Knowing the Villegas well is proof I'm doing something right. Juan and Rosemary Villegas are two visionary painters in north Austin blazing their own trail. They have both been painting for over a decade, with a clarified spiritual focus the last 5-7 years, they have co-created a transcendental, surreal home for art and the artists who create it at Art Us Co art gallery. It wasn't always easy... in fact it was a challenging period in the early years both as artists and just as human beings working out their own shadow sides. Until their hard work and vision, literally they engineered this space mentally, paid off into their own artist-run grassroots art collective and gallery in north Austin in the Arboretum area. As painters, they've exhibited their work in galleries across Texas and other states. As students, they've learned from visionary artists Alex and Allyson Grey. And as gallery owners, they've showcased art by diverse artists from different cultural backgrounds, all with the shared mission of expanding consciousness.

We discuss:

- Juan and Rosemary’s “overnight” success built over decades of personal and creative evolution.

- Why they founded ArtUs Co after years of being rejected by traditional galleries for being “too mystical.”

- Rosemary’s awakening through animal spirit guides after a visionary intensive with Alex & Allyson Grey.

- Juan’s transformation from surrealist darkness to uplifting spiritual imagery after leaving toxic relationships.

- Their shared inspiration from psychedelics—not to paint on them, but to integrate the visions afterward.

- The role of nature, animals, and sacred symbols in both their personal healing and artistic expression.

- Why authenticity and feedback—not market trends—drive their most impactful works.

Subscribe to Karmic Relief Podcast on YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/@iambobpeckConnect with Juan & Rosemary

https://www.instagram.com/villegasartist

https://www.instagram.com/mysticalrosemary

https://www.instagram.com/artuscoart

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/karmicreliefpod

More about Bob Peckhttps://www.linktr.ee/bobpeck

Theme Music Scott Standley - "You Got It" https://www.scottstandley.com

Design by Paige Hasaballah & Bob Peck https://deltavenus.art

Kayla Marie's story is extraordinary. She is a trauma informed somatic coaching counselor whose work is influenced immensely by her childhood growing up Mennonite. Mennonites are an extremely antiquated fundamentalist Christian cult that perpetuates chauvinism, indoctrination, and control. There are moments of beauty in the faith, but ultimately the controlling egos subjugate their community and their women. Kayla was in Handmaid's Tale in real life. And sadly the end of her Act I is very dark. But she also has bloomed incredibly after the darkness and it is such a thrill to point to her, her work and her story as a shining example of rising from the ashes.

We talk through:

-pre trans fallacy - if the truth isn't transcended it can cause harm, Ken Wilber

-Mennonite upbringing:

- beautiful singing

- ultimately innocent as God's children

- seeing God in everything like the mystic, however fear and indoctrinating children

- in church every morning

- Kayla's dark story of sexual abuse, within her Mennonite religion, within her family -- sharing as a way to help other victims understand they can rise above the ashes too; and it's not their fault!

- You are worthy of love, the Infinite Love of Creator

- Her Hollywood-movie-esque story of leaving Mennonite abuse and finding freedom

- She has a punk rock period, and then found her spiritual practice after losing a loving partner

- The Tao Te Ching as an initial veil-breaking text for "a flower blossoming in her chest"

- Personal growth is not linear

- Christians are "worshipping the door instead of walking through it"

- Loving myself now, never thought I'd do that

Connect with Kayla:

https://www.instagram.com/songbird_living

Subscribe to Karmic Relief Podcast on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/@iambobpeck

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/karmicreliefpod

https://www.instagram.com/bobpeck

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/7es7cjNdcSel032NLXr4wK?si=cf96e7379ab14052

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/karmic-relief/id1515029592

More about Bob Peck

https://www.linktr.ee/bobpeck

Theme Music Scott Standley - "You Got It"

https://www.scottstandley.com

Design by Paige Hasaballah & Bob Peck

https://deltavenus.art

Dr. Rick Diamond is a beautiful shining eternal soul having a temporary human experience. Just like you. Dr. Rick is one of my favorite people on Instagram and I'm thrilled to call him a friend and mentor here in Austin. He found me through my book and we've been big supporters of each other ever since. Rick's work is called "story healing" where he helps people investigate the stories we've been telling ourselves for so many years. He was an English professor, and a former Christian pastor, he also ran the Journey Imperfect Faith Community for 17 years here in town.. so yeah Rick has led countless classes, seminars, and spiritual retreats guiding ourselves, and himself, into authentic spirituality. He really walks the walk. He dances the walk. I loved talking to him and laughing with him. Enjoy Dr. Rick Diamond on this episode of Karmic Relief.

Subscribe to Karmic Relief Podcast on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/@iambobpeck

Connect with Rick

https://instagram.com/drrickdiamond

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/karmicreliefpod

https://www.instagram.com/bobpeck

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/7es7cjNdcSel032NLXr4wK?si=cf96e7379ab14052

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/karmic-relief/id1515029592

More about Bob Peck

https://www.linktr.ee/bobpeck

Theme Music Scott Standley - "You Got It"

https://www.scottstandley.com

Design by Paige Hasaballah & Bob Peck

https://deltavenus.art

What if the people in our lives—especially those who trigger us—are actually our greatest spiritual teachers? In this enlightening episode, Carol Howe, a renowned ACIM teacher and biographer of Bill Thetford, shares her wisdom on how relationships serve as powerful mirrors for our own inner work.With nearly 50 years of experience with A Course in Miracles, Carol explains how the Course’s core principles—true forgiveness, releasing guilt, and seeing past illusions—can help us shift our perception and heal even the most challenging relationships. Drawing from her close friendship with Bill Thetford, she also gives an inside look at his journey with the Course, his transformation, and how its teachings shaped his life.This episode is an invitation to see our relationships differently, embrace forgiveness as a tool for awakening, and recognize that our greatest struggles may hold the key to our deepest peace.Subscribe to Karmic Relief Podcast on YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/@iambobpeckConnect with Carolhttps://www.carolhowe.comInstagramhttps://www.instagram.com/karmicreliefpodSpotifyhttps://open.spotify.com/show/7es7cjNdcSel032NLXr4wK?si=cf96e7379ab14052Apple Podcastshttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/karmic-relief/id1515029592More about Bob Peckhttps://www.linktr.ee/bobpeckTheme Music Scott Standley - "You Got It" https://www.scottstandley.comDesign by Paige Hasaballah & Bob Peck https://deltavenus.art

Michael Phillip is talking to people. Hundreds of fascinating philosophers, academics, psychologists, scientists, and crazy mystics on his show Third Eye Drops. He is helping to untangle esoterica in the Western world. And one of the most important discoveries he's made on his incredibly popular podcast, Third Eye Drops, is that Philosophers are actually mystics. Plato, for example, has been framed by history as a man who understood reason, and the world, in a secular, grounded way. This is true in some aspects, but if we haven't read the Timmaeus, we're not fully appreciating how mystical and how esoteric Plato truly was... there's a reason that Cave metaphor inspired by the Matrix.

Michael and I talk about how he got into this world of podcasting and esoterica, how his friend Don Hoffman PhD sees the world, as well as touching on our historical faves from Plotinus to Jesus to Jung. Enjoy.

Subscribe to Karmic Relief Podcast on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/@iambobpeck

Connect with Michael

youtube.com/@thirdeyedrops

instagram.com/third_eye_drops

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/karmicreliefpod

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/7es7cjNdcSel032NLXr4wK?si=cf96e7379ab14052

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/karmic-relief/id1515029592

More about Bob Peck

https://www.linktr.ee/bobpeck

Theme Music Scott Standley - "You Got It"

https://www.scottstandley.com

Design by Paige Hasaballah & Bob Peck

https://deltavenus.art

Stephanie Brinkerhoff is an ex-Mormon on mushrooms. Not all the time, really just one important time… she took 1 gram of psilocybin and saw through the illusion of the Church of Latter Day Saints. She left the Mormon church and changed many things in her life… Stephanie is hilarious. Authentic. Humble. And continually seeking on the path… after Mormonism, carved through New Age and got some battle scars from “our people” too.

instagram.com/mormonsonmushrooms

Dylan Townsend is calling it out. The world of spiritual satire seems to be growing everyday. My feeds are fed by jokes about the world of spirituality and new age, and look, I'm all for a good laugh. But if you're gonna come for spiritualgram you better have come out of the jungle baby. You better be able to connect Padmasambhava's teachings to Carl Jung's psychoanalysis. You better read the stars like a fortune cookie. And Dylan Townsend is just that. He left his home in Ireland for India to learn Yoga at 19 years old. He went to Venezuela to get to know plant medicine at 20. He's been ALL over this planet to learn and study under different spiritual traditions. And it is all culminating in his work in writing and film production on multiple new series headed for streamers soon. We cover a lot of ground! The interview starts with me contextualizing my book for a hot second... thank you, enjoy!

In this episode, we cover:

- The human-ness of the Bible

- Milarepa and multi-incarnation paintings of Thangka Buddhist paintings

- The Irish and US revolutions

- The brilliance of the film "Embrace of the Serpent"

- Being from Texas old school and the unique beauty of Austin, Texas

- Topanga Canyon as the Life Coach Capital of America

- Dylan's spiritual satire shows "Eden 2.0" and "Intentional"

- Fiction as the purest highest art form

- Back to Milarepa on the futility of this world, yet not being apathy

- Laozi on The Way vs. striving

- Everything in life is this moment

- Social media as antithetical to Buddhist self-defining

- "Prayer-formance" as the modern Pharisees vs. embodying wisdom deeply

- Social as content strategy vs. 'dear diary'

- The beauty of the availability of yoga and psychedelics nowadays

- The pejorative tone of "New Age"

- Dylan and Bob starting a new religion

- Astrology, the Eclipse, and transcending our astrological impacts

- And more

Connect with Dylan

https://www.instagram.com/dylan.p.townsend

www.dylantownsend.com

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/karmicreliefpod

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/7es7cjNdcSel032NLXr4wK?si=cf96e7379ab14052

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/karmic-relief/id1515029592

More about Bob Peck

https://www.linktr.ee/bobpeck

Theme Music Scott Standley - "You Got It"

https://www.scottstandley.com

Design by Paige Hasaballah & Bob Peck

https://deltavenus.art

Sameh Neseim is a certified mystic. He is certified, but that's not what I mean. His every step is a pilgrimage. His every breath is a meditation. I am continually blown away and inspired by my friend Sameh, an Egyptian-American who I met at Meta (then Facebook) back in 2019.

Sameh is a Spiritual and Mindfulness teacher, Self-Mastery Coach and Unity Prayer Chaplain. We met through being two global co-leads of Mindfulness@ Meta, our humble club of meditators within one of the largest conglomerates in the world. We were (and still are) the mystics in the machine. Sameh has since left FB and moved on to helping individuals and leaders out here in the wild.

In this episode, we cover:

- Corporate burnout leading to deliberate choice to change

- The connection between creativity and intuition

- Practical application of "my holiness envelops everything I see"... seeing the One in all including our workplace

- Intention of collaboration and sitting in the holiness of the present moment... detaching from proving anything, from the past and future

- Corporate as a beautiful environment to practice spirituality by dropping the need to be seen as right or important

- "You Are Enough"

- Going to our meditation practice with the intention to either be still and receive peace, or to receive specific inspiration for a project -- being specific! A morning meditation to get grounded for the day, an afternoon meditation on a creative project, and a nighttime meditation for rejuvenation and peace

- A Course in Miracles as a profound practical document for spiritual awakening, that the ego does not want you to read!

- When you want nothing of this world, you acknowledge your commitment to your own happiness

- Rumi helps us with pain and understanding the full experience of love and suffering

Subscribe to Karmic Relief Podcast on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/@iambobpeck

Connect with Sameh at:

https://instagram.com/samehneseim

https://samehneseim.substack.com/podcast

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/karmicreliefpod

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/7es7cjNdcSel032NLXr4wK?si=cf96e7379ab14052

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/karmic-relief/id1515029592

More about Bob Peck

https://www.linktr.ee/bobpeck

Theme Music Scott Standley - "You Got It"

https://www.scottstandley.com

Design by Paige Hasaballah & Bob Peck

https://deltavenus.art

Mikayla Humphrey has questions. She was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, and knocked on thousands upon thousands of doors. At 17 she could no longer endure its cultish control over her life. Sadly Mikayla has not spoken to her immediate family since leaving the church nearly a decade ago... it's an official JW doctrine to "shun".

She is a phoenix arising from the ashes. As a fervent reader of a variety of spiritual philosophies, Mikayla enjoyed my book, "Original Sin Is A Lie" and we have continued to have several theological chats about the nature of it all. We decided to record a Q&A style convo as a unique episode of Karmic Relief Podcast.

We cover:

- The illusory nature of this world

- Nondual cosmology hypotheses

- "World denialism" vs. "world antagonism"

- Door-knocking stories from her Jehovah's Witness childhood

- How the ego loves "special-ness"

- The JW doctrine that _you will never die_ + overcoming a new awareness of impending physical death

- Our mutual adoration of Mollie Adler and her podcast "Back from the Borderline"

- Debunking Biblical infallibility as an essential first step in the open-minded spiritual path

Subscribe to Karmic Relief Podcast on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/@iambobpeck

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/karmicreliefpod

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/7es7cjNdcSel032NLXr4wK?si=cf96e7379ab14052

More about Bob Peck

https://www.linktr.ee/bobpeck

Theme Music Scott Standley - "You Got It"

https://www.scottstandley.com

Design by Paige Hasaballah & Bob Peck

https://deltavenus.art

Rubén Cantú is always innovating. Ever since growing up in a modern day cult-like Christian community, "La Luz Del Mundo" (“The Light of the World”), Rubén has been pushing for positive change. Look they might not be evil, but anyone who says "WE are the chosen people headed to be with God and no one else is", that’s a cult to me. That never sat well with Rubén as he continued his work in the world: on behalf of social impact, local community entrepreneurship, and no shortage of Austin Texas projects in creativity and activism, he has ALWAYS been guided by love. Ultimately that’s the gateway to Eternity—not fear, not division, but Love. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation earlier this summer at a park in east Austin. What we cover:

- The simplicity and joy of a humble upbringing

- Growing up in "The Light of the World / El Luz Del Mundo" Church, a community that deludes itself with the self-image of 'chosen people'

- Getting sick of the "same food" aka unhealthy religion over and over again, and wiping the slate clean -- "Who am I if I'm no longer a part of this community?"

- What is "The One Thing" you can do to improve everything else in your life?

- "If people want to know God, have a direct relationship with Love itself."

- Love is the absence of fear.

- "Love expands our consciousness beyond our cultural conditioning"

- How love and faith informs our daily work, in particular Ruben's focus in social impact entrepreneurship

- Be open to the unfolding of your path

- Our appreciation and critiques of the University of Texas at Austin

- "When you stay silent in the face of injustice, you allow for those who breed on fear to continue to reign..." whereas justice combined with Love can transform the world.

Connect with Rubén:

https://www.instagram.com/rubencantoo/

Subscribe to Karmic Relief Podcast on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/@iambobpeck

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/karmicreliefpod

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/7es7cjNdcSel032NLXr4wK?si=cf96e7379ab14052

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/karmic-relief/id1515029592

More about Bob Peck

https://www.linktr.ee/bobpeck

Theme Music Scott Standley - "You Got It"

https://www.scottstandley.com

Design by Paige Hasaballah & Bob Peck

https://deltavenus.art