by Mark Pierpont

I felt like my life had come full circle. After years of internal wrestling, nearly completely rejecting any sense of faith and often utterly disbelieving my past experience of personal connection with God, things began to come together for me. I had finally begun a process of recovery. Over the past several years, the process of coming out as a gay man had often left me empty, confused, and sometimes quite terrified. Still, I continued to wrestle. The decision to come out was made with a relentless commitment to one primary thing: I would tell the truth.

As the scattered pieces of my inner experience slowly began to take shape, and the confusion began to settle, I finally began to really know myself. At last, I was again energized with passion and excitement. As long as I can remember, I have always been motivated to share my experiences and understanding with others. Often that has been misdirected, premature, and distorted by my own denials and lack of personal insight. In the past, the truth I had stood for was often adopted from others, rather than from my own experience. How liberating it was to realize that the only truth I have to offer is my own true story! I have nothing to prove! I only have a story to tell. Perhaps all that anyone really has is their own true story.

Friendly skies ahead for Alive Mind and Zohe films as the two have teamed up for the DVD release of Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, premiering on the Sundance Channel tonight at 9 p.m..

The New York Times says:

In this six-part documentary, Jennifer Fox weaves together experiences from her own life over three years — ages 42 to 45 — with those of female friends around the world. The result is a series of conversations with women in 17 countries, among them South Africa, Russia, Cambodia, Pakistan, France, England and Germany, during which a camera is passed back and forth amid candid discussions of love, sex, relationships, expectations and desires. The series will be shown two episodes at a time on Mondays, beginning with “No Fear of Flying,” a frank analysis of the permutations of sex, and at 10, “Test Piloting,” an examination of motherhood.

In Honor of Albert Hofmann

Albert Hofmann passed away Tuesday April 29th at his hilltop home near Basel, Switzerland at the age of 102. He discovered lysergic acid diethylamide, popularly known as LSD, in a Swiss lab in 1938. The New York Times writes:

Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938 but did not discover its psychopharmacological effects until five years later, when he accidentally ingested the substance that became known to the 1960s counterculture as acid.

He then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature. That perception, of union, which came to Dr. Hofmann as almost a religious epiphany while still a child, directed much of his personal and professional life.

Alive Mind honors Dr. Hofmann’s contributions to science and twentieth century culture. We are pleased to release Hofmann's Potion, an uncensored history of LSD, from its accidental discovery by Dr. Hofmann to its prohibition by the U.S. government in 1966.

Initially LSD was hailed as a powerful tool to treat alcoholism and drug addiction and to provide a window into schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. While researchers were establishing the medical benefits of LSD, others - like author Aldous Huxley - promoted the drug as a powerful tool for mental exploration and self-understanding. At Harvard, Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Ram Dass (then known as Richard Alpert) became popular heroes after the university cancelled their research project into psychedelics.

Featuring interviews with many LSD pioneers, such as Albert Hofmann, Timothy Leary, Aldous & Laura Huxley, Ram Dass, Humphry Osmond, Ralph Metzner, Duncan Blewett, Myron Stolaroff, Abram Hoffer and Stanislav Grof, Hofmann's Potion is much more than a simple chronicle of the drug's early days. With its thoughtful interviews, beautiful music and stunning cinematography, it is an invitation to look at LSD - and our world - with a more open, compassionate mind.

Learn more about the DVD here.

More to come soon from the Alive Mind Team

Listen to the newest Humanist Network News podcast here.

It’s been a busy last two weeks here at Alive between attending MIP TV in France and launching our latest releases. Our prez, Richard Lorber and I are back from Cannes after attending the International Programming Market. Twice a year, broadcasters, distributors and producers from around the world converge on the Riviera for a week of non stop meetings. We met with old friends, made new ones, and arrived home with a suitcase full of screeners.

Protagonist is now available for pre order. We are very excited about this release and coming soon you will be able to read posts by Mark Pierpont, one of the four “protagonists,” as well as exclusive interviews with another protagonist, Joe Loya and director Jessica Yu.

And at the other end of the spectrum is Richard Smoley’s Conscious Love. The following is an excerpt from Richard about his new publication:

In retrospect, it seems curious to me that I should have written a book about love. It being a subject in which not even the experts are experts. Of course that creates a level playing field for all of us.

I suppose what made me write it was a sense of tremendous cognitive dissonance in people's thinking about love. Love, we are told, does not keep accounts; it gives and gives spontaneously, without any thought of return.

It does not take much reflection to see that love in this sense is extremely rare.

Most love, in fact, is really an elaborate and negotiated form of transaction. Not only is it that way, but it's supposed to be that way. When it is not, people say something is wrong.

Read more here...

And this is what the reviewers are saying:

Whether he is talking about the heart or the duty embedded in one’s deepest self, the complexities of male and female love, social justice, or love of family and kin, Richard Smoley has served up a literary banquet of the myriad ways love is made manifest in life, and in so doing he deepens our capacity to love and be loved. Anyone seeking to follow the eternal thread of love down through the centuries needs to read this book.
—Michael A. Toms
cofounder, New Dimensions Radio

A wise, provocative, and deeply informed take on humanity’s messiest emotion. Drawing from science, literature, and the esoteric Christian lore he articulates so well, Richard Smoley encourages us to put away childish things in order to clear the ground for a love both realistic and transcendent. Conscious Love is the sort of spiritual writing we need: grounded and unsentimental but evocative and spiky enough to wake us up.
—Erik Davis, author, The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape and TechGnosis

Richard Smoley proves once again that he is one of the liveliest, most intrepid, and most gifted explorers of the spiritual landscape writing today. Like any book worthy of the topic, Conscious Love is by turns exciting, surprising, and sometimes even shocking. But Smoley’s warmth, humor, and ever-present intelligence are such that he is a joy to read even when one is disagreeing with him.
—Ptolemy Tompkins
author, Paradise Fever and The Beaten Path; senior editor, Guideposts and Angels on Earth magazines

In Conscious Love, Richard Smoley does a masterful job of distinguishing between the real deal when it comes to love and everything else. The result is as enjoyable as it is enlightening. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is ready to take the big step to spiritual adulthood.
—Gary A. Renard, author, The Disappearance of the Universe and Your Immortal Reality

So, buy Mindfucking and Conscious Love from Alive Mind and directly support the authors and Alive Mind.

All for now from Elizabeth Sheldon and the Alive Mind Team