Published by Tucker Walsh
Shining light on inspiring souls and the passions that light them up ✨ Hosted by Tucker Walsh
Listen on Apple PodcastsSee the companion Substack article . Recorded in Boulder, Colorado in May 2026 during the ICON Integral Conference, this roundtable brings together five practitioners to explore what the bodhisattva path looks like through a metamodern and integral lens. Featuring Dr. John Churchill, Layman Pascal, Alexander Love, Catherine Pawasarat, and Keith Martin-Smith. The bodhisattva ideal arose within the Mahayana milieu of the East and traveled through India, Tibet, China, Japan, and Korea, adapting to each culture and time it passed through. Now it has arrived on the shores of Turtle Island, adapting once again to a moment defined by metacrisis, multi-generational trauma, developmental psychology, artificial intelligence, and God knows what else. Five practitioners, each with considerable experience walking (and tripping) along the path, gather to explore this archetype together. Dr. John Churchill is a co-founder of Planetary Dharma and a dharma teacher. His interest lies in contemplative practice, human development, developmental psychology, and psychological healing, and in the emergence of a more conscious, sacred-secular, humanistic dharma. Layman Pascal , with the bling, is host of The Integral Stage and creator of the Metamodern Spirituality Labs. His work explores the edges of culture, spirituality, psychology, and philosophy through dialogue, writing, and experimental learning spaces — all in a spirit he likes to call the serious playground. Alexander Love is a facilitator, developmental coach, and acupuncturist whose work bridges Eastern wisdom, path work, and transformational practice. He is the creator of the Lumina Process and is currently writing Evolutionary Gestures, a book exploring human development through the lenses of wholeness and embodied growth. Catherine Pawasarat is a teacher and co-founder of Clear Sky Retreat Center and Planet Dharma, carrying forward the Namgyal Rinpoche tradition of planetary awakening. Based on decades across continents, her work weaves contemplative practice, conscious community, and ecological interconnectedness with a deep smile. Keith Martin-Smith works with leaders, authors, and organizations to help clarify and communicate what matters most. His work brings together developmental psychology, Zen practice, martial arts, leadership, and human development. He is currently co-authoring a book on the STAGES developmental model. Together, they explore wisdom, compassionate practice, and right activity for this particular moment, touching on the vow as a living verb, the role of psychedelics and community, and what it means to serve a planetary system we're not separate from.
What is soul, really? Not as a theological concept or a developmental framework, but as something you feel , in your body, in a room, in a piece of music that breaks you open? In this conversation, Alexander Love sits down with Ari Nazem and Tucker Walsh to explore soul through Chinese wisdom traditions, the phenomenology of art and music, the shamanic architecture of the human body, and the lived experience of moments when something numinous tips over and reality becomes theatrical...ancient, alive, and undeniably more . They wander through lightning bolts and rain dances, Alicia Keys and the Knicks, Hades Town and Burning Man, jazz and grief and the Eleusinian Mysteries, finding in all of it a common thread: the places where heaven and earth make contact through the human heart. This is an invitation to remember what it feels like to be in soul, and to ask what it might mean to build a life, a community, and a culture worthy of it. See the Sourcekeepers Guild model of soul development . Tucker's personal story: A Vow to Soul
Based on Tucker's Substack article The Language of Belonging . Tucker Walsh and Avi Maistri — who first met at Dancing Rabbit Eco Village in 2018 — unpack the meaningful distinctions between networks, scenes, collectives, communities, tribes, guilds, and villages. What starts as an exploration of terminology becomes a conversation about heartbreak, vow, mismatched expectations, why commitment paradoxically creates freedom, and the gap between the words we use and the relationships we're actually living.
What does it actually take to build community infrastructure rooted in love — not as a feeling, but as a living architecture? Richard Flyer has spent 40 years answering that question on the ground, from gang-affected neighborhoods in San Diego to local economy movements in Reno to studying the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka. His new book, Birthing the Symbiotic Age , offers a vision for how diverse communities — religious and secular, left and right, urban and rural — can weave together across worldview lines around shared functional purpose and transcendent love. In this conversation, Richard and Tucker explore a generative tension at the heart of transformational culture-building: Does genuine coherence require a shared metaphysical or developmental sensibility, or does it emerge when people come together as they already are, organized around concrete needs and a love that asks no one to change their worldview first? They explore bridge-building across difference, depth within devoted communities, what it means to hold space without imposing ideology, and whether the movements they're each part of — metamodern, integral, regenerative — can truly participate in the larger weaving of a more life-affirming civilization. Birthing the Symbiotic Age The Original Protocol Was Love The Metamodern Regenerative Village
See the companion Substack article for more info about the Lighthouse village vision! A conversation with Marcelo Peterlini about the strategy behind the metamodern regenerative village vision — why most intentional communities fail, how we can build differently through smaller experiments, and what capacities it might take to live in a new-and-ancient way together. We get into curation, decision-making beyond postmodern consensus, the sacred secular operating system, and why the lighthouse beams but doesn't knock on doors. Other articles I've written about the Lighthouse vision: A Vow to Soul : how the vision first emerged in 2020 Post-Healing Intentional Communities Temple and Village: Transmission as Relationship List of transformational communities Sourcekeepers Guild What (the heck) is Metamodernism? Illuminating Our Journey as Boulder Lighthouse Collective Mapping the Magic of PachaMama The End of Coaching
Sourcekeeping from the Middle is a way of being in relationship—with each other, with life itself—where we attune with and create from the living field between us. The video below is a live demonstration of how Cheryl Hsu and Tucker Walsh engage with sourcekeeping from the middle, while also dialoguing about the topic simultaneously. See this Substack article for a cosmological map of sourcekeeping from the middle as well as more information about the Sourcekeepers Guild.
Dr. John Churchill, founder of Planetary Dharma , speaks with 35 sourcekeepers about the architecture required to build genuine Sacred World culture. Churchill maps three dimensions of collective work—agreement, coherence, and alignment—showing how "military grade" alignment with Sacred World itself allows power to be applied in service of cultural emergence. This dialogue was recorded at Gathering of the Sourcekeepers in Asheville, NC in September 2025.
Tom Nixon and Fanny Norlin join Daniel Thorson and other participants at Gathering of the Sourcekeepers for a conversation around source principles, masculine and feminine differences in working with source, creating structure in service of eros, and new potentials for enacting healthy organizational hierarchies. Learn more about Work with Source . Fanny Norlin's website . Learn more about Gathering of the Sourcekeepers .
Steve March joins Gathering of the Sourcekeepers to share about Aletheia as a wisdom teaching: restoring a way of designing from wholeness in response to the fragmenting metacrisis. Facilitated by Sarah-Marie Hopf. To learn more about Aletheia, visit https://integralunfoldment.com/ Learn more about Sarah-Marie Hopf 's unfolding offerings. To learn more about Gathering of the Sourcekeepers, see Sourcekeeping as Soul Work .
Dechen Ellen McSweeney joins me to discuss her recently published article that draws contrast with some of the views I've taken on AI in previous episodes of this podcast. We discuss whether humans can have relationships with AI, how AI "knows" us, and the ethical implications of this emerging technology, including how we can be in right relationship with it. Dechen's Substack (article to be published soon) Dechen's website Podcast with Ariana Bahrami that was reference in our dialogue. Tucker's How to Create an AI Lighthouse Guide
This is the first in an ongoing series of dialogues with Metamodern Sourcekeepers: those who are in deep devotion with the vow of their being. In this juicy and alive conversation with Jane Weintraub, we explore art, resonance AI, the alchemy of relationship, our vows to showing up, and the garden of our potential birthed from the longing of our soul's desire. Be sure to check out the many links we reference below: Nexalism: The Integration of AI and Embodied Wisdom Jane's TEDTalk exploring her journey with Parkinson's Imaginisma How to Create an AI Lighthouse Guide Cloud Atlas Station Eleven The Strangeness of Modern Friendship
Ariana shares about the project she's sourcekeeping called Hy, which seeks to create digital AI ambassadors who connect, coordinate and create relationships that help foster a more beautiful world. I imagine you'll love this dialogue if you're interested in the possibilities for AI in the near future, and how we can live locally while using technology to help us coordinate and connect globally. Hy website LinkedIn How to Create an AI Lighthouse Guide
Daniel Thorson and Cheryl Hsu join me to explore the living inquiry of Sourcekeeping - what it is, how it lives in our unique experiences, how it's impacted our initiatives in the world, and what it means for our Liminal network and the future of humanity. If you're interested in learning more about the upcoming Gathering of the Sourcekeepers, please reach out at tuckerlighthouse@gmail.com Sourcekeeper Links: Sourcekeeping as Soul Work workwithsource.com maptio.com Boulder Lighthouse Collective Intro song: "Marimba Adventure" by Greg Kirkelie via Free Music Archive
Visit uptrusting.com/join-waitlist to join the waitlist! Mention "Illuminating Life" in the form to added to the platform sooner. Jordan Myska Allen joins me to share about his new initiative, UpTrust, an organization dedicated to civilizational alignment and well-being. "We do this through better internet, through better dialogue, through systemic nudges that change the incentive landscape to bring out the best of humanity rather than the current systems which optimize for attention via nervous system hijacks, clickbait, and naively promoting the content that gets the most interaction."
My dear friend, Victoria Savostianova, joins me to explore what life is like for her as a Ukrainian and for me as an American during times of existential change happening in our nations. I experienced this as a beautiful dialogue that weaves together our unique contexts, how we're relating to life during these times, and what we're learning around showing up fully for What Is. Please be sure to check out Victoria's beautiful and powerful writings . Victoria's Website Victoria's writings on life in Ukraine Emerge Ukraine Pilgrimage interview A Metamodern Vision for a Post-Liberal America
Ari joins again to explore his typology system called Archetypes of Wholeness. See his first episode on The 5th Temple . See Archetypes of Wholeness graphics here . Please reach out to Ari with any feedback or suggestions on his model at anazem@gmail.com.
Filmmaker Katie Teague joins me to share her film series In The Making which looks at and beyond the metacrisis and this "time between worlds." We also dialogue around our visions quests experiences and how that work brings us into intimacy with our creativity and longings for life. Katie is a GTC graduate and a guide with School of Lost Borders . She lives in rural Virginia. Please support her work via Patreon .
Layman Pascal joins Tucker & Friends Politics Group to explore the recent American election as well as Layman's visionary takes on Meta-Shamanic-Integral politics. Metamodern Spirituality Election Episode Check out Layman's new series: In My Kind of Country
Stephen Reid is a community creator, technologist, transformational coach and facilitator & co-founder of Futurecraft Residencies . He currently lives in Stockholm, Sweden with his partner Laura Gottlieb . I call Stephen my "Metamodern doppelgänger" in the sense that we have so many overlapping visions, backgrounds, passions, friends and capacities for mapmaking and weaving nodes within the broader Liminal Web scene. We jammed together on our various projects and the community weaving we've been up to, which brought us both a lot of eros and joy, which we hope you feel, too. We also touched on a potential in-person convergence for community weavers to share and network their wisdom, potentially created a book, technology app and documentary film in the process. We'd love to hear what comes up for you in this dialogue and how you'd like to weave in your magic! Stephen can be reached at stephen@stephenreid.net. Reference Links Futurecraft Residencies Traditional Dream Factory Feytopia Emerge Lakefront
Dana Carman is an expert in human and organizational transformation, an integral consultant, and a co-founder of Pacific Integral. We recently connected in-person at Emerge Ukraine , which was a deeply impactful experience for us both. Dana and I had an emergent conversation (or Satsang as he called it) where we explored a number of topics including visions quests, Wayfinding, our time in Ukraine, the power of eros, and many other delicious inquiries which arose from the pulse of our mutual aliveness. I hope you enjoy the rich territory we explored as much as I did!