Vision Battlesword [00:00:00]:
How's it going, Brent? How are you feeling today? Feeling really great.

Brent Willett [00:00:03]:
I'm on a new trajectory and life is good. I'm feeling positive and really been looking at all of the past. And as we're about to discuss how cycles have been and which cycles I want to create.

Vision Battlesword [00:00:20]:
Yeah, I love that. I'm really excited about our topic today. This is something that's been very interesting to me for a long time, and I. I can't wait to get into it. But before we do that, I just wanna ask you one very simple question, which is, who are you, Brent Willett.

Brent Willett [00:00:35]:
Well, you know, I call myself a recovering S.N.A.G. or recovering Super New Age Guy, so I kinda consider myself a hybrid of sorts. Where I grew up on a farm, I was in a fraternity, I worked in yachting, I got deep into festival culture and psychedelics. And then at some point I was like, what am I doing? When I was in Hawaii, I was like, you have to. I wanted to live there, but I was like, in order to create something, you have to kind of bring something here. And that was a segue of me sort of turning a quarter and deciding that I wanted to ground down and do a business. And I started doing a chocolate co. Packing company called Coco Logos. And that had gone on the last ten years or so.

Brent Willett [00:01:26]:
And that sort of brings us up to about now. I had shut that down a few years ago, and I met you about a year ago, and I've been doing some journey work and kind of rebuilding, and most recently have participated in a few hundred hours of neuro linguistic programming. And I'm on the side doing private contracting for, we'll just say, activated chocolates.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:02]:
Nice. I'm sure that all of your vast experience will come into service in this conversation, and I'm really looking forward to that. And I'm Vision Battlesword. I'm the founder of the Sacred Light Spiritual Community. I'm the creator of something called Intentional Autonomous Relating. And I am the host of Sacred Conversations, which is this audio series that we're having right now. So we were talking yesterday, I think it was yesterday or maybe the day before, and having a really cool kind of preliminary conversation where we eventually got to a point where we realized what we wanted to talk about is the whole concept of cycles. And so I will start with my traditional opening question, which is, what are cycles? Or what is a cycle? What are we even talking about?

Brent Willett [00:02:53]:
Wow. Well, I was thinking about this too. I was thinking about it this morning and I was like, a cycle is essentially the structure in which the entire holographic fractal quantum universe operates on and within. And you could look at that as a waves, you know, essentially the electromagnetic spectrum as waves and how those waves do cycles or spirals. And within that we divide waves into components or segments or logarithmic sections. And out of that we have math and geometry and physics and all of the things. But on a sort of day to day level, we have orbitals of neutrons and protons and electrons. We also have planets and solar systems and galaxies.

Brent Willett [00:03:47]:
So cycles are sort of the caduceus, the snake eating its tails. It's the continuous ebb and flow of life and death and the rebirth and consciousness evolving.

Vision Battlesword [00:04:03]:
I love that. I love that you brought it immediately to frequency or vibration cycles per second, how we measure Hertz, that sort of up and down of a sine wave, but also that circular pattern of an orbit, whether that's an orbit of an electron in the atom, I guess, assuming that they really do orbit in that way, which I suppose is a gross, cartoonish simplification of how an atom probably really makes. But the planets, of course, also in our solar system. And then the cycles of life, you know, breathe in, breathe out, sunrise, sunset, birth, death and so forth. And I think that's really how our conversation got started. Originally. We were. I do remember that that's how it got started, was you had mentioned that you felt that you were completing some sort of a cycle of your life over some period of a decade or so.

Vision Battlesword [00:05:01]:
And it really got me thinking about these cycles that we go through in our own development as we go through life. But then, I'm a student, I guess I'm highly curious about the cycles that we go through as societies, as communities, as civilizations, maybe even as a species. And I think about those things a lot, and I read a lot about them. And there's one particular sort of body of work that's come into the collective consciousness, at least in the potaverse, that I pay attention to all of a sudden. I'd never heard of it before the last few weeks, but now it seems like everyone's talking about it. This book called the fourth turning, which was written in the late nineties, I guess it was written over a period of starting in the late eighties and finished in the late nineties, which describes this generational cycle of at least american society. And so a lot of people are talking about this. It's become pretty interesting to me.

Vision Battlesword [00:06:04]:
And so I guess I'm just sort of setting the stage for all of the different ways that we can explore the idea of cycles together today. What do you think about all that?

Brent Willett [00:06:13]:
I think that's great. And I was also thinking of developmental cycles because I was just, you know, exposed to a lot of integrative psychology. I was also thinking of financial cycles, and I've been studying some decentralized finance, and we just got a. I just had a class of macroeconomics on a global scale, and how that has to do with inflation and liquidity, and how that also goes into concept with election cycles. But that 80% of the money that's loaned out is in one to five year loans. And so that creates cycles of refinancing. So all of these things are simultaneously influencing, I think it's so fascinating.

Vision Battlesword [00:06:59]:
So I'm just wondering right now about the idea of a cycle, and does it require that we return, or rather, does a cycle start from a specific place, go through a process, and return back to that same place? But because when you talk about, let's say, election cycles, okay, well, we use that term or financial cycles or really any of these other things that we've talked about, in brief, it doesn't exactly return to the same place. There's something that has a start and a completion, and there's a predictable or repeatable process to it, but it doesn't seem like it's not like a loop of, like, if you take a video and play it on a loop wherever, you know, it's the exact same thing playing out over and over again. It's more like a spiral or something that has a progression to it. Right. It's going through a repeatable process, but it's always changing in each iteration, wouldn't you say?

Brent Willett [00:08:02]:
Yeah, and I would kind of. Also, what I'm thinking of is aspects of, like, the hero's journey or solar, you know, the zodiac, as we have an archetypical relationship to cycles, or even just a yin and yang of the push and pull. So I just think it's not necessarily that it's returning to the point of origin. I think it's more of a dynamic, and you can observe similarities in dynamics, and you can categorize those a little bit or segment them into different ways. It's almost like the compass. You know, it's like. Or if you were going around, you know, you're navigating, you know, there's. There's different things that happen with northeast, southwest, but originally you turn back to north, but it doesn't mean you're in the same location, just because you're going north again.

Vision Battlesword [00:08:53]:
Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. What type of cycles have you noticed in your own life?

Brent Willett [00:08:58]:
Well, I notice I peeked at the book, the fourth turning, so, like, I was sort of got familiar with what you're talking about. But I did notice that there is a correlation between getting new inspiration, new information, and then using it, and then that running its course. And then there's this kind of dark night of the soul. I can identify three or four particular dark nights of my soul that would have, they would, they would probably run about every ten years of about 1323, 33, 43, something like that. And that was just for me, those were like the hardest points of my life, right? And then through those, I break through and I have this next octave, this next, I take all that forward, and then I have another breakthrough and it's just like, holy shit. I go to this thing. I used to think I couldn't get my mind blown anymore, which was really naive and kind of egotistic, but then I just get your mind completely blown open again. You're like, holy, this is amazing.

Brent Willett [00:10:06]:
Like, and then how to actually integrate that and get cohesive with your new, you know, your new being and how to, like, move forward in the world. There's, there's like this wobbling that goes on and then there's like this breakthrough and then you're on your path and that has its challenges and you're going through and in the, I feel like I can't, I have gotten sort of complacent in that place. I feel like the universe is like, no, you still need to grow whack, you know, you're off the horse now. Get back up and go again.

Vision Battlesword [00:10:41]:
Have you personally experienced your own hero's.

Brent Willett [00:10:44]:
Journey cycle in, yeah, in a way. Well, I would say, I mean, I'm in it right now. I mean, it depends on even within the hero's journey, there's little mini, there's little mini heroes journeys within each cycle. And I haven't looked at, you know, the twelve phases in a little while, so I'm not, I wouldn't know exactly where I'm at right now. I'm not familiar with it in this moment. But ultimately that dark night of the soul and kind of persevering and getting to the next phase or sort of being triumphant, I would say that's, I mean, even more recently, like, I had this, this chocolate co. Packing company and I started it from next to nothing. I mean, I went, it went from a $10,000 loan from my dad and seven or eight years later, we were doing a million a year in sales.

Brent Willett [00:11:43]:
And that was all. That was just all grit, that was all 60, 80 hours a week. And in the midst of that, I got into a relationship and she got pregnant, and we had two babies and we separated, and there's, like, all this stuff going on. And that was the gnarliest and most triumphant, like, challenging time of my entire life. It built more character. My father died. My son was born three days later. Breach, like, had to go to the emergency room and get flown in a helicopter to Stanford's NICU unit while I'm basically going to my father's funeral.

Brent Willett [00:12:26]:
And then, you know, like, two or three years later, I'm separating from their mother, and two years later, my company's shutting down. And then I'm going deep into, wow, this is the first breath that I've had in ten years, and I actually get to reclaim. I did, like, a bit of a soul retrieval, and I did some deep medicine work and re found myself. And now I'm getting ready to hit a one year in a really empowering relationship. And I've never been more sort of on my path and coherent in myself. And so, yeah, I just feel like that's part of it. All that wisdom, like, what did I learn through the communication challenges or the values or the alignment of the last partner that I picked? What did I learn about the business relationships or things that I did write or did wrong? I think ultimately it's just about, do we choose to repeat the same cycles? Did we actually get the lessons? Are we paying attention? Because I feel like that's the other part of cycles we can actually repeat. So it's like, we call them karmic cycles, right? You've heard that.

Brent Willett [00:13:45]:
And I'm seeing there's parts of karmic cycles that I'm still repeating because I didn't quite get it, but there's other parts that I've broken through, and I'm on to the next. The next version, the next level.

Vision Battlesword [00:13:54]:
How do you notice when you're repeating a cycle?

Brent Willett [00:13:57]:
I think part of it is if you can not gaslight ourselves and realize we're getting the same results or the same frustrations.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:06]:
Have you noticed personally, that you have a moon cycle or, like, a monthly cycle?

Brent Willett [00:14:10]:
Oh, my man. Moon. Yeah. Stay away, man.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:14]:
Yeah, I was. You know, I started noticing that about myself. I don't hear people talk about that, men or women, hardly ever, but I don't know, it was about five or six years ago I got really into tracking things. I got really into tracking cycles, you know, especially female cycles of, you know, people I was in a relationship with and in that, like, in learning that and, like, you know, kind of becoming more intimate with that, you know, whole aspect of relationship dynamics. I started noticing in myself that I have a cycle in the same way. Like, not as. Maybe not as dramatic. I mean, certainly there's a lot of, you know, physical aspects of it that aren't.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:59]:
That don't affect men, but emotionally and sexually, I think from a libido perspective and energy wise and other things, I noticed I have a very, you know, noticeable four week cycle. I just think that's so interesting that we don't, typically, as men, we don't talk about that, notice that, or take that into account when maybe we're dealing with the normal ups and downs of life. Challenges, frustrations, highs, lows, to just kind of, like, check in with ourselves and be like, am I in a low point in my cycle right now, or is this really situational? You know what I mean?

Brent Willett [00:15:36]:
Yeah, there's both. And I also just. It just reminded me I was like, I haven't really been keeping track of that. And that's, are we at cause or are we at effect? You know? And cause would be more of the mentality of what you're doing. You're like, I'm just noticing this is a thing versus effect, which is being in it and not having any sort of nuance or awareness.

Vision Battlesword [00:15:59]:
I just think there's something really empowering about having that knowledge. I think sometimes our lives and the universe and everything can be very mysterious. We feel like we're just sort of getting blown around or, you know, getting jerked back and forth by life or situations or circumstances. And everything's very mysterious and confusing and maybe sometimes frightening in that way. It's like, why is this happening? Why do I feel this way?

Brent Willett [00:16:24]:
Why?

Vision Battlesword [00:16:25]:
And yet, if we can realize where we're at in our own personal cycle, maybe in the cycle of our society or community, depending on what you believe from an astrological perspective, planetary cycles and the cycles of our civilization or even species development, sometimes I think that can take. I don't want to say take the mystery out of it, but it can help, you know, it can give you perspective. That's what's happened for me, is I've found some peace and also, I think, some ideas for how to move forward, you know, for action to take, for ways to relate with or respond to things that are happening out in the world that may affect me with the virtue of that, maybe historical, cultural, social, or personal perspective with regard to cycles. What do you think about that? Yeah.

Brent Willett [00:17:23]:
Yeah, I think that we are. I think as a culture, we're conditioned to be more linear and individuated than collective. And we're as a whole kind of condition to be looking out in front of us and not necessarily, like, cultivating the awareness of how things are repeating themselves or how they're influencing us in that way.

Vision Battlesword [00:17:50]:
I love that. I want you to say that again. I want to hone in on that. You said as a culture, we're conditioned to be more linear and more individual versus collective. Did I get that right? Yeah. And what culture are you referring to?

Brent Willett [00:18:05]:
I say western culture. I mean, japanese culture tends to be more collective, but I would say western culture.

Vision Battlesword [00:18:13]:
Like western civilization.

Brent Willett [00:18:15]:
Western civilization, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:18:16]:
Yeah. All right. I think that's right. I think there's something about that, the linearity and the individualism. And so are you suggesting that that creates a perspective that sort of creates a blind spot to cycles, to natural or social cycles?

Brent Willett [00:18:36]:
I do. I mean, I think there is awareness around it. There's sayings like history repeats itself. There's, on a scholastic level, there's people studying it, you know, historians and astronomers, cosmology. But I think, just as, in general, college's mainstream culture is moving forward to obtain, consume, compete, kind of be, and just do the thing. That's sort of a generality.

Vision Battlesword [00:19:08]:
Do you think that's true, that history does repeat itself?

Brent Willett [00:19:11]:
Well, not to the exact same point, but in general, it's been shown that I mentioned this a couple days ago, the Pluto cycle repeats itself, and it's sort of a revolutionary phase, I think, on a big scale. If you want to get to, what is it called, the Satya yuga on the 26,000 year cycle, and how consciousness is influenced on. And this gets to be probably controversial on a whole other tangent, but how many civilizations have existed here on earth and where we don't even have evidence of them because they were so long ago? You could even get into looking at the supposed age of megalithic structures around the world, or specifically to Sphinx, to the great pyramid of Giza, and what sort of the narrative is how those were tied to different eras of, you know, egyptian culture, but based upon other evidence, they're showing they're significantly older. So I know that was a bit of a tangent, but it just kind of opens it up to this macro view. There's very large cycles and then galactic cycles, and then we get into the smaller historical cycles of what's been going on, like, from the Renaissance till now.

Vision Battlesword [00:20:33]:
Yeah, no, I love that you brought the historical perspective and the civilizational perspective into it. It just makes me think about how if there's these various cycles that are coming around on different periods of time, that occasionally they will stack on each other. If we're going around and around a generational cycle, and then we're going around and around a civilizational cycle, and then we're going around a cycle that has something to do with the evolution of our species, the evolution of our planet overall, etcetera, that from time to time, we'll have these, like, big cycles, or big cusps, let's call it. And you brought up civilizations. That reminds me of a book that I'm actually a very big fan of called the evolution of civilizations by Carol Quigley. Have you heard of the seven stages of civilization model?

Brent Willett [00:21:26]:
No, I have not.

Vision Battlesword [00:21:27]:
It's really interesting. So I won't go deep into, like, the origin of Carol Quigley and who he was and how he came to this theory, but to me, it's very compelling. And what he talks about is there are seven stages that all civilizations tend to go through, or have gone through, let's say, leading up to this point. Now, whether or not we may have broken the model with technology or globalism or something along those lines, I suppose, is yet to be seen, but so far, things seem to be tracking. And so a civilization goes through the following seven stages, which is mixture, the initial stage, where different cultures, belief systems, and ways of living blend together, which lays the foundation for a new civilization to emerge from this mixing. Gestation, where the emerging civilization consolidates its identity and starts to develop institutions. Expansion, where it grows and spreads through conquest or trade, seeks to expand its territory, its resources, and influence. Then it goes through an age of conflict, where it reaches its peak.

Vision Battlesword [00:22:35]:
There's internal conflicts and power struggles, which can lead to a period of instability and turmoil. Eventually, it becomes an empire. It achieves its period of dominance, where it starts to exercise control over other territories and populations, usually through a centralized authority, which leads to decay. As it begins to decline, its institutions and values become rigid and inflexible, and it starts to decay internally from decadence. And then the final stage is invasion, where some external force sees the weakness in the old empire and invades, supplanting this declining civilization, which leads to its collapse and the replacement of it by a new civilization, which is a mixture of all of the cultures that remain from that collapse of that empire. What do you think about that.

Brent Willett [00:23:27]:
That's interesting. Brings up. I want to tie something in that I recently learned. We did this kind of Myers briggs personality test for the training I was just doing. And then they were also doing a values elicitation on a larger level. And there were these kind of levels of consciousness. And they. I forget the name of the scientist who had put this together, but they color coded the different levels of consciousness.

Brent Willett [00:23:55]:
And the first one was this sort of infant survival, and they called it beige. And then there was this more kind of totem, spiritual powers, almost like mysticism. It was kind of like having your crystal or your amulet having special powers. That was more of a purple. And then it went into red, and red was that conqueror. It was like the empire. It was the competitive was the.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:23]:
Yeah, this is spiral Dynamics. That's what you were.

Brent Willett [00:24:26]:
Spiral dynamics.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:27]:
Yep.

Brent Willett [00:24:28]:
Got it right. And then it goes into blue, which is going into the structure, kind of like the DMV and all the corporate taxes. And then we go into orange, which is more of an entrepreneurial, like make money, like free economy, or like pure capitalism, untethered by manipulation. But then you go into green, which is more of a communal. Of the collective, the sharing. And then you go into yellow, which is a combination of the entrepreneurial and the green. And then beyond that, it goes into an aqua, which is more of a global. Not utopian, but more of a global collective collectivism.

Brent Willett [00:25:21]:
And we're not even anywhere close to that. But the idea is we're now moving. And so you still have certain countries here that are in red, like, maybe in the Middle east or Africa or different places around the world that are more third world or still developing, or just, like, really volatile. And you have really blue countries. And you definitely have America as an orange country, which has a lot of blue here. And then you have the, you know, and they named it green before the green movement was even a thing. So it's really interesting they. They got that.

Brent Willett [00:25:57]:
But I think the juices in the yellow, where you're. You're still able to be entrepreneurial and empower other to people to be in sort of wealth and prosperity consciousness, but still be benefiting the whole. But as far as what you're talking about, uh, with this Carol Quigley's work, it sounded like a lot of that was operating in the red. And so there's, I think once the tech, when you're talking about the technology, I think it brings spiral dynamics into it, where we're able to kind of get settled and stabilized a little bit. More, and we have advances and we can. There's probably that dynamic even within the other sort of higher levels of spiral dynamics. But I think it's interesting how it evolves.

Vision Battlesword [00:26:43]:
Yeah, that's an interesting point. I've studied a lot about spiral dynamics myself, and I think I'm glad you brought it up, because I was thinking about spirals earlier, like imagining cycles. If it's a circle that goes around and around, but it's progressing through time. So that automatically makes a spiral, right? If you've got a circle that's going around and around, but it's moving in this third dimension that's creating a spiral. So you may be repeating the same pattern over and over again, but it's inherently also in a state of change. That's a big part of spiral dynamics, is the idea of things always being in an inherent state of change. And it is a hierarchical, in a way, stage development model. Spiral dynamics is, but it has a cyclical pattern to it, which is the back and forth oscillation between individual stages and collective stages.

Vision Battlesword [00:27:43]:
So, like in what you were just outlining there, from beige to purple to red to blue to orange to green to yellow and then turquoise, the way that Don Beck, who adapted the work of Claire Graves to create what he called spiral dynamics, named those assigned color codes to those stages, is designed to create two different ladders, if you will, or two different hierarchies that sort of sit side by side. And they're arranged into the warm colors that is beige, red, orange, yellow. And then the cool colors that is purple, blue, green, and turquoise. So the warm colors represent more individualistic memes or stages of development. And then the cool colors represent the more collective mindset of an individual or a community or a culture. So mapping that to Carol Quigley's civilizational stages is interesting. I never thought of that before, when you said, it sounds like its a predominantly red, egocentric, power driven mindset. But I dont necessarily think that the civilizational stages map directly to one of the spiral dynamic stages in that way.

Vision Battlesword [00:29:06]:
I think that you could have civilizations that have a dominant meme set that could be something other than red. In fact, I think theres historical examples of that, like more administrative civilizations, which would be more dominant in blue, more meritocratic or entrepreneurial capitalistic type civilizations, which would be more dominant in orange. But I do think it's an interesting point that you make, because I've never really thought about going backwards so far that you try to imagine what a purple, like a magical stage or a tribal stage civilization would look like, because that's almost like a contradiction in terms. I think those things are inherently pre civilizational, maybe, but it also depends on kind of how you define civilization. That's very interesting.

Brent Willett [00:29:56]:
Yeah. And the other thing is, they all exist in one society, different aspects. And so you can be green or you can be blue dominant, but you have red tendencies. Right. Which is like basically America, or blue and orange dominant, but you can have red tendencies.

Vision Battlesword [00:30:19]:
Well, let's bring into it, since we're getting all kind of sociological and historical here, let's bring in the fourth turning stuff. So the fourth turning is talking about a shorter time period cycle, which is this idea. And it really only discusses american society in particular. But I don't know. It seems to me you might be able to just detect this cycle in other societies or cultures as well. But it talks about a cycle that happens over the course of a long human lifetime, somewhere in the range of about 80 years. And so that's like approximately four generations that come to adulthood in that period of time. So the cycle begins with a high, which is sort of, we've just emerged from some conflict or crisis, and we're successful.

Vision Battlesword [00:31:13]:
We're in the period where we get to flourish. We're flourishing. This is called the high. The high gives rise to an awakening. So there's new consciousness that starts to emerge from within the society, from within the culture. The awakening gives rise to an unraveling, that is to say, the institutions, the foundations of the fabric of the society itself, in the light of this new awareness, in the light of this awakening, begin to be questioned, and the society itself actually starts to unravel. This also, by the way, seems to mirror what we were just talking about with spiral dynamics in the individual versus collective oscillation. This kind of back and forth where we go into collective phases, where we pull together, we lose a little bit of our identity, we lose a little bit of our autonomy, but we create something that is, let's say, more solid at the community or the cultural level.

Vision Battlesword [00:32:19]:
And then we oscillate back into a period of almost like individualistic rebellion against our own autonomy being sacrificed to the whole, or our individualism or self expression being restricted or something along those lines. And we go into more individualist phases where we want to not be so deeply embedded within the fabric of society. So these kind of go back and forth through these four turnings, as William Strauss and Neil Howe call it. So the unraveling is where that individualism really actually starts to become predominant and sort of pull the fabric of society apart where we want to explore our own selves in the light of these new awakenings that we've had about maybe the way things could be different or the true nature of the universe or different things like that. And then this will inevitably sort of lead the society into a crisis where everything has come into question. Things have fallen apart, things have become less productive, and there's the opportunity for an internal or an external threat or existential risk to emerge. We either come together again and face it, defeat it, transform it, overcome it in some way, and go back into a new high, or we don't. And sometimes we don't.

Vision Battlesword [00:33:47]:
But up until now, maybe the society of this continent, which we currently call the american society or the United States nation or something like that, has been through this about three times. Three or four times, I guess, depending on how you want to start counting it. And we're very likely in this crisis period as a society right now. One thing that I thought was really, really interesting about our previous conversation years in mind was that I noticed as we were talking that these four stages, the high, the awakening, the unraveling, and the crisis, bear a very strong resonance or reflection to sort of like the way a typical psychedelic journey can go. It just sort of like, I just had this kind of epiphany about, I don't know, just collective psychology and our collective consciousness and like what? Like, I've had. I sort of have a new appreciation for what it is that we're all going through right now with that framing. What do you think about that?

Brent Willett [00:34:57]:
Yeah, it's fascinating. I think you are a unique talent in your way to sort of track and frame things and put things together in that perspective, you know? To me, I definitely could recognize what you're saying. I wouldn't have correlated it to those dynamics, but I can recognize what you're, what you're saying. For me, psychedelic journeys are more of a little more of a roller coaster ride, you know, so there's. Or depending on where you're at, you know, so. But I can appreciate that it. There is a parallel between the work and what you've been speaking to and this fourth turning these four stages.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:37]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm just, you know, I'm just thinking about the breakthroughs that we can have. And it's not limit, certainly it's not limited to psychedelics. You know, it's more. It's more like any transformational experience, really.

Brent Willett [00:35:52]:
Absolutely.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:53]:
Like, it could be through NLP, like what you've been studying it could be through any kind of peak spiritual experience. It certainly can be in ceremony, but it's that sort of. And I've been reflecting, because I've been thinking about this a lot all throughout my life. The evolution of civilizations is one piece of a puzzle for me in terms of understanding or trying to understand what it is that we're living through right now. Another huge piece of it for me is a book called the origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind by someone named Julian Janes. And now this fourth turning that I've only just discovered is an interesting other piece of the puzzle to me as well. But my sense is that we're going through some kind of collective breakthrough experience, very much akin to a breakthrough experience. Anyone could have ingested therapy and psychedelics in spiritual experience, meditation, any other transformational experience that someone can have.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:59]:
Like there does come that point where you have a high, you go into a peak experience, you have an awakening. All of a sudden, there's new information available. There's new knowledge, new insight, new revelation. Whatever it is, that catalyst that triggers an unraveling. Like, whoa, my worldview is gonna have to change. My worldview. This, I can't. Something is coming through that I can no longer deny.

Vision Battlesword [00:37:36]:
That's the unraveling. It's the unraveling of a belief system. It's the unraveling of a thought process, a story, a past experience that we're suddenly reframing in a totally different way, whatever that is. And then a crisis, the crisis being like, who am I now? What do I do? What do I now do with this information? How do I reintegrate? It's almost like an ego death, in a way, or it certainly is a crisis of potentially self identity or a new belief system. You know what I mean?

Brent Willett [00:38:11]:
Yeah. I was also. I wrote down the four things, the high awakening, the up leveling, and the crisis. And I was thinking, a lot of people start looking for therapy or help or making changes based on a pain point, based on something that's not working out, based on depression or losing a job or losing a loved one or whatever is going on or something out in the world, or they're being unfulfilled. And so the other idea is, like, starting from the crisis and then kind of having this unraveling of what I'm doing and then going into. And the unraveling could be doing therapeutic work, and then through that, having an awakening, getting a high, and then having an awakening that you just went through all that, and that's all unraveling back into another crisis. Okay, now what am I gonna do? Yeah, so it's like you can, you can kind of look at it both, both ways. I also wanted to overlay an interesting thing because I always attempt to look at everything from a polymath perspective of multiple genres.

Brent Willett [00:39:18]:
And essentially money is one of the key factors that drives the world and empires and is a motivator. And there's another interesting thing, especially in the US, is the international bankruptcy cycle is like 70 years. And the original revolutionary war was, was funded by the king of France. And so whenever you do these 70 year cycles, they relate to these major cycles that have happened in the development of our country and sort of these where we've gone bankrupt. And it's really interesting. And one of those was going from the revolutionary war to the civil war. And I, essentially what they had to do is we had the revolutionary war, we did the, you know, the Declaration of Independence, the constitution, the bill of rights, we did all of that and then, but we had to pay for the war, so we had to use the, this is a little bit of a tangent, but it's important. It just good information.

Brent Willett [00:40:23]:
We had to use our title to the federal government as like a surety as to say, hey, we can pay this back. We're going to put up the title of our government as collateral so we can pay this loan back. But what happened, and 70 years later it wasn't paid back. And so it's basically a cycle of bankruptcy. So we had to basically refinance and put the states up for collateral. And the south had all of the money from cotton and all of the agricultural exports that were going on. And that was part of the civil war. And then you go forth around 70 years later and that sort of set us up a few years before that with the Federal Reserve and the whole banking act.

Brent Willett [00:41:14]:
But essentially we got into Social Security and that in the 1930s. And you go forth another 70 years and you're right around the cusp of the millennium. And I won't go further than that, but I'll just say the events around the wars and 911 and what happened to the gold and what's happened since is really interesting. I'll just leave it at that.

Vision Battlesword [00:41:41]:
Huh. So can you tell me more about the 70 year bankruptcy cycle? You're saying countries go bankrupt.

Brent Willett [00:41:47]:
Why? I don't want to speak, I don't want to speak out of, out of my thing. But this is the way it's been explained to me is that in international banking on a country level, it's a 70 year cycle to basically, if you're using a country or a state or people as collateral, then there's a 70 year cycle in which that is in which it resets, in which it's paid back or not and gets refinanced. So there's. So, essentially, we've been in a 70 year cycle with resetting our nation's economy and how that ties into property, and that property was the federal government going into the state government going into actual individuals. And then. I'm not exactly sure how, but that's a tangent. But going back to what you were saying, I think the segue that was interesting from what we were talking about is, so we're now we're in this crisis, and we're in this awakening. So what are we going to do with all of this information, with our awakening? To me, that looks like an educational revolution, because we're getting these pieces around how to be more fit in our bodies, you know, how to grow food, how to regenerate the soil, how to work with mental health, with different modalities, integrated psychology, psychedelics, daily practices, you know, our words we're using.

Brent Willett [00:43:20]:
There's all these different modalities, how we can be more aligned with our values, and so that we're driving our behaviors with authenticity. And ultimately, we also have this movement in decentralized finance. So we have the ability to sort of move towards the direction of taking control of our own destiny. And I think there's a huge movement in alt currency, alt community, alt education. And the merger of that confluence is very interesting to me, and that's where I've been doing a lot of dreaming into the possibilities of how to work with that.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:01]:
Well, this is where, to me, it just gets ultra fascinating, because so now what we've done here is we've put a whole bunch of different cycles down on the table, and they're probably all at play, right? We've got the civilizational cycle, and I can. We could go down a rabbit hole just with that whole topic. Cause, I mean, it's just so complex to try to sort it all out. Like, okay, well, where are we in the civilizational cycle? Okay, but where are we in the financial bankruptcy cycle? But where are we in the spiritual cycle? Or the spiral dynamics, the developmental cycle? Where are we in this generational cycle? If this is true, if this theory is true, which seems pretty spot on, I mean, the way it tracks from the pre, what, pre revolutionary period. I haven't finished the fourth turning yet. And I know you've only had probably gotten a few chapters into it as well since we started talking about it, but, you know, the way it tracks from the pre american revolutionary period through the civil war, through the early 20th century wars to now, it's pretty. There's, there's. There's quite a few data points that line up on that.

Vision Battlesword [00:45:19]:
So just kind of like looking at all that stuff and thinking about it, we could go down a real deep rabbit hole. This is what I was about to say earlier. You know, we could go down a rabbit hole just on the civilizational piece of where I've got a lot of thoughts about western civilization compared to classical civilization, meaning classical being really kind of the roman period and just how many parallels there are between what's going on in our society. Western, I guess, western Civ overall, compared to where the Romans were right around the time of the fall of the republic, right around the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar, kind of that particular crisis period, it's all just so fascinating to me. But the two cycles in particular, that based on what you were just riffing on a moment ago, you're talking about this awakening that we're going through collectively. I look at that piece that wouldn't map to the awakening of the fourth turning, because the high for us was about 1945, right at the end of the war. The crisis to 1965, that was like the high, that was the peak. That was where we really just.

Vision Battlesword [00:46:40]:
We got to own it, we got to flourish, we got to. The fruits of our dominance were fully expressed then. 1965 to 1985 was the awakening. That sort of, let's say the second psychedelic renaissance, because the first one was at the very beginning of the 20th century, which most people don't even know about. But the second psychedelic Renaissance, the civil rights, free love, all of that sort of stuff was the awakening of our current cycle. Then the unraveling started around 1985 and went to about the mid two thousands. Maybe you could say 911 is the start of the crisis. Maybe you could say the financial collapse of 2008.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:27]:
It actually makes more sense for it to be 2008 based on the theory. And 911 is some other thing. Who knows? But anyway, and then we've been in the crisis now for almost 20 years and we're coming to the end of it where things are going to get weird and are already getting, you know, extremely weird and. And we're going to have to go through something. But the other, the other piece that you're describing, oh, and I want to layer on top of that, like what we were talking about the other day, which is that in order to get through the crisis, we are going to have to create a new community. And I think, like, that's what we all feel, and I think that's. That's part of the juice of this conversation that you and me want to have, because we're both so passionate about that, about this new community. And many of us, the friends and people that we hang out with, are all very passionate about this idea of creating a new type of community.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:28]:
And I think that that's, like, the solution, or rather, that's what has to happen to weather the crisis and to come out on the other side. And that would be reflected in the fourth turning. But additionally. Additionally, according to Spiral Dynamics, we're also on the cusp of a stage transition, which is what you're describing in the form of the emergence of this new consciousness. So, according to spirodynamics, where we should probably be at right now is on the cusp between green and yellow. And that is the biggest jump that we've ever experienced collectively as a species, because according to Don Beck and Claire Graves, what that represents is it's a quantum leap. It's not just a normal stage transition. It's the transition between what they call tier one and tier two consciousness.

Vision Battlesword [00:49:30]:
So we're actually moving from a. A one worldview at a time model of consciousness to a multi perspectival. The tier two or the yellow, the integral meme, or worldview, is capable of actually holding all of the other worldviews simultaneously, which is what makes it radically new, radically novel. I guess it's no wonder that things seem to be so exciting, right?

Brent Willett [00:50:03]:
Yeah. And you said intercool, and while you were saying, I was like, are you a Ken Wilbur guy?

Vision Battlesword [00:50:09]:
Oh, yeah, of course I am.

Brent Willett [00:50:11]:
Are you not super deep, but patched it.

Vision Battlesword [00:50:16]:
Yeah. Both Don Beck and Ken Wilbur use the term integral to describe that first tier two stage of development. But then, of course, integral theory is much broader in scope than spiral dynamics. Spiral dynamics is kind of, I'd say, one component of Ken Wilber's overall integral framework, and they both acknowledge that.

Brent Willett [00:50:40]:
I think the word that's been coming up for me that's been more in my field lately is congruent or congruency, and that is a parallel or synonym to integral in certain rules. And there's a lot of shadow work to do, and that is being done. And we're in this collective dark night of the soul. And, like, you know, as far as the collective crisis, and you're talking about these cycles, I think the book said is like 80 to 100 year cycles. And they're not perfect. You know, it's not like, oh, this is this year. And like, switch, like a light switch. I feel like it is like phase conjugation.

Brent Willett [00:51:18]:
It's like we're rolling and there may be some overlays. There may be, you know, it's like ocean waves or there's. We're in it, but there's going to be, you know, the peak. But I think just like, we look at generational waves, like there's the millennials and Generation Z and the, you know, we called the indigo's and like, different things. Like, I was a early, you know, an early indigo or an early millennial or whatever, however you want to look at that. Like, I. I, as someone who's 46, was relating to a lot of people in their, you know, or whenever I was in my thirties, I was relating to people in their twenties because I was like. I was like, kind of taking on a brotherly role, too, as a.

Brent Willett [00:52:02]:
As a leader. And there were people that were in their forties or fifties, like, on the same level of where they were at, you know, giving the same. So it doesn't mean they were born in a certain year, that put them in a certain generation. I feel like there was a level of consciousness that they came in with a little earlier than the main wave to sort of set themselves up to be a mentor for those that were coming in behind them. So whenever we're talking about this next wave that they're in, or the possibility of creating this tier two leap, this quantum leap into yellow, what does that look like?

Vision Battlesword [00:52:40]:
Yeah, that's a really interesting question, especially since green, the green meme seems to be a little different. I mean, I guess they're all entirely different. They're all unique in their own way. But generally, what we seem to see throughout history, and as you said, apart from just looking at history, you can actually just look around the world today and see different societies that are in different stages of development. And everyone, everyone individually progresses through every stage of development throughout their life, up to whatever is the current, you know, the best thing going, right? The most complex stage available, let's just say. So you can actually look around and see to your point, you can still see some dominantly purple societies, dominantly red societies, blue, orange, but you don't actually see any successful green societies even yet. And green has been trying to emerge now for a while. In my view, you can actually play that all the way back to the French Revolution of the late 17 hundreds as the first peeking through of what we would now call Green.

Vision Battlesword [00:53:58]:
The green meme attempting to come out. And generally speaking, every stage gets its day dominance. It gets to be the state of the art for some period of time. Sometimes I wonder if what we're going through now really is the actual emergence of yellow, or if what's actually happening is we're going into the dark age of green and we still have a ways to go with postmodern philosophy, culture meme set, or if this is going to be something where we get to kind of pass through a stage and integrate it on our way to something more holistic without it ever actually getting, getting to run the show for however long, you know, some period of time, whether it be decades or centuries, because orange has had a very. Has definitely had its moment in the sun, right? What we would call modernism has had at least two or three centuries now and kind of really, I'd say, reached maybe its peak in the 20th century and is now on the decline. But that's an interesting question to me, and I still haven't quite been able to suss that one out. Yeah.

Brent Willett [00:55:19]:
What comes up for me is regardless of all these cycles, we're here and now we have internal representation, we have where we're at and how we perceive the world. And here we are in community and we have these resources. So regardless of the external influence of mercury retrograde or whatever you want, you know, it's like, regardless of, like, giving our power away to the cycles, like, what are we gonna do? Like, what are, you know, like, who cares what cycle it is, right? It's like, like that. There's the, there's the, like, we can say, like, oh, it's no use because the, you know, there's like a doom and a gloom. There's almost like, there's no use because the world is going through this thing. So whatever. But we are still contributing to the, the piece of that. So how? I'm just like, what are we going to, what are we.

Brent Willett [00:56:11]:
We're doing it now. We're talking about it. But then there's something. There's something of a legacy that I'm sort of alluding to. Like, what is our legacy project that lives on past us? You know, one of my values is impact, you know, one of my values is integrity, growth, purpose, and what, you know, generational wealth. And we can do that in a way which we can do generational wealth instead of just in an individualistic way. We can also do it in a collective way. I think we can do that through setting up community trust and having people contribute value inputs into those community trusts where they and their, their offspring or benefactors can benefit from that long term.

Brent Willett [00:57:00]:
We can set up. Yeah. So I think that that just gets into the whole thing of like, I I'm, uh, I just started to think of it in a system phase from a solutionary standpoint, because what happens is whenever we're talking about philosophical socioeconomic systems, we're talking about cycles, talking about cosmology, we're talking about history, even me taking the 30,000 foot view as the listener, what value am I going to come away with from this conversation other than an expanded awareness around how things are interconnected?

Vision Battlesword [00:57:36]:
Well, that's valuable, isn't it?

Brent Willett [00:57:38]:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Vision Battlesword [00:57:40]:
To me, yeah, I think I'm detecting what you're saying. And to me, it's like there's a couple of different traps that we can fall in. One of them is the kind of self fulfilling prophecy trap where we say, oh, we know about this cycle and we know how this is going to play out. And so therefore, we just almost, we make it come true, right? It's like, oh, it's going to go this way and this way and this way. And so this is our part that we have to play in, that we can also fall into a fatalism trap. It's like, oh, we've seen this cycle before. We know how this is going to play out, and there's nothing we can do about it. So we just throw up our hands and say, well, whatever, we'll do the best we can, but we expect that there's going to be a crisis, there's going to be a war, there's going to be a collapse, there's going to be a rebirth, there's going to be whatever it is that we think is going to happen, and we just kind of throw up our hands and forget about it.

Vision Battlesword [00:58:38]:
But I think that, like, the context, like I said at the beginning of the conversation, the perspective, I think, can help us much. Like, if we start to become aware of our own personal cycle as a human, it's like, I woke up today and I feel awful, I feel depressed, I feel sad for no particular reason what's going on, but if I know that, it's like, oh, yeah, this is my low week of the month. I can take that information and I can make better choices than what I might make otherwise. So it's like if we know collectively that we're in this cycle where we're going through an unraveling, we're going through a breakdown, a new consciousness might be ready to emerge. We can play a part in that. What do we want to do with that information? You know, I think that's the real question. It's like, I think there's a lot of people who take a fatalistic approach. There's a lot of people who take a self fulfilling prophecy approach or maybe just don't even understand what's going on at all and are just really scared and confused.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:41]:
But I think if there's some of us that can look around and say, okay, there seem to be some of these cycles at play here. What could this mean for different approaches that we can take for building the best life for ourselves, for our community, for our legacy, for our generation, that we can. Is there any information that's usable for us to make good decisions? That's the way I look at it.

Brent Willett [01:00:08]:
Yeah, I like the way you frame that a lot. So based upon what you're saying, where would you like to go from here?

Vision Battlesword [01:00:14]:
I want to go to community.

Brent Willett [01:00:16]:
Love that.

Vision Battlesword [01:00:18]:
What kind of community would you like to build in the midst of an american crisis? A species consciousness revolution, a potentially civilizational reset opportunity? All of these different things. And maybe, as you say, cosmological or cultural or other cycles that may be at play as well, but in the context of where we seem to be at right now, what would you like to do? What kind of community would you like to create?

Brent Willett [01:00:54]:
Well, the first word that comes to mind is balanced. And there has been this sort of existential social conditioning that's been unraveling. And we called the merging of the sort of psychedelic era in the sixties, and now we have this subculture of transformation festivals and then how things are also showing up in. Even in politics now with on many layers. But I think when community is a broad term, and then I guess the question is, how do you want to apply community? Because we have community. It's just like, are we utilizing our community?

Vision Battlesword [01:01:40]:
Yeah, I think that the word community definitely can mean a lot of different things. And maybe. Maybe it's helpful if we get clear on what we're talking about because, you know, I live in a community, in one sense of the word, in Austin, but I don't think, like, I think we have sort of lost a sense of true community in neighborhoods. You know, I mean, maybe there are some neighborhoods that are still tight knit. I used to live in one when I first moved to Austin, which was really kind of cool. Where everybody actually knew each other and, you know, would have block parties and parades on holidays and stuff like that. And it was actually like a true. An actual true community with like a little neighborhood association, but not in like a rigidly governed sort of way, but like a true community sort of way.

Vision Battlesword [01:02:29]:
But I think the vast majority of places where people live today, you don't even know your neighbors, even though you live next door to them for however many years or however long. Communities also mean groups of people that share common interests. I think that's the sense in which we tend to use it a lot. When we talk about the spiritual community or the conscious community, the transformational community or so forth. It's sort of like maybe a group of friends, acquaintances, associates, we all tend to go to the same places together. We all tend to go to the same festivals or know each other in kind of a networking sort of way. But I don't know if that's really a true community. And then we also talk about, like, conscious communities or intentional communities.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:15]:
Sorry, I really meant just intentional communities. Like the idea of a group of people getting together to create a co living situation that's based on a common culture, common goals, shared ownership, different things like that. But you use the word decentralized community, I think, earlier, which is really interesting to me, and I think that's where there's a very interesting opportunity for us that is a little bit different than, I think, the kind of communities that historically our societies have been based on, which have been very geographical, local, like, people within proximity, sharing resources. And I wonder what a new paradigm community, or maybe even culture or maybe even civilization could look like that doesn't necessarily look like old style cities or states or nations or something like that, with, like, geographical or geopolitical boundaries. What do you think about that?

Brent Willett [01:04:21]:
Yeah, I think it mimics this conversation around cycles, where there's lots of different types of cycles, there's lots of layers of cycles, there's lots of things happening, so there's lots of different types of community, and I think there's different things that can coexist, and there's no one size fits all. I think sort of my early years of identifying with wanting to live in community, kind of like, let's all live on a piece of land and grow food and kumbaya is like, the idea was injecting my values into other people and that it had to look a certain way. And so, personally, what kind of outcomes would I like to see? And what are my values? And those are the people that I would like to attract as my core community. So whether that's online, whether that's immersive conferences or events, or whether that's living in proximity in an eco village in Costa Rica, like, wonderful, like, those are all things I would like to do. So I don't think it has to look like it's just all one container or one way, I think. But the important thing is, is that I'm congruent with my own values and I'm creating generational wealth with my community. I'm here to help uplevel health and consciousness on the planet as my purpose. And that expresses itself through a polymath approach to creating integrated academy that incorporates indigenous wisdom, that incorporates entrepreneurship with products and services.

Brent Willett [01:06:00]:
Probably that's done in private, like meaning in on the private side of law, for protection of my rights and for the freedom to exercise my true self, my freedom in a way that's doing no harm to others, but it is not encroached upon by something of agency that is incongruent with my values, that are actually moral and ethical.

Vision Battlesword [01:06:33]:
And what do you think about the current cycle or cycles that we seem to be in right now as it pertains to what choices you would make in creating that?

Brent Willett [01:06:42]:
Well, things can be labeled, you know, for good or used for good or bad. Money can be used for corruption or for regeneration. Like community, like words can be used negatively or positively. So I think it's about intention. And, you know, education can be used to indoctrinate and limit, or it can be used to uplift and really expand. And so I would, in this cuss, I'm sort of segueing into artificial intelligence can be used in those frameworks. But I think it's also an opportunity to use all of the tools that we have used the technology, but also not lose sight of the things we've gained from the past. And it goes back to those karmic cycles and not repeating the same mistakes.

Brent Willett [01:07:39]:
Really good to sort of take stock of what we've learned. And that's part of the process. And I think the other thing is like, well, and also where. What do we actually want to, where are we going? What do we want to accomplish? I think the true thing in community is we want connection, and we also want to exchange and share resources, and those are also going to be, again, based upon our values. And so what that looks like for me is a community that is, has some health, you know, has some discipline, has some work ethic, also has freedom of self expression, and has the ecstatic side where we are expanding our own self limitations. And that would be in the construct of an on the ground kind of ranch, farm academy, holistic center, herbal food production, clothing production, like where they're, you know, and so whatever scale that would be at whether micro or a little bit larger macro on a larger piece of land and having nodes of those that I know meet my values and have, you know, the similar, similar things that are not sort of centric to one entrepreneur or one power holder, but that aren't also so loose that there's no sense of authority or structure or real leadership. So, like kind of finding the balance between that and something where it's not a free for all and where it's. And it's not Kumbaya and it's also not greedy and sort of, I guess, a traditional rental labor structure where it all goes to everybody is serving the one person who's sort of creating it.

Brent Willett [01:09:48]:
And so the balance is where there's a values exchange of people's time and energy, and that creates a long term or at least a measurable value. So I'm kind of getting into the weeds a little bit. I'm just kind of naming the constructs of what I'm interested in.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:09]:
What do you think are the natural or expected cycles that a community would go through?

Brent Willett [01:10:16]:
That's a great question. I haven't really thought about it a lot in terms of cycles, but I would say there's going to be the learning cycle. There's going to be. I guess there's a couple ways to approach it because you can mimic things that are already out there that are working. And essentially there's going to be an adoption cycle. If you're changing your lifestyle or you're coming into a new structure, then there's going to be an adaptation kind of adoption. And with that, there's going to be some growth or perhaps resistance, and that might present itself as shadow. I think there's also going to be some breakthrough.

Brent Willett [01:11:00]:
There's a. There's going to be perhaps the realization that, why didn't I do this sooner? This is amazing. Like, I have that experience. I've had that experience at many, you know, festivals and events. Like, it's not really sustainable to always play because where's the food is come the food and the bathrooms and all the resources are coming in. It's like we're. We're paying for that, right? So we can have the time and celebrate. But I think the balance of finding the balance in creating, basically, I guess I'm saying there's work that goes into it.

Brent Willett [01:11:37]:
And so I think the cycle of, like, it's like the grit is almost like the can be a little bit of the cry. You could kind of relate that to the crisis cycle of like, wow, this isn't easy. It's not going to be. It's not going to be easy. I think in, um, on a level, like, our capacity to love, our capacity to have breakthroughs on some level is related to the pain that we've been through. And on some level, I've listened to. I've listened to other people talk about it. I'm not able to articulate it in the same way.

Brent Willett [01:12:15]:
But I think there's a. I think there's a relationship between growth and the sort of grit and suffering or pain that it takes to do to get to the next level. And I think that is just sort of the tao of the universe. I don't think anything just happens or is handed over. It's like, here you go. And if it is, it's kind of superficial. It's coming from outside of us.

Vision Battlesword [01:12:42]:
Yeah. I'm reminded of what you said at the beginning of the conversation about how in our civilization or culture, we tend to look at things in a very linear way, and probably more from a perspective of individualism versus collectivism. And then I'm just thinking about communities, and I'm also thinking about the idea of life cycles and how that, like, there's this kind of idea of linearity and perpetual growth that's a common meme in our culture and society that I've always been, not always, but that I came to become very sort of suspicious of over the last 15 or 20 years, and noticing that this idea of, like, perpetual growth, this, like, linear up and to the right, it infects corporate culture a lot. It infects the idea of, I don't want to call it it's not capitalism, because that's not fair to capitalism. But there's something about our mainstream economic theory, I'd say, that imagines that we can grow forever like that. There's always more room for growth. And it's linear. It's a linear idea.

Vision Battlesword [01:13:58]:
It's not cyclical. I guess we have an idea of a business cycle, but that's something we almost are. It's almost like a problem that we're trying to design out of the ideal situation, which is that, oh, we can just go up and to the right, up and to the right. Up and to the right. I noticed this kind of mentality I think in community design as well, where there's some idea that we're going to create the kind of ideal governance structure, we're going to create the ideal investment strategy, we're going to create the ideal infrastructure, plan, all of these different things, and then it's like, oh, okay, well, our community is just going to be, we're going to do this thing and then it's going to be good. And I never really, I'm only noticing this in this moment, really for the first time. I'm, like, having a fresh realization right now that I never really notice anybody considering the possibility that a community might have a natural life cycle that maybe it doesn't need to, or it wouldn't necessarily exist forever, or at the very least that it would go through some sort of cycle of death and rebirth or growth, like spiral dynamics, stage development or something. Right? And it's just interesting to me in this moment to kind of have that fresh awareness of, like, when we're talking about building community.

Vision Battlesword [01:15:28]:
Wouldn't it be interesting and maybe wise to consider that communities will go through cycles that might include something like the generational cycle of a high, to an awakening, to an unraveling, to a crisis and prepare for that, expect that that's what it seems like we're not doing in our lives and in our greater lives, generationally speaking or civilizationally speaking, we're not expecting that things will change and that they do change. They will inherit. They inherently change, and there will be a crisis. Winter is coming is a line that keeps being repeated in this book we're reading, and it also, of course, reflects back to Game of Thrones. It's like we want to pretend like winter is never coming. Like, no, no, no, you don't understand. We can be in this golden age forever, and it can always go on, and we'll just grow at 5%, year over year, quarter over quarter. But, like, isn't it more, isn't it more mature to accept that? Yeah, just like we as individuals, as people, we'll have a childhood, we'll have an adolescence, an early adulthood.

Vision Battlesword [01:16:49]:
We'll go into middle age, we'll go into a state of maturity. Maybe with that comes wisdom. Maybe with that also comes decrepitude. Maybe with that comes all sort of different things. But we are eventually going to transition to the next thing, to the next phase, the next life, whatever that may be, that our societies, our communities, our civilizations are all going through the same process. And acknowledging wherever it is that we are in that process could help us to have a better life. I don't know. Just thought about cycles and community in that way.

Vision Battlesword [01:17:21]:
What do you think?

Brent Willett [01:17:22]:
Yeah, I think in my twenties or thirties I just awakened to more of a worldview or what was going on in a greater perspective. And I've realized how much energy I've put into wanting to change it or fix it, when really that's not in my control. And there's this sort of external existential crisis. And then ultimately, by being in the story of everything outside of myself, I avoided what was actually going on inside. And sort of the real community is like the community of organisms, the community of whatever's going inside in ourselves. And so it kind of comes back to like doing the work and paying it forward. If you're inspired, personally speaking, what are.

Vision Battlesword [01:18:09]:
You personally inspired to do? What work are you personally inspired by?

Brent Willett [01:18:14]:
Well, I want to see sort of a confluence, a convergence. So lots of things come together in kind of what I was talking about, an academy, a holistic center, a, you know, a housing experiment, but where the materials are mold resistant, fire resistant, tornado, earthquake, wind resistant, you know, like just getting into more intelligent design and function. Working within the academy side of, you know, this is sort of a more of a legacy vision, if you will. Personally, I am kind of diving in deeper and deeper into shadow work so I can be a more effective human, so I can be more congruent. The more congruent I am, the more I can have influence and support to other people and starting with self in a healthy way. So that's where I am personally, is just getting more congruent in myself.

Vision Battlesword [01:19:18]:
What does the word congruent mean to you?

Brent Willett [01:19:20]:
Well, I'm learning more and more about that word. I think it's consistency in your values, for one, and actually identifying values in all those sort of six major areas of life and living by those values as consistently, and remeasuring yourself, reevaluating yourself and living in authenticity. So if you are authentic to your values and to yourself, you're congruent within yourself. I think it's also having a good relationship in shadow work and actually dealing with some shadow work, which is a whole other wormhole.

Vision Battlesword [01:20:04]:
Is there anything else that we haven't touched on that's interesting or important to you about cycles?

Brent Willett [01:20:11]:
You know, one of my visions is called visionary alchemy, or around the concept of vibration as a word and five being the golden mean. We're kind of getting into spiral dynamics and that all of the core platonic solids, the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron, all of those are the base geometric solids of the mineral kingdom and essentially correlate to the physical world. Angles and angels, both messengers of light. And so all of that comes down to coming back to electromagnetic structure and biology, and even on a galactic level, how everything has congruence through the algorithm of the golden mean, this ratio that shows up in every bone of your body, or even down to the DNA and every biological being in trees and flowers. And so, since the holographic fractal matrix universe, that constant, that mathematical constant, the phi or Fibonacci ratio, golden mean ratio, shows up as a growth expansion ratio. I think this has been one of my big inquiries, is how do we intentionally apply that into the multidimensional layers of growth, but also distribution within socioeconomics? And I also look at the Fibonacci numbers as developmental growth ratios. You have the zero, and out of the zero is the one, and you add the zero and the one, and zero plus one equals one. So you add the previous sum to the next sum.

Brent Willett [01:22:12]:
So one plus zero is one, and one plus one is two, and two plus one is three, and three plus two is five, and five plus three is eight, and so on, it goes on out. But what happens is whenever you get out into 13 to 21 to 34 to 55, et cetera, whenever you divide 13 into 21 or 21 into 34 or 34 into 54, you get 0.618, which becomes the golden mean ratio. Those numbers, like in the spirals of a sunflower seed, for example, there's 34 spirals. There's not 33 or 35. So nature mimics the fibonacci naturally. Well, what I want to say is those numbers, 1235, 813, 2134-5589 144, to me, those are also marks of developmental ranges in the sort of human lifespan capacity. And that's a fascinating way of looking at it. It doesn't necessarily have to match up exactly, but I would look at the infant development cycle of one, two, and three, and then into five and into eight, and a teenager at 13.

Brent Willett [01:23:32]:
And then at 21, you're kind of like officially an adult. And by the time you're 34, you're now sort of an established. It's like more of the family, sort of professional. And at 55, you're sort of coming into one of the elders, and at 89, you're a Jedi master. At that point, you've lived enough life. And I think that's a fascinating way of looking at all of it. So just looking at, you know, even the pyramid of Giza. If anybody hasn't looked into the work of Robert Edward Grant or Alan Green, and the work they've done around all the, all twelve mathematical constants are perfectly embedded into the dimensions, the ratios to proportions of the pyramid of Giesa, whenever you start looking at the different slope angles, diagonal, horizontal, vertical.

Brent Willett [01:24:28]:
So to me, that that's the only sort of plug I would just give in. The whole grand scheme of consciousness is it's all been left here. It's all been left here for us to rediscover the sort of interconnectedness of everything. And so, regardless of the aspects of the spiral dynamics, but even on a greater intentionality to create just a higher level of awareness. But I really do think the thing, if we're not arguing about dogmas and beliefs and religions, because we recognize the core of what is and how that shows up throughout vibration and science and reality, I think it that starts to depolarize positive, negative, neutral, and you can kind of apply those three principles to everything. That's my filter of how you view life. And so even in the cycles, whether it's neutral or positive or negative, it's just part of the process, and one is serving the other regardless. So the shadow serving the light and the light serving the shadow, and it's just part of who are.

Brent Willett [01:25:46]:
So to be able to kind of zoom back and see things from that perspective, I think we can just kind of breathe into it and just gain perspective so that we can just keep persevering and do life, enjoy each other.

Vision Battlesword [01:26:03]:
Hmm. I think that's a beautiful place to end it. I love that you brought it back to the golden ratio and the golden spiral and then reflecting. I've never really thought about that before. Reflecting the Fibonacci sequence to our age, the age that we are when certain things happen and where we are at certain places of life. That's really cool. That's really fascinating. Thanks so much for having this conversation with me today, Brent, about cycles.

Vision Battlesword [01:26:31]:
This was really interesting to me, and I know I had several new thoughts out of this conversation, which is always really exciting.

Brent Willett [01:26:39]:
Absolutely. It's always a pleasure talking and conversing and getting to know you more and more. And, you know, I'll be your way in a few weeks. I look forward to hopefully getting to hang out some more.

Vision Battlesword [01:26:49]:
Yeah, man. Likewise. All right, have a great one.

Brent Willett [01:26:52]:
You too, brother. Thank you.