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Essay: Mystery of History (Exclusive for Patrons)

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An Infinite Path podcast official URL http://www.aninfinitepath.com

Spotify | iTunes | Google Play | Overcast FM | Stitcher | Player FM
Elevate yourself with a membership to nilesheckman.com, purchasing our current extended episode archive or essay volumes, or sharing a proactive review on iTunes.

Niles’ work can be found elsewhere on YouTube, Vimeo, and Patreon.

Here’s our affiliate link for Jambo Superfoods as well.

Heart of Darkness

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Heart of Darkness is an 1899 novella by Joseph Conrad about a narrated voyage up the Congo River in the Heart of Africa. It's the original story which the film Apocalypse Now, the 1979 Vietnam War epic directed by Francis Ford Coppola, is based off of. 

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse is the 1991 American documentary film about the production of Apocalypse Now.

Filmmaking is difficult. For every project that is completed there are 10x more that begin and never finish. I don't generally have other directors on the podcast because it's hard to find any who aren't egomaniac's only concerned about their career laurels and advancement. I've known other filmmakers who have had many broken friendships due to their behavior trying to finish a project. Also another documentary filmmaker who was divorced because he secretly spent all of his and his wife's money they we're saving for purchasing a house in an attempt to try to complete his film. Those horror stories are mainly from indie ventures and don't even include all the staggering challenges of managing high budgets and dealing with studio pressure. 

This documentary was initially begun by Eleanor Coppola, regarding all the problems the film's production encountered, having to recast actors after extensive shooting with them, the budget spiraling out of control, and mental and physical health issues crew members suffered from, including nearly destroying the life and career of its director and her husband, the footage of which she then turned over to a couple other filmmakers.

There are six primary types of documentaries, but the rarest are those which have exclusive once in a lifetime access to unusual and rare events. This is one of them and is very worth a watch. As it's a fascinating exposé on the difficulties of complex filmmaking.  

It used to be very hard to find. I remember paying the most amount I ever had for a VHS copy of it in the late 90's. Today, it is easily finable on streaming platforms such as Amazon or YouTube rental.

Oldie But Goodie - Podcast 46: Leonardo Bondani & Octavio Rettig

http://www.mediafire.com/file/uy4xbxgu3mmyx82/NoveltyGenerators_ep046LeonardoBondaniOctavioRettig.mp3

A old chat on the podcast was with two Mexican friends. Leonardo and Octavio. First, some background...

Leo is a fellow documentary filmmaker who was with us on the first episode of Shamans of the Global Village. Octavio is known for being one of the main providers of 5-MeO-DMT in the world, who has ability to legally travel with and administer the medicine, and is the shaman who the first episode of our show featured. Find his website here.

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If you are interested in galactivation, we have spoken many times around vetting a practitioner who you might work with. My personal experience with Octavio has been astronomically life changing in a positive way. However, full disclosure... he has become extremely controversial since our making of episode 1. For numerous things which I am out of the loop on and have only heard about after the fact. Apparently stemming from there having since then been deaths around his ceremonies. Shamanic medicines are no joke and Octavio is a bit of a cow boy. While being a beautiful Mexican Jesus style figure and a really honorable and good hearted dude, which is why my colleague Rak originally decided to feature him in the first episode of our show. But over time there were challenges to his practices and claims. Mainly related to this technique which can be seen in our episode where he pours water on people's mouths during their experience. Which looks like waterboarding. Also, challenges to the validity of the toad venom (the medicine) use actually not being an ancient indigenous tradition like Octavio states. 

Leo and I share the commonality of having spent lots of time having made a documentary around Octavio and now always having a piece of media out there which faces these obstacles. Rak is more the face of Shamans of the Global Village than I am and since I'm out of sight, am thus usually out of mind with it, he's the one who's taken all the blowback for his choice to feature Octavio. Another toad practitioner, Gerry Sandoval, is even MORE CONTROVERSIAL than Octavio. Having done super sketchy unethical things around his practices. For some details see this article 5-MeO-DMT: Light and Shadow in the Psychedelic Toad and this community open letter 5-MeO-DMT-Malpractice

So we learned a lot making the first episode, and are continuing to deal with the ramifications of having made it. Including a complete press blackout in what seems like the entire English speaking first world. No streaming platform seem to want to touch it. Yet the vast majority of feedback we get from folks who actually watch it is positive and warm hearted. So we are still very proud of it as a stand alone piece of filmmaking, stand by it, and have a "onward and upward" attitude with the series as a whole. 

There are many more details to this story and it goes way deeper of course, but along with the first episode of Shamans of the Global Village, this conversation is a good initial vector into learning a bit more about this particular incredible, amazing, and remarkable shamanic medicine. Even though it was recorded prior to much of this toad politics and drama which have since occurred. Do give it a listen.

Podcast 102: Jean Marie Guilfoil - Navigating the Unreality (Early Release for Patrons)

*No private podcast extension for patrons this month but we've blasted the uber mothership essay which transmuted into a stand alone audio product "Traveling Through The Ninth Gate" your way to hopefully compensate.

Direct Download Backup - http://www.mediafire.com/file/ycypg5kv02ry8oq/AnInfinitePath_ep102JeanMarieGuilfoil.mp3

Jean Marie Guilfoil on navigating the unreality, what is beautiful and true, turning off outer garbage to more accurately tune into inner synchronicity and dreamscapes, free association, and ideas on what we are and why we are here.

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https://jeanmarie.space/
https://www.instagram.com/thebeautifulandtrue/
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/navigating-unreality-mystical-perspective-on-being/id1517199931

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An Infinite Path podcast official URL http://www.aninfinitepath.com

Spotify | iTunes | Google Play | Overcast FM | Stitcher | Player FM
Elevate yourself with a membership to nilesheckman.com, purchasing our current extended episode archive or essay volumes, or sharing a proactive review on iTunes.

Niles’ work can be found elsewhere on YouTube, Vimeo, and Patreon.

Here’s our affiliate link for Jambo Superfoods as well.

Book Share: Think and Grow Rich

Napoleon Hill is the godfather of self-help books. All modern day self-help folks, charlatans or not, base much of their concepts after Hill's. Which is very justified, because even though it's a bit of a product of its time, Hill's writing is quite outstanding. 

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He wrote Think and Grow Rich in 1937 and it would become his flagship work. He promoted it as not exclusively a business success book but more a personal development and self-improvement book. Claiming within its pages to be inspired by a suggestion from business magnate and later Godzillionaire Andrew Carnegie. While the book's title and much of the writing concerns increasing monetary income within commerce, he insisted that his philosophy covers a much broader scope of helping readers succeed in any goal in life, or to do and be anything they can imagine. As money is en energy, and want's to flow, being poor sucks and a base standard of financial freedom is important for having time wealth. So the financial aspect is important sure. Yet better still is being happy, healthy, and wealthy in body, soul, and spirit. Hill's philosophies are basically a combination of New Thought which was derived from earlier Hermetic (mental) occult philosophy regarding the power of the mind. He doesn't say that but those who know it will recognize it when they see it. 

Folks have had a habit of taking Hill's books and abridging them with modern additional text. These are rubbish. Seek out his originals. Another book of Hill's which is highly recommended and will be shared here in the future, Outwitting the Devil, has absolutely dreadful dreadful dreadful annotations by Sharon Lechter. Who sadly was able to do everything in her power to make a fabulous work as crap as possible in cooperation with the Napoleon Hill Foundation after his passing. So Hill is turning in his grave for these water downs of his pros and it's absolutely recommended to seek out his originals and don't touch any of the newer additions with a 1000 foot pole. Here's the original addition of Think and Grow Rich. Including an infographic of a summary of the 13 principals it advocates for. 

*Final note. there is a deeper secret to Think and Grow Rich which is spoken of in the book. We will discuss when we dive into Hill and is work in a future sure to be privately shared essay only for patrons.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/g3av9kgkdxp1pxs/Napoleon_Hill_-_Think_and_Grow_Rich_%25281937_Edition%2529_%2528Full_Audiobook%2529.mp3

http://www.mediafire.com/file/9ef6d0si7l5d74a/NapoleonHill_-_ThinkAndGrowRich.pdf

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Traveling Through The Ninth Gate (Exclusive for Patrons)

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We at nilesheckman.com usually work on completing our own films over doing "analysis" of other's films. BUT, the 1999 work The Ninth Gate is one of our favorites and holds a special place in our hearts, so we've completed one for that! In two variations, written, which has the advantage of the companion engraving artworks as well as some other supporting esoteric art, and spoken word, which is more easily digestible as you listen perhaps on the go.

This was initially planned as a private essay, but spiraled into a larger work which has somewhat become a very short little book. Coming in at around 40 pages. It's taken us about a week of research + writing, so we've actually decided to make it a stand alone product, the combined components of which we are selling for $6.66 through our store HERE. Yet, we give it away freely to you wonderful folks with continual thanks for your support. 

Ghee Is Amazing

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*If you're vegan you need not read any further... and this message will self-destruct. 

Grass-fed butter is amazing. Ghee is a type of clarified butter. It's more concentrated in fat than butter, as its water and milk solids have been removed. So grass-fed Ghee is 2x amazing!! 

It does have a slightly funky taste yes, but has so many benefits. 10 benefits of Ghee via The Holistic Highway - https://theholistichighway.com/10-amazing-health-benefits-of-ghee/ 

Regardless of brand, it's recommended to of course make sure which ever one you get is grass-fed. 

Ghee is basically mega healthy fat for your brain and on a personal note, I find that I stutter more when I don't have healthy fat. So I ALWAYS drink Bulletproof Coffee before a podcast.

If you want to get really hardcore, there are also forms of Ghee with other ingredients. Jambo Superfoods are my buddies and they for example make a form of CBD Butter Oil, Grass-fed Ghee & MCT Oil which is 3x amazing!!! https://jambocbd.com/product/butter-oil-cbd/

A Wonderful Example of Cottage Industry

A future essay will highlight the importance and beauty of small cottage industry. Meaning a small-scale, decentralized manufacturing business often operated out of a home rather than a purpose-built facility. Cottage industry use to be ubiquitous, but now you travel across countries and it's shopping mall after mall with the same paint by numbers chain stores. I could get political as to why that is but will spare you that here. The good news is jobs are moving to be more work-from-home based and a ripple effect of that is cottage industry will never die out! It will instead only return greater than ever because it's our natural way.

An absolute pinnacle example of this craft is David A. Smith - a traditional sign-writer and designer specializing in high-quality ornamental hand-crafted reverse glass signs and decorative silvered and gilded mirrors. This short film captures the 'Behind The Scenes' creation of the absolutely wonderful turn-of-the-century, trade-card styled album cover for American singer/songwriter John Mayer. For his album 'Born & Raised' and 'Queen of California' artwork, as well as 2 unique reverse glass panels, hand-crafted in England by David A. Smith.

This post was dug up while also doing some research on a future short film we are putting together, which is aiming to perhaps have a title cover in a similar style.

The Art of Being A Good Interviewer

From Dale Carnegie's classic book How To Win Friends and Influence People, originally published in 1936 and still going strong.

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Notice how step 1 - "How To Make A Person Like You" just so happens to also be the exact same steps of a good interviewer during conversation. Either on camera or only behind a microphone. 

Not pictured here are also "Fundamental Techniques in Handling People":

1. Don't criticize, condemn, or complain. Human nature does not like to admit fault. When people are criticized or humiliated, they rarely respond well and will often become defensive and resent their critic. To handle people well, we must never criticize, condemn or complain because it will never result in the behavior we desire. This is the problem with the schooling system. As it mainly only points out what the student did wrong over highlighting all the vast majority of steps they did right.

2. Give honest and sincere appreciation. Appreciation is one of the most powerful tools in the world. People will rarely work at their maximum potential under criticism, but honest appreciation brings out their best. Appreciation, though, is not simple flattery, it must be sincere, meaningful and with love.

3. Arouse in the other person an eager want. To get what we want from another person, we must forget our own perspective and begin to see things from the point of view of others. When we can combine our desires with their wants, they become eager to work with us and we can mutually achieve our objectives.

I'm glad we had this talk.

Podcast 101: Patrick MacManaway - Subtle Energetics of The Land (Extended for Patrons)

Direct Download Backup - http://www.mediafire.com/file/masa5ooc5kl1kps/AnInfinitePath_ep101PatrickMacManaway_Patron.mp3

Patrick MacManaway on working with the subtle energetics of the land, correspondences with what is above and below, permaculture over monoculture, living on a planet of free will and in the exclusive extension for patrons, insights as to how the ancients built sacred sites and what they did with them.

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An Infinite Path podcast official URL http://www.aninfinitepath.com

Spotify | iTunes | Google Play | Overcast FM | Stitcher | Player FM
Elevate yourself with a membership to nilesheckman.com, purchasing our current extended episode archive or essay volumes, or sharing a proactive review on iTunes.

Niles’ work can be found elsewhere on YouTube and Vimeo.

Here’s our affiliate link for Jambo Superfoods as well.

California 2017

Ben Wong is a young sprout in his late 20's living outside Toronto. He's a friend and is also one of few people who's a better cinematographer than I am. This is a piece he put together from his visit to California in 2017. With yours truly and my snobby Leica rangefinder camera featured at the start. 

Like all my film work now, this piece is shot in anamorphic. I owe Ben credit for helping me in the last couple years hop on board the train of shooting in the anamorphic format cost effectively, which required putting together a custom lens system. A complex task which he and I talked about in the videos featured in this post on the blog HERE

The current plan is to have Ben shoot episodes 3&4 of Shamans of the Global Village next year in Peru, as we are looking to do both back to back. Very exciting yes. Would have happened this year, if COVID didn't take a huge dump on everyone's travel plans. BUT, we will make manifest in 2021 and I'm aiming to have those episodes of the show be even more high production value than episodes 1&2. Woot!

Ben's website
Ben's YouTube channel 

#FreeHongKong

So as we said in our "Navigating With Reason" essay which was released on the 3rd of January, the 2020 astrological forecast called for us to "strap in, for this year is going to be a wild ride." Now in June, how is that prediction been panning out?

While I aim to have my work not cover current events but instead timeless events, it's fair to say about a dozen super tipping points are spilling over currently on spaceship Earth. The latest being massive protests in the US over 300+ years of sanctioned murdering of African Americans by corrupt authority figures. Another is what's going on in Hong Kong. 

I have been trying to get my buddy Ed Liu, who lives half in Hong Kong and half in Hawaii, and used to have the Psychedelic Milk podcast, on as a guest of An Infinite Path recently. It was aiming to be too difficult to make manifest, but Ed's largest want for having a conversation on the podcast was to help get the word out about what's going on there. Even though it's from The Wall Street Journal, this short documentary does a quite good job of laying out the timeline of the pro-democracy Hong Kong protest events.

Having free time to work on yourself is truly a gift. As many around the world are fighting for basic freedoms, it's sometimes, if not oftentimes, easy to forget how good we may have it. 

Holographic Space Love

So for about 5 years, there has been a film project bouncing around in the mind / brain imagination. The reason it hasn't been finished is because it's currently somewhat un-finishable.

It's for a short film called Holographic Space Love. It would be a first person perspective point of view of what it is like to smoke 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine, otherwise known as 5-MeO-DMT. It's one of the if not the absolute most life changing psychedelic experience's one can undertake and was the medicine we focused the first episode of Shamans of the Global Village around.

I have partaken in that form of DMT four times in my life, and the first time, which occurred toward the end of the shooting of that episode of the show, was a complete BC/AD moment where nothing from that point on would be the same. Yes, there is private footage of my weird and quite unusual experience in which I look like a sunburnt troll. I spoke of it on episode 59 of the podcast under the previous Novelty Generators title. And for the epilogue philosophical easter egg at the end of that episode I used audio from Rak Razam giving one of the best descriptions of his experience from a talk he gave at the Exploring Psychedelics Conference in Ashland Oregon, which I cleaned up, trimmed down a bit, and put to music. That audio IS the audio for the short film. So audio done. 

But, the 5-MeO-DMT experience is (usually) very much like flying through a high speed white light tunnel and then a dissolving into an oceanic void of pure overexposed white light consciousness. The film would be bookended of live action footage from Rak's point of view of him smoking the DMT pipe and then coming out of the experience on the back end, but the problem is creating the visuals to visualize the whole internal experience would be 2+ years of work if I did it independently because it would require extensive computer graphics, which TAKE FOREVER to make without teams of talented digital artists, streamlined pipelines, and massive render power - which means lots of money required. Like hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. This is precisely why I mainly only do live action these days. For it's way easier to actualize and finish quality projects with small budgets yet good production values. 

The final film visually would be done in an extremely similar style to the outstanding short Kensho. Created by a bloke called Aaron Paradox and I think it took him well over a year to complete. That's right, 4 minutes long and it took him a year. I've spoken to Aaron and sent him the Holographic Space Love audio with the idea of collaborating on this project and he loved it, thought it would be a great companion piece to Kensho, but we concluded it would just be way too time consuming to actually pursue. 

Transmutation had some visual effects shots which I made but they were few and far between and didn't involve flying through a tunnel like space which would likely involve way more data and 3D graphic details. Those Transmutation computer graphic shots I was able to do in just a few short days each, but spending a year+ on a short film, with zero revenue stream, is just unfeasible these days as I could spend that time way more wisely in other ways that output more of a body of work. Most of which have revenue streams.

So the point of the story is this project has been in limbo for years, and currently remains there unless some of these circumstances change. BUT, you can listen to the audio and use your best tool, your imagination to fill in the visuals.

Potential steps if you so choose:

Download the Holographic Space Love audio HERE
Watch Kensho on Vimeo HERE
Listen to the podcast of me trying to language my first 5-MeO-DMT experience (which is mostly un-languagable HERE
Research 5-MeO-DMT at Erowid HERE
Dive into Tryptamine Palace HERE
Watch Shamans of the Global Village episode 1 HERE
See footage of me having my first 5-MeO experience HERE

Essay: A List of Illogical Fallacies (Exclusive For Patrons)

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An Infinite Path podcast official URL http://www.aninfinitepath.com

Spotify | iTunes | Google Play | Overcast FM | Stitcher | Player FM
Elevate yourself with a membership to nilesheckman.com, purchasing our current extended episode archive or essay volumes, or sharing a proactive review on iTunes.

Niles’ work can be found elsewhere on YouTube, Vimeo, and Patreon.

Here’s our affiliate link for Jambo Superfoods as well.

Ninth Gate Engravings

*Nine engravings from the fictional book "The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows" from the film The Ninth Gate.

So, we are in the process of writing an essay on one of our favorite films, certainly our favorite Polanski film. The Ninth Gate - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142688/

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It's one of those movies that was quite shit canned by critics and has a pretty low Tomatometer as a result - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ninth_gate. Yet, I personally cant get enough of it and have seen it probably a dozen times. It has the nail biting trifecta of  mystery, thriller, and occultism. Do yourself a treat and go watch it if you haven't already.

The Ninth Gate is a 1999 mystery thriller film directed, produced, and co-written by Roman Polanski. An international co-production between the United States, Portugal, France, and Spain, the film is loosely based upon Arturo Pérez-Reverte's 1993 novel The Club Dumas. The plot involves authenticating a rare and ancient book that purportedly contains a magical secret for summoning the Devil. 

Podcast Episode 100 Visual Guides!

If you're interested in diving deeper into what was discussed (which is more like what we scratched the surface of) in the private extension on episode 100 regarding esoteric mapping of the mind, do check out Ruba's podcast episode starting here. Sharing an initial lay of the land on Hermetic Qabala which is oftentimes also spelled "Kabbalah".

*Qabala/Kabbalah is super esoteric so most people could care less about it. For those small amount of Jedi who do care, it's still quite difficult to wrap your head around. So the point of the story is if this confuses you, don't worry about it. As I'm very much a student of it myself. 

Some visual AIDS:

Partzufim Theory are complete living configurations of divine energy. Here are three forms of consciousness which make up a family unit which represent the "higher self" / "higher functions":

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A more simple mapping with elemental attributes. This is where we get the six rayed star:

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100: Rubaphilos Salfluĕre - Transmuting Ego into Higher Genius (Extended for Patrons)

Direct Download Backup - http://www.mediafire.com/file/cxxhwwczi3kdsw8/AnInfinitePath_ep100RubaphilosSalflue%25CC%2586re_Patron.mp3

Rubaphilos Salfluĕre on 21st century Alchemy, his story of being passed esoteric knowledge, misconceptions vs realities of Hermeticism, most modern occultism not really being hidden, higher level spiritual growth being so difficult next to no one wants to do it, and in the exclusive extension for patrons, defining mental and symbolic secret keys to more deeply grasp what the practice reveals.

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Ruba's Youtube - www.youtube.com/c/Rubaphilossalfluere
Ruba's forum - https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/hermetic-alchemy/info
Heredom College - www.heredomcollege.org

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An Infinite Path podcast official URL http://www.aninfinitepath.com

Spotify | iTunes | Google Play | Overcast FM | Stitcher | Player FM
Elevate yourself with a membership to nilesheckman.com, purchasing our current extended episode archive or essay volumes, or sharing a proactive review on iTunes.

Niles’ work can be found elsewhere on YouTube, Vimeo, and Patreon.

Here’s our affiliate link for Jambo Superfoods as well.

Nourishing Traditions

On the subject of health and diet, and how well over 50% of our health is due to what we put in our bodies, (who would have thought?!?!) Sally Fallon Morell's blog Nourishing Traditions is worth your time...

https://nourishingtraditions.com/

It aims to be "a blog that challenges politically correct nutrition and diet dictocrats". Sally is known for her quite heart shattering lecture from back in the day entitled "The Oiling of America" in which she lays down how heart disease is certainly a major concern, but much of the "Heart Disease Industry" was invented by deception, and what's back is really front and what's front is really back in regards to that subject. Such as many "low fat" vegetable oil's being super bad news and actually being a major catalyst of coronary disease. 

On this end, it always makes since to me that we should eat what our ancestors ate. If our great great great great grandmothers who lived on small farms didn't eat it, we might not want to eat it either.

Essay: Three Pillars of Persuasion (Early Release for Patrons)

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An Infinite Path podcast official URL http://www.aninfinitepath.com

Spotify | iTunes | Google Play | Overcast FM | Stitcher | Player FM
Elevate yourself with a membership to nilesheckman.com, purchasing our current extended episode archive or essay volumes, or sharing a proactive review on iTunes.

Niles’ work can be found elsewhere on YouTube and Vimeo.

Here’s our affiliate link for Jambo Superfoods as well.