Howe has told some parts of her life story before, in countless lectures and in her book An Alien Harvest; at the moment she related it again, she was sitting on a panel devoted to "Ancient Secrets" alongside several self-proclaimed experts in ancient civilizations and what the program dubbed "the enormous cover-up of our true past."It would've been a bit difficult for an unschooled observer to figure out what the "enormous cover-up of our true past" actually was. Things had quickly gotten a little chaotic, in a good-natured way, and stayed there, with Howe and the other panelists genially talking over each other about reptilian species, light beings, the significance of ancient artifacts, and, ultimately, Jesus. ("I'm a Jesus freak," William Henry told the room. He's an "investigative mythologist" who has been a producer on Ancient Aliens. He was critical of the show for not mentioning Jesus more, given that Henry sees Him as central to the extraterrestrial phenomenon).What, precisely, is too out there for Conscious Life?
While Conscious Life presenters can tend towards the verbose, Quicksilver is almost painfully the opposite. He's clearly had profound spiritual experiences, which led him to leave what he describes as a "strong Jewish culture" in Brooklyn and "set sail for California" in the early 70s with the woman he was married to at the time. He married again, had three children and six grandchildren, and settled into life as a successful manufacturer of commercial furniture. But meanwhile, something else was working under the surface, which he's said in another interview with Conscious Life presenters had to do with a spiritual awakening in Mexico, the details of which he seems to prefer to keep private."You're light workers," said a man who was conducting a workshop on "energy healing with extraterrestrial lasers."
"The NHF did two expos a year, here and in Pasadena," Salaman's son Sean David Morton told me, back in 2017. "We had like 50,000 people who would come. Remember that back in the day, a lot of this stuff was completely out there. Pushing the envelope. People who couldn't get stuff in the NHF convention started their own show," which was Whole Life. "It all evolved from there."But even then, debates were forming about what might be too fringe for the fringe. In 1986, Whole Life's organizers told the L.A. Times that they were strictly limiting the psychics and mediums who came to the Expo, out of concerns over exploitation. Brian Duggan, the event's director, told the paper:"Spiritual things, like beauty and art and crystals. That's really what I focus on. The upliftment of things."
"It's not that we have anything against intuitive ways of knowing things, there are definitely deep connections between people," Duggan explained, adding that individuals "working in areas that are controversial and sometimes abused" must be reviewed by show officials before they are granted a booth. None of this year's applicants (among the psychics and tarot card readers) passed the test, he said.
But while the anti-vaccine movement creates direct and lasting negative consequences, some of the other beliefs on offer at Conscious Life can be harder to put firmly in black and white. In the lowest level of the marketplace, Los Angeles Skywatch, an anti-chemtrail organization, was tabling next to 5G Free California. Skywatch has been around for quite a few years; they make a variety of extremely heated claims about the government carrying out weather modification technologies to control the population, or worse. “The weather can be controlled and turned into the ultimate weapon,” the guy manning the booth assured me, before telling me that the wildfires in California and elsewhere were also government-made, and making a variety of claims about who Greta Thunberg’s “handlers” really are.5G Free California, meanwhile, raises concerns about both the radiation levels created by 5G technology—a controversial idea at best—while also, on their website, calling it “a final piece in a global surveillance puzzle.” While those ideas don’t have a lot of basis in fact—a sentence they will surely send me some strongly worded emails about—it also doesn’t have much of a negative effect on their lives, or anyone else’s. They stage demonstrations, write letters, get together for community meetings—all a slightly fractured version of activism and community-building. It’s neither helpful nor harmful, precisely; more like an attempt to feel a level of agency and control in the face of forces that are, inarguably, a lot bigger than themselves.There's a difference between harmlessly eccentric views and ones that pose genuine risk to other people, although seemingly no two people can quite agree on where that line is.
Brand had become drawn to some spiritual mentors as a result of his recovery, he said, which, given his fame, led to him being able to do things like call up Eckhart Tolle, the author of The Power of Now and one of the most famous living spiritual teachers. "Someone gave me his number for work purposes," Brand said. "I misused it. I was treating it like a spiritual phone sex line." The room echoed with scandalized laughter."You're obviously fucked," said Russell Brand.
The promise of natural healing backed with “ancient” wisdom is a pretty common one at Conscious Life. But it can also take some unappealing forms, like a fetishization of Native Americans as simple, innately wise healers waiting to offer their secret wisdoms to paying customers. (There are a lot of dreamcatchers for sale.) A longtime Conscious Life volunteer who goes by Alegría told me that while she appreciates the connections and conversations that the Expo creates, “I’m critical of the ways indigenous cultures are being repackaged and sold here. That’s always my trigger, my critique, my observation.” While she has her own business focused on alternative healing, “I don’t promote here,” she told me. It’s not quite the customer base she’s looking for."We're here to heal ourselves, and heal the planet."
"There's a hidden agenda to wipe out certain lineages here on the planet."
The Conscious Life Expo is the largest forum and marketplace for alternative ideas and products on the planet. Having visited similar trade show events around the world, none compare to the breath and scope of Conscious Life. We constantly stretch the boundary of credibility and seek to introduce to a worldwide audience the power and inevitability of radical spiritual transformation. Lots of walls to break down.
We live in an evolving universe, in an orgasmic nuclear dance of consciousness. Everything is changing, evolving, transforming. Wise men and women throughout history have tried to define the nature of the reality in which they found themselves. Myriad models have existed- most have fallen into the historical garbage heap, others cling by threads. We, these generations, are creating a new model. Is it all figured out and defined? No. Do we know some of the elements of what this future model might look like? Yes. The primary intention of the Conscious Life Expo Conference and Exposition is to participate in the conscious co-creation of a new world, a world based on new paradigms in science, in spirituality, in longevity, in local and global community, in relationship, in health and well-being.
Follow Anna Merlan on Twitter.And while we co-create this new holistic model through our authentic self expression, we also participate in a powerful and passionate celebration of life and love. The Expo is a three-day gathering of the tribes, a three-day celebration of evolution and consciousness and a three-day brainstorming session on who we are, where we are and where we are going