Building Power from the Bottom Up -Impact Circles and Reimagining Community with Lucy Caldwell
SHOW NOTES | TRANSCRIPT
Today on the Rose Woman Podcast, social psychologist Lucy Caldwell joins us and shares how small groups can create transformative social change, bridging divides and reimagining our collective potential. She is passionate about bringing people together, even in tough times. She believes that despite living in a culture of fear and facing countless challenges, we have a powerful way forward: by connecting with each other and building grassroots momentum. Her approach isn't about dwelling on problems, but creating an optimistic movement that unites people and helps them discover their collective strength. By drawing communities together and empowering them from the ground up, she sees real potential for positive change.
Join us as we explore Lucy's inspiring work of awakening human potential, fostering empathy, and creating a more compassionate, inclusive world—one collaborative circle at a time.
In this episode, we cover:
The Formation of Impact Circles and Lucy’s Focus on Social Psychology
The Role of Social Media and Polarization
Empathy and the Polarization Effect in Group Dynamics
The Impact of Social Media Algorithms on Societal Polarization
COVID-19 Pandemic and The Burning Man Experience
The Structure and Goals of Impact Circles and Community Building
The Future of Human Connection and Technology
The Potential of AI to Enhance Human Potential and the Importance of Maintaining Authenticity
The Need for Innovative Experiments and Research on Resource Distribution and Community Resilience
Vision for Impact Circles as a Global Community Platform Supporting Changemakers
Helpful links:
Lucy Caldwell - Founder of Life Revealed
Bending the Bow: How Ordinary People Spark Visionary Social Movements by Christine Mason
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Host, The Rose Woman on Love and Liberation: Listen, Like, Share & Subscribe on Apple Podcast | Google Podcasts | Spotify
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Lucy Caldwell 0:01
We are acknowledging that we live in a culture of fear and that there is hardship, and, you know, all of these adversities, but we are saying the way forward is through the opportunity to draw people together and build power from the bottom up. And so in that way, it is intended to be a movement that is both optimistic and uniting.
Christine Mason 0:27
Hello, everybody. It's Christine Marie Mason, your host for the rose woman podcast on love and liberation, I've been thinking more and more about what would it mean to be living constantly in the story of love and beauty, or in the story of one great grace, and that we are living in a time when the stories we tell ourselves are really vital. It's very important at this point in history that we tell ourselves the story that small groups of committed individuals who team up together can really get things done. That is not just an imagination or wishful thinking. When I wrote my book in 2018 on how the great movements for social change got started, we learned that it was not charismatic individuals who did it. We learned that there was always a pod, a group of five to seven people who banded together, and yes, they had a charismatic leader at the helm, but they also had these very predictable roles of people who supported each other, and then those pods that they formed would interlink with other pods, and that's how most change happens. It's never a person who's just out there doing it alone. So in that vein, today, I have a wonderful woman to come and speak with us around impact circles. Her name is Lucy Caldwell. She is fittingly named after loose or light reflecting her life's work of illuminating possibilities and nurturing activism and wholeness. She was born in the vibrant cultural tapestry of San Cristobal de las casas in Mexico, her earliest experiences were richly shaped by indigenous village life and the dynamic community her parents created through their language school. So she's an American woman living in California now, but this history of being born in Mexico and shaped by that culture still stays with her after moving to the United States at four, she grew up in American culture, but largely shielded from a lot of the things that mainstream would do, like there was no television in her home until she was middle of her childhood. She was instead deeply immersed in a world of imagination and creativity and play. So this sort of natural joy, authenticity, dance, movement, all of that was who she was. But like many of us, her journey toward adulthood brought some challenges, including some traumas, sexual trauma in particular, which she's very open about, that led her away from her natural gifts, and instead, she sort of began funneling, as she explains it, toward perfectionism and achievement as protective strategies. So she's not really in that story anymore. She's reclaimed those lost parts of herself, rediscovering her creativity and authenticity and all of that stuff that had been suppressed through pressures of the society and other things. And she has gone on to do research at Stanford and to build these impact circles, which I'm going to tell you a little bit about in a minute. So as a leader and a speaker and the founder of something called Life revealed and these impact circles, she is inviting other people, not only on their own path of integrated self awareness and healing and renewal, but she is also helping people bond, tighten, reimagine and build a more whole and connected world, primarily through impact circles, which is imagined as a global community platform designed to support social entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, intrapreneurs or just regular citizens, through a blend of peer mentorships, workshops, collaboration events, kind of creating a vibrant ecosystem where changemakers can connect and learn and CO create solutions to pressing social and environmental challenges. While the programs can be one off workshops or mentorships, they are really more aimed at helping people form groups of three to 15 people no more than 15, ideally somewhere around eight, to pick one area that they're really concerned about, and then imagine where it will be in 20 years. So if you pick democracy or you pick environment or you pick women's issues, or you pick health and wellness, then you would work with this small pot of people to imagine where things are going and then what can be activated in the next six months. So this is happening in Northern California now. There's a potent group of people who've come together, formed a lot of these different pods and have picked some really amazing projects as they go through it. There are these weekly meetings facilitated by her co founder, John Hegel, who. Who ran the Innovation Center at Deloitte and Touche for many years, and they provide a mini course on over six weeks on how these things happen while doing embodiment practices and things to sort of get you into your most capacious visioning place in your in your mind and in your heart. So Lucy is a social psychologist and a master facilitator, and she's deeply involved in doing these kinds of things. She's very passionate about awakening human potential to usher forth a more compassionate, inclusive and regenerative world. And it is my utter joy to invite you into this dialog with the fantastic and wonderful Miss Caldwell.
Lucy Caldwell 5:40
Well, I was studying social psychology, which is not actually pathologizing. So abnormal psych within the undergrad curriculum, and I stayed and did my Master's too, but within the field of psychology, there's cognitive behavioral there's neuroscience, there's child development, there's what we call abnormal psych, which is the more like, you know, do you have depression? Do you have abnormal personality disorder, like, so that's the pathologizing, and then their social psych, which is what I was fascinated by, is actually more about looking at what are all the cultural layers and the kind of invisible strings, like a marionette puppet, that that guide our behavior. We tend to assume that people have character traits and personality and right, and that's why we behave the way we do. And actually, it's so humbling to study social psychology and realize so much of what we do is situational, so much of how we show up and how we behave is guided by all these other dynamics, group dynamic, power of influence, sense of wanting to belong. You know, there's just these, these core human instincts, even you know, the psychology of evil it, you know. So Phil Zimbardo, who did the Stanford Prison study, was one of my professors, and they actually had to stop that study, like five days into it or something. I don't know that number of days into it, but they randomly assigned people to the role of guard or prisoner, and these were healthy, normal people, screened out for any psychopathology or anything like that. But the people who were prisoners were actually they had police come. They picked them up, they put them in handcuffs, they took them to the basement of the Stanford psych department, and they had very few rules about what was going to happen. They sort of were letting human nature kind of fill in the skit of what was going to happen and the amount of cruelty that the guards started demonstrating toward the prisoners, with no checks and balances in the system, no guidance on what they were supposed to do, they became incredibly dehumanizing, cruel, violent, and it was Phil zimbardo's wife who came to observe. She was a grad student at that point, she came to observe the study, and she said, You have to shut this down. To shut this down. This is totally like, dangerous. And so it helps understand, it helps us understand, how can cultures move toward authoritarianism, like, how is it that Hitler came into power? You know, through a democratic process, it helps us understand that, and there's something, again, very, very humbling when you study social psychology, to realize, like every person has capacity for good and evil, and there are so many factors that come into play on how we end up, you know, turning out basically. And it gives us all of these levers of how to change human behavior. And actually, the truth is that technology, you know, fast forward to after I left Stanford, the Internet was exploding, and the tech world was just like blooming. And, you know, being right there at Stanford, it was amazing to witness that transformation that was happening. Initially, technology wasn't so sticky. The use of technology kind of required, like, you know, it was like you had to put on your scuba gear and be this certain kind of person that could stick with it, you know, with these Linux prompts. And, you know, it was like, wow. But when they actually married the understanding of human behavior and what gets our attention to stay on something, and what cultivates or pulls on our desire to belong or our self conscious patterns like basically, they used social persuasion techniques from social psychology to cause technology to become so compelling that it's now like, you know, sort of taken over so much of like the interior experience of being a modern human being. And it's because we know as scientists how to manipulate the human mind, is the truth of it.
Christine Mason 9:56
I went back to look neuro marketing. Do you remember, like, right in. Beginning when Campbell's soup was doing those photographic experiments, like, how do I make this? And they would hook people up and test their galvanic skin response or their heart rate in order to see, like, what was working on your subconscious mind to get you to buy something. And the whole model that in the digital era, you don't need to hook up anybody's brain. You just watch their click tracks and their linger time, and you can do the same exact thing and start to play to their subconscious. Yeah,
Lucy Caldwell 10:27
and it really is, to me, that is the shadow of unchecked technological market adoption. It was like so exciting at the beginning that they had figured out a business model, because originally, all the tech companies were these exciting startup tech companies that wanted to connect the world and bring information to life. They couldn't figure out, like, how do we make money at this right? And once they finally hooked up, like, you know, Lycos and these different search engines where they were kind of struggling to get their business model, and Google, like, figured it out, how do you not charge people to use your service that they're not actively paying a subscription fee. But then, like, ultimately, we are the human subjects, like they are collecting all the data about us in order to design an experience that is causing us to buy things, and that is the model
Christine Mason 11:19
changing your entire mind and like what what you think reality is constructed of, and how you act in the world, and what you base your values on. Well, I think that's
Lucy Caldwell 11:29
where social media, in particular, has played an enormous role in the polarization of humanity. So that was the other that going back to the Stanford days after I initially studied around empathy, I got really interested in how we construe each other across lines of difference, so either in hierarchical situations or where we have different belief systems. And so I start got really fascinated with this polarization effect. And it's interesting because it's sort of like that's still kind of lighting the path for me of where, of where I'm drawn to be of highest service is to help try to figure this out, because the truth is that we have so much more in common than we do that separates us. And this is a known psychological effect, that we tend to overestimate our differences. You put people into a group, they tend to kind of always polarize. So, you know, every single group, when it goes through its forming and storming, kind of like people, people end up taking their different spots along a spectrum. And so this is part of the differentiation process of group forming. But what I was trying to understand is like, can we use empathy to get people to come back into coherence with each other, like the I don't know if you could guess. Like, what's the number one thing that causes groups that are at odds to kind of suddenly unite a common enemy? Yes. So that's like, think in some ways that the climate crisis could be bringing that toward us, but we're actually, we're polarizing more in the face of the climate crisis, but I think that actually is because we have, there's this term that I learned of recently around like conflict entrepreneurs. There are people who benefit from the conflict, and unfortunately, the news agencies are a big part of that. But all of social media, you know, the Facebook algorithms and that whole Cambridge Analytica came to Revelation After the two 2016 election, just started to become so clear that there was financial and power incentive that was driving the intentional polarization of society. I
Christine Mason 13:39
just looked into the book by Sarah when careless people she was the person who was working at Facebook during that time and running their policy group. And she talks about the embedding of some of Facebook's best behavioral scientists inside of the Trump campaign during that window, and how they were targeting people's emotions and doing misinformation, seating throughout that election, and how they really didn't understand the potency of what they were doing until it was way too late, but that that's still continuing, that
Lucy Caldwell 14:13
is absolutely continuing, and for that reason, I've gotten off social media. I'm not using it other than I have LinkedIn. It's really sad, because I think there are so many blessings that technology brings into our lives, and the ability to connect and spread good ideas and like there's so much potential there and so much beauty. And it connected me to so many people around the world, and I was in this transformative chapter of my life. You know, when I was struggling in my marriage and trying to figure out, like, what was my life going to be about, and I had all these exterior markers of the American dream, and I was feeling really disconnected from from self, from source, from purpose and and I started writing about. It on Facebook that was like in 2011 1213, before we I had the full wake up call as to how Facebook was, you know, undermining mental well being and democracy, but I was using it as this platform of deep self inquiry, and then sharing it with others. And there was something very beautiful that was happening, where I was getting feedback from people, some people who I knew, and they they could kind of see this deeper, more sensitive layer inside of me. And then other people I hardly knew, you know, would come up to me at the TED conference or different places, and like your writing is, is really touching something deep inside of me, and I haven't really figured out, like the next format for how to do that, that very tender, revelatory, revelatory and but very timely. You know what
Christine Mason 15:49
you were saying about, you know, seeing people as full, tender humans, and being able to show that. And it's amazing to have an audience that you move that way. That's what novelists and poets have done throughout history. And here you are. You know, you're trying to do that in an environment where it's initially received, and it's really like, wow, I can put my gifts out there and I and it moves people, and then it suddenly gets, like, monetized and conflict oriented. And you're wondering, like, why am I putting my most private things into this monetization framework? That's right, but why? But where else will I go with it?
Lucy Caldwell 16:23
Yeah, I've never really resonated with the Instagram or Tiktok culture as much because it was so appearance oriented and so the law. There's something about the longer form, and the more you know the use of poetic language that really worked for me at work, versus like it was actually completely the opposite on Instagram, like that culture of trying to make your life look really perfect from the outside and every angle of the photo you know, being flattering or showing your life. And I felt like that is creating so much alienation and feeling of disconnect inside of people, and especially our youth, and so I stayed with it for a little while of trying to post positive content and depth and so forth, but I just sort of felt it was just getting drowned out in this ever fast beauty
Christine Mason 17:15
of noise, Like I remember a piece making molehills out of mountains. How social media diminishes our deepest and best ideas, like, oh, and then also, you don't develop ideas as much as you would have, like, really, really down deep. Look at it from all angles. But it has a time pressure and a frequency pressure that it's like, post more twice a day at these times a day. In order
Lucy Caldwell 17:42
to even play ball, you have to be subjected to all of their insecurity, kind of poking ads, you know? And it was just, there was so much on there. Every time I was going on to try to share inspiration, it's like, you know, how does your belly fat look? You know? It's just like, Wow. This is, this is awful. I don't want to be fed this kind of information that is so undermining, of like everything that I stand for and trying to pull on insecurities I just, I can't get down with it. It's not that is the opposite of the resonance that that I think is going to uplift and unite and help us heal. And so back to your original question of sort of finding my way back to to kind of where I started with the empathy work, and then weaving in, you know, the creativity of the Rosita era. I've been on this project with my collaborator, John Hegel for almost a decade now, we met at the hatch conference in Montana in 2015 or maybe 16, and we actually did meet around this topic of polarization. That was what the original spark was that, you know, I think they had different social impact labs that were happening during the conference, and we both gravitated toward that lab. And I think we actually created, with a few other people, a really funny, playful skit around an innovative idea of like a board game. What kind of conversations could you have with your you know, relatives, or people at Thanksgiving that have totally different political views? That topic hasn't gone out of style. That hasn't gone out. Things have gotten even more so I think let's back up and say, Okay, so we're 10 years ago, and what was hatch? What that conference was happening as recently as two years ago? Did it stop? Is it still going on? Nope, it's still going and it's amazing. It's, I feel very, very connected to hatch. It is a boutique experience. Is not a large scale. This wonderful, wonderful human Yaro Craner started it 20 years ago. I believe that's right, because we just, I think did the 20 year anniversary. He has a real knack for finding extraordinary people who are very heart centric and have different. Types of gifts and bringing them together. You know, 100 people at a time, going through a series of inspirational content and talks and depth of things and speakers on stage and different things happening. And so, you know, by the end of the experience, there's this feeling of, you're like hatching new ideas and a new version of yourself, and I've been to it a number of times now, and actually got very involved with them over the pandemic, because they were one of the groups that was really stepping up into the void of all of the anxiety and uncertainty. And I was helping them. I also was really involved with my Women's Council that I had formed through the work I was doing at Esalen, leading women visionary leaders. So I was stewarding that as well. I sort of felt it was a time to rise into service, to meet the moment of all that uncertainty by bringing community and meaning making and wisdom and connection to that, to that time. And so we did these global living rooms every week and had really interesting speakers. And it was, it was really part of very core part of my COVID experience, which was otherwise a pretty isolating experience, being divorced, raising kids and kind of not. I wasn't in a relationship at that point, and I was just living in Los Altos and spending long periods of time in solitude. So I know some people had really brutal COVID experiences. Others got off a little easier, I would say it, it made a big impact, definitely in my life. But being part of those communities was was quite nourishing. It
Christine Mason 21:41
says so much about you that you, during that time, would put all of the things that you have known to work in service.
Lucy Caldwell 21:49
I felt very strong about that, and it was an animating force for me. It really was how I spent that COVID lockdown was holding like holding the Center for people, and bringing, like I said, like being a light bearer, lighting the candles. And I've always been really connected to nature. So for me, it was so beautiful to watch all these other people who were so busy and in their lives that they had maybe lost touch with the natural rhythms and kind of coming into these firsthand experiences with hiking and going to the beach and nature and writing about it. And I was, you know, I was just sort of like cheering, because it's how I live my life, and I felt like so many more people were appreciating the just the the spiritual gift of getting to to be close to nature. And I, I had some, some moments of real optimism that it could be a moment of human transformation on a on a large scale. I remember that first Easter, I think it was, and, you know, many of us were at home, and there was this idea of putting the good of the collective at this at the center of the circle, you know, and that just in my whole lifetime, I hadn't really seen that on a mass scale. So I do think that things became very complex from there, although it really was a moment. I think the awakening of consciousness, like even on an individual journey, it happens in moments like you get this little like pinhole, um, or this, aha, where you can see through to the potential of what could be. And so I think that was a collective human moment that we all could actually collaborate and come together and get on the same page and decide to do what's right. And we weren't able to hold that frequency for very long, but the idea that we could hold it for even a period of time, and that we could celebrate the grocery clerks, you know, with applause and dignity. You know, I get kind of chills thinking about that, because I think it's such an under appreciated, you know, the unsung heroes, I mean, the doctors and the nurses, absolutely too, and the sacrifice and the threat that they were going through, and the way teachers were adapting their course materials and doing their best to meet the needs of students. I mean it where there was so much there really was so much beauty that was happening amidst so much uncertainty and fear and pain and death. So it felt like a real, catalytic moment. I had another moment like that. Ironically enough, at Burning Man, a few years ago, I hadn't been in many years, and I went back, and that was the year that we had the big rains at Burning Man. Everybody was up to their knees in mud. Yes, it was really something else. And I. It was a it was a moment too, that actually reminded me of some of my my gifts and the power that I can have to hold the collective in a moment of crisis. So on a personal level, there was something there, and there was something on the collective level, when all that rain came down, I was sitting in a tent, and people were just kind of oblivious and talking and just, you know, like not being very aware of the outside. And I kept going out and kind of monitoring, and I could see that there was this huge, huge amount, like 1000s of pounds of water that were starting to form in the dip of one of these large tents that we were all under. And it was so interesting, because I always have had a little bit of, I don't know if I've always had it, certainly since I was had the trauma happen to me. Probably some amount of vigilance to safety, but it really it serves to be able to kind of have your eyes on the horizon. And there was something that made me go outside and really monitor that swelling bulge of water, because eventually, if that got too big, like the pole that was holding up, the tent was going to collapse and we would all suffocate under the water. And so I went out, and, you know, we figured out how to get a knife. And it was very makeshift, you know, but it was, I just think it's so rare and in our privileged modern world that we come face to face with these it was a trial run for a survival situation, but it was unknown, like, whether the electrical wires that were all buried under the mud were going to be safe, or what was the water going To You know, carry electrical currents in it. And, you know, and I could see people starting to take it in, like how dangerous it was, people who had come from across the playa on their bikes, and there was no way they were getting back that night. And so I flipped into gear on, is there enough water for these people? Because they probably just have one little water bottle full, and, you know, our people what's what's really happening? And there was this moment as the anxiety was starting to build, and people who had been in one setting like were realizing they couldn't get home and so forth. And I just some kind of, like, calm came over me. And I realized, if this gets really dicey and people really go into panic, I know what to do. It was this really interesting moment of awareness like that, peeking through the veil kind of thing of like, I could hold this situation. I can get these people calm and into CO regulation of their nervous system, and use these, these practices that I've used in my teaching to bring us out of fear and into collaboration and maybe even into moments of joy and on the collective layer, it was just so interesting to see when all the resources were a mess and we didn't know how long we'd be stranded there. No one could leave. There's a kind of claustrophobia that starts to kick in, and people are a lot of people are having panic attacks. And I was sort of individually supporting people in that moment, but I also was kind of thinking ahead and seeing the way that teams assemble and start, like natural leadership starts to pop up and figure out, like, the different things that are needed, and how are we going to serve the community? And I remember sort of thinking, wow, that's interesting. So the COVID experience, plus this like little Burning Man experience, are helping me see the kind of things that we are going to need as we move ahead into a world that is going to be much more frequently disrupted in ways that we are not accustomed to. I think our ancestors were accustomed to famine, and I don't know like it's going to be climate events that are going to be driving, you know, these, as well as cultural uprising and things that happen, I think. But it made me alert to kind of, how do power structures change and form and what's needed in these moments of crisis that I really think are kind of part of the toolkit for being a modern human being, that we are going to need to start learning?
Christine Mason 29:11
Yeah, there's something very focusing about crisis also, you know, it's like you're you know what's important then, keep people safe, feed people, get them water. Why do we lose sight of that? In normal life, there are people who are not safe, who don't have food, like, let's take care of them. You know,
Lucy Caldwell 29:26
you're absolutely right. There's, there's like a blindness that overtakes us, because, I guess, to live with so much awareness to the human suffering, like, the only way we can take it all in is if we actually are addressing the problem, right? And so the way that the human psyche deals with that is to just wear blinders to it
Christine Mason 29:48
into increasingly speciated communities, people who are more or less like you, one or two levels up or one or two levels down in the social caste, economically also, and then when you don't. Don't, if you like, go into service mode, like philanthropy or doing charity, then you can't just go help people. There's also inherent power dynamics in that where you're actually seeing humanity and going man, there before this moment in time could be me, you're not. So there's so much in like an invitation to say, look, any one of us could lose our entire situation at any moment, and when that, if that were to happen, how would we want to receive and be received? How could we welcome others? Now, in with that idea that it's not a personal failing to lose everything, yeah, or to be born into it, or to be born into it, that's right. So you, I love, I love the narrative and the way that you're, you know, been formed by so many different waves and these moments of insight, it's almost like you have been being prepared for this time. And there's something in the work that you're doing with the impact circles, that I find so hopeful. There's a sense of like a re agency coming in. Like people are realizing the larger architectures and systems of like, so called democracy aren't doing much anymore to support your actual local living well, and so there seems to be this idea, like we can do something, and that's very exciting to me.
Lucy Caldwell 31:21
I'm so glad that that feels like it's at the core of it, because that is like when I really go into the intention of what is this work about it is it is around reclaiming agency, that each one of us has power and has a voice and has a capacity to envision something and bring it forward. And so you're right on in terms of what my greatest wish is. And so that is the power of grassroots social movements. Is this idea that small groups of people can come together and make big changes in the world. And in fact, most social progress actually has always come about that way. The modern movements, a lot of them, have been shaped in the message of either sort of anger or fear. So the work that we're doing, and I think maybe one of the reasons that people are feeling invi rated and inspired by it is because we are we are acknowledging that we live in a culture of fear and that there is hardship, and, you know, all of these adversities, but we are saying the way forward is through the opportunity to draw people together and build power from the bottom up. And so in that way, it is intended to be a movement that is both optimistic and uniting from my study of human psychology and even as you know child development, we're born compassionate beings, like even babies, even really young children, they understand the idea of of sharing or of kindness. You know, they actually wince at pain. All of the cultural norms are kind of shaped. And what I'm really wanting to do is to remind us of our capacity for moral beauty, for kindness, for like, reaching our higher selves, and that that's innate in everyone. So it's sort of like when you remove the films or kind of make that opportunity available, there's almost like a swelling of energy that can come up to the surface. Because it's like, to me, that's also kind of like that remembering of how connected we are to nature. It's like there's this natural human impulse to want to be good, to want to have joy, to want to have connection, to want to love our neighbors. And there are these forces that I almost feel are like artificially pulling at us and numbing us and putting us into states of denial and fear and animosity and yucky energy. And so when you're kind of creating a context that we can step out of that and step into believing in our power, believing that diverse people can come together with different backgrounds that we don't we're not going to just be in echo chambers, you know, yelling across the chasm. There's an energy that is animating around that, and it's really very exciting. And it's pushing the edge of my own development to just like allow all the energy to come in that is wanting to come in right now and and this is just like the the small momentum that we're building in the circles that we know, and the extended circles that we're inviting in. I'm so curious and excited to see, how can we reach across to people who we don't know and start inviting them in, you know? And. And so we really are. We're looking for the collaborators, and we're looking for the models, you know, that are going to take this toolkit that we are building, that we want to be kind of open source, and make it available. Like, you know, who are our brothers and sisters in other countries, or, you know, in high schools around the world, and, you know, like, how can we help them to bring their fullest selves forward. And how can new leaders pop up and, you know, decide that they want to take it on in their community? So that's like this, this beautiful, emergent kind of life giving energy. One thing
Christine Mason 35:35
that I really like about the way you've approached it is you include music and poetry and movement and breath work. So the community builds not only embodied practices together, and they get to know each other in a way that builds trust, that accelerates collaboration. It's not like you're just coming together to talk about, you know, how to fix this road problem, you know, authentic human connecting before you get to solving a problem. We don't only
Lucy Caldwell 35:59
want to be in the energy of of the problems, right like we want to be, in that energy that's guided by love and the energy that enables us to take creative risks we know so much around the psychology of belief that we live our way into the stories we tell and the cultural stories that we have right now guiding us are, they're they're scary, they're disempowering, highly problematic, right?
Christine Mason 36:28
Live into the stories we tell. Let's live into a better story. Let's live into
Lucy Caldwell 36:33
a better story. And there's so much opportunity to create better stories, and there's this really exciting collaboration potential with AI. So I know I sounded like very negative on the ways that technology has it's not the technology's fault. It's the business model that we've put behind the technology that did what happened with social media and what we were talking about earlier. And you know, the jury's out still on what's going to happen with AI, but there is so much beautiful unlocking of human potential that I'm already starting to feel and that we're bringing we're you're really trying to surface the best of how technology can collaborate with us, and the speed at which we can, you know, share ideas and brainstorm and Come up with visions and create, visualize ideas and share them with each other, like it's just, it feels like, you know, the clay is really wet in terms of the potency of the creative opportunities that exist right now. And you know, the future of work is dramatically changing as a result of this, and the future of education, like all these things are being disrupted. And so I think the best thing to do is like, let's be there and shape it. Let's shape the clay as it's kind of, you know, let's, let's be at the forefront of that and bring all of the human capacity that we have toward connection, creativity, Alchemy, all these kind of things. Like, let's surface those to the top. It's actually a really exciting time to be kind of someone who's a student of the liberal arts. It's funny, because the last 30 years, like, everything has been about STEM, you know, and actually they're, you know, a lot of the most kind of strategic, brilliant thinkers about the future of technology are saying that it's a moment where actually our human like we get to be in our most human capacity, which I think is really exciting, because technology is going to be able to do a lot of the sort of drudgery pieces or just the mundane.
Christine Mason 38:38
I'm in deep, deep evaluation of it. I use a lot. I use a lot of different platforms. Explore a lot and the longing for in real life, human connection, authentic emotion, authentic experience. I think, I think what's happening is it's so obvious when you're using a large language model to stand between you and what you present to the world that I'm really curious now if the tantric worldview will finally take hold, which is, anytime I'm using AI to write something, it's drawing on what is already known, and the only thing which is not known is what Lucy thinks from her direct position on Planet Earth as her her unique worldview, her unique impressions and experiences, because everything else can be aggregated and reported upon by the engine. So perhaps it will return people more and more to a direct knowing that's so interesting. Like, if I could write on something on AI, what it knows, and then I won't write that already a known piece of information, like, I don't have anything to
Lucy Caldwell 39:41
add, but there is always the layer of our own human construal when that's what I was talking about, when I was going through my process of awakening and some of the great traditions I was coming in contact with, the Buddhist teachings and meditation. And in different experiences, obviously, I actually had this moment where I realized so much of the this is, this is original wisdom, that's just, I'm the vessel for it. But there was that way in which my encounter with the wisdom, with the mantras, with, you know, the teachings, and just sharing how it was illuminating me, or helping me get unstuck, or helping me feel things I hadn't felt. So it comes through you, and it's a unique presentation of that material through and as you, that's beautiful.
Christine Mason 40:29
But
Lucy Caldwell 40:30
I even feel when I'm doing these really big brainstorms, because we have all of these different circles, right? Future of democracy, future, you know, reimagining business future of health and wellness. Like, I'm not an expert in these fields, but I keep zooming in and then zooming out and going lateral. And I'm having, you know, these, these fabulous brainstorms with chat GBT on, like reimagining the World Fair, which is what, you know, built the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. And like these moments of cultural pride and San Francisco's coming out of this very, you know, such a boom and bust town, and imagining like this intersection between people converging in person and having these different immersive experiences along the Embarcadero and in these these physical spaces. And then bringing the creative, immersive, awe inspiring visuals, you know, that we could illuminate, you know, the buildings and the bridges and the you know. And then bringing somatic practices and spiritual practices, so that when we talk about like, the future of democracy. We're not just talking about citizen I mean, citizen assemblies are fascinating and all of these things, but we can actually, we can look at the level of the nervous system of like, how do people relate to difference? How can we actually expand the aperture to hear each other's stories of how we formed our opinions? To me, that's the only way through this. It's going right back to where we started with the empathy, the true empathy, which is grounded in humility and and grounded in the beauty of the lived experience of human beings. When we speak from that place, there's not just empathy, but there's like compassion, there's there's grief that comes to the surface when you realize how much we misunderstand. And so I get so excited in those, those places of inquiry, because I don't feel like that knowledge really did yet exist in the world. But now AI is helping bring really some examples to me, and I'm adding to it. And, you know, and it's just like this flywheel. It's generating so many beautiful ideas like it's keeping me in a flow state on this creative collaboration, and then I send it back out to people, and they're doing the same. And, you know, so there's some, there's some kind of an energy here. Well,
Christine Mason 42:51
we got into a very long conversation when we were at the urine about embodied consciousness and non embodied consciousness. And sort of there's a bias currently that organic, embodied consciousness is somehow like a superior consciousness, and this is a duplicate, a poor copy, but it could be a step on the way to collective consciousness. What I do know is, I really love the idea that at any time of the day or night I can inquire into any subject matter and have a dialog on any subject matter that has ever been known to the human psyche. It's amazing, inexhaustible. It still irritates me when people pass it off as their original idea. So why? Because I have kind of, I have some kind of bias that they shouldn't do that that's all, that's all my judgment and make wrong.
Lucy Caldwell 43:35
That is interesting. I mean, I think in general, we as human beings want to feel belonging. We want to feel worthiness. We want to feel seen. It is an interesting question about, you know, the ways in which the technology provides like these superpowers, and then to the extent people are kind of like wearing it as a mask, you
Christine Mason 43:58
know, you just got it. That's exactly the thing. Like, when you long for a real connection and authenticity, there's all this hiding, like, tell me what's real, if worthy of your trust and vulnerability, I am here to receive. And so all of this is like another layer of what you were talking about, like the Instagram perfectly curated plate, and now it's moved to verbal or ideation. But you know, those of us who love words and have loved words for a long time, maybe it's like somebody who's like, super fast or long legged, and now, though it's a great equalizer, so maybe I'm just being a stinker. Well, it's
Lucy Caldwell 44:36
always worth considering the opposite hypothesis, right, like, and then also to understand, like, Why? Why did the things that irritate us bother us so much? Maybe in your case, this has been a particular superpower of yours where you've been able to be kind of synthetic thinker, right? And so maybe there's part of you that's kind of like, well, wait a minute. Like, if. Everyone else is going to be able to catch up, you know? They're not even using their original thinking, just, I'm going to be honest, like, I I was born with the genes to have boobs, and I remember when everyone started getting implants, you know? And they got to be like, so skinny, because it was sort of like, oh, you get the boobs, but you have maybe more stimulating like that, right? And then it was like, oh, wait a minute, all these women who they genetically have the really skinny bodies, but then they get to put the boobs on, like, I just lost the boob advantage.
Christine Mason 45:30
All right, that's go with that one as an example. Okay, I love this actually great equalizer. And you know, I do it with imagery, like I see something in my head, and I really want to see it visually, because I'm a visual person, but I don't have the talents to do it. Let me see if I can get that to be constructed just using the power of my words. So maybe, maybe there's something in here that I can, like, investigate, on appreciating these, these biological extenders, these school extenders, these capacity extenders that allow everybody's true, authentic inner life to shine. Yes, but this is interesting because, like, you know, you look at, I was just listening to that telepathy tapes. She's talking like non verbal people who are autistic and non verbal for the most part, and their parents always were saying, like there's no one inside.
Lucy Caldwell 46:22
Oh, interesting, yeah. So just it's been in my awareness field because my son is on the autism spectrum,
Christine Mason 46:29
and with these tools, not just the spelling tools and other things that they're revealing that not only is there someone inside, they're like this poet and never had the access to get it out of their Embodied Reality. And that to trust that all creatures, all beings, have these, these inner philosophers, poets, genius, beauty, and to not be such a curmudgeon when it comes to AI enhancements, to let that get out, yeah, and
Lucy Caldwell 46:56
especially if you can think at the layer of a privilege, right? Like, where someone who never got to go to college, never had an amazing mentor, but just has these this curiosity and this zest, like, can live anywhere in the world, and they can become a filmmaker, and they can tell their stories, you know, and they can start interacting with an audience, like, that's the beautiful side of the of the ability to use this kind of great equalizer.
Christine Mason 47:26
You're really getting into one of the big economic challenges of our era, like, Oh, but I make my living writing, or I make my living with words. And that actually hits a chord in my base chakra, like my security shocker, and I imagine, like people who are in the driverless car era, and they've been drivers or paint artists, and now you've got Canva, you know, all of these tools that are democratizing for a large swath of people are also deeply threatening to the creative class, and that, I don't think we're really prepared for This.
Lucy Caldwell 48:00
Well, actually, it's not just the creative class. It's every human capacity that we've ever derived economic meaning from potentially being disrupted. If you look
Christine Mason 48:10
at a social impact question and you're like, okay, all y'all economic reality identity is going to be disrupted in every field. I mean, that is climactic change. It
Lucy Caldwell 48:24
really is. And that is some of the work of when I am, when I'm talking about this work we're doing to imagine the future we want to build. Those are the questions we really, really need to sit with. And that's why I'm also playing with different time horizons, because if you go way, way out in the most optimistic possible future, there's like this, this post abundance society, that where we figured it out, and people get to be in their creative gifts, and we've taken away economic scarcity and all of that, right? But that, to me, is a little less interesting than the lens that's like, how would we get there, you know, like the closer in time horizon lens of the the 20 years or the 40 years, because it's certainly not a foregone conclusion at all. And human behavior would would suggest that people are hoarders and they are not generous. We are not generous. We We live in a scarcity mentality. I think that there are tribal systems that had a totally different relationship to this notion of property, and so I do believe it's possible to come up with new ways of relating to the collective, to the commons and to sharing, and we need to do innovative experiments and research on how, you know, how we can distribute resources. It's not just that. You know, there are certain bigger and bigger winners, and then everyone else is is falling behind. It's that way in terms of of land, because huge swaths of of our land mass. Gonna not have access to water and not have arable, you know, like you won't be able to grow any crops on them and and so that there is still going to be viable land, but it's moving further north and further south, so we're being concentrated, you know, 100 years from now, onto different land masses. And whether humanity can bridge this divide where we have tremendous economic possibility, and, you know, potentially clean energy and other things, you know, but like, how can we make the transition where we don't basically just go into war, essentially just to bring a fine
Christine Mason 50:41
point on these impact circles, is that this kind of a topic is one that we could have a group of three to 15 people who are really learning as much as they can and come in with one place where you could take action together and you're not alone in it. So I don't I can be ideating and worrying about like, how do we not drop into famine by myself in my living room or with 10 other intelligent, curious, passionate people, we can ask these questions, and then we can say, what do we need to prepare for that now? And so that model that you're suggesting, I mean, first of all, I appreciate you for doing it and for stepping out with such charitable efforts. You're doing this for this big community here, and you've drawn hundreds of people together, and they're meeting every few every couple of weeks, and you're doing that all for charity. You're doing that for free. Nobody's paying a fee for No,
Lucy Caldwell 51:29
no, no, what? There's no money exchange happening. And I also really advocated to make it an open invitation. It's a, it's a members club where we're doing but it's it's actually an open invitation for anyone to participate. And I also have empowered aikwei Scott, who is a very diverse leader from Oakland, whose family has roots and a lot of movement organizing. And he's a creative and I have this very strong instinct about the the magic of having him involved in leadership, from the inception, just sort of the the creativity and, you know, Gina Renee and her social movement music, like there are certain decisions that are guiding me, that are, they are like they are sourced, you know, beyond me. They're beyond my gifts.
Christine Mason 52:20
So this template tell me about if your dream or vision for this were to be like beyond your wildest dreams, what would happen with impact circles? Impact
Lucy Caldwell 52:31
circles would come to be known as like a household name all around the world, like people would actually know, just like at this point, we now know that meditating is good for you, right? Like almost everyone now, it knows that at some level, and 30 years ago, we didn't necessarily all know that. So impact circles would become like, like it like, how people know about the work of AA meetings, they're available, and almost every community has the framework available and people who are meeting and coming together. And so in every high school, in every community, there would be, like, self appointed leadership and and not just coming together to do this, like this big work that what I'm seeing, and you know that you referenced it before, like there's light in people's eyes, there's a feeling of community and of belonging and of meaning And of bridging across divides or meeting our fears and transmuting them. And you know that there would be that that beautiful cultural context, just like there's a Chamber of Commerce in cities, that would be beyond my wildest dreams, and that there would be opportunities for beautiful gathering spaces so that people could come together in enjoy and creative arts and experimentation. And, you know, we had the founder of the maker movement at our first opening salon, Dale Dougherty, and he talked about how he started this, the Maker Faire, which is such an amazing, beautiful place for tinkerers and innovators and all these little maker movements that spread all across, you know, the United States, and I'm sure in other countries. And he talked about during COVID, when the world was shut down and there weren't masks, you know, in the hospitals, like no one had deployed the resources or knew how to get it out to humanity, yet, that the makers stepped up. And so this is the idea of social movements, because we are going to have more uncertainty. We know we have the isolation problem. There's going to be, you know, more variability in in sourcing of food and all these kind of things like, you know, it's bringing community together, but also redistributing the power structure so that people feel empowered and are. Empowered.
Christine Mason 55:00
There's almost like a return to those, like local community models of the 50s and 60s, like the Kiwanis Club was big in the Lions Club, although those things were where it's it's even like a micro version of that. But I love that idea. What if ever you're like, Oh, hi, my name is so and so, what impact circles are you in? You know that normative? Yeah,
Lucy Caldwell 55:19
that would be amazing, you know, but the bridging that we're trying to figure out, because there is magic in the in person, there's a way that we're building trust and doing these embodied practices and all that. And it is part of the magic of movement building, is that human connection. And Gary Wolf, who was at our opening salon, and he did the quantified self movement, you know, and he was talking about that was one of the things they really studied, is that there's magic in the human lived experience of being together. And he had that beautiful example of the summer of 2015 I think it was when the Syrian refugee crisis, and there were, there was this boat of refugees with, like, over 300 people that set sail and started capsizing, and people were drowning, and they had the Hellenic Coast Guard that had been through all their drills, and so well resourced, and they could not pull it together to get the lifeboats out. And there was just this huge panic that set in. And it was all the little fishing boats and all the little, you know, small, little constellations of community that all rushed in to meet the moment. I get the chills when I say that, because it's like that actually has to be the way forward. Which isn't to say that I don't believe in institutions, but the institutions are going through, you know, a death and rebirth cycle, like they need to be reconsidered, you know, even our education system, our healthcare system, like all of our systems, and so I do think that there's this redistribution of of agency, which is interesting, because in some ways, that used to be more of the kind of conservative view, you know, but now it's Like, it's sort of like across the political spectrum, there's this way in which we're going to have to come back together as human beings, and generally people do show up in community when they need to, which is the beautiful thing, and the more we can kind of weave those connections and Find the contexts for it being playful and joyful and fun and connective, the better. I live in Santa Cruz, right by the ocean, and there's a beautiful event happening here tomorrow called she is beautiful. I researched it. It's like one woman who had this dream to create this celebration of the feminine and of girls and mothers and women running and being athletes and connecting it to self empowerment messages. So it's the cutest event. There are, you know, triathlons and different things that take place here, but they have all these signs out that are these positive affirmation like, it's the complete opposite of that social media, you know, draining thing that makes you feel insecure, and you see dads and the little boys and all these people coming out and holding these signs, you know, like, my mom is amazing. I don't know. I have to, I'll have to take some pictures and send them to you, because it's just the sweetest thing. But it's like when you have an event like that, and the way that the community kind of comes together, and you can't just help it, like every person around has a smile on their face when it's happening. And that's what I think gets us out of these fear states and the isolation and the loneliness, and we just, we need that kind of community action happening everywhere. Yeah,
Christine Mason 58:35
I love to see that, and just mutual upliftment, that's one of my core values. Well, I appreciate you so much for doing all the things you're doing, and what a pleasure to get to know you. So honored
Lucy Caldwell 58:45
to have you be a part of it. I feel honored and humbled and so excited to have your your leadership here at the helm. And what I'm really wishing to do is to kind of channel each person's passions who's feeling called to the project. So it's an open invitation to you, or anyone who listens to this podcast to reach out help this movement. Dream up what you know, what it is that that lights you up and makes you feel alive and connected to your soul's reason for being here. And I feel like when we bring that energy, it's just going to keep on building. Yes,
Christine Mason 59:23
I will do it. I think for me, the one that I'm really interested in is this core aspect of human consciousness, like, how do you start to see yourself as part of the fabric of everything? And, you know, get beyond some of the tribal divisions and just be local and love the people you have and work together to make it good for everybody. Yeah, that sounds easy and, and Pollyanna, but it's actually a tremendous amount of work inside of the self to be able to hold and digest and pass through more and more of your experience without spewing your anxiety or your trigger onto other people. And and it's so exciting. It's such an exciting. Place to be, because from that place, we're like, wow, you have an actual objective issue sitting in middle. How can we work on that together? Or it's not objective to be in an untriggered exploration of it from all these different angles. How exciting is that? Yeah,
Lucy Caldwell 1:00:13
and I mean, we're so lucky because the arts, you know, like music, kind of it creates that field. It actually invites people into that field of connection and moving your body. And you know, there are certain things like that, that kind of, like, they create the frequency around us. And you know, not that everyone has the same musical taste, but just in general, like there are these human traditions, like, like being around a campfire that is like, it must be in our genetic memory going back 1000s of years. So it's sort of like, how do we create more of those campfire moments with each other that that reset the frame I
Christine Mason 1:00:53
remember how to dance around a campfire and pound a drum and talk to the night sky and be with people. Something in my ancient blood knows
Lucy Caldwell 1:01:02
that exactly. It's this deep seed that exists inside of every person. And I can remember being a little girl and just how natural it was to do with that age. And then, you know, kind of finding myself full circle, that that's what I'm seeking out. You know, at this chapter of life. I did want to also say, like, it's about building this vision, and then it's about being really strategic, about how we get started and beginning where we are, and starting small, starting with, like, what's the six week opportunity? And how does that weave in to, you know, the six month opportunity, and and then learn and and go back and refine it, and try it again, you know? And keep it, keep it lightweight enough. Part of where we get overwhelmed is we try to, like, take everything on, and then it feels so overwhelming, then we do nothing,
Speaker 1 1:01:54
or need to make a startup around it, or an organization,
Lucy Caldwell 1:01:58
that's right. And I am seeing that there's just, there's a lot of fatigue around that, because, you know, with organizations, then you have all the fundraising cycles and all those same structural and power dynamics that come into it. So trying to keep it nimble, I think, is really important.
Christine Mason 1:02:14
Do you have any advice for people, as we're closing here, like, anything that you think is absolutely critical to doing this? Well, if I'm a person who's going to go join what are the qualities I should bring with me? I do think
Lucy Caldwell 1:02:26
some open mindedness and some ability to sit in the place of creation, which is a bit of a place of uncertainty. So sometimes people come in and they're like, I want to know what it is we're creating. Can you show me an example? And you know, we can show some examples, but it's never been done before. So put on your child like Wonder hat and your sense of curiosity, because we want to have that spirit lighting the way, so that we can come up with new ideas and then really tune in within yourself to what truly lights you up, and find a circle, or create a circle that is in that space, and then find a few collaborators where, you know, it can be as few as three to make an impact circle, if they're really committed, and start meeting every week like it. You know, you don't even need our protocol to do that. You know, we're going to provide lots of resources and materials, you know, to make it available, but you know, if people are coming into what we're doing in Marin, get to know the people that are there and make it fun and make friendships out of it, so that you want to keep coming back.
Christine Mason 1:03:38
So thank you so much for joining me with this conversation with Lucy Caldwell, and I hope that you look up impact circles and find a way to activate locally. We need everybody's creative Joy right now. So I would like to remind you of some things that you can do if you want to get more engaged and hang out with me a little bit more every third Sunday of the month, I do a community call called good community, very original. I know where we practice breath work and meditation together, and then we go into a conversation on a topic, and then we practice listening skills, and we do some attunement, and we bless out. It's very bonding. And I'm trying to build a longitudinal Community of Practice of people who really want to get more skilled in how do we handle all the things that are coming at us in life, digest it and live fully and freely with more love and less fear. So the next one of those is coming up next Sunday, you can find out all the dates that are happening and register for those at Christine mariemason.com, the other thing I want to tell you is rosewoman.com. Rosebud, as I've been telling you for a long time, my long arc vision with Rosebud was always to create a lifestyle, reverent lifestyle. Of love and beauty, of dwelling in the grace of life. And I began it with women's intimate and sexual health and wellness products, topical and then we added body care topicals. And I always wanted to do more, you know, things that helped create a beautiful life no matter where you were. So we added, I did candles and some other things. So I've just recently added a curation of washable silks, beautiful bedding that is made out of mulberry silk that is temperature regulating, and some other products. So you'll see, if you go to rosewoman.com that we are merging, and we are morphing, sorry, a little bit from the Rosebud woman, intimate care, body care only, topicals, although we're still doing that and I'm going to expand that part of the line. Part of the line to being a more broader offering of reverent lifestyle of love and beauty, the lifestyle of one great grace. I'm I'm in the story of love and beauty. I'm in the story of one great grace. And at a time when that story is often, I'm in the story of, ain't it awful? It's a very important thing to stay connected to the abundance of this beautiful planet, to the abundance and beauty of the life that we've been granted, to the direct relationships we have with people around us who shine the magnificence of creation back at us through their eyes and their smile and their touch and their own creative offerings, and you and I and everybody else who's living in the story of love, beauty and grace are part of that transformation. Are part of that story taking root on Earth. So wherever you're at I invite you to step into that fully with me. Do it through impact circles. Do it in your own way. Let me know how you're doing it, so maybe I can amplify you and your work as well. Okay, to the one true light that animates everything. Have a beautiful, beautiful day. You
