoughts that come up here. One is a quote from Edward O. Wilson, and I dropped this quote in a recent episode, so excuse my, the listeners for having to be subjected to this again, but it is a very good quote. It said basically humanity has paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and God-like technology. And there's a way in which psychedelics are helping to, I think, accelerate the sort of spiritual evolution of humanity in order to allow us to be able to handle the external technology that we now have available to us. Stewart Brand, there's another quote from Stewart Brand, which is, we are as Gods, or we are like Gods, we might as well get good at it, and I think these are sort of powerful frames, especially for folks who have maybe grown up in a mainstream religion.

0:29:23.3 Paul Austin: It's like there is this difference between a big G God, let's say, or the gods, or Source or energy and we as individual humans, and yet I think it's, as you said, undeniable that a Source lives within each one of us, and that psychedelics help us to become a little bit more aware of that. Huxley, I'm reading a book right now, I'm just finishing it. Aldous Huxley, the final book he wrote was a book called Island which was the utopian sort of balance to Brave New World, the dystopian book that he published in the early 30s and Island is all about, it's a novel, it's fiction, but it's about this island in the South Pacific called Pala that essentially is a utopian society where they have rites of passage with a medicine called moksha, and everyone lives in an egalitarian way.

0:30:26.7 Paul Austin: And the whole sort of premise or plot of the story is the external world is trying to come in and take the, make them transition to become an industrialized country and sell oil and all of these things. So a lot of the novel is about that relationship. And I think that story is a really good utopian vision of what we, the ways that we could live. And I think the challenge is a little bit is, Rousseau, Jacques Rousseau would often talk about this going back to nature, right? And how we just need to go back to nature and there's this sort of primal, wild aspect that just needs to be uncaged and undomesticated. And yet modern life has a lot of amenities and conveniences that a lot of people would find it difficult to go without. So long story short, I do think there has to be like, what is that balance between the ancient primeval and the modern technology that does help us to live in a better way, in many cases?

0:31:37.5 Brandon Beachum: A hundred percent, yeah, this sort of retro futuristic approach I think is where the sweet spot, I'm with you. I'm not trying to give up. I am a creature of comfort if I'm anything. And so I'm not, it doesn't mean we've gotta get back to undo things that are advancements and really make life easier for us. I think it's the things that got cut off in that process that are really essential to our psychology and wellbeing and health. And I think a lot of that has to do with like community structure and we just, we don't, it doesn't... That's the beautiful thing about like my life at this point with the Mystic Manor and it's like conscious community, let's call it. It's like it gives us a reason to come together and to experience and with that same core idea.

0:32:36.9 Brandon Beachum: And it doesn't mean there's not drama and all the things that you could experience in high school but for the most part, when you have people that are really doing the work on themselves, it leads them to that desire for, "Oh, I want more community. Oh, I wanna support others more." And I feel really blessed at this point to have as much community as I do in my life. I mean, I think that so many people maybe that, let's say, I went to high school with who went a completely different path, how isolated and old maybe they feel because life is just the excitement, they've cut themselves off. And like I said, my life is more vibrant and exciting and fun than it's ever been. And there's no reason everyone can't experience that and that's really my aim, is to help as many people as possible and make decisions and see things from perspectives that help them to tap into more of that community, that our life is meant to be a celebration. Yeah, there's challenges as well, but doing it alone sucks.

0:33:50.1 Paul Austin: And that's certainly one of the common patterns in your project, whether that's through The Positive Head Podcast or I would imagine even ResortShare. Tell us a little bit more about ResortShare. You mentioned that it was quite successful and I'm kind of curious. I have a sense of what it could be like, maybe like an early precursor to Airbnb for resorts though or?

0:34:08.7 Brandon Beachum: Yeah, it's funny that you mention that because we were doing... The same time Airbnb was scraping Craigslist to put together listings for what their first listings on their site were, we were posting, taking, working with timeshare owners who had way too much timeshare, they'd been oversold, that industry is a pretty notoriously shady one, and a lot of people get just sold tons of time they don't need. And so we said, look, let us help you to manage and rent out your unused time. And so we, the same time they were scraping Craigslist to create inventory on their site, we were posting timeshares for rent and it went from an idea for me really as a way to fund Industree, this art community project that I had had a lot of sort of, like I said, spiritual breadcrumbs and synchronicities pointing me to launch.

0:35:07.3 Brandon Beachum: It was just a method for me to really test my manifestation skills and like, "Okay, I'm one with the Source consciousness that creates and animates all things. I can manifest more financial resources to do what I want." And it took off, it was just, we were right thing, right time, and it went from me on my friend's couch to a 100 plus employees and Inc. 569th fastest growing private company in the US. And, it was, it definitely was like a sort of a story out of a, like a movie script a little bit, because in that five year journey, it went from me on my friend's couch to doing a million a month in sales volume and rentals and to us getting offered to be bought out for a lot of money, tens of millions of dollars. And within 12 hours of a $30 million offered to be bought out, we lost 90% of our revenue which then led to that deal imploding, which then led to a business partner betraying me and trying to sort of steal what was left of the company.

0:36:19.0 Brandon Beachum: And it was like, he had asked me months earlier, he said... I had just launched the podcast towards the end of ResortShare, ResortShare I left in 2015 and launched something new called HelloVacay in 2016 but he asked me at the time, months before it went down, he's like, "Hey, Brandon, what would you do, you just launched this new podcast. So if it became a really big deal and one of our other partners tried to lay claim to ownership of it because you were still on payroll of ResortShare when you started it," this is how he thought, this is like his sort of mentality. And I was like, "I would actually give it to him because I'm infinitely abundant and there's only more where that came from." Little did I know months later, ResortShare would get hit by an asteroid, we lose this big offer, offer of $30 million. "Oh, nevermind, you lost 90% of your revenue, evaporation."

0:37:10.9 Brandon Beachum: And then the same partner who asked me that question to discover he was trying to maneuver to take what was left of my equity in ResortShare, and me and my brother at the time said, "You don't have to take it, you can have it, we just want away from your toxic energy." And we started HelloVacay out of the ashes of that. It was definitely one of the most challenging hero's journey tales I could imagine, getting to walk the talk, it didn't manifest exact way we talked about in that hypothetical scenario, but I basically said, "You don't have to take what you're trying to take." Now, keep in mind, I was the original founder and I had given him his equity to begin with, and then he was trying to take the rest, and by the way, he's the only one who became a millionaire off of it because he sold some shares months before everything went down. So, and he was trying to take what was left and I ended up saying, "You know what, you can have it, just get me away from you."

0:38:07.5 Brandon Beachum: And it was crazy because fast forward 6 years, and my book, The Golden Key, I share this whole hero's journey tale and how I believe it happened for me, not to me and it's all soul contract, divine design, and the day I submitted my book for... I'm done, I'm turning it in, go to print, I get a call from that partner and I see his name pop up and I'm shocked 'cause I haven't talked them in six years, and my partner, Karen, was like, "Answer, answer." I answered, he goes, "Hey, I know you probably don't wanna hear from me, but I've been on an intense spiritual journey since all those years ago, and my intuitive friend said something about us writing a book together, and I just wanted to reconnect." And I'm like, "Well, I just printed the book minutes ago and you're the villain in my hero's journey's tale, so yeah." It's crazy, it was crazy. Yeah, and he's really turned a new leaf and we're friends again, and I truly believe it all is...

0:39:05.6 Paul Austin: Wow.

0:39:07.5 Brandon Beachum: I had Dr. Eben Alexander on my podcast years ago, and he talks about... I don't know if you're familiar with him, he was a Harvard neurosurgeon who had a huge best seller, because here's this... He wasn't woo woo at all, and here all of a sudden, the Harvard brain specialist gets meningitis and his brain is one day fine, the next day he's in a coma, it's fried, and after a week, they tell his family his brain is gone, it's fried, pull the plug. And they pulled the plug and he miraculously comes back, and all he remembers is his time on the other side. And when I interviewed him, I remember one of the things he said is what he was shown in the week in a coma on the other side supposedly, and he documents in his book, I think it's called Proof of Heaven.

0:39:53.9 Brandon Beachum: He says, "I was shown a lot of times the villains in your story are actually your best friends on the other side, and they choose to play these roles, they volunteer to play roles for you to have a certain experience." Like in my case, I got to walk the talk of what I told him those months like, "Look, I'm infinitely abundant." I gave away what was left of my company that I had just been offered $30 million for months earlier. And it was tough obviously, and yeah, it's just one of those things that were... I write about believing like, hey, this is, this person, it doesn't mean I'm still, wanted them in my life, but I think they played a role by divine design and da da da da, and then of course the day I submit the book, they call me. I'm like... It's a trip.

0:40:44.2 Paul Austin: Yeah, I've found that there's many paths to spiritual development, right? And sort of the classic bifurcation is monk in the mountain versus person who was living amidst... And we know if you go and you meditate on the side of a mountain, maybe bring some acid with you, and you're just sort of in that space, you can easily reach the state of equanimity and peace, not easily, but it's much more in reach, oftentimes, whereas when we're in the sort of muck and profanity of everyday existence, especially with business, 'cause business has its own structure, its own energy that I think especially in today's world, getting too sucked in can lead to a lot of toxicity, can lead to a lot of sort of egoic and immature tendencies.

0:41:40.7 Paul Austin: And so there's almost a way in which pursuing the path of an entrepreneur but with sort of a heightened awareness of what it means to be present and aware, compassionate and loving, I find that it really is the ultimate path for spiritual development, precisely for the reasons that you mentioned that money really gets to our root chakra, it's like the deepest thing, 'cause it's safety and security, and so a lot of people are attached to that, they tether to that because they think, "Oh, I'm gonna be safe if I just have enough money." And what a lot of us know who have gone through this path is money doesn't create safety.

0:42:22.2 Paul Austin: It's a nice energy source to have, it's good to have enough of it, certainly, but that in and of itself won't create the necessary foundation to feel safe. And so what I'm hearing, again, I'm hearing a lot of like... I had a similar story where I started a company in the psychedelic space and it got to the point... I was lucky enough to get a very, very small buy-out for a very small amount of equity, but it got to a point where I gave back, initially I was basically half owner, I just gave away 30% of the equity and that at some point, the co-founder tried to steal more or less the rest.

0:43:00.3 Brandon Beachum: Wow, similar.

0:43:00.3 Paul Austin: And I was just like, "Look, I don't really care. There's all these other opportunities, I don't even wanna deal with this energy." So I was just like, "Fuck it." And of course, about six months ago now, that company went bankrupt in a flame of really terrible PR. And so it was just sort of one of those things where there's a Dharma, there's a karma to the natural evolution of how things flow and I think what really matters is to stay in integrity to our values and to our principles and not feel like we have to get sucked in to the manipulations or the machinations of people who we find ourselves engaged with. And I think it's a great frame that you provided that these villains in our lives, they often can be the greatest catalysts for awareness and growth, it's just a matter of, it's like... It's a bit of a kinky thing, it's like an existential kink, can you confront it? Can you look into it? Can you deal with it and still be present and centered in the midst of that?

0:44:16.4 Brandon Beachum: Right. That's exactly right. It really tests your ability to tap into your own integrity and your own trust and the mystery, and this idea that you don't have to chase anything, it's... At the end of the day, you are the magic, you are the secret sauce, and that can't be stolen, and if you really feel and know and trust in that, it's like no one can really ever take anything from you that's the real value, which is your heart, your mind, your essence.

0:45:00.4 Paul Austin: So playing off of what we've been talking about, what is The Golden Key? What is The Golden Key for consciousness, for awareness, for just being a human? And don't feel obligated to recite all three hours of the audio book, like we talked about, you can go and you can get that as a free gift, but how would you sort of pinpoint The Golden Key of existence?

0:45:25.3 Brandon Beachum: Yeah, I shared... What I did with The Golden Key, it's really eight keys that I laid out, okay, what have I found to work most effectively? Key perspectives and... Yeah, perspectives I guess is the best word. And so, yeah, I'll just rattle off the keys. Obvious, if you wanna go deep with understanding them, get the book, but just at a high level, these keys are perspectives that I found by adopting have enhanced my happiness, success, health, etcetera. And the first key is see the oneness, the second key is know the illusion, the third key is focus your flow. The fourth key is align your intentions, the 5th key is BBB. The sixth key is trust the mystery, the 7th key is love what comes, and the 8th key or golden key that kinda ties them all together is master the Youniverse, master the Y-O-U universe. And I love putting it that way and really to kinda sum it up, a lot of us have this idea of like, "Oh my gosh, the world is too big, I can't affect it. It's out there. There's too many people, there's too much competition, there's too much... " You know.

0:46:55.4 Brandon Beachum: And what I really try and drive home, and the book is, actually it's the exact opposite is what's going on. You are the lead actor, actress, star, director, writer in your own private Youniverse, you are it, it is you. Source is so infinite that it can play out infinite universes where... And this one where you're experiencing, Source is experiencing through you and your avatar, you're the star here, and everything and everyone is a prop in your movie reflecting you back to you in some way, shape or form. So in the case of me speaking to you, you're just... I'm just a projection that is a prop that is reflecting Paul back to Paul, and you're actually the star here, and of course you make it, you are it. Everywhere you go, you're there waiting for yourself. And so when you take on that empowering perspective of like, oh, I'm... Source is all alone experiencing itself and pretending like there's other and in this moment, in this particular universe, it's wearing this bio-body suit and seen through this lens.

0:48:10.4 Brandon Beachum: And what I find, when you apply that perspective and tap into how powerful you actually... I mean, you're so powerful you built this place, you just have amnesia to the fact that you built this place. The same way when you're sleeping at night and the bear is chasing you through the woods, and then you wake up and you're like, "Oh, I thought that was real. I thought that the bear was about to get me," but really, I'm laying in bed and I forgot. That's what's happening. This is a dream God once had and you're God dreaming, and the difference between understanding the king and queen of your domain, your universe versus, "Oh my God, all of this external stuff is out there and it's so big and it's so vast, and I could never impact it or make a difference," it's huge the difference in looking at the life experience through these various lenses.

0:49:08.6 Paul Austin: Thank you for that. It brought up a lot even to have that as a transmission, and it sounds like in some ways this book for you was a, and has been a transmission, right? The 2100 podcasts that you've recorded in a way are a transmission, and then the refining of that is in and of itself a transmission. And I'm reminded a little bit of the philosophy of idealism. So panpsychism is consciousness is emergent, consciousness is in everything. Idealism is we are always, always creating our own reality, there's a way in which we've been restricted to creating as limited beings, and my sense is why psychedelics have been prohibited for so long is because they allow people to see through that illusion and tap into what people may consider to be magic or manifestation. And the power that can come from that is, I think it's alluring in many ways, which is why there are some not so great people attracted to psychedelics, but it also... I love how you've said this a couple of times now, it helps us to remember where our species has collective amnesia about where we come from, and the remembering of our divinity and our God-hood is central to waking up as a collective consciousness.

0:51:00.4 Brandon Beachum: Fully, yeah. I like to put it, we're re-membering, we're coming back together with these other aspects, these lost aspects of ourself. And this is the game of cat and mouse I think that Source plays with itself throughout eternity, it forgets so that it can remember and it means something again. And so you can't know that what you are unless you know that what you are not. So it's a necessary tool. Evil is live spelled backwards, it's like the higher the branches, the deeper the roots, all of this, I think it really... When you start to understand that it's all happening for love to mean something, it doesn't mean that we're now supportive of... From our level of consciousness, we're voting for more murder and mayhem and all these things, but it helps to take the sting out of the things that otherwise are almost unbearable to why? Why does it have to be this way?

0:51:58.9 Brandon Beachum: And when you think of, from the perspective of like, this is just... Who we are at our core is really untouchable and un-movable. And so when you are, all of that is, and you are in eternity, you do a lot of interesting things to feel and to experience. And that requires the contrast, and I think psychedelics are such a key part, have been a key part for so many people that, you and I before I think we were recording, I said, if I had a nickel for every time someone I know said they took mushrooms and it changed their life, I mean, in my case, I microdose somewhat regularly now, and I'm sure a lot of people, it's become such a big thing, and it's, just to have that little bit of magic in your system, I think helps to open the door.

0:53:05.1 Brandon Beachum: In my case, my friend launched a microdose sort of nootropic that has a burnt Chaga and Lion's Mane and all of these other... Bacopa in it, which by the way, if people wanna check it out, they can go to thegreat.mother on Instagram, and you can reach out and connect with them about the potential of gaining access to that stuff, but it's not about getting messed up or high or it's like, oh, how do I use these tools that Source has put here to help tap in? And that's just one path, for some people that's not their path and meditation is what it takes, or more exercise or there's many ways for us to tap into more of our divinity, but obviously, you've dedicated a podcast to one of the most appealing ways, which is using these teachers and these allies that I believe have been left for us on this path to remembery.

0:54:14.0 Paul Austin: Yeah, and they are allies and it's an intelligence that we're working with, there is a symbiosis that's very present whenever we engage and many times they are excellent catalysts and like anything else, tread reverently, so to say, right? Like, yes, these are great tools, and I've worked with LSD in such a way that it's really helped me to experience joy and bliss, and fun and laughter, absolutely, and there's a reason that Icarus' wings burn when he flew too close to the sun, so I think there's a way in which balance, especially when working with psychedelics is helpful, and that's why I love microdosing 'cause microdosing I think is physiologically very beneficial, it's a way to weave a little bit of magic in on a regular basis...

0:55:12.8 Brandon Beachum: Yep, I'm with you.

0:55:15.3 Paul Austin: Without having to again and again and again dip into this well of mysticism. Every now and then, it's great to have these experiences, these peak experiences, but when done too often, they can be more disassociative than transformative.

0:55:30.8 Brandon Beachum: I agree. I think that's a good way to really gauge your relationship, is are you using the substance to enhance the moment or escape from the moment? And if you're falling into sort of an escapism disassociation, then I think it's something... Ketamine is a great example of a substance that is pretty popular that can be a wonderful tool and also really used for escapism and then kind of go the other way. It's a double-edged sword. So I think that's the thing to really be mindful of, what is the relationship and the intention with these very powerful substances that deserve respect.

0:56:25.8 Paul Austin: Absolutely. Well, Brandon, it's been an honor to have you on the show with... As a fellow podcast host, The Positive Head podcast, as a creator of an incredible co-living and co-creative space, the Mystic Manor, and even as an author of The Golden Key, which again folks can find, I believe it's... Is it thegoldenkey.gift or?

0:56:52.3 Brandon Beachum: Just goldenkey.gift, no "the." And yeah, goldenkey.gift and use the code LOVE at checkout and you can get the audio and/or e-book.

0:57:05.2 Paul Austin: Incredible. And yeah, I just... We're gonna turn the mic around for The Positive Head Podcast pretty soon, so if listeners wanna check that out and hear part 2 of this conversation, they'll be able to do that as well. So yeah, I just appreciate you taking the time and popping on the pod today to go deep on all these very deep things that we got to explore.

0:57:30.8 Brandon Beachum: Thank you for giving me the opportunity, and yeah, very much looking forward to our next go round where we flip the mic a little bit and dive in deeper with some of your insights and wisdom and yeah, this is fun.

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0:57:52.1 Paul Austin: Hey listeners, Paul here, I hope you enjoyed our episode today with Brandon Beachum. Remember to head to thethirdwave.co/podcast and go deeper into this episode with full show notes, transcripts and all the links we mentioned in this conversation. That's thethirdwave.co/podcast and scroll to Episode 216 with Brandon Beachum. If you want to dive into dialogue on our community forum, that's community.thethirdwave.co, talk about what moved you in today's conversation, what inspired you, what new insights did you gain and do you have questions for either Brandon or myself. To do this you first have to sign in or create an account, and then once you're logged in, navigate to The Psychedelic Podcast menu and leave us a comment. And while you're at it, check out the rest of the platform to find support, meaningful discussions and high quality education resources and providers across our global ecosystem, and you can sign up for free at community.thethirdwave.co. We hope to see you there.